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This paper explores the use of the mental fitness and resiliency inventory (MFRI) as a tool for the management of workplace health and well-being. The MFRI provides information on the extent to which positive workplace practices are experienced within three mental fitness domains and five resiliency domains. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factorial structure and internal consistency of the MFRI.

The MFRI was administered to 1,519 employees in multiple workplace environments in Canada. The factorial structure of the MFRI was examined to conduct confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In addition to the CFA indexes, the internal consistency of each latent construct was calculated, with results reported using Cronbach's coefficient alpha.

The reliability of the MFRI is very high (alpha = 0.973). The fit indexes from the CFA indicate that the model is permissible. The MFRI can be used with confidence to highlight mental fitness and resiliency strengths, as well as areas needing further development in workplace environments.

Limitations may include the selection of fit indexes upon which to base judgment as to whether the model is satisfactory. Although the MFRI model has been confirmed based on the data from the study sample, there is not yet sufficient data to conclude that the model is a true predictive model. Current and ongoing research will enable elaboration on this matter. In addition, formal documented observations regarding the MFRI's face validity and ease of explanation and understanding of the results may confirm a priori expectations on the part of the users and may strengthen the conclusions from this study.

Implications for workplaces arising from the validation of the MFRI include a growth in capacity to measure the existence of positive psychology practices within organizational environments and to identify and address areas for needed growth and development. By assessing the prevalence of mental fitness and resiliency practices in workplace environments, reports can be produced that indicate various levels of development and integration of these practices. The application of the MFRI facilitates the use of evidence-informed decision-making in addressing organizational goals related to positive workplace cultures.

The MFRI is a new, validated instrument that measures the presence of positive practices that contribute to healthy and effective workplace cultures. The results of the MFRI provide workplace health managers with a profile of organizational strengths (practices that are embedded and comprehensive) and areas for development (practices requiring promotion and capacity building) related to mental fitness and resiliency.

This study sought to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how managers' coaching skills can affect individual performance through the mediating role of affective commitment.

The sample included 198 employees from diverse organizations. Based on an online survey, respondents assessed their managers' coaching skills and reported their own individual performance and affective commitment to their organization.

The findings show that managers' coaching skills have a positive impact on individual performance and affective commitment, with the latter mediating the relationship between the first two variables.

Additional studies with larger samples are needed to understand more fully not only the impact of managers' coaching skills on individual performance but also other psychosocial variables affecting that relationship.

Organizations can increase employees' affective commitment and individual performance by encouraging managers to integrate more coaching skills into their leadership styles.

This study is the first to integrate managers' coaching skills, affective commitment and individual performance into a single research model, thereby extending previous research on this topic.

Research on creative workers speaks to the relative lack of job opportunities available, the role that changing production logics play in shaping such opportunities, and gender disparities in success. Tracking 22,561 hits found on Billboard's mainstream charts, we examine various factors that may spur or hamper the success of female recording acts. We find that the expanding logic of decentralized production eliminates the negative effect of concentration on the success of female acts and that the presence of successful female acts in one period bodes well for subsequent female acts, until a glass ceiling of sorts is reached.

Looks at the pathfinder approach to library instruction, which was developed in the 1960s by Patricia Knapp. Knapp's system focused, not on the simple provision of answers to questions, but on the teaching of the effective use of the library and its resources– in other words, on the finding of one's “way” in the library.

A traditional theoretical model for the creation and evaluation of pathfinders (subject research guides) can be identified through study of the literature. This model, expressed in the design criteria of consistency, selectivity, transparency and accessibility, sprang from an impulse to serve the inexperienced user by emulating or facilitating the user's search process.

A gap in this model can be detected, in the form of a missing multi‐dimensional picture of the user and the user's experience of the information service via the pathfinder. In an attempt to fill the gap, literature examining information behavior, the search process, the design of user‐centered services, and the information retrieval interaction is discussed.

An experience‐centered model for online research guide design and evaluation is derived from the findings.

Recent reports by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) signal a substantial yet unrealized deficit in patient safety innovation and improvement. With the aim of reducing this dilemma, we provide an introductory account of clinical error resulting from poorly designed systems by reviewing the relevant health care, management, psychology, and organizational accident sciences literature. First, we discuss the concept of health care error and describe two approaches to analyze error proliferation and causation. Next, by applying transdisciplinary evidence and knowledge to health care, we detail the attributes fundamental to constructing safer health care systems as embedded components within the complex adaptive environment. Then, the Health Care Error Proliferation Model explains the sequence of events typically leading to adverse outcomes, emphasizing the role that organizational and external cultures contribute to error identification, prevention, mitigation, and defense construction. Subsequently, we discuss the critical contribution health care leaders can make to address error as they strive to position their institution as a high reliability organization (HRO). Finally, we conclude that the future of patient safety depends on health care leaders adopting a system philosophy of error management, investigation, mitigation, and prevention. This change is accomplished when leaders apply the basic organizational accident and health care safety principles within their respective organizations.

The cultural industries consist of those organizations that design, produce, and distribute products that appeal to aesthetic or expressive tastes more than to the utilitarian aspects of customer needs such as films, books, building designs, fashion, and music (Peterson & Berger, 1975, 1996; Hirsch, 1972, 2000; Lampel, Lant, & Shamsie, 2000). Less widely acknowledged, but as critical, cultural industries also create products that serve important symbolic functions such as capturing, refracting, and legitimating societal knowledge and values. For example, educational publishers influence what concepts and theories are promoted to students by the books they publish. Architects shape the sensibilities of interactions at work, home, and play by their choice of technologies, space design, and material resources. Music producers discover and promote vocal artists whose lyrics shape our understandings of age, gender, and ethnicity. Because of the societal impact of these symbolic functions, cultural industries have continued to interest both popular writers and sociologists alike.

From the 1960s onwards, students and members of the academic community on growing numbers of college and university campuses in the United States chose to confront the issue of apartheid by advocating divestment from corporations or financial institutions with any sort of presence in or relationship with South Africa. Student divestment advocates faced serious opposition from university administrators as well as opponents of institutional divestiture both at home and abroad. Despite these challenges, the academic community in the United States was one of the first arenas where anti-apartheid activism coalesced. This chapter examines the campaigns of students and educators who participated in the debate over divestment – to engage with the South African government and apartheid through dialogue and communication or to disengage completely from the country through withdrawal of financial investments. The anti-apartheid efforts of the academic community at Michigan State University, one of the first large research universities in the United States to confront the issue of apartheid and divestment at the university level and beyond, serves as a window to view academic activism against apartheid. The Southern Africa Liberation Committee (SALC), a consortium of students, faculty, and community members dedicated to aiding the liberation struggle of Southern Africa, led the efforts at Michigan State and collaborated with allies across Michigan and the United States. SALC focused most of its efforts on South Africa, though the organization also confronted the issue of South Africa's controversial occupation of South West Africa and the ongoing civil war in Angola.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.

Poland appears to be an attractive consumer market, based on strong demand for consumer products during the past several years. However, this may not be the case for Western marketers, because of the influence of strong feelings of national pride on behavior of Polish consumers. Measures of consumer ethnocentrism may provide Western marketers with the information necessary to target consumers who do not allow nationalistic feelings to influence product quality evaluation and purchase behavior. Also, the necessity of the product to consumers may provide marketers with clues on which products will be accepted in the Polish marketplace. The purpose of this study is to learn, for various consumer products, whether Polish consumers’ perceptions of product quality differ based on consumer ethnocentric tendency, product necessity, and country of origin. A repeated measures ANOVA test provides empirical evidence that perceived quality differs by necessity, by product, by country, and consumer ethnocentrism influences quality perceptions of Polish consumers.