The aim of the study was to examine the application of a computerized handwriting model for characterizing complex figure-drawing performance. We posit that spatial, temporal, and pressure measures ...that reflect figure-drawing behavior will differ significantly under two mental workload conditions, and that both drawing and handwriting process measures will predict the quality of what is drawn and/or written. Thirty participants copied the Rey–Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (ROCFT). They then reproduced it from memory and finally copied a paragraph on a digitizer that is part of the Computerized Penmanship Evaluation Tool (ComPET) system. Results indicated that certain computerized measures of the ROCFT copying significantly correlated with those of the paragraph-copying behavior (
r
= .38–.75). Significant differences were found between the spatial and temporal computerized measures of performance in the ROCFT copying and drawing-from-memory tasks. Stepwise regressions indicated that mean pressure predicted 12 % of the variance of the ROCFT and paragraph-copying quality scores and 6 % of the ROCFT drawing-from-memory score. Furthermore, 52 % of the variance of the ROCFT drawing-from-memory score was predicted by the mean velocity. The benefits and significance of obtaining computerized measures of the drawing process for better insight about human performance characteristics are discussed, and applications are suggested.
This study investigates learning disability (LD) as an individual-differences variable predicting leadership emergence, role occupancy, and effectiveness. We hypothesize that individuals with LD are ...less likely to occupy leadership roles, and that informal group processes (leadership emergence) will mediate the relationship between LD and leadership role occupancy. We also hypothesized that, among leaders promoted and selected for leadership training, there would be a negative relationship between LD and effective leadership. We first checked for LD in a sample of 1076 soldiers, measuring cognitive ability with a geometric-analogies test as a control. Some months later, during the soldiers’ basic training, we measured leadership emergence. We then identified those who were selected for leadership training, recording, and measuring their effectiveness according to supervisory and peer evaluations. Leadership emergence was found to mediate the negative relationship between LD and leadership role occupancy. There were no significant differences among leaders (n = 308) with and without LD in regard to leadership effectiveness.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on service quality and value co-creation and co-destruction by unpacking the phenomenon described as “difficult customers”, which ...has many associated costs for service organizations. The paper examines how frontline service employees make sense of and react to client behaviors that disrupt service processes.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a qualitative study with 128 frontline workers, who were interviewed about their perceptions, explanations and reactions to problem-related customers, using a sensemaking perspective.
Findings
Content analysis revealed 17 themes related to workers' perceptions, explanations and reactions to problem-related customers. Workers classify behaviors of problem-related customers in terms exceeding the single notion of intentionality that dominates the literature, instead referring to the degree of both controllability and malevolence of customers. Service workers choose a wide range of behavioral reactions that have not been studied before.
Research limitations/implications
A convenience sample, although large, limits generalizability. Suggestions for future quantitative research are proposed.
Practical implications
Based on the findings, the authors suggest specific directions related to managerial policy and organizational practices related to training and employee empowerment and service recovery routines.
Originality/value
The study introduces a new theoretical notion of “problem-related customers”, set within a value co-creation context. It presents findings that enable deeper understanding of the emotional and behavioral reactions of frontline workers to service disruptions and offers multiple scholarly contributions, new research directions and managerial insights that can help to improve service recovery and service quality
Customers constantly deviate from social norms in their interactions with service employees. Previous research has explored customers' deviance from the service employee's viewpoint, overlooking the ...customers' own perspective of their deviance. Based on interviews, we present a model of customers' individual and social sensemaking of their deviant behavior in service interactions. Customers frame their behavior as inseparable from script violations by the service provider. Deviance is viewed as a justified act of taking charge to substitute an unmotivated or incapable service provider. Social sensemaking tends to validate such behavior by providing approval, thereby reinforcing norms of deviance in service.
Numerous studies have documented the importance of religion, and especially of religious congregational attendance, in regard to volunteering. Most of these studies focus on individual and contextual ...factors, usually within one country. Recent studies suggest that the association between religious attendance and volunteering varies among countries. We hypothesize that national culture plays an important role in explaining volunteering mainly as a moderator of the relationship between religious attendance and volunteering, especially on volunteering to help people in need. To support this position, we used individual-level data from the World Values Survey (WVS) coupled with national data on cultural measures. This enabled assessment of these relationships using a multilevel analysis of individuals nested in countries. We used two models of national culture, Hofstede (1984) and WVS to explain the differences between countries. We found direct relationships between national culture constructs (power distance and survival/self-expression values) and volunteering. We also found that individualism, power distance, and survival/self-expression values moderated the effect of religion on volunteering, with a stronger relationship between religious attendance and volunteering in nationalities with self-expression values, high power distance, and low individualism. Theoretical and practical implications of this approach are discussed.
•We introduce the concept community-level road-safety climate.•We present and test a community-level road-safety climate questionnaire.•Road safety climate is particularly relevant in the case of ...geographical communities.
This study applies the safety-climate concept to road safety and proposes a new concept – community road-safety climate. To date, safety climate has been a measure of a formal organizational unit and a valid predictor of unit members’ behavior and unit outcomes. However, many drivers do not drive when at work, so that organizations have only limited influence on road safety. We suggest that the community level adds value to the organizational level of analysis in climate research and can improve understanding of road-safety behavior. We conducted a qualitative interview-based study (n=61) in order to explore community influence on road safety and develop a safety-climate scale; and a quantitative questionnaire-based study (n=132) to test that scale. In both studies we found evidence of a community-level road-safety climate, and that this concept is particularly relevant in the case of geographical communities.
•The current study uses network analysis to study safety climate in cliques.•Cliques were found to be a valid level of analysis for safety-climate research.•The number of cliques in a team was ...negatively related to the team's safety-climate strength.
Safety climate is one of the most valid predictors of safety outcomes in organizations. Safety climate studies usually refer to formal organizational units (the team/department) as the main level of analysis for predicting climate emergence and safety outcomes. The current research extends the traditional perspective toward safety climate by proposing a complementary framework based on social network theory. Specifically, this research aims to understand how two common features of formal units, namely (1) the presence of informal subgroups of friends (i.e. cliques), and (2) the prevalence of negative relationships between team members, affect the team’s safety climate strength. We hypothesized that employees who are members of cliques would exhibit high internal agreement, at the clique level, regarding the team’s safety climate, and that both the number of cliques and the prevalence of negative relationships in a team would be negatively related to team safety-climate strength. We sampled 568 workers in 118 cliques within 46 formal teams in nine organizations. Findings showed the cliques to be a valid meso level of analysis for safety-climate research. The number of cliques in a team was negatively related to the team's safety-climate strength. In addition, we found an interaction effect between the number of cliques and the prevalence of negative relationships in the team, such that the negative association between the number of cliques and climate strength grew stronger as the prevalence of negative relationships increased.
Previous studies of national culture and prosocial behaviors have been limited to Hofstede's five traditional culture dimensions. We introduce the fairly new and less studied cultural dimension of ...indulgence versus restraint (IVR) as a predictor of prosocial behaviors. We tested the effect of IVR on prosocial behavior over Hofstede's previously studied dimensions. We also tested the moderating effect of government effectiveness on the relationship between indulgence and prosocial behavior. We crossed data for cultural dimensions from Hofstede with data from the world-giving index for prosocial behavior and data for government effectiveness from the World Bank. In total, eighty-seven countries entered our model. Indulgence predicted volunteering above the other researched cultural dimensions. It did not predict helping a stranger or donating. Among the cultural dimensions, only uncertainty avoidance was also significant in the prediction of volunteering. Uncertainty avoidance was the only cultural dimension that predicted donating. Individualism was not significant in the prediction of prosocial behaviors. Long-term orientation was the only cultural dimension that predicted helping a stranger (but not volunteering and donating) over other researched cultural dimensions. We found that government effectiveness is a boundary condition to the link between indulgent cultures and tw prosocial behaviors (donating and helping a stranger but not for volunteering). Our results indicate that only in countries with high government effectiveness does indulgence predict prosocial behaviors, and not in cultures with low government effectiveness.
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