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This study engages an understudied presupposition that values are relatively impervious to situational pressures. We do this within a key sociological context, incorporating social status as a meso-level structure, by measuring values before and after a competition situation with an experimentally controlled outcome to determine the situational robustness of values.

We incorporate measures of values into a standard competition experiment, looking at how winning or losing and the status of the perceived competition influence peoples’ values.

Drawing on the well-established expectation states literature, we demonstrate that perceptions of gaining or losing a competition influence core values. Overall, positive, related situational feedback seemed to heighten all of the values-measures, while receiving (manipulated) negative, specific feedback dampened the rating of all values.

This is an initial exploration of the received wisdom; future work should involve different manipulations, wider arrays of values-measurement, and more diverse samples.

We hope that our interpretations of these results suggest how perceived status influences core internal experiences. The processes described have implications for the experiences of groups that win or lose political competitions, and other social interactions whereby people feel more or less affirmed in terms of their core beliefs.

This suggests that individuals and groups who perceive themselves as winning competitions, elections, or challenges will feel affirmed in their core beliefs, and be more motivated to pursue those valued ends. People who perceive themselves as being situationally unsuccessful will feel a general dampening of these core beliefs.

This chapter is the first to link the internal study of values with the general expectation states tradition. It is exploratory, and results suggest this is a fertile area for future inquiry.

Purpose – Due to an absence of dialogue between sociology and the neurosciences, the scientific study of morality largely ignores cultural and structural influences. This chapter offers a synthetic approach integrating these separate disciplines to aid a more complete understanding of morality.

Design/methodology/approach – This chapter reviews morality's bonding (a sense of groupness and belonging) and bounding (reproducing and reinforcing group boundaries) qualities across disciplines, and proposes three provisional principles to systematize an interdisciplinary model of morality. We then offer a preliminary illustration of how this model might be operationalized with functional MRI data.

Findings – Our proposed principles (as exemplified by our illustrative example) suggest that the sociology-neurology gap in understanding the domain of morality might shrink through an engagement with the underlying neural mechanisms that encompass issues of empathy, racial attitudes, and identity as potential platforms opening up a more “social” neuroscience.

Research limitations/implications – This chapter provides a starting-point for further research incorporating biological mechanisms into sociological theories in the area of morality. The illustrative case study should be replicated in a larger sample and/or in additional studies with different social groups.

Practical implications – This chapter is a useful source of information for sociologists seeking to find out more about the intersection of neuroscience and sociology as well as the neural dynamics of morality.

Originality/value – This chapter presents an introduction to an integrative approach recognizing our biological capacities for a socially constructed morality and the interaction between society and the mind. It includes one of the first sociologically oriented fMRI studies, offering avenues for new ways to bridge research disciplines.

This volume begins with two chapters that draw on evolutionary sociology to advance our understanding of interpersonal processes and their role in social organization. In “The Biology and Neurology of Group Processes,” Jonathan H. Turner and Alexandra Maryanski draw on three areas of evolutionary sociology (cladistic analysis, comparative neuroanatomy, and ecological analysis) to show how understanding the selection pressures acting on the brain over millions of years can help us get a better grasp on the biologically based capacities and propensities that are involved in group processes such as role-taking and role-making. An improved understanding of these processes means better explanations of how humans create, sustain, and change social structures and culture – topics that lie at the core of sociological inquiry. At the same time, Turner and Maryanski's chapter will give sociologists much to think about and debate, as one of the main conclusions of their argument is that neurology explains human capacities to develop non-kin groups more than culture. The next chapter entitled “Sacrifice, Gratitude, and Obligation: Serial Reciprocity in Early Christianity,” by Richard Machalek and Michael W. Martin, may be seen as giving more equal explanatory weight to culture and biology in a theoretical analysis that combines a focus on cognitive processes (historically unique meanings and ideas) with evolutionary sociological insights about emotions in order to generate better explanations of complex socio-historical developments. Specifically, Machalek and Martin extend Rodney Stark's analysis of how ideas contributed to the rise of Christianity by showing how the evolved features of human emotionality related to “paying it forward” (or serial reciprocity in more formal terms) may have also played an important role in this historical process. Both chapters provide excellent examples of the value of combining multiple theoretical perspectives and paying attention to the interplay of social and biological forces.

This paper aims to investigate whether values enactment could be increased through frame-of-reference (FOR) training configured around values prototyping and behavioural domain training for managers within an Australian public sector organisation.

Employees from an Australian public sector organisation were studied to ascertain the effect of values training and development via a three-way longitudinal design with a control group.

The findings indicate that FOR training can increase employee values enactment clarity and, thereby, have a positive impact upon organisational values enactment.

The application of FOR training constitutes a new approach to supporting the development of employee values clarity, which, in turn, can support the achievement of organisational values enactment. Through FOR training, employees can learn to apply organisational values in their decision-making and other behaviours irrespective of whether they are highly congruent with their personal values.

Empirical research into values management is limited and there is a lack of consensus to what is needed to create a values-driven organisation. The article shows that FOR training can be a beneficial component of a broader human resource strategy aimed at increasing organisational values enactment. With reference to the resource-based view of the firm, it is argued that values enactment constitutes a distinctive capability that may confer sustained organisational advantage.

Research on diversity climate has shown that diversity climate as an employee's perception of an organization's diversity-related practices or procedures has a positive impact on reducing turnover intentions. However, we know little about which intervening mechanism explains the relationship between diversity climate and employee's turnover intentions. In this study, we suggest that individual employee's perceived diversity climate influences turnover intentions through personal diversity value and affective commitment.

With a sample of 901 employees in more than 50 companies affiliated in South Korea, the authors test the hypothesized relationship, using structural equation modeling (SEM).

Our findings show that personal diversity value and affective commitment sequentially mediate the relationship between perceived diversity climate and turnover intentions.

This study can enhance the understanding about the mediating mechanism linking the relationship between perceived diversity climate and turnover intentions and how personal diversity value and affective commitment link the relationship.

The authors theorize and find that perceived diversity climate can influence personal diversity value that results in employee commitment and turnover intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of consumers’ collectivism and long-term orientation (LTO) cultural values on their purchase intention in relation to environment-friendly products.

This research adopts a hypo-deductive research design. A unique conceptual model was developed by linking cultural values to key determinants of green purchase behaviour. This model was then tested using a quantitative survey of 682 shoppers in popular Vietnamese electrical appliance stores.

Analysis using structural equation modelling reveals that consumers with greater adherence to collectivism and LTO tend to engage in green purchase behaviour owing to their positive environmental attitudes, strong subjective norms and tolerance of inconvenience associated with eco-friendly product purchase. Gender is found to moderate the relationship between the determinants and purchase intention.

Marketers including manufacturers and policymakers must endeavour (change globally) to reduce or eliminate perceived inconvenience associated with green purchases. They should also effectively communicate messages stressing that eco-friendly product purchases are crucial for environmental protection and benefit consumer groups including family, peers and society in the long-run.

This research is the first of its kind which links consumers’ cultural values at a personal level to all the elements of the theory of planned behaviour. This research also extends current knowledge about green purchase behaviour in emerging markets by focussing on Vietnam.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of the use of spiritual intelligence into women academic leadership practices. The study designed to provide a clear understanding of the effectiveness of the use of spiritual intelligence practices within women academic leadership practices. In addition, the study will be an ideal for women in academic environment, considering that more women will have the opportunities to hold leadership positions in higher learning institutions. Understanding the unique skills and attributes of spiritual intelligence could increase their confidence towards taking on leadership positions in future. This study will also provide greater clarification on how spiritual intelligence when translated through leadership practice will contribute to a more balanced and harmonious working environment.

The study assimilated a qualitative approach guided by phenomenological inquiry to explore the effectiveness of the use of spiritual intelligence practices among the women leaders. Phenomenology best fit the researchers’ assumptions that it is possible to know, define and categorize women academic leader’s experiences in a more structured manner. It is by entering into their field of perception that the researcher pursues to understand spiritual intelligence as the leaders saw it.

The finding established three main effectiveness of integrating spiritual intelligence into leadership practices: employees inspired by vision; increase credibility and long-term sustainability of institution; and heightened moral values and reduces ethical issues. The authors conclude that bringing the attributions of spiritual intelligence will transform the workplace into a more meaningful and purposeful atmosphere by constructing balanced and harmonious relationship within employees.

The study rely profoundly on women academic leaders as a primary source of data. Due to their higher position, there may be some elements of their works which are similar to each other or different compared with other women leaders who may not have reached the higher position. The responses was mainly based on the self-perception of women academic leaders grounded on their insight of leadership and experience. This experiences probably could not be verified by others to see if their perceptions of leadership were in line with how others perceive them. The study also limited in terms of generalizability as the sample was purposively selected.

The study will be applicable for human resource personnel to develop policies and procedures that are needed to improve the holistic strategies of leading not only in public university but also throughout all the other higher educational institutions. The study assist researcher and the practitioner in the Human Resource Development (HRD) field to understand the issues related to leadership practice in current era. Hence, the information in this study could be used to aid them in advocating employee training programs and formulating HRD intervention remedial programs input for designing and facilitating of intervention for professional academic leaders, academicians and change agent to understand and analyse the characteristics of personal and organizational situation in order to contribute to the long run survival of the higher educational learning institutions.

This paper has provided unique evidence of women leadership particularly in Malaysian higher educational context on their experiences of spiritual intelligence and its effectiveness into their leadership practices.