Workplace bullying,the development of job insecurity and the role of laissez-faire leadership: A two-wave moderated mediation study

Workplace bullying is increasingly recognised as a risk factor for job loss and exclusion from working life. Consequently, bullying may represent an antecedent of job insecurity, but this notion has not been sufficiently tested using prospective, representative data. In the present study, the association between workplace bullying and job insecurity was therefore investigated using a two-year time lag and a representative sample of Norwegian employees (N?=?1775). Employing regression analysis, support for a cross-lagged effect of bullying on stability adjusted job insecurity was found. With respect to explanatory mechanisms, a moderated mediation analysis also revealed that this relationship is mediated by continued exposure to bullying behaviours at T2, and, that the relationship between baseline bullying and continued victimisation at T2 is moderated by laissez-faire leadership (i.e. the enactment of passive-avoidant and non-responsive leadership behaviour). Thus, laissez-faire leadership appears to represent a condition under which the bullying process can endure and progress, and the bullying behaviours associated with such sustained and escalated scenarios seem to be particularly relevant antecedents of job insecurity. These results represent novel contributions to our understanding of workplace bullying and job insecurity, holding important implications for prevention of workplace bullying and alleviation of its negative consequences.     

How critical is the event? Multicultural Norway after 22 July 2011

It is commonly assumed that insecurity experienced by citizens in the wake of a terror attack gives rise to public demands for strong countermeasures, which political leaders must respond to. This article asks how Norwegian society was affected by the 22 July 2011 attacks against the government office complex in Oslo and Labour Party youth camp on Utøya. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, it analyses political impact, examining post-22 July public debates and related policymaking. A dataset of newspaper op-eds and commentaries was created to determine the significance of key issues debated in the print media after the attacks, and changes over time in the intensity of debates. Key issues were then followed up in a qualitative analysis of policy implications. The study further investigated the discursive framing of the attacks, and the problems and possible solutions evoked in the debates. Was this a ‘critical event’ as Veena Das has theorised, bringing about new sorts of action through the reworking of traditional categories, codes or meanings? Public security emerges as the key frame within which the 22 July attacks have been debated. Arguments over police reforms and alleged inaction by authorities stand out as the most lasting debate.     

Empirical Bayes Age–Period–Cohort Analysis of Retrospective Incidence Data

We analyse the (age, time)-specific incidence of diabetes based on retrospective data obtained from a prevalent cohort only including survivors to a particular date. From underlying point processes with intensities corresponding to the (age, time)-specific incidence rates the observed point pattern is assumed to be generated by an independent thinning process with parameters (assumed known) depending on population density and survival probability to the sampling date. A Bayesian procedure is carried out for the optimal adjustment and comparison of isotropic and anisotropic smoothing priors for the intensity functions, as well as for the decomposition of the intensity on the (time, age) Lexis diagram into the three factors of age, period and cohort.     

Recovery: experiences of resistance to disablism?

This article explores whether it is fruitful to use a service user/survivor approach to recovery, by seeing recovery as survival of social invalidation. That is survival of the psychosocial forces that were the source of the experience of mental distress, and as survival of social oppression by the psychiatric services and/or wider society. It could be argued that the participants in this study in the United Kingdom and Sweden recovered, and reclaimed and (re)constructed positive identities. They actively resisted experiences of disablism and rebuilt their lives. By approaching recovery from a service user/survivor perspective, one is focusing on the social, structural and political aspects of the recovery process, and one is resisting biomedical, deviant and reductionist notions of recovery.     

Case history discourse: a rhetoric of troublesome youngsters and faceless treatment

In numerous social control settings, staff routinely write case histories on clients to assist colleagues and authorities in treatment decisions. In this article, we examine how such institutional writing constructs ‘working versions’ of youngsters, portraying their objects of care as personally troublesome. Simultaneously, the institution is portrayed as facelessly, uniformly and collectively remedying their behaviour. Using material from a centre for juvenile delinquents in Sweden, we analyse three discursive techniques that accomplish this documentary reality: (1) trouble zooming, (2) mood notes and (3) deflecting staff agency. We also reflect on the social conditions for the recurrent rhetoric.     

Does Relative Risk Aversion explain educational inequality? A dynamic choice approach

The theory of Relative Risk Aversion (RRA) suggests that educational decision making is motivated by the individual's desire to avoid downward social class mobility and, furthermore, that this desire is stronger than the desire to pursue upward mobility. This paper develops a Dynamic Decision Process (DDP) model which tests the two central behavioral assumptions in the RRA theory that (1) individuals maximize utility when making educational decisions and (2) the RRA mechanism comprises an important component in the educational decision-making process. Furthermore, our DDP model allows for class-specific cultural values regarding education. We analyze data from the Danish Youth Longitudinal Study and find strong evidence that RRA affects educational decisions over and above traditional socioeconomic factors.     

Teachers’ silences about racist attitudes and students’ desires to address these attitudes

In this article, we use ethnographic data to explore school-based perceptions of racism. We draw on the findings of a one-year study conducted in two upper secondary classes in a Swedish school. The starting point of the analysis was student discussions of racism in the school and the surrounding neighbourhood, which prompted an examination of teacher and student responses to racist and nationalist ideas. We concluded that the school seldom acted in line with recommended approaches for promoting non-racist and intercultural education. We suggest that the response is related to educational ideals that emphasise learning ‘objective’ facts (as opposed to values) and a de-contextualised view of teaching.     

Do boards of directors foster strategic change? A dynamic managerial capabilities perspective

Journal of Management and Governance - The purpose of this study is to understand the dynamic relationships between managerial human capital, dynamic managerial capabilities and strategic change...     

Information Hazards in Biotechnology

With the advance of biotechnology, biological information, rather than biological materials, is increasingly the object of principal security concern. We argue that both in theory and in practice, existing security approaches in biology are poorly suited to manage hazardous biological information, and use the cases of Mousepox, H5N1 gain of function, and Botulinum toxin H to highlight these ongoing challenges. We suggest that mitigation of these hazards can be improved if one can: (1) anticipate hazard potential before scientific work is performed; (2) consider how much the new information would likely help both good and bad actors; and (3) aim to disclose information in the manner that maximally disadvantages bad actors versus good ones.     

Labour market participation among young refugees in Sweden and the potential of education: a national cohort study

This register-based study examined the importance of education on labour market participation among young refugees in Sweden. The study population consisted of unaccompanied (n?=?1606) and accompanied refuges (n?=?4142), aged 23–26 years in 2006–2010, after 7 years of residence in Sweden. Native Swedish, aged 24 years (n?=?347,255) constituted the comparison population, with intercountry adoptees (n?=?6689) as an alternative reference group. Gender-stratified multinomial regression models indicated that unaccompanied and accompanied male and female young refugees had higher risks of being in insecure work force and NEET compared to native Swedes with comparable levels of education. However, young refugees and intercountry adoptees with primary education had similar risks of poor labour market outcomes. The educational differences within each group concerning the risk of being in insecure work force were comparable. With the exception of unaccompanied females, secondary education seemed to be less protective against being in NEET among young refugees compared to native Swedes and intercountry adoptees. We conclude that while young refugees face employment disadvantages, education has the potential of mitigating poor labour market outcomes in this group.