Maternal narration about parenting pride and regret is related to youth emotion regulation

As they respond to children's emotions, mothers socialize children's emerging emotion regulation. Mothers' own autobiographical narratives likely reflect in part habitual ways of expressing and managing emotions—ways that may in turn influence the way mothers respond to their children's emotions. We examined features of mothers' narratives about parental pride and regret experiences, and assessed whether these were associated with parental socialization of emotion and the emotion regulation repertoire of their children. Two hundred thirty‐seven mothers with children ranging from 8 to 17 years of age provided two narratives about parental pride and parental regret experiences. Parental emotion socialization and children's emotion regulation were assessed via self‐ and informant‐report using a multi‐measure, multi‐observer approach. We found that features of the way mothers narrated their experiences with a particular child related to their parenting of that child, and that child's emotion regulation. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for emotion‐related parenting, and the potential importance of parent narratives.     

Cooperation and preference by peers in early childhood: A longitudinal study

Children who are more proficient in cooperation with peers tend to be more preferred. To date, the development of peer cooperation has been studied mainly in two research traditions, one focusing on action coordination and the other focusing on interaction quality. Both aspects of cooperation are relevant for children's peer relations, but it is unclear whether both aspects of children's earliest cooperation skills predict their later preference by peers after the transition into organized social groups in school. In this study, we assessed coordination proficiency and interaction quality of 181 Dutch children longitudinally from 2 to 4 years of age. No relation between early action coordination and later preference by peers at school was found. However, especially in girls more affiliative and fewer antagonistic behaviors at the age of two predicted likeability among classmates at school at the age of four. The findings shine new light on the earliest foundations of children's peer evaluations.     

Inequality Assessment by Probabilistic Development Indices

Social Indicators Research - This paper analyses the Human Development Index (HDI) time series from 2010 to 2017. An alternative index is studied, which combines the same components of the HDI by...     

Customer satisfaction: Cost driver or value driver? Empirical evidence from the financial services industry

We investigate the relation between customer satisfaction, customer servicing costs, and customer value in a financial services firm. We find that customer satisfaction is positively associated with future customer servicing costs, as well as with customer value. The relation between customer satisfaction and customer value appears non-linear; higher customer satisfaction appears to have a higher return for the most profitable customer segments. Our findings indicate that customer satisfaction is a value driver; however, customer satisfaction is not cost-free and managers have to consider the costs, as well as the benefits, of increasing customer satisfaction.     

Ideal Values and Counter‐ideal Values as Two Distinct Forces: Exploring a Gap in Organizational Value Research

Motives and values at work have long been key topics of business and management studies. In a focused review of the literature on the nature of human values, this paper identifies a disconnect with the literature on human motivation, despite the otherwise inherent relatedness of the two fields. Specifically, extant theory and research have conceptualized values generally in terms of ideals, namely desired end‐states that individuals strive to approach. Although values, by this definition, express motivational concerns, theories of human motivation suggest that there are two forces to consider, i.e. approach and avoidance motivation. By applying this ‘two forces’ perspective to value research, this paper identifies a gap in the literature on values: namely, the idea that individuals are also influenced by counter‐ideal values, i.e. end‐states that they deliberately seek to avoid. The identification of this gap opens up new opportunities for value research in general and organizational value research in particular. To pave the way for future research, this paper critically discusses the few studies that have taken first steps in that direction and outlines research questions that may follow for issues such as employer branding and person–organization fit. This paper closes by providing suggestions on how to tackle the issue in organizational practice.     

“How May I Help You?” Improving Telephone Customer Service in a Medical Clinic Setting

The current study was carried out per management request to improve the overall quality of telephone customer service among appointment coordinators in a medical clinic. Exceptional telephone customer service included (a) using a standard greeting, (b) speaking in the appropriate tone of voice throughout the call, and (c) answering every call received by the unit. A preintervention analysis suggested that performance deficiencies resulted from weak antecedents, poor knowledge and skills, and weak performance contingencies. Task clarification, goal setting, feedback, and performance-contingent consequences were combined to improve these customer service behaviors for 20 full-time appointment coordinators at the clinic. The study used an ABÁ reversal design with weekly maintenance and 5-month follow-up observations. Introduction of the multicomponent intervention produced visible improvements in greeting (38% increase) and friendly voice tone (22% increase) behaviors; performance was maintained above baseline levels at 5 months postmaintenance. Abandon rates (the percentage of calls not answered by a live voice) remained fairly stable, on average. Findings support the use of a multicomponent intervention to increase telephone customer service behavior in medical clinic settings.     

On the total outer-connected domination in graphs

A set S of vertices of a graph G is a total outer-connected dominating set if every vertex in V(G) is adjacent to some vertex in S and the subgraph induced by V?S is connected. The total outer-connected domination number γ _toc (G) is the minimum size of such a set. We give some properties and bounds for γ _toc in general graphs and in trees. For graphs of order n, diameter 2 and minimum degree at least 3, we show that $\gamma_{toc}(G)\le \frac{2n-2}{3}$ and we determine the extremal graphs.