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Alongside structural equation modeling (SEM), the complementary technique of partial least squares (PLS) path modeling helps researchers understand relations among sets of observed variables. Like SEM, PLS began with an assumption of homogeneity – one population and one model – but has developed techniques for modeling data from heterogeneous populations, consistent with a marketing emphasis on segmentation. Heterogeneity can be expressed through interactions and nonlinear terms. Additionally, researchers can use multiple group analysis and latent class methods. This chapter reviews these techniques for modeling heterogeneous data in PLS, and illustrates key developments in finite mixture modeling in PLS using the SmartPLS 2.0 package.

In order to deepen understanding of team processes in dynamic organizational contexts, we suggest that analyses employing techniques to identify and analyze team member interaction patterns and trajectories are necessary. After presenting a brief review of interaction data coding and reliability requirements, we first review examples of two approaches used in the identification and analysis of interaction patterns in teams: lag sequential analysis and T-pattern analysis. We then describe and discuss three statistical techniques used to analyze team interaction trajectories: random coefficient modeling, latent growth modeling, and discontinuous growth analysis. We close by suggesting several ways in which these techniques could be applied to data analysis in order to expand our knowledge of team interaction, processes, and outcomes in complex and dynamic settings.

This chapter presents Infosys’ approach to leader development that includes the practical benefits of psychometric and statistical methods commonly used by other disciplines, such as Rasch measurement and latent growth modeling. Infosys is beginning to use these with other individualized leader development practices such as coaching, intervention bundling, and evaluation. When combined, these elements have the potential to personalize developmental processes to each leader and improve microlevel leadership theory with the overarching purpose of enhancing global leadership at Infosys and promoting the science of individual leader development.

Purpose: The death of a child can elicit enduring and intense parental grief. Additionally, as parents are both confronted with the loss of their child, interpersonal processes come into play. This study aimed to examine the change in reported levels of grief among bereaved parents individually and at a couple-level. The authors examined the differences in grief trajectories between mothers and fathers and whether the reported level of grief of one partner predicts the other partner’s reported level of grief.

Design/methodology/approach: Our longitudinal study included 229 bereaved couples who completed the Inventory of Complicated Grief at 6, 13, and 20 months post-loss.

Findings: A latent growth curve analysis showed that parents reported consistently high average grief levels, mothers reported higher grief levels than fathers, and all parents reported a similar small decline in grief. A cross-lagged panel analysis showed that the grief of one parent affected the grief of the other parent with similar strength. Our results held regardless of the child’s gender and age, but an expected loss was associated with a lower grief level 6 months post-loss and a smaller decline in reported levels of grief.

Originality/value: These findings highlight bereaved parents as a particularly vulnerable population, increase our understanding of change in parental grief over time and of the interdependence of grieving in bereaved couples.

Extant research on job insecurity has traditionally investigated this construct as a hindrance stressor, based on theoretical developments and meta-analytical results that have shown consistent negative relationships between job insecurity and a host of organizational outcomes. In this chapter, the authors take a person-centered perspective based on the transactional theory of stress and argue that employees can and do appraise job insecurity in different ways which is manifested by qualitatively distinct latent profiles. The authors also argue that certain positive psychological variables (i.e., hope, optimism, self-efficacy, and grit) might influence one’s odds to belong to specific appraisal latent classes. Using a cross-lagged dataset of 322 US-based employees, the authors found evidence of five qualitatively different latent profiles (i.e., employees who viewed job insecurity as: (1) irrelevant, (2) simultaneously moderately challenging and hindering, (3) primarily hindering, (4) both highly challenging and highly hindering, or (5) primarily challenging). Further, the results showed that higher grit was associated with higher odds of belonging to any of the appraisal profiles compared to the high challenge/high hindrance group whereas higher self-efficacy was associated with higher odds of belonging to the irrelevant group compared to any of the appraisal profiles. Hope and optimism, however, did not influence latent class membership. The authors discuss the implications for theory and practice considering seemingly paradoxical findings demonstrating sometimes positive and sometimes negative outcomes of job insecurity, as well as traditional assumptions that employees primarily view job insecurity as either a hindrance or a challenge.

On many occasions, organizational science research has been referred to as fragmented and disjointed, resulting in a literature that is, in the opinion of many, difficult to navigate and comprehend. One potential explanation is that scholars have failed to comprehend that organizations are complex and intricate systems. In order to move us past this morass, we recommend that researchers extend beyond traditional rational, mechanistic, and variable-centered approaches to research and integrate a more advantageous pattern-oriented approach within their research program. Pattern-oriented methods approximate real-life phenomena by adopting a holistic, integrative approach to research wherein individual- and organizational-systems are viewed as non-decomposable organized wholes. We argue that the pattern-oriented approach has the potential to overcome a number of breakdowns faced by alternate approaches, while offering a novel and more representative lens from which to view organizational- and HRM-related issues. The proposed incorporation of the pattern-oriented approach is framed within a review and evaluation of current approaches to organizational research and is supplemented with a discussion of methodological and theoretical implications as well as potential applications of the pattern-oriented approach.

Jay Barney is a Professor of Management and holds the Bank One Chair for Excellence in Corporate Strategy at the Max M. Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University. He received his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University, and his master's and doctorate from Yale University. He taught at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA and Texas A&M University before joining the faculty at Ohio State in 1994, where Professor Barney teaches organizational strategy and policy to MBA and Ph.D. students.

Using data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study, this study examines the structural relationships between negative school social relationships, school safety, educational expectation, and academic achievement of Latino immigrant students. Results from multilevel structural equation modeling show that discrimination, unhelpful school social relationships, and experiences of unsafe school environments influence Latino immigrant adolescents’ academic achievement indirectly and directly through their educational expectations. Specifically, this study explores how noncognitive and contextual factors embedded in different structural layers of school organization influence Latino immigrant adolescents’ academic achievement. It draws attention to the impact of negative school factors such as discriminatory and unsupportive school social relationships, and negative and unsafe school structures that undermine school life. Based on our findings, we argue that as Latino immigrant students internalize negative experiences from their school experiences during the critical period of adolescence, such accumulated negative internalization may reinforce negative self-perceptions and inaccurate stereotypes. Not only discrimination but also other negative school features such as the absence of academic supporters, nonacademically oriented friends, and unsafe learning environments inhibit them from navigating positive school opportunities and ultimately, successful school achievement. Implications for the social organization of U.S. public secondary schools with a focus on Latino immigrant adolescents’ academic achievement are discussed.

Purpose: The aim is to explore how family relations are affected by societal changes in relation to informal and formal caregiving and self-determination of older adults.

Design/methodology/approach: Care managers (CMs)/social workers (SWs) (N = 124) participated in a comparative vignette study including Japan, South Korea, and Sweden. Systems theory was used.

Findings: Japanese CMs/SWs clearly describe their efforts to create networks in a relational way between formal and informal actors in the community. South Korean CMs/SWs balance between suggesting interventions to support daily life at home or a move to a nursing home, often acknowledging the family as the main caregiver. In Sweden, CMs/SWs highlight the juridical element in meeting the older adult and the interventions offered, and families primarily give social support. Regarding self-determination, the Japanese priority is for CMs/SWs to harmonize within the family and the community. South Korean CMs/SWs express ambivalent attitudes to older adults’ capability for self-determination in the intersection between formal and family care. Swedish CMs/SWs adhere to the older adult’s self-determination, while acknowledging the role of the family in persuading the older adult to accept interventions. The results suggest emerging defamilialization in South Korea, while tendencies to refamilialization are noticed in Japan and Sweden, albeit in different ways.

Research limitations/implications: In translation, nuances may be lost. A focus on changing families shows that country-specific details in care services have been reduced. For future research, perspectives of “care” need to be studied on different levels.

Originality/value: Using one vignette in three countries with different welfare regimes, discussing changing views on families’, communities’ and societal caregiving is unique. This captures changes in policy, influencing re- and defamilialization.