Hybridity in contemporary commercial organizations: implications for employee trust

This study advances the concept of organizational hybridity (OH). By doing so, it takes into account the individual level of analysis often neglected in organizational theory. More specifically, it aims to understand the implications of organizational hybridity for employees’ trust in contemporary commercial organizations. Informed and guided by current literature, this study argues that the current literature on organizational hybridity fails to adequately address the consequences of hybridity for employees' behaviour. The empirical study was conducted in 2014 using data collected via semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The study was based on a comparison of two case studies in Nigeria: Alter Securities Limited and Barak Petroleum Limited. A total of forty (40) interviews were conducted; twenty (20) from each organization. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. The main findings are that organizational hybridity in this study produced tensions that resulted in negative behavioural responses and employees’ distrust in the commercial hybrid organizations. However, employees’ identification with non-market orientated institutional logics such as family, philanthropic and religious logics is seen to facilitate their commitment, honesty, and trust in the organizations. Nevertheless, caution is required here as religious logics may also lead to an acceptance of unethical behaviour by employees. Overall, this study contributes to the literature on organizational hybridity by extending on Battilana and Lee’s (2014) framework, which highlights governance, leadership, organizational culture and intra-organizational relationships as core organizational attributes in the context of which issues may arise in commercial hybrid organizations. Furthermore, it addresses a gap in Besharov and Smith’s (2014) hybrid typology framework by providing an alternative line of argument focused on understanding how tensions manifest within commercial hybrid organizations. The key recommendations of this research underscore the need for commercial hybrid organizations to invest in mechanisms for improving employees’ trust so as to reap the benefits associated with trust. This could be achieved by involving employees in the decision-making process and clearly communicating the organizations’ values, so as to minimise the misinterpretation of the embodied institutional logics by employees.

Aproximaciones a mindfulness en la psicología contemporánea

Este trabajo es una revisión de literatura que abarca una selección de artículos disponibles en bases de datos especializadas y publicados en el periodo comprendido entre los años 2006 a 2016 para artículos científicos y entre los años 2000 a 2016 para libros. En total se revisaron: 1 tesis doctoral, 1 tesis magistral, 111 artículos y 9 libros o capítulos de libros. Se presentan diversas definiciones de mindfulness y formas de conceptualizarla, sus mecanismos de acción, sus enfoques psicoterapéuticos predominantes, los efectos de su práctica estable, sus principales campos de acción y la importancia de la formación de los docentes que imparten la práctica. Finalmente se presentan algunas conclusiones acerca del diálogo entre la literatura psicológica sobre mindfulness y algunas de las concepciones de la tradición budista en torno a la meditación.

ATIRE EM SOFIA, THE WRITER SÔNIA COUTINHO: WRITING AND RESISTANCE IN THE LITERATURE OF FEMALE AUTHORSHIP

The literature on female authorship as a place for questions about the female, is one of the topics discussed in feminist theory and in this article will be reviewed by the trajectory of feminist thought in the contemporary context. This analysis will give from the novel Atire em Sofia (1989), the writer Sonia Coutinho. This perspective will be appointed after the rupture of the central character, Sophie, with tradition and with the subjugation of his body. The narrative discusses the status of women, which has always worked in phallocentric discourse, the signifier always referred to the meaning, signaling that it is time to reverse the situation and take over the deed to her sign her own story. To this end, we will use as a base, feminism, women and writing changes over the centuries that resulted in gender studies.

LITERATURE, THE PRESS AND THE INTERNET: AUTHORS, READERS AND THE DESIRE FOR INVISIBLE MEDIATION

In this text I examine recent changes in how literature is being produced and circulated in Brazil. These shifts can be related, among other factors, to the growing use of the internet as a way of divulging literary works and to the expansion of national literary life and narrative space. My examination sets out from Silviano Santiago’s analysis of the ‘deliteraturization’ movement in his historical account of the written press. Taking an opposite tack to this writer and critic, though, I look to explore the diverse forms of ‘serialization’ and ‘literaturization’ found among contemporary media such as the internet and television. As I aim to show, the migration of newspaper serials and literary works to web sites, blogs and social networks poses diverse questions and challenges to the critic, including the emergence of new figures of author and reader, accompanied by different forms of mediating and legitimizing literary works. These changes are also essential to understanding the profile of the new generation of literary supplements circulating in Brazil today.

How does ‘Newstainment’ actually work? : ethnographic research methods and contemporary popular news

Much debate has taken place recently over the potential for entertainment genres and unorthodox forms of news to provide legitimate – indeed democratized – in-roads into the public sphere. Amidst these discussions, however, little thought has been paid to the audiences for programs of this sort, and (even when viewers are considered) the research can too easily treat audiences in homogenous terms and therefore replicate the very dichotomies these television shows directly challenge. This paper is a critical reflection on an audience study into the Australian morning “newstainment” program Sunrise. After examining the show and exploring how it is ‘used’ as a news source, this paper will promote the use of ethnographic study to better conceptualize how citizens integrate and connect the increasingly fragmented and multifarious forms of postmodern political communication available in their everyday lives.