Engaging leader – Engaged employees? A cross-lagged study on employee engagement

The goal of this study is to provide a cross-lagged examination of the relationships between engaging leadership, job resources and employee work engagement. We propose a mediation model and we postulate that engaging leadership can increase perceptions of three specific job resources (i.e. autonomy, support from colleagues and opportunities for learning and development) which theoretically correspond to the three facets of engaging leadership (i.e., inspiring, connecting and strengthening, respectively). Subsequently, in keeping with the extant body of Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) research, we link job resources to employee work engagement. Our hypotheses were tested on data collected at two time-points – T1 (N = 759) and T2 (N = 273) –from employees working for a hotel chain in the Netherlands. In line with our expectations, engaging leadership showed a significant cross-lagged relationship with autonomy and support from colleagues, but did not predict learning opportunities and work engagement across time. While we formulated specific hypotheses, we also tested reversed causation relationships. We found no direct effect from engaging leadership on employee work engagement, however, the reversed effect was significant; employee perceptions of engaging leadership were shaped by their own engagement experiences. Importantly, engaged employees at T1 reported more job resources at T2. By providing a cross-lagged examination of our model, we showed that engaging leaders as well as employees’ positive affective state of being engaged, are essential to shaping a resourceful work context. A comprehensive view on the triggers and outcomes of work engagement and engaging leadership is needed, as the traditional unidirectional cause-effect rationale fails to explain how these concepts relate to one another and to employee experiences of job resources.     

Real nonparametric regression using complex wavelets

Summary.  Wavelet shrinkage is an effective nonparametric regression technique, especially when the underlying curve has irregular features such as spikes or discontinuities. The basic idea is simple: take the discrete wavelet transform of data consisting of a signal corrupted by noise; shrink or remove the wavelet coefficients to remove the noise; then invert the discrete wavelet transform to form an estimate of the true underlying curve. Various researchers have proposed increasingly sophisticated methods of doing this by using real-valued wavelets. Complex-valued wavelets exist but are rarely used. We propose two new complex-valued wavelet shrinkage techniques: one based on multiwavelet style shrinkage and the other using Bayesian methods. Extensive simulations show that our methods almost always give significantly more accurate estimates than methods based on real-valued wavelets. Further, our multiwavelet style shrinkage method is both simpler and dramatically faster than its competitors. To understand the excellent performance of this method we present a new risk bound on its hard thresholded coefficients.     

Coining societies: an inter-functional comparative analysis of the Euro

The present analysis of the Euro looks for the marks that function systems make on what we commonly take for the European money. Clearly distinguishing between coins and currency, the Euro coins and banknotes are not taken for economic tokens per se but for storage devices that contain both economic and noneconomic information. A systemic analysis of the function system references on these storage devices shows that the economy has left fewer marks on the Euro than politics, art, and the mass media systems have. We, hence, argue that “the Euro” “is” not just money with a political second mission but rather can be understood as an indicator of the relative relevance that specific function systems do or do not have for the European societies and the European society.     

Strategic Design Responsiveness: An Empirical Analysis of US Retail Store Networks

This study uses a service operations management (SOM) strategy lens to investigate chain store retailers' strategic design responsiveness (SDR)—a term that captures the degree to which retailers dynamically coordinate investments in human and structural capital with the complexity of their service and product offerings. Labor force and physical capital are respectively used as proxies for investments in human capital and structural capital, whereas gross margins are proxies for product/service offering complexity. Consequently, SDR broadly reflects three salient complementary choices of SOM design strategy. We test the effects of “brick and mortar” chain store retailers' SDR on current and future firm performance using publically available panel data collected from Compustat and the University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction Index databases for the period 1996–2011. We find that retailers that fail to keep pace with investments in both structural and human capital exhibit short‐term financial benefits, but have worse ongoing operational performance. These findings corroborate the importance of managers strategically maintaining the complementarity of design‐related choices for improving and maintaining business performance.     

Determinants of microbat communities in urban forest remnants: a rapid landscape scale assessment

Urban Ecosystems - Urbanisation affects fauna in many ways; with some species persisting and going on to dominate urban habitats, while other species decline over time due to habitat disturbance...     

If You Want People to Listen to You,Tell a Story

We hypothesized that (a) when people share a meaningful story, as opposed to when they share information, they make their partner listen well, and (b) that narrative-induced listening is positively associated with speakers’ psychological safety and negatively associated with their social anxiety. In Study 1 (N = 45), we showed that a meaningful story is perceived much more as a narrative and higher in narrative quality than two types of informational-discourses (telling about daily routine and describing buildings). In Study 2 (N = 52), we randomly asked participants to either share a meaningful story or tell about their daily routine. The participants sharing a meaningful story reported that their interlocutor was a better listener, d = 0.61, 95% CI |0.32, 0.92|. In Study 3 (N = 42), we compared the effect of sharing a meaningful story to describing buildings, and replicated the results of Study 2, d = 1.10, 95% CI |0.61, 1.59|. Moreover, we found that the perceived listening, which was induced by the narrative, mediated the manipulation effects on psychological safety, and social anxiety. Thus, we concluded that when speakers share meaningful stories they make their partner listen well and consequently experience higher psychological safety and lower feelings of social anxiety.