Listening in the Business Context: Reviewing the State of Research

The central role of listening in leadership has been the subject of increasing attention in recent years. In leadership studies, listening is being theorized as an essential dimension to effective leadership. Those seeking an elected office also have come to appreciate the centrality of listening by engaging in listening-centered events. However, listening leadership requires more than just the presence of listening. Listening and leadership must be connected. Using President Jimmy Carter and his July 15, 1979 “Address to the Nation on Energy and National Goals” as a case study, this essay explores the concept of listening leadership during the evolution and delivery of that speech. This essay argues that in the development and delivery of Carter's speech, the topic of listening was placed front and center for and by the President. However, Carter failed to balance the listening component of leadership with other characteristics which ultimately bifurcated listening from his role as a leader.     

Uncertainty in the study of belief: the risks and benefits of methodological agnosticism

The study of religious and spiritual beliefs raises complex epistemological and methodological questions for interpretive social scientists concerning our ability to understand the everyday lifeworlds that belief-based communities inhabit. The primary focus of recent debates has been on the long-standing methodological insider/outsider dynamic, defined in terms of religious belief or affiliation, which intersects with other social categories such as gender or ethnicity. We contribute to this debate by considering a relatively neglected position, methodological agnosticism, which informs our study of religion and spirituality in the workplace. We argue that an agnostic position can be methodologically productive as a research strategy, but this must be counterbalanced by awareness of the fieldworker risks, which include emotional distress and identity threats. Agnosticism also encourages greater epistemological reflexivity as it implies ‘not knowing’ in relation to both metaphysics and social scientific knowledge construction. Through this, we highlight the productive nature of uncertainty in the study of belief as an epistemologically and methodologically constructive standpoint.     

The ethics and implications of paying participants in qualitative research

It appears that the practice of giving cash or gift vouchers to research participants is becoming increasingly common; however, this practice has received little attention from social researchers. Paying participants has implications in terms of the ethical requirement for consent and may have consequences in terms of recruitment for research projects and for the data collected. In this paper I consider how these issues arose in a research project with lone mothers and the way in which offering payments might help with gaining access to participants. I argue that the possible impact of making payments to research participants should be considered in research accounts and the possible impacts of payments should be more widely debated.     

Do the DSM-5 diagnostic revisions affect the psychometric properties of the Brief Biosocial Gambling Screen?

Several significant changes in the diagnostic criteria for gambling disorder occurred with the newest revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). The changes aim to simplify and streamline the diagnosis without compromising its validity. Yet many of the tools used to screen and diagnose the disorder are based upon the prior fourth edition of the DSM, and it is unclear how they perform with the revised diagnostic criteria. The aim of this study is to examine the psychometric properties of a common pathological gambling screen, the Brief Biosocial Gambling Screen (BBGS; Gebauer, LaBrie, & Shaffer, 2010), in the context of DSM-5 criteria within a help-seeking sample. Gamblers calling a helpline (N = 2750) completed a semi-structured interview assessing DSM-IV past-year pathological gambling criteria with a trained clinician. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and differences by sex were examined. The BBGS had high sensitivity as well as positive and negative predictive values. In light of the revisions made to the diagnostic criteria in DSM-5, the BBGS remains a psychometrically supported instrument for gambling disorder.     

Stressors,Coping Resources,Functioning, and Role Limitations Among Older Korean Immigrants: Gender Differences

This study explored the differential impacts of stressors and coping resources on the functioning and roles of 246 older Korean immigrant men and women. Older Korean immigrant women were significantly more likely than men to have acculturation and socioeconomic stressors, physical/social functioning problems, and role limitations. English-language barriers and lack of transportation were significantly related to lower functioning and higher role limitations of older Korean women compared to those of older men. Providing social and health care services with bilingual and transportation services to older Korean immigrant women is recommended to increase their physical/social functioning and role performance.     

Understanding the experience of moving a loved one to a long-term care facility:family members' perspectives

This project was designed to develop an understanding of family members' experiences of moving a loved one to a long-term care facility and to identify ways in which facilities might help ease this process. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with family members who had recently moved a relative into one of three long-term care facilities in Southern Ontario, Canada. Several factors appeared to contribute to the overall experience of the move to long-term care and either served to impede or facilitate a positive transition for families. These factors included: the experience during the waiting process, preparation for the move, ease of the actual move, control over decisions, communication throughout the process, support from others, and family and resident perceptions and attitudes towards the move. Easing the difficult aspects of moving a loved one to a long-term care setting can be facilitated with better preparation and support from facilities and community services.     

The Block-Block Bootstrap for Time Series

This article proves that the block-block bootstrap of Andrews (2004 Andrews , D. W. K. ( 2004 ). The block-block bootstrap: improved asymptotic refinements . Econometrica 72 ( 3 ): 673 – 700 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) can be helpful to provide asymptotic refinements for the GMM estimator when autocorrelation structures of moment functions are unknown (i.e., incorporating the HAC covariance matrix) and when we allow for statistics that are inefficient. The asymptotic refinements of this block-block bootstrap in the time series context are shown to exist with the use of less restricted kernels than in the block bootstrap in Inoue and Shintani (2006 Inoue , A. , Shintani , M. ( 2006 ). Bootstrapping GMM estimators for time series . J. Econometrics 113 : 531 – 555 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), since they do not require to have a characteristic exponent larger than 2. The procedure allows to apply in practice kernels that guarantee that the HAC covariance matrix estimator is positive semidefinite, and to get asymptotic refinements at the same time.     

Out of mind,out of sight? Leading distributed workers to ensure health and safety

ABSTRACT

Current frameworks of leadership are based on face-to-face interaction. A growing number of workers work away from their main location of work; this makes it challenging for leaders to ensure the health and safety of distributed workers. In the present study, we explore the relationship between line managers’ health and safety leadership and distributed workers’ health and safety behaviours. We also explore the organisational procedures and practices that may enhance the impact of health and safety leadership. We included a broad range of distributed workers (in analyses, minimum N?=?626) from 11 organisations. We found that health-and-safety-specific leadership was positively related to distributed workers’ self-rated health, safety compliance and safety proactivity. These relationships were augmented by distributed workers’ sense of being included in the workplace. Knowledge sharing among colleagues was associated with safety compliance when health-and-safety-specific leadership was low. Our results indicate that one way of addressing the challenges of distributed working may be through line managers putting health and safety on the agenda.