Creating stabilizers and safety nets for successor executives' high‐wire act

This article explores executive succession planning in a nonprofit health care organization with a strong values‐based culture. Case study research was used to explore how retiring executives have prepared the organization for their departure and have used various strategies in an attempt to limit any potentially negative impact.     

Daily,high‐potency cannabis linked to first psychosis

Daily use of marijuana (cannabis) is associated with a greater than three times increased risk of psychotic disorder compared to never users, according to a study published in Lancet Psychiatry. This risk increased to nearly five times if high‐potency cannabis was used. Across the 11 sites included in the study, if high‐potency cannabis were not available, 12.2 percent of cases of first‐episode psychosis could be prevented, rising to 30.3 percent in London and 50.3 percent in Amsterdam.     

Theorizing postfeminist communities: How gender‐inclusive meetups address gender inequity in high‐tech industries

Through a qualitative analysis of gender‐inclusive meetup groups in the US technology sector, this article offers a theory of postfeminist communities to identify how community organizing can take a postfeminist turn. Gender‐inclusive meetups are public, often free groups or organizations where participants have access to training, mentorship and support. Groups import postfeminist values of choice, empowerment, individualism and entrepreneurship into their community organizing efforts to address workplace gender inequities. Groups employ three strategies to improve the status of women and non‐binary people in the tech industry: (i) organizing a supportive community rooted in professionalism and entrepreneurialism; (ii) offering skills development in a safe environment; and (iii) training participants on how to take individual action against discrimination. While postfeminist communities are able to successfully cultivate supportive groups of participants who organize outside of the workplace, strategies focused on individual‐level changes ultimately do little to disrupt organization‐level gender inequities.     

Doing gender in segregated and assimilative organizations: Ultra‐Orthodox Jewish women in the Israeli high‐tech labour market

Ultra‐Orthodox Jewish (haredi) women in Israel, who are traditionally expected to be both mothers and breadwinners so as to allow their husbands to immerse themselves in religious studies, are recently entering the high‐tech labour market in both segregated and assimilate organizations. This segmented labour market allows the constructed and intersectional character of doing gender in organizations to be examined, which in turn may also effect the ways in which such labour segmentation continues to develop. In 2014–2015, we administered a questionnaire to 119 haredi women working as computer programmers in assimilative and segregated organizations, and interviewed 42 of them as well as 16 of their managers. We describe the emergence of a dual pattern of employment with its benefits and disadvantages regarding pay, satisfaction, commitment and burnout. Findings are presented concerning the balancing of work and family as well as the professional/social conflict that is accentuated by working in an assimilative organization. Our findings show how the intersection of work, religiosity, class and gender is central to women's labour trajectories and identities, highlighting both the boundaries of gendered arrangements and their negotiability. We conclude by discussing how specific strategies of doing gender in segmented labour markets play out in/against ‘global’ norms of work and professionalism.     

Using Values‐Based Webinar Interventions to Facilitate Career‐Life Exploration and Planning

Using a quasi‐experimental design, the authors examined whether career indecision could be reduced by participation in a values‐based career webinar designed to translate various types of psychological data (e.g., Holland‐type themes) into values‐based language. Participants (N = 67; 36 women, 31 men; mean age = 36 years) were divided into 1 control and 2 treatment groups. The 1st treatment group received an interest‐based intervention. The 2nd received a values‐based intervention. Both interventions consisted of 1 additional webinar spanning 1 hour in length. This study demonstrated a statistical significance of career indecision decrease through use of the values‐based, process‐oriented webinar intervention, which is particularly helpful to career counselors working with adults. The study also illustrated the effective application of online technology as a service delivery tool. Future research might examine the efficacy of this intervention in a variety of settings (e.g., K–12, postsecondary, agency, mental health, corporate).     

Chinese–African encounters in high‐tech sectors: Comparative investigation of Chinese workplace regimes in Ethiopia

Studies on China–Africa co‐operation have revealed increasing diversification of China's on‐the‐ground practices in Africa. However, engaged research has yet to examine the situated experiences of Chinese and African individuals whose activities shape and are shaped by Chinese multinationals, especially those in the growing yet underexplored high‐tech sectors. To address this gap, this article investigates the workplace regimes of two Chinese companies in Ethiopia. Using a mixed‐method approach, it articulates the contradictory nature of Chinese investment and its diverse manifestations in work relations between Chinese expatriates and local Ethiopians. Our findings suggest that Chinese and Ethiopian employees are proactive yet constrained agents in exploiting work opportunities for their own economic interests and professional development.     

Evaluating the Nature of the Still‐Face Effect in the Double Face‐to‐Face Still‐Face Paradigm Using Different Comparison Groups

The current study explored two possible comparison groups for the double Face‐to‐Face Still‐Face (FFSF) paradigm to evaluate their effects on infant behavior and different hypotheses about the nature of the Still‐Face (SF) effect, an effect not fully understood. Mothers and their 4‐month‐old infants were randomly assigned to one of three groups, a double FFSF group (Group_FFSF, n = 44), a control, semi‐structured play group (Group_Story, n = 46), or a control, unstructured play group (Group_Play, n = 28). As hypothesized, Group_FFSF infants exhibited the classic SF response (decreased positive affect and gaze to mother; increased negative affect) and Group_Play infants showed an increase in negative affect over episodes. Contrary to expectations, Group_Story infants displayed a similar, but less intense, pattern of behavior as Group_FFSF. Taken together, the findings indicate that multiple episodes of face‐to‐face play exceeded 4‐month‐olds' regulatory capacities and that infants are sensitive to shared communicative intentions and violations of social expectations, whether these violations are negative or positive in nature.     

Cross‐Task Stability in Infant Attention: New Perspectives Using the Still‐Face Procedure

Infant visual attention has been studied extensively within cognitive paradigms using measures such as look duration and reaction time, but less work has examined how infant attention operates in social contexts. In addition, little is known about the stability of individual differences in attention across cognitive and social contexts. In this study, a cross‐sectional sample of 50 infants (4 and 6 months of age) were first tested in a look duration and reaction time task with static visual stimuli. Next, their mothers participated with the infants in the still‐face procedure, a mildly distressing social interaction paradigm that involves violation of expectancy. Individual differences in looking and emotion were stable across the phases of the still‐face task. Further, individual differences in looking measures from the visual attention task were related to the pattern of looking shown across the phases of the still‐face procedure. Results indicate that individual differences in attentional measures show moderate stability within cognitive and social contexts, and that the ability of infants to shift and disengage looks may affect their ability to regulate interaction in social contexts.     

Using the Self‐Directed Search: Career Explorer With High‐Risk Middle School Students

The Self‐Directed Search: Career Explorer was used with 98 (95% African American) high‐risk middle school students as part of 14 structured career groups based on Cognitive Information Processing theory. Results and implications are presented on the outcomes of this program.     

Measuring the Development of Social Attention Using Free‐Viewing

How do young children direct their attention to other people in the natural world? Although many studies have examined the perception of faces and of goal‐directed actions, relatively little work has focused on what children will look at in complex and unconstrained viewing environments. To address this question, we showed videos of objects, faces, children playing with toys, and complex social scenes to a large sample of infants and toddlers between 3 and 30 months old. We found systematic developmental changes in what children looked at. When viewing faces alone, younger children looked more at eyes and older children more at mouths, especially when the faces were making expressions or talking. In the more complex videos, older children looked more at hands than younger children, especially when the hands were performing actions. Our results suggest that as children develop they become better able to direct their attention to the parts of complex scenes that are most interesting socially.