Trait Anger, Employee Work Behaviors, and the Moderating Role of Problem Focused-Coping

This study aims to analyze the moderating role of problem-focused coping style in the relationship between trait anger and employees’ withdrawal and taking-charge behaviors. Our sample included 254 employees from two middle-sized organizations, i.e. a medical facility and a financial company, in Northern California. To reduce the common-source and desirability biases, the data regarding taking-charge behaviors were collected from the employees’ supervisors. Our results showed that employees with higher level of trait anger were more likely to engage in taking-charge behaviors, such as identifying and pursuing work-related problems. In addition, trait anger instigated withdrawal behaviors if the employees reported lower levels of problem-focused coping. In contrast, when employees were higher on problem-focused coping, their trait anger was not significantly related to withdrawal behaviors. These results suggest that, when employees take on a more problem-focused approach to manage their stress at work, their trait anger could work for the benefit of these employees and their organization by driving them to identify and solve work-related problems. Our study revealed that trait anger, in itself, is not necessarily a functional or dysfunctional employee characteristic and delineated the moderating role of problem-focused coping style in the relationship between trait anger and work behaviors.

Creating Order Out of Chaos? Development of a Measure of Perceived Effects of Communication on the Crisis Organizing Process

Organizations are important sources of communication during natural-hazard crises. How members of an organization perceive these communications (e.g., creating confusion, causing disorder, providing clarity, and restoring order) influences response and recovery from such a crisis. Using Chaos Theory as a guiding framework, the authors developed a new instrument measuring the perceived effects of an organization’s communication on crisis-organizing processes. Three distinct studies were conducted to assess the reliability and validity of this new instrument: the “Perceived Effects of Communication on the Crisis-organizing Process (PEC-COP)” scale. This one-factor scale can be used by both scholars and practitioners to assess the effects of an organization’s communication on how people organize (i.e., react and respond) during a crisis. By gaining greater insight into how an organization’s communication is perceived, the organization can better prepare to communicate in ways that promote efficient and effective crisis-organizing processes throughout a natural-hazard crisis. Effective communication can create order out of chaos

Group member explanatory style as a predictor of group performance and turnover intentions in a manufacturing setting

A field study of 50 three-person work groups in a major division of a large manufacturing operation in the Midwest investigated the potential effect of group explanatory style (optimistic or pessimistic) on group productivity and turnover intentions. Additionally, the moderating effect of group potency, group cohesion, and social identity on these relationships was also investigated. The theoretical foundation for this analysis was drawn from the literatures on learned helplessness, causal attribution, and explanatory style at the individual level of analysis. The extension presented here includes the expansion of self explanatory style to a group level of analysis. Regression analysis indicated that group explanatory style was significantly related to turnover intention. Moderated regression analysis also suggested that group cohesion is significantly related to group performance and turnover intentions. Overall, this study demonstrated that optimistic group explanatory style has a negative main effect on turnover intentions. In addition, group cohesion has also a positive main effect on group performance and a negative main effect on turnover intentions. The hypothesis that group explanatory style is significantly related to group performance was not supported. Further, the hypotheses that group performance was moderated by group cohesion, group potency and social identity was not supported. The other hypotheses that group cohesion, group potency and social identity moderated turnover intentions were also not supported. In regard to group explanatory style, this study suggests that today\u27s organizations should devote particular attention to optimistic and pessimistic explanatory style as factors which are related to turnover intentions of their employees. Training with an optimistic explanatory style can solve some of the problems associated with high turnover as well as high recruitment and training cost. Additionally, an optimistic work culture will contribute to more effective work groups. Suggestions for future research include examining group explanatory style in other settings and varying group size and task interdependence

Are Female Leadership styles culturally universal or specific? A comparative study between Italy and Japan

The aim of the present research is to analyse to what extent female leadership styles vary across cultures – by digging more in depth on how the new “impostor phenomenon” affect successful women covering leadership position, since, nowadays, women still face either difficulty in entering the job market or they receive a lower salary compared to the male counterpart. This has been done through the analysis of the already existing literature upon the various leadership styles, gender differences and influences on leadership styles, and culture. After adopting the cultural definition and dimensions proposed by Hofstede, an experimental empirical section started. To explore the main research question, a sample of female managers and directors working in Italy and Japan filled out an online self-report survey. The quali-quantitative findings clearly reveal that leadership style varies according to the culture; while behaviours related to the Impostor Phenomenon seems to be universally felt. These results seem to take even more shape in the light of the social role theory and the Hofstede cultural dimensions of the two countries. Notwithstanding the obtained results, the research gives a lot of other suggestions, leaving space for further studies and consideration in the field of leadership studies, especially in relation with the female group

University Talent Management: an experimental design to enhance student's employability

Talent management experiment proposed to enhance employabilities of students in university in the work world. First experiment based on a reasearch realized in collaboration with California State University (Sacramento) and in University of Pavia. It are presented the conceptual framework, the research methodology end the first results

Modelling and Measuring Group Cohesiveness with Consonance: Intertwining the Sociometric Test with the Picture Apperception Value Test

The purpose of this research is to model, measure and explain group cohesiveness through consonance. For this aim, we propose a holistic framework that combines the sociometric test with the novel Picture Apperception Value Test for defining group cohesiveness by assessing interpersonal attraction of group members through categorical values. The research approach is quantitative, classified both as inferential and quasi‐experimental. Findings indicate that the holistic framework serves as an effective model for measuring group cohesiveness, much more that it can be the sociometric test alone. Research originality and value derives from the fact of combining one existing and consolidated tool like the sociometric test, with an innovative tool like Picture Apperception Value Test for the measurement of group cohesiveness. Regarding practical implications, through the first instrument it is possible to create groups; with the second, it is possible to measure in a new way the interpersonal attraction based on individual's value system. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

A moderated mediation test of personality, coping, and health among deployed soldiers

Our study examines how personality and coping influence soldiers’ psychological health among 648 US Army personnel who were at that time deployed in Iraq at the height of an insurgency. Conscientiousness, neuroticism, and extraversion were associated with different coping behaviors, and these were in turn related to psychological distress. Conscientiousness was positively associated with problem-focused coping and negatively with avoidance coping, whereas neuroticism was most positively associated with avoidance coping. Extraversion was positively related to both seeking social support and avoidance coping. As expected, avoidance coping was positively associated with psychological distress. Coping style explained more variance in the relationship between personality and distress among soldiers who perceived higher levels of threat, thus supporting a moderated mediation hypothesis. We discuss implications for facilitating the stress coping of workers who face acute and potentially traumatic stress exposures

Group dynamics and systems thinking: interdisciplinary roots, metaphors, and applications

The term “group dynamics” was coined and popularized for the first time by Kurt Lewin in the 1930s with the scope to describe the way groups and individuals act and react to changing circumstances [1]. Fundamentally, the dynamics of a group conceptually derives from the continuous interaction (resonance) between its members. For Lewin, the principle of interactionism in his field theory is expressed by the formula: B = f(P,E) which means that the behavior (B) of an individual (i.e. group member) is a function (f) of the interaction between personal attributes (P) and environmental factors (E) (Lewin, 1951). Said with Lewin’s words: “every psychological event depends upon the state of the person and at the same time on the environment, although their relative importance is different in different cases” (Lewin 1936, pp. 12). Even though Lewin is recognized by the scientific community as the founder of group dynamics both as a subject matter and a scientific discipline of study, other predecessors have wrote about the topic. In the late 1800s and in the early 1900s various disciplines were concerned about the behavior of individuals within small or huge groups Therefore, the first part of this work deals with the interdisciplinary roots of group dynamics that can be summarized in the following table. Next, the second part offers a metaphorical perspective of groups by using some organizational metaphors typical of the Viable Systems Approach. Thus, shifting the focus on the behavior within organizations, other interesting perspectives (with a common denominator on systems theory) are to be taken into consideration. According to Golinelli (2010, pp. 27-35), a firm can be seen as mechanical, organic, cybernetic, autopoietic, cognitive (including the emotional dimension), and viable system. These metaphors and analogies [2] are important for understanding the dynamics of groups within business firms and other organizations. In addition, only through metaphors and analogies the science makes progress and creates new paradigms (Kuhn, 2009), taking always into account the limits of an exaggerated vocabulary composed by metaphors and analogies (Golinelli, 2000). The last part of this paper deals directly with groups in systems thinking by underlying first, the system’s properties of groups and their dynamics, and second by exploring the applicative contexts. In reference to the applications, two main directions are followed: the socio-technical perspective and the socio-psychological perspective. The first one is represented by the researches handled near the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations: “Coal Mining Studies” (Trist and Bamforth, 1951); “Indian Textile Mills Studies” (Rice, 1953); “Socio-technical approach” (Emery and Trist, 1960). For the socio-psychological view (Trist and Murray, 1990), it is relevant to mention the studies of Tavistock Clinic with Bowlby’s Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1958, 1959, 1960) and Mental Research Institute of Palo Alto with the Bateson Project (Bateson et al., 1956, 1963). From the methodological standpoint, the present research type is a conceptual research based on the interpretivist paradigm. From the ontological viewpoint, this research relies on constructivism and relativism, emphasizing the role of the observer. From epistemological standpoint, the present research focuses on non-dualism, subjectivism, holism, quest of the possible. From the methodological perspective, the focus is on constructivism and constructed realities. In summary, this study uses the qualitative methodology and the methods of literature review and theory development. [1] According to Barile and Iannuzzi 2008, pp. 50, there is a difference between a metaphor and an analogy. A metaphor allows, using the simulation of a concept through a specific word, to express a defined experience referring to another. Instead, an analogy goes further: it aims to extend the knowledge background of a particular phenomenon or entity and the behavioral properties of that phenomenon/entity to another one which seems to be “similar”. For example, seeing a group as a brain is a metaphor, instead seeing it as a cognitive system is an analogy because it explains how the brain works. So, a metaphor is a structural concept, it is static (e.g. a photo). At the other hand an analogy is a systemic concept, it is dynamic (e.g. a video); one expresses the anatomy and the other the physiology of the phenomenon

Group dynamics and systems thinking: interdisciplinary roots, metaphors, and applications

The term “group dynamics” was coined and popularized for the first time by Kurt Lewin in the 1930s with the scope to describe the way groups and individuals act and react to changing circumstances [1]. Fundamentally, the dynamics of a group conceptually derives from the continuous interaction (resonance) between its members. For Lewin, the principle of interactionism in his field theory is expressed by the formula: B = f(P,E) which means that the behavior (B) of an individual (i.e. group member) is a function (f) of the interaction between personal attributes (P) and environmental factors (E) (Lewin, 1951). Said with Lewin’s words: “every psychological event depends upon the state of the person and at the same time on the environment, although their relative importance is different in different cases” (Lewin 1936, pp. 12). Even though Lewin is recognized by the scientific community as the founder of group dynamics both as a subject matter and a scientific discipline of study, other predecessors have wrote about the topic. In the late 1800s and in the early 1900s various disciplines were concerned about the behavior of individuals within small or huge groups Therefore, the first part of this work deals with the interdisciplinary roots of group dynamics that can be summarized in the following table. Next, the second part offers a metaphorical perspective of groups by using some organizational metaphors typical of the Viable Systems Approach. Thus, shifting the focus on the behavior within organizations, other interesting perspectives (with a common denominator on systems theory) are to be taken into consideration. According to Golinelli (2010, pp. 27-35), a firm can be seen as mechanical, organic, cybernetic, autopoietic, cognitive (including the emotional dimension), and viable system. These metaphors and analogies [2] are important for understanding the dynamics of groups within business firms and other organizations. In addition, only through metaphors and analogies the science makes progress and creates new paradigms (Kuhn, 2009), taking always into account the limits of an exaggerated vocabulary composed by metaphors and analogies (Golinelli, 2000). The last part of this paper deals directly with groups in systems thinking by underlying first, the system’s properties of groups and their dynamics, and second by exploring the applicative contexts. In reference to the applications, two main directions are followed: the socio-technical perspective and the socio-psychological perspective. The first one is represented by the researches handled near the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations: “Coal Mining Studies” (Trist and Bamforth, 1951); “Indian Textile Mills Studies” (Rice, 1953); “Socio-technical approach” (Emery and Trist, 1960). For the socio-psychological view (Trist and Murray, 1990), it is relevant to mention the studies of Tavistock Clinic with Bowlby’s Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1958, 1959, 1960) and Mental Research Institute of Palo Alto with the Bateson Project (Bateson et al., 1956, 1963). From the methodological standpoint, the present research type is a conceptual research based on the interpretivist paradigm. From the ontological viewpoint, this research relies on constructivism and relativism, emphasizing the role of the observer. From epistemological standpoint, the present research focuses on non-dualism, subjectivism, holism, quest of the possible. From the methodological perspective, the focus is on constructivism and constructed realities. In summary, this study uses the qualitative methodology and the methods of literature review and theory development. [1] According to Barile and Iannuzzi 2008, pp. 50, there is a difference between a metaphor and an analogy. A metaphor allows, using the simulation of a concept through a specific word, to express a defined experience referring to another. Instead, an analogy goes further: it aims to extend the knowledge background of a particular phenomenon or entity and the behavioral properties of that phenomenon/entity to another one which seems to be “similar”. For example, seeing a group as a brain is a metaphor, instead seeing it as a cognitive system is an analogy because it explains how the brain works. So, a metaphor is a structural concept, it is static (e.g. a photo). At the other hand an analogy is a systemic concept, it is dynamic (e.g. a video); one expresses the anatomy and the other the physiology of the phenomenon

Meeting information needs in a natural hazard: Development of crisis information needs and adequacy for internal stakeholders (CINA-IS) scale

Natural-hazard crises generate much uncertainty among individuals, organizations, and communities. As feelings of uncertainty grow, individuals experience higher levels of stress and negative impacts to their psychological well-being. People desperately seek information and guidance on what to do and expect, along with how to adapt when faced with crises. While crisis-response organizations are key information disseminators, individuals also seek information from non-crisis-response organizations such as places where they work, volunteer, attend school, or worship. As the frequency of natural-hazard crises increases, so do the expectations of non-crisis-response organizations as valuable information sources.However, there is limited research on the information needs of internal stakeholders and the adequacy of the information provided. In this paper, a new reliable and valid scale, Crisis Information Needs and Adequacy for Internal Stakeholders (CINA-IS) is introduced. Three studies to develop and test this scale are described in detail. This 6-item, one-factor scale can be used to assess the adequacy of the information provided during a crisis from the perspective of internal stakeholders. Organizations and those who study them are encouraged to use this scale to improve internal crisis communication. Adequately meeting internal stakeholders' information needs has the potential to help reduce uncertainty and negative psychological impacts on an organizations’ most important asset – its people