Search results

Management educators often seek out innovative ways to introduce theories and concepts in such a way that students are more engaged and connected with the course material. A meme is an image juxtaposed with short text that elicits emotional responses from its readers and is now a staple in social media. Examples include: grumpy cat, success kid and distracted boyfriend. The authors have successfully used memes both online and in-person as a teaching tool. This paper aims to describe how the authors have used memes and some of the best practices and lessons learned from this experience.

Students in a training and development undergraduate course and an organizational behavior MBA course were tasked with creating and presenting memes that reflected the subject matter in their respective courses.

Their fellow students were successful in identifying the course theory or concept when these student presenters presented their memes in class. This suggests that this type of activity is helpful for students to apply a key course concept or theory in a way that was fun and interactive. Follow-up feedback from the students indicated that they enjoyed this type of activity and felt that it aided in their retention of course material.

While memes are quite popular in social media, there is a paucity of academic articles on the application of memes for teaching management concepts. This article guides instructors on how the authors have used memes in the classroom and offers some suggestions for doing a debrief afterward.

Recent research along with anecdotal evidence suggests that exercise may play a role in mitigating perceptions of work-family conflict (WFC). However, the temporal effects related to this relationship have been ignored. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue by testing for the effects of acute and long-term exercise on the work-family interface.

Employed females (N=46) were randomly assigned to a treatment (exercise) or control group (no exercise) and data were gathered at three points in time, over four weeks. Linear Mixed Model processes were conducted.

The authors found that there is a statistically significant long-term exercise effect on strain-based work interference with family and family interference with work.

The sample was restricted to sedentary females, was predominantly white/Caucasian, and held white-collar jobs, limiting the generalizability of the findings.

Results from the current study suggest that exercise assists individuals in managing the work-family interface. While this is not a broad-sweeping call for all employers to offer on-site exercise facilities, the authors suggest that employers consider offering accommodations to individuals seeking to utilize exercise as a way to reduce WFC and general stress.

This is the first empirical study that examines the temporal impact of exercise on the work-family interface.

This conceptual chapter introduces an interdisciplinary model of emotional ambivalence using an adapted framework based on the Affective Events Theory (AET). Given the preoccupation in the current literature with studying affective disposition and discrete emotions, there is opportunity for researchers to explore the presence and influence of conflicting emotions. I use the organizational context of Personal Web Usage (PWU) monitoring to set the stage for a hypothetical discussion of the AET-based model of emotional ambivalence. The likelihood of conflict in the cultural norms and values associated with both monitoring activity and employee behavior presents an opportune setting to study emotional ambivalence. After an in-depth description of the model and its application to the PWU-based monitoring context, I conclude with a brief discussion of potential areas for future research.

Daniel J. Beal is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from Tulane University. His primary area of research interest examines the affective, cognitive, and motivational processes underlying within-person performance. In addition, he has interests in several methodological topics, including multilevel and longitudinal modeling and meta-analytic techniques. His work has appeared in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Research Methods, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Swansea carry on … THE University College of Swansea has decided that the Swansea Tribology Centre will continue after the initial DTI support ends, which is this month. This means that the Centre must cover its costs by means of income from industry and so must, in fact, provide an independent consultancy service on tribology. Swansea will of course say that as far as its consultancy work is concerned it has always been independent, but now that it must stand on its own feet financially, it must see that it continues to build a reputation for results like any other competitive independent business undertaking.