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1 – 10 of 11John C. Pruit, Carol Rambo and Amanda G. Pruit
This performance autoethnography may or may not be interpreted as a continuation of a conversation regarding the experiences of those with devalued statuses in academic settings…
Abstract
This performance autoethnography may or may not be interpreted as a continuation of a conversation regarding the experiences of those with devalued statuses in academic settings. The authors rely on “strange accounting” to consider their experiences in the academy from various standpoints: before and after promotion, before and after leaving academia. While reflecting on our past experiences, we introduce the concept of “everyday precariousness” as a way of explaining the normalization of instability, insecurity, and negative affect that is part of everyday life for those with devalued statuses in academic settings and beyond. Everyday precariousness is an embodied experience for those in vulnerable positions. Normalized exposure to risks, such as discrimination, harassment, bullying, or structural instability, produces an undercurrent of threat that permeates academic culture. Our stories of everyday precariousness span race, ethnicity, class, academic roles, and gender boundaries (among many others). Analyzing these experiences furthers previous work on the uses of strange accounting as well as the dynamics of status silencing. In the final analysis, unresisted and unabated, everyday precariousness and status silencing can lead to institutional failure and resonance disasters.
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In writing this article,1 I have been guided by the questions of by what means the Xambioá deal with commerce and how it makes sense, and what part it plays in their attribution…
Abstract
In writing this article,1 I have been guided by the questions of by what means the Xambioá deal with commerce and how it makes sense, and what part it plays in their attribution of meaning to the world. I attempt to demonstrate that the use of money, and internal commerce, among the Xambioá are not historical accidents. Money and merchandise are the objects of tireless experiences by the Xambioá. They appropriate meaningfully these allogenic elements and make them circulate in their own way. I suggest that the appropriation of a signifying element like money occurred not only because of its utility but because it is a highly meaningful element. People and things are introduced and are signified according to native logic.
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While the main emotional labor strategies are well-documented, the manner in which professionals navigate emotional rules within the workplace and effectively perform emotional…
Abstract
Purpose
While the main emotional labor strategies are well-documented, the manner in which professionals navigate emotional rules within the workplace and effectively perform emotional labor is less understood. With this contribution, I aim to unveil “the good, the bad and the ugly” of emotional labor as a dynamic theatrical performance.
Methodology/Approach
Focusing on three geriatric long-term care units within a French public hospital, this qualitative study relies on two sets of data (observation and interviews). Deeply rooted within the field of study, the chosen methodological approach substantializes the subtle hues of the emotional experience at work and targets resonance rather than generalization.
Findings
Using the theatrical metaphor, this research underlines the role of space in the practice of emotional labor in a unique way. It identifies the main emotionalized zones or emotional regions (front, back, transitional, mixed) and details their characteristics, before unearthing the nonlinearity and polyphonic quality of emotional labor performance and the versatility needed to that effect. Indeed, this research shows how health-care professionals juggle with the specificities of each region, as well as how space generates both constraints and resources. By combining static and dynamic prisms, diverse instantiations of hybridity and spatial in-betweens, anchored in liminality and trajectories, are revealed.
Originality/Value
This research adds to the current body of literature on the concept of emotional labor by shedding light on its highly dynamic and interactional nature, revealing different levels of porosity between emotional regions and how the characteristics of each type of area can taint others and increase/decrease the occupational health costs of emotional labor. The study also raises questions about the interplay of emotional labor performance with the level of humanization/dehumanization of elderly people. Given the global demographics about an aging population, this gives food for thought at a social level.
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Paul T.P. Wong and Freda Gonot-Schoupinsky
The purpose of this article is to meet Professor Paul T.P. Wong, PhD, CPscyh, who is based at the Department of Psychology, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Wong…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to meet Professor Paul T.P. Wong, PhD, CPscyh, who is based at the Department of Psychology, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Wong represents an interesting case of how a racial/cultural minority could achieve success in a hostile environment consisting of the systemic biases of injustice, discrimination and marginalization. His life also epitomizes how one can experience the paradoxical truth of healing and flourishing in an upside-down world through the positive suffering mindset (PSM).
Design/methodology/approach
This case study is presented in two sections: a positive autoethnography written by Wong, followed by his answers to ten questions. The core methodology of positive autoethnography allows people to understand how Wong’s life experience of being a war baby in China, a constant outsider and a lone voice in Western culture, has shaped a very different vision of meaning, positive mental health and global flourishing.
Findings
Wong reveals how to live a life of meaning and happiness for all the suffering people in a difficult world. He has researched the positive psychology of suffering for 60 years, from effective coping with stress and searching for meaning to successful aging and positive death. According to Wong’s suffering hypothesis and the emerging paradigm of existential positive psychology (Wong, 2021), cultivating a PSM is essential for healing and flourishing in all seasons of life.
Research limitations/implications
An expanding literature has been developed to illustrate why the missing link in well-being research is how to transcend and transform suffering into triumph. Wong reveals how this emerging area of research is still not fully embraced by mainstream psychology dominated by the individualistic Euro-American culture, and thus why, in an adversarial milieu, existential positive psychology is limited by its inability to attract more researchers to test out Wong’s suffering hypothesis.
Practical implications
The wisdom and helpful tools presented here may enable people to achieve mature happiness and existential well-being even when they have a very painful past, a very difficult present and a bleak future.
Social implications
This autoethnographic case study offers new grounds for hope for all those who are injured by life, marginalized by systemic biases or tormented by chronic illnesses and disorders. It also provides a road map for a better world with more decent human beings who dare to stand up for justice, integrity and compassion.
Originality/value
Meaning as reflected in suffering is according to Wong the most powerful force to bring out either the worst or the best in people. The new science of suffering shows us how the authors can achieve positive transformation through cultivating a PSM, no matter how harsh one’s fate may be.
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Zhaoyang Sun, Haiyang Zhou, Tianchen Yang, Kun Wang and Yubo Hou
The shape of a product plays a crucial role in shaping consumer behavior. Despite the voluminous research on factors influencing consumers’ shape preferences, there remains a…
Abstract
Purpose
The shape of a product plays a crucial role in shaping consumer behavior. Despite the voluminous research on factors influencing consumers’ shape preferences, there remains a limited understanding of how the busy mindset, a mentality increasingly emphasized by marketing campaigns, works. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the relationship between a busy mindset and the preference for angular-shaped versus circular-shaped products and brand logos.
Design/methodology/approach
This research consists of seven experimental studies using various shape stimuli, distinct manipulations of busy mindset, different assessments of shape preference and samples drawn from multiple countries.
Findings
The findings reveal that a busy mindset leads to a preference for angular shapes over circular ones by amplifying the need for uniqueness. In addition, these effects are attenuated when products are scarce.
Originality/value
This research represents one of the pioneering efforts to study the role of a busy mindset on consumers’ aesthetic preferences. Beyond yielding insights for practitioners into visual marketing, this research contributes to the theories on the busy mindset and shape preference.
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Weihong Ning, Ofir Turel and Fred D. Davis
In this current review, we aimed to understand technology addiction interventions and provide guidelines for IS scholars to use IT to prevent or attenuate technology addiction.
Abstract
Purpose
In this current review, we aimed to understand technology addiction interventions and provide guidelines for IS scholars to use IT to prevent or attenuate technology addiction.
Design/methodology/approach
We systematically reviewed articles associated with technology and substance addiction interventions. These articles included review articles, peer-reviewed articles, conference proceedings, and online articles.
Findings
We propose a roadmap for technology addiction intervention development and testing based on the review. Next, we summarize the similarities and differences between substance addiction and technology addiction in terms of antecedents, negative consequences, and neurobiological mechanisms. Based on this, two types of potential interventions for substance addiction were reviewed to explore how they can be used for technology addiction. To conclude, IT-mediated interventions were summarized, and promising avenues for future research were highlighted.
Originality/value
Technology addiction has a broad range of adverse impacts on mental health and well-being. With the knowledge and insight from this review, the Information Systems community can become part of the solution to technology addiction.
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This paper aims to offer a new history of management by tracing a religious dimension of scientific management. The thesis is that the good was foundational for bringing…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to offer a new history of management by tracing a religious dimension of scientific management. The thesis is that the good was foundational for bringing scientific management to success in Taylor’s native Quaker Philadelphia in the 1880s. The paper’s main contribution is to contrast the philosophical origins of Taylor’s ideas in scientific management to his native Quaker roots, and how Taylor, over time, into the 1910s, wrestled with this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is situated in historical interpretivism and subjectivism, leaning on contextual and narrative research on religious morality.
Findings
Quaker morality prevented managerial opportunism at Taylor’s Midvale Steel in the 1880s. Conversely, by the 1900s and 1910s, interest conflicts between workers and managers escalated when scientific management moved out of its traditional cultural contexts of Quaker Philadelphia and spread across the USA. The historical implication is, already for Taylor’s time, that scientific management never was the “one-best way” of management.
Research limitations/implications
Future research needs to deepen and broaden research on scientific management when tracing the significance of religion and culture in management thought.
Practical implications
The paper has implications for modern studies of business morality by uncovering the practical relevance of religious business ethics at the outset of management studies.
Social implications
The historic emergence of scientific management points to a theory of institutional evolution and economic growth, when religiously grounded governance of the firm deinstitutionalized, and institutional economic governance, with different but superior economic advantages, progressed by the 1900s.
Originality/value
The paper suggests an alternative version of the intellectual heritage of management studies by tracing the legacy of Taylor’s Quakerism and how religious and cultural ideas contributed to the formation of science in management.
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Service robots are expected to become increasingly common, but the ways in which they can move around in an environment with humans, collect and store data about humans and share…
Abstract
Purpose
Service robots are expected to become increasingly common, but the ways in which they can move around in an environment with humans, collect and store data about humans and share such data produce a potential for privacy violations. In human-to-human contexts, such violations are transgression of norms to which humans typically react negatively. This study examines if similar reactions occur when the transgressor is a robot. The main dependent variable was the overall evaluation of the robot.
Design/methodology/approach
Service robot privacy violations were manipulated in a between-subjects experiment in which a human user interacted with an embodied humanoid robot in an office environment.
Findings
The results show that the robot's violations of human privacy attenuated the overall evaluation of the robot and that this effect was sequentially mediated by perceived robot morality and perceived robot humanness. Given that a similar reaction pattern would be expected when humans violate other humans' privacy, the present study offers evidence in support of the notion that humanlike non-humans can elicit responses similar to those elicited by real humans.
Practical implications
The results imply that designers of service robots and managers in firms using such robots for providing service to employees should be concerned with restricting the potential for robots' privacy violation activities if the goal is to increase the acceptance of service robots in the habitat of humans.
Originality/value
To date, few empirical studies have examined reactions to service robots that violate privacy norms.
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Matthew D. Roberts, Matthew A. Douglas and Robert E. Overstreet
To investigate the influence of logistics and transportation workers’ perceptions of their management’s simultaneous safety and operations focus (or lack thereof) on related…
Abstract
Purpose
To investigate the influence of logistics and transportation workers’ perceptions of their management’s simultaneous safety and operations focus (or lack thereof) on related worker safety and operational perceptions and behaviors.
Design/methodology/approach
This multi-method research consisted of two studies. Study 1 aimed to establish correlational relationships by evaluating the impact of individual-level worker perceptions of operationally focused routines (as a moderator) on the relationship between worker perceptions of safety-related routines and workers’ self-reported safety and in-role operational behaviors using a survey. Study 2 aimed to establish causal relationships by evaluating the same conceptual relationships in a behavioral-type experiment utilizing vehicle simulators. After receiving one of four pre-task briefings, participants completed a driving task scenario in a driving simulator.
Findings
In Study 1, the relationship between perceived safety focus and safety behavior/in-role operational behavior was strengthened at higher levels of perceived operations focus. In Study 2, participants who received the balanced pre-task briefing committed significantly fewer safety violations than the other 3 treatment groups. However, in-role driving deviations were not impacted as hypothesized.
Originality/value
This research is conducted at the individual (worker) level of analysis to capture the little-known perspectives of logistics and transportation workers and explore the influence of balanced safety and operational routines from a more micro perspective, thus contributing to a deeper understanding of how balanced routines might influence worker behavior when conducting dynamic tasks to ensure safe, effective outcomes.
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