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Is co-supervision (i.e., two or more supervisors) a blessing or a torture? While co-supervision enables doctoral students to embrace a greater breadth of expertise, studying under the supervision of two or more supervisors can also be frustrating, especially when they have different requirements and expectations. Co-supervision is sometimes like living on the edge of two “systems” of theories and paradigms. It is important for doctoral students to be academically, emotionally, and interpersonally prepared to maximize the value of co-supervision, which often requires special management skills and techniques. Based on the experiences and stories of doctoral students from Hong Kong, this chapter will provide practical tips to navigate co-supervision.

“I just finished my meeting with one supervisor and need to prepare for the other now!”

“I just finished my meeting with one supervisor and need to prepare for the other now!”

“I can learn different things from each supervisor. It is very helpful.”

“I can learn different things from each supervisor. It is very helpful.”

“I am quite confused! My supervisors have totally different stands on this issue.”

“I am quite confused! My supervisors have totally different stands on this issue.”

Does any of the comments ring a bell with you? If you studied or are studying for a doctoral degree in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, or Hong Kong, you are likely to find yourself in similar situations. With the development of distributed supervisory practice in higher education and the growing number of doctoral candidates, more and more doctoral students are likely to be supervised by two or more academics, that is, co-supervision.

This chapter charts the recent evolution of research focused on reflective supervision provided to practitioners delivering services to young children and their families through early intervention programs. The authors explore research focused on defining reflective supervision, identifying five essential elements or “active ingredients” of reflective supervision as a professional development model and demonstrating the impact on practitioners. The impact studies described in this chapter have produced empirical data demonstrating an increase in reflective supervision behaviors as a result of participation. In addition, the studies provide qualitative accounts of practitioners’ experiences, conveying positive effects on intervention practice and reduction of practitioner job stress.

This study is a preliminary effort to examine “muted anger” in the workplace. Muted anger is a unique interpersonal and organizational phenomenon, incorporated in the Dual Threshold Model (DTM) of workplace anger (Geddes & Callister, 2007). Characterized as a form of suppressed workplace anger, muted anger occurs when angry organizational members intentionally keep their anger hidden from management and those responsible for the problematic situation, and instead express their emotions to colleagues (and others) unrelated to the initial anger-provoking incident. Using the DTM framework, we surveyed 296 full-time employees regarding their experience with an angry colleague who vented to them after an infuriating event. Our findings indicate that whether or not muted anger episodes can lead to productive communication practices depends on the anger intensity of both the actor and the sympathetic responder as well as the responder's level of organizational commitment. Those who themselves felt moderate anger intensity after hearing their colleague's plight and those with high organizational commitment were more likely to advocate on behalf of their angry colleague and approach management or someone in a responsible position to help address the problematic situation. Those with lower anger intensity and organizational commitment typically discussed the situation with one or two additional, but unrelated persons – expanding the muted anger episode.

This study proposes a multilevel framework to test the mechanisms and boundary conditions of the relationships between positive group affective tone (PGAT) and individual/team creativity.

Data are collected from 122 research and development (R&D) teams (including 305 members and 122 team leaders). Hierarchical linear modeling analyses and hierarchical regression analyses are performed to test hypotheses.

The results show that PGAT facilitates individual creativity via enhanced work engagement, and increases team creativity via team information exchange. Supporting the substituting perspective, we found that the positive indirect effects of PGAT on individual/team creativity were attenuated when supervisory support is high.

Although all variables were collected at the same time and the individual-level variables were collected from the same source, our findings highlight the mechanisms explaining the beneficial effects of PGAT on individual/team creativity, and how supervisory support can substitute for such effects.

In order to make the individuals and teams more creative, the organizations need to promote PGAT via the selection of appropriated leader and members or team social events. Moreover, supervisors support is particularly salient in enhancing team creativity when PGAT is low.

This study is the one of the first study to test the motivational/social mechanisms linking the relationship between PGAT and individual/team creativity, and the competing theoretical perspectives regarding how supervisory support can moderate the PGAT–creativity linkage.

Decision-making rationality is said to be bounded by managers’ cognitive capabilities. Recent studies indicate that accounting functions evolved to augment the cognitively bounded human brain in handling complex economic exchanges. The neuroscience discipline suggests that human brains have the ability to implement “automatic” processes of positive versus negative emotional stimuli to make rational decisions. Neuroscientific evidence shows that the activations in the ventral striatum decrease with negative emotional information/motives and increase with positive emotional information/motives. The authors, hence, argue that our understanding of the decision-making rationality in financial and managerial decisions could be enhanced by using a functional neuroimaging approach.

Decision-making rationality has been focal in debt covenant violation and earnings management research. The contracting theory predicts a relationship between managers’ decisions and the proximity of violating debt covenants. However, no prior research has investigated brain activities associated with the evaluation of debt covenant violation and earnings management. Meanwhile, in another strand of research, there is an extensive prior literature concerning the consequences of managers’ decisions and the use of accounting information in relation to their evaluative style, i.e., supervisory style. The authors argue that the relationship between the proximity to debt covenants violation and earnings management incentives is contingent upon managers’ supervisory style. However, no previous research has examined the impact of the supervisory style on earnings management in the context of the proximity to debt covenants violation and other earnings management incentives.

In this research note, we argue that neuroaccounting could be relied on to examine the relationship between the proximity to debt covenants and earnings management, contingent upon managers’ supervisory style, by capturing brain activities. The adoption of the neuroscience functional neuroimaging approach in this field should contribute to the understanding of managers’ behaviors and provide implications for research and practitioners. The goal of this research note is to provide a new avenue for future research in this field.