Effects of the Interaction Between Reaction Component of Personal Need for Structure and Role Perceptions on Employee Attitudes in Long-Term Care for Elderly People

This study examined the interaction of reaction component of personal need for structure (reaction to lack of structure, RLS) and role perceptions in predicting job satisfaction, job involvement, affective commitment, and occupational identity among employees working in long-term care for elderly people. High-RLS employees experienced more role conflict, had less job satisfaction, and experienced lower levels of occupational identity than did low-RLS employees. We found individual differences in how problems in roles affected employees' job attitudes. High-RLS employees experienced lower levels of job satisfaction, job involvement, and affective commitment, irrespective of role-conflict levels. Low-RLS employees experienced detrimental job attitudes only if role-conflict levels were high. Our results suggest that high-RLS people benefit less from low levels of experienced role conflicts.

Social Participation and Maintaining Recommended Waist Circumference: Prospective Evidence From the English Longitudinal Study of Aging

Objectives: To investigate whether older adults participating in social activities are more likely to maintain or achieve recommended waist circumference (WC) levels. Method: A total of 4,280 older adults who participated in Wave 2 (baseline) and Wave 4 (follow-up) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. WC was measured by a nurse in both study waves. Results: Participation in education, arts, music groups, evening classes, and in charitable associations was associated with maintaining recommended WC only in those men whose WC was in the recommended range at baseline. Participation in social activities was not associated with achieving recommended WC in women or men with initially large waist. Discussion: Participation in cultural and charitable activities may help in maintaining a recommended level of WC in older men with WC originally in the recommended range.

Social Identity and Youth Aggressive and Delinquent Behaviors in a Context of Political Violence

The goal of the current study was to examine the moderating role of in-group social identity on relations between youth exposure to sectarian antisocial behavior in the community and aggressive behaviors. Participants included 770 mother-child dyads living in interfaced neighborhoods of Belfast. Youth answered questions about aggressive and delinquent behaviors as well as the extent to which they targeted their behaviors toward members of the other group. Structural equation modeling results show that youth exposure to sectarian antisocial behavior is linked with increases in both general and sectarian aggression and delinquency over one year. Reflecting the positive and negative effects of social identity, in-group social identity moderated this link, strengthening the relationship between exposure to sectarian antisocial behavior in the community and aggression and delinquency towards the out-group. However, social identity weakened the effect for exposure to sectarian antisocial behavior in the community on general aggressive behaviors. Gender differences also emerged; the relation between exposure to sectarian antisocial behavior and sectarian aggression was stronger for boys. The results have implications for understanding the complex role of social identity in intergroup relations for youth in post-accord societies.

Home Is Where the Self Is: Monodrama, Journey-Play Structure, and the Modernist Fairy Tale

The first decade of the twentieth century witnessed the creation of two of the most beloved works of children’s literature ever produced. L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wizard of Oz and Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1908 play each gave rise to many adaptations, including, well beloved film versions, and both have become a deeply ingrained part of the cultural memory and construction of childhood in both Europe and the United States. And while these works are deeply original in content and detail, the structure of these works harkens back to the form of the journey play (traceable, on some level, back to the medieval morality play Everyman), a form that had undergone a considerable revival in the second half of the nineteenth century in the work of writers such as Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg. This article explores the structural and conceptual links between Baum and Maeterlinck’s children’s classics, Ibsen’s Norwegian folk play Peer Gynt, and August Strindberg’s Lucky Per’s Journey and The Road to Damascus, Part I. In these works, the protagonists, disenchanted with their homes or current situations, set out on an epic journey in which they come upon characters and situations that act as commentary upon their situations before the journey. Ultimately, the characters return to where they started, with the journey seeming to have been a dream or merely a pointless excursion. But in these journeys of self-discovery, the protagonist that emerges at the end has undergone a significant transformation, a process at the heart of all of these works.

Combining and integrating life /social sciences and citizen trainers in Nurse Education - a N. Ireland initiative

Before commencement of the academic year 2012/2013 the social sciences, public health and the biomedical sciences were taught to separate modules. This reinforced the idea off separate disciplines certainly for some of the younger students and a failure to appreciate the interconnectedness (whole person) perspective on health; separately modules taught and assessed in separate silos. There was limited understanding by the lecturers of the other areas that they were not teaching to -reflecting perhaps a dis-coordinated approach to health sciences (Mason and Whitehead 2003). As a result of significant discussion and interdisciplinary negotiation the life, social sciences public health/ health education were drawn together in the one module for the academic year 2012/13. The module provides the undergraduate students with an introduction to an understanding of Life Sciences, psychology, sociology and public health and their contribution within the context of nursing and midwifery. Each week’s teaching seeks to reflect against the other module delivered in first year - addressing clinical skills. The teaching is developing innovative e-learning approaches, including the use of a virtual community. The intention is to provide the student with a more integrated understanding and teaching to the individual’s health and to health within a social context (Lin 2001; Iles- Shih 2011). The focus is on health promotion rather than disease management. The module runs in three phases across the student’s first-year and teachers to the field of adult mental health, learning disability, children’s nursing and the midwifery students -progressively building on the student’s clinical experience. The predominant focus of the module remains on health and reflecting aspects of life and social life within N. Ireland. One of the particular areas of interest and an area of particular sensitivity is engaging the students to the context of the Northern Ireland civil unrest (the Troubles); this involves a co-educational initiative with service users, only previously attempted with social work students (Duffy 2012). The service users are represented by WAVE an organisation offering care and support to bereaved, traumatised or injured as a result of the violent civil conflict `the Troubles’. The `Troubles’ had ranged over an extended period and apart from the more evident and visual impact of death and injury, the community is marked by a disproportionate level of civil unrest, the extremes of bereavement, imprisonment, displacement antisocial behaviour and family dysfunction (Coulter et al. 2012). As co-educators with the School of Nursing and Midwifery, WAVE deliver a core lecture (augmented by online material), then followed by tutorials. The tutorials are substantially led by those who had been involved with and experienced loss and trauma as a result of the conflict (Health Service users) as `citizen trainers’ and provide an opportunity for them to share their experience and their recollection of personal interaction with nursing and midwifery students; in improving their understanding of the impact of `The Troubles’ on patients and clients affected by the events (Coulter et al. 2012) and to help better provide a quality of care cognisant of the particular needs of those affected by `the Troubles’ in N.Ireland. This approach is relatively unique to nursing in N. Ireland in that it involves many of those directly involved with and injured by the `Troubles’ as `citizen trainers’ and clearly reflects the School’s policy of progressively engaging with users and carers of nursing and midwifery services as co-educators to students (Repper & Breeze 2006). Only now could perhaps such a sensitive level of training to student nurses and midwives be delivered across communities with potential educative lessons for other communities experiencing significant civil unrest and sectarian conflict.

‘At First I Saw It as a Toy’: Life Stories, Social Consciousness and Music Ethnography

This article examines the role of life narratives as discursive spaces for the performance of individual resistance. Through the inspection of three interviews with professional musicians in Athens, the essay will illustrate how the recounting of nodal events in their lives and careers facilitates an assertion of their current social ideology and their disillusionment with the popular music industry in which they operate. Ultimately, what follows will suggest a mode of listening to individual utterances and narratives as discursive forms of resistance that need to be appreciated as social acts as opposed to mere ethnographic data.

Killing animals: sociology, species relations and institutionalized violence

Influential voices have argued for a sociology which acknowledges the way we are co-constituted with a range of non-human species as part of the condition of life on this planet. Despite this, sociology has generally retained a conception of the social that is centred on the human. This paper argues for the inclusion of non-human animals in sociological agendas, focusing on the emerging field of the sociology of violence. It examines the institutions and processes through which non-human animals are subjected to different forms of violence, most notably, mass killing.The practice of killing animals is routine,normative,institutionalized and globalized.The scale of killing is historically unprecedented and the numbers killed are enormous. The paper argues that this killing of non-humans raises questions around inequal- ities and intersectionality, human relations with other species, the embedding of violence in everyday practices and links between micro and macro analyses. These are questions with which the new sociology of violence might engage.

Does the existing Corporate Governance structure and strict Legal Framework, affect the strategic decisionmaking of CEOs?

This thesis is a case study on Corporate Governance and Business Ethics, using the Portuguese Corporate Law as a general setting. The thesis was conducted in Portugal with illustrations on past cases under the Business Judgment Rule of the State of Delaware, U.SA along with illustrations on current cases in Portugal under the Portuguese Judicial setting, along with a comparative analysis between both. A debate is being considered among scholars and executives; a debate on best practices within corporate governance and corporate law, associated with recent discoveries of unlawful investments that lead to the bankruptcy of leading institutions and an aggravation of the crisis in Portugal. The study aimed at learning possible reasons and causes for the current situation of the country’s corporations along with attempts to discover the best way to move forward. From the interviews and analysis conducted, this paper concluded that the corporate governance structure and legal frameworks in Portugal were not the sole influencers behind the actions and decisions of Corporate Executives, nor were they the main triggers for the recent corporate mishaps. But it is rather a combination of different factors that played a significant role, such as cultural and ethical aspects, individual personalities, and others all of which created gray areas beyond the legal structure, which in turn accelerated and aggravated the corporate governance crisis in the country.

Kin structure and queen execution in the Argentine ant Linepithema humile

Every spring, workers of the Argentine Ant Linepithema humile kill a large proportion of queens within their nests, Although this behaviour inflicts a high energetic cost oil the colonies, its biological significance has remained elusive so far. An earlier study showed that the probability of a queen being executed is not related to her weight, fecundity, or age. Here we test the hypothesis that workers collectively eliminate queens to which they are less related, thereby increasing their inclusive fitness. We found no evidence for this hypothesis. Workers of a nest were on average not significantly less related to executed queens than to surviving ones. Moreover, a population genetic analysis revealed that workers were not genetically differentiated between nests. This means that workers of a given nest are equally related to any queen in the population and that there can be no increase in average worker-queen relatedness by selective elimination of queens. Finally, our genetic analyses also showed that, in contrast to workers, queens were significantly genetically differentiated between nests and that there was significant isolation by distance for queens.

Melting the matrices : structure, anti-structure, and the emerging conversation /

This thesis investigates two cases of Christian churches, which as a part of their mission seek to accommodate people who would otherwise not be interested in church. One of these communities consider themselves a part of the global 'emerging church' movement, and the other does not. I argue that both communities are employing what I call 'de-compartmentalization' strategy in order to adopt a pragmatic relationship with social and political issues. Furthermore I discuss the case of the emerging church community as an example of 'paraliminal community '; a concept I develop from the work of Victor Turner and Arnold van Gennep.

Perceptions of intergroup bias : the roles of social projection and meta-stereotypes

Underlying intergroup perceptions include processes of social projection (perceiving personal traitslbeliefs in others, see Krueger 1998) and meta-stereotyping (thinking about other groups' perceptions of one's own group, see Vorauer et aI., 1998). Two studies were conducted to investigate social projection and meta-stereotypes in the domain of White-Black racial relations. Study 1, a correlational study, examined the social projection of prejudice and 'prejudiced' meta-stereotypes among Whites. Results revealed that (a) Whites socially projected their intergroup attitudes onto other Whites (and Blacks) [i.e., Whites higher in prejudice against Blacks believed a large percentage of Whites (Blacks) are prejudiced against Blacks (Whites), whereas Whites low in prejudice believed a smaller percentage of Whites (Blacks) are prejudiced]; (b) Whites held the meta:..stereotype that their group (Whites) is viewed by Blacks to be prejudiced; and (c) prejudiced meta-stereotypes may be formed through the social projection of intergroup attitudes (result of path-model tests). Further, several correlates of social projection and meta-stereotypes were identified, including the finding that feeling negatively stereotyped by an outgroup predicted outgroup avoidance through heightened intergroup anxiety. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings, investigating the social projection of ingroup favouritism and meta- and other-stereotypes about ingroup favouritism. These processes were examined experimentally using an anticipated intergroup contact paradigm. The goal was to understand the experimental conditions under which people would display the strongest social projection of intergroup attitudes, and when experimentally induced meta-stereotypes (vs. other-stereotypes; beliefs about the group 11 preferences of one's outgroup) would be most damaging to intergroup contact. White participants were randomly assigned to one of six conditions and received (alleged) feedback from a previously completed computer-based test. Depending on condition, this information suggested that: (a) the participant favoured Whites over Blacks; (b) previous White participants favoured Whites over Blacks; (c) the participant's Black partner favoured Blacks over Whites; (d) previous Black participants favoured Blacks over Whites; (e) the participant's Black partner viewed the participant to favour Whites over Blacks; or (£) Black participants previously participating viewed Whites to favour Whites over Blacks. In a defensive reaction, Whites exhibited enhanced social projection of personal intergroup attitudes onto their ingroup under experimental manipulations characterized by self-concept threat (i.e., when the computer revealed that the participant favoured the ingroup or was viewed to favour the ingroup). Manipulated meta- and otherstereotype information that introduced intergroup contact threat, on the other hand, each exerted a strong negative impact on intergroup contact expectations (e.g., anxiety). Personal meta-stereotype manipulations (i.e., when the participant was informed that her/ his partner thinks s/he favours the ingroup) exerted an especially negative impact on intergroup behaviour, evidenced by increased avoidance of the upcoming interracial interaction. In contrast, personal self-stereotype manipulations (i.e., computer revealed that one favoured the ingroup) ironically improved upcoming intergroup contact expectations and intentions, likely due to an attempt to reduce the discomfort of holding negative intergroup attitudes. Implications and directions for future research are considered.

Gender and work identity among Canadian cowboys

L’objectif général de ce mémoire est de comprendre l‘impact du genre sur l’identité de travail des cowboys, dans leur milieu de travail et de vie dans un ranch du Canada. Cette étude vise à contribuer aux études sur le genre en utilisant des théories existantes pour les appliquer à un nouveau champ. Sur la base d’une approche théorique fondée dans le féminisme et les études sur la masculinité, en utilisant aussi l’histoire des cowboys de l’Ouest, cette étude se penche sur la question de l’importance du genre dans la division du travail dans le ranch, celle de l’identité de travail des cowboys et sur la façon dont le genre affecte cette identité. La collecte des données s’est faite par l’observation participante et des entrevues semi-structurées. En utilisant une analyse thématique des données, l’étude conclut que le genre est un principe important dans la division du travail dans le ranch et que l’identité de travail est d’une extrême importance pour les cowboys. En outre, l’étude démontre que le genre jour de différentes façons dans l’identité de travail, l’hétéronormativité et les idéaux du cowboy allant dans le même sens, alors que la féminité s’oppose à cet idéal. Les traditions sont encore importantes pour les cowboys contemporains, mais en même temps, ceux-ci mentionnent la réalité du travail éreintant et sans fin comme contrepoids à l’image romantique de la vie des cowboys. Enfin, il y a des similitudes entre les cowboys de cette étude et les adolescentes suédoises étudies par Ambjörnsonn (2004) dans la façon dont le groupe se crée une identité sur la base du genre.