Ethical judgement and intent in business school students: the role of the psyche?

The aim of this paper is to highlight how business schools can improve the ethical behaviour of future managers. It assesses the positions of ethical judgement and ethical intent within a sample of UK business students, together with an analysis of underlying explanatory factors to those positions, such as levels of depression, anxiety, stress, motivation and self-compassion. A range of scales were used to evaluate the ethical stance and psychological characteristics of a group of UK business students. The results indicate that feelings of self-compassion, a sense of self-direction and mental health (in particular, depression) affect the ethical judgement and intent of students in a range of business and university scenarios. It is recommended that in addition to more formal ethics education, universities consider the mental health and psyche of their students to improve the efficacy of ethical training.N/

Mental health of Irish students: Self-criticism as a complete mediator in mental health attitudes and caregiver identity

Mental health is a concern in the Republic of Ireland, and in particular mental health of higher education students is challenging. Further, their poor mental health may be negatively impacted by their negative mental health attitudes and caregiver identity, which can yield high self-criticism and low self-reassurance. Accordingly, this study aimed to (i) elucidate the relationships among these five constructs, and (ii) assess the impact of self-criticism and self-reassurance in the relationship (a) between mental health attitudes and mental health, and (b) between caregiver identity and mental health. One-hundred twenty-nine Irish undergraduate students completed self-report measures regarding these constructs. Correlation and path analyses were conducted. Overall all variables were related to each other, in particular family-related shame subscales were strongly related to mental health problems. In path analysis, self-criticism completely mediated the relationship between mental health attitudes and mental health, while self-reassurance did not. Likewise, self-criticism also completely mediated the relationship between caregiver identity and mental health, while self-reassurance did not. The findings suggest the importance of self-criticism to their mental health. While current literature highlights the importance of mental health attitudes such as stigma and caregiver identity such as low self-awareness, our results indicated that it was their self-criticism that predicted poor mental health. Their mental health may be more effectively improved by targeting self-criticism. Compassion training, peer-support groups, and reframing were recommended to counter self-criticism. Our findings will help educators and researchers to identify an alternative and effective means to improve mental health in Irish students.N/

A qualitative investigation into the experience of neuro-linguistic programming certification training among Japanese career consultants

Although the application of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) has been reported worldwide, its scientific investigation is limited. Career consulting is one of the fields where NLP has been increasingly applied in Japan. This study explored why career consultants undertake NLP training, and what they find most useful to their practice. Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with six career consultants, who had attended NLP certification training, revealed that they wanted to learn action-oriented NLP-based coaching skills in addition to their active-listening-based counselling skills. NLP provided frameworks to lead their clients’ thoughts efficiently, deepened their understanding of the human mind, and developed their attitude to understand others and themselves. The NLP skills found most useful were reframing and the Disney strategy.N/

English translation and validation of the Ikigai-9 in a UK Sample [Protocol]

The psychological construct of ‘ikigai’ reflects the sense of having a ‘reason for living’ and has been associated with various positive health-related outcomes. This proposal presents an English translation of the Ikigai-9, empirically explores the manifestation of ikigai in the United Kingdom, and outlines its associations with facets of well-being.N/

Revisiting the self-compassion scale-short form: Stronger associations with self-inadequacy and resilience

The Self-Compassion Scale-Short Form (SCS-SF) was developed as an economical alternative for the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS), one of the few scales to assess self-compassion. Despite the active use of the SCS-SF, a psychometric evaluation of this scale remains limited. This study analysed the factor structure, reliability, and construct validity of the SCS-SF in UK university student populations. Methods Of 365 students approached, 333 completed the SCS-SF, and other measures including negative psychological constructs (mental health problems, self-criticism, and mental health shame) and positive psychological constructs (self-reassurance, resilience, and wellbeing). Data were analysed through confirmatory factor analyses and correlations. Results CFA revealed that the six-factor structure, reported in the validation paper, was not replicated. The positive factor, consisting of the three positive subscales, was not strongly related to any variable, but moderately related to reassured-self, resilience, wellbeing, and inadequate-self. The negative factor, consisting of the three negative subscales, was strongly related to inadequate-self, and moderately related to resilience, reassured-self, stress, wellbeing, depression, and internal shame. Coefficients in the negative factor were in general larger than those in the positive factor. The total SCS-SF score was most strongly related to inadequate-self, followed by resilience. Inter-correlations of the six subscales did not follow Neff (2003b)'s theoretical model of self-compassion nor the full-scale factor solution. Conclusions Findings do not accord with the common use of the global SCS-SF score as an assessment of six factors of self-compassion, and suggest a two factor solution assessing self-criticism and self-compassion.N/

Japanese managers’ experiences of neuro-linguistic programming: a qualitative investigation

Though several work-related mental health training initiatives have been implemented in Japan, the effectiveness of such approaches remains unclear. Consequently, some Japanese corporations prefer using interventions such as neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) to improve employee mental health and wellbeing. This language-based development methodology has been the subject of debate in terms of the quality of the underlying empirical evidence. However, a perspective missing from this debate is an evidence-based understanding of the first-hand experiences of employees that have undertaken NLP training. The purpose of this paper is to inform this debate by conducting a rigorous qualitative examination of the experiences of Japanese senior managers who had recently received training in NLP. Semi-structured interviews attended by 11 Japanese NLP master practitioners were analysed using thematic analysis. Four themes emerged from the data set: improving work-related mental health, NLP fosters a better understanding of the mind, NLP helps to reframe perspectives relating to work and mental health, and challenges of NLP training. While managers found NLP training skills such as reframing and neuro-logical levels useful to their managerial practice and mental health more generally, they raised concerns about NLP’s reputation as well as the utility of some of the techniques employed in NLP.N/

Ikigai and existential positive psychology: Recurrence of meaning for wellbeing

N/

Exploration of contributing factors to mental health in workers and students

Having worked in the field of human resources, my publications focused on mental health and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). Poor mental health has been reported among workers and university students in the United Kingdom (UK). The costs of poor work mental health are estimated to be £87 billion annually in the UK. In particular, hospitality workers, who comprise 7% of the country’s workforce, are known to suffer from poor mental health. Likewise, more than a quarter of UK university students suffer from a mental health problem. Through a series of cross-sectional studies using correlation, regression, moderation and path analyses, I found that mental health shame was positively related with mental health problems, and self-compassion and intrinsic motivation were negatively related to both mental health shame and mental health problems in a variety of population groups that had not been explored before, including UK workers, UK students and Japanese workers. In my NLP research, I investigated the application of NLP-derived skills for career guidance and critically reviewed psychological outcomes of applying those skills in organisational settings, through a pre-post study, thematic analysis, and systematic review. Two skills, the Disney Strategy and Sponsorship, were regarded particularly useful by the small sample of registered career consultants in Japan investigated in Publication 1. My systematic review (Publication 8) concluded that while NLP may be effective for diverse psychological outcomes, there is a need for rigorous future research. Taken together, my findings suggest the wide applicability of the effects of self-compassion and intrinsic motivation on mental health, and the similarity of Sponsorship to the soothing system in the three emotion regulatory systems. The critical appraisal of my published works identified four areas that are caveats for understanding the findings and could benefit from further work: (a) Lack of consideration for established predictors, (b) Mental health variables being treated as a unitary construct, (c) Balanced discussion of positive and negative aspects of mental health, and (d) Lack of critical appraisal 6 of NLP. Future research should consider these critical insights to improve our understanding of mental health and NLP.N/

Development and validation of the inspirational leaders survey.

Purpose The Inspirational Leaders Survey (ILS) was developed to identify the behaviours and characteristics of inspirational leaders. The main aim of the ILS is to help businesses identify and recruit inspirational leaders into their workforce. Design/methodology/approach After a literature review 75 inspiring behaviours were identified. The items were examined through the exploratory factor analysis of responses from a sample of 212 adults; and a confirmatory factor analysis from a sample of 248 adults employed in various organisations with management systems. Findings Two factors with nine items emerged as the best approximation of the population covariance matrix of the three models tested from the results. The factors were called 'Individual Behaviours (five items: desire to achieve success, determined to achieve goals, passionate about work, committed to achieve success, and hardworking)' and 'Relationship Behaviours (four items: ability to instil confidence in people, inspire others, offer hope to others, and offer stability and direction to others)'. Originality/value The characteristics of inspirational leaders have received only limited empirical assessment, and an instrument to measure these characteristics has not been widely available. Such an instrument could provide a useful tool to identify inspirational leaders in our social and work- related groups. The present study describes the development of the ILS, which would help human resources in organisations identify and recruit inspirational leaders into their workforce.N/

World index of moral freedom: WIMF 2020

N/