Adaptation of the short version of the Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ-12) into Spanish / Adaptación al español de la versión reducida del Cuestionario de Capital Psicológico (PCQ-12)

Psychological capital (PsyCap) has been a topic of increasing interest in the last decade. However, there is a lack of validated instruments in Spanish to map PsyCap and its consequences for individuals’ well-being. Consequently, the goal of this study is to adapt the 12-item short version of the Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ-12) to the Spanish context by analysing its internal consistency and reliability, factor solution and external validity. Results indicated that the PCQ-12 exhibited good Cronbach’s alpha (.87) and omega coefficient (.93) values in a sample from a vehicle inspection company (n = 798). As expected, results also revealed that a second-order factor structure provided the best fit. Moreover, PsyCap is associated with increased job engagement (β = .579; R²_adjusted = .333), decreased job burnout (β = ?.409; R²_adjusted = .166), and lower psychological distress (β = ?.349; R²_adjusted = .121) (all p < .01), which provided additional support for using the PCQ-12 in the Spanish context. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Discussion on the paper “On simulation and properties of the stable law” by L. Devroye and L. James

We congratulate the authors for the interesting paper. The reading has been really pleasant and instructive. We discuss briefly only some of the interesting results given in Devroye and James (Stat Methods Appl 2014) with particular attention to evolution problems. The contribution of the results collected in the paper is useful in a more wide class of applications in many areas of applied mathematics.     

Evaluating positive leadership: pilot study on the psychometric properties of a reduced version of the Positive Leadership Assessment Scale / Evaluando el liderazgo positivo: estudio piloto de las propiedades psicométricas de una versión reducida del Positive Leadership Assessment Scale

Positive leadership is considered a fundamental factor which contributes significantly to the development of healthy organizations. Positive leadership has been address via other leadership models, primarily transformational and authentic leadership, with which some affinities have been established. Although there is a large body of literature on positive leadership, especially related to its practical aspects, the construct is not properly delimited and there are only a few relevant contributions on how to measure it. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a pilot study to examine the psychometric properties of a reduced version of the PLAS (Positive Leadership Assessment Scale). Results from a confirmatory factorial analysis show that a five-correlated factors model achieves a good fit with the empirical data (on a sample of Spanish students). Likewise, this study also offers a range of evidence of validity, showing a relationship with the constructs of both transformational and authentic leadership and engagement.     

The impact of Serbian public relations on economic indices

This study presents the research results whose aim was to examine and define dependences and the impact of public relations on business effects (economic indices are taken as representatives of business effects). Serbian companies were the object of this research. The data were collected by polling 100 managers from 100 companies. Multivariate regression and correlation were applied in order to determine the observed dependences. The research results confirm the existence of a significant direct relation between public relations and economic indices.     

Wozu keine Wertsch?tzung?

The article follows the question why it is likely to find the request for more appreciation in most organizations, while everybody seems to agree that amelioration in this regard would be of help. To find an answer it uses empirical data to illustrate what most employees actually mean when they formulate their request for appreciation. This analysis offers some reasons why appreciation is less likely in organizations and gives first hints to reframings and questions that could be of help in coaching and supervision processes. It is followed by an interpretation of the communicated lack of appreciation based on social systems theory. It will reveal the benefit of this apparently unsolvable bad state of affairs and draws further consequences for coaching and consulting.     

Dynamic Pricing in the Presence of Myopic and Strategic Consumers: Theory and Experiment

We investigate retailers’ dynamic pricing decisions in a stylized two‐period setting with possible supply constraints and demand from both myopic and strategic consumers. We present an analytical model and then test its predictions in a behavioral experiment in which human subjects played the role of pricing managers. We find that the fraction of strategic consumers in the market systematically moderates the optimal pricing structure. When this fraction exceeds a certain threshold, the retailer offers relatively small late season markdowns to discourage strategic consumers from waiting and to incentivize them to buy during the early season; otherwise, the retailer offers relatively large markdowns to divert all strategic consumers to the late season, where the majority of revenue is made. Our model analyses suggest that the latter policy is optimal under fairly broad conditions. Our experiment shows that after some significant learning, aggregate behavior is able to approximate the key qualitative predictions from our model analysis, with one notable deviation: in the presence of a mixture of myopic and strategic consumers, subjects act somewhat myopically – they underprice and oversell in the main selling season, which significantly limits their ability to generate revenue in the markdown season.     

On vertex-parity edge-colorings

A vertex signature \(\pi \) of a finite graph G is any mapping \(\pi \,{:}\,V(G)\rightarrow \{0,1\}\). An edge-coloring of G is said to be vertex-parity for the pair \((G,\pi )\) if for every vertex v each color used on the edges incident to v appears in parity accordance with \(\pi \), i.e. an even or odd number of times depending on whether \(\pi (v)\) equals 0 or 1, respectively. The minimum number of colors for which \((G,\pi )\) admits such an edge-coloring is denoted by \(\chi '_p(G,\pi )\). We characterize the existence and prove that \(\chi '_p(G,\pi )\) is at most 6. Furthermore, we give a structural characterization of the pairs \((G,\pi )\) for which \(\chi '_p(G,\pi )=5\) and \(\chi '_p(G,\pi )=6\). In the last part of the paper, we consider a weaker version of the coloring, where it suffices that at every vertex, at least one color appears in parity accordance with \(\pi \). We show that the corresponding chromatic index is at most 3 and give a complete characterization for it.     

Food Risks on the Web: Analysis of the 2017 Fipronil Alert in the Italian Online Information Sources

In the summer of 2017, several European Union Member States were involved in a food alert caused by the presence of fipronil pesticide residues in chicken eggs. The food alert became a major news and received wide coverage both in the mass media and on the Internet. This article describes a study that analyzed how the Italian online information sources represented the fipronil alert, using web monitoring techniques and both manual and automatic content analysis methods. The results indicate that the alert was amplified because general news media could represent the alert within the frame of a political scandal, and because different social actors exploited the case. However, online information sources correctly communicated that the risks for consumers were low, reporting mainly what was officially communicated by the Italian health authorities. The study provides empirical evidence on how the online information sources represent food risks and food alerts and offers useful indications for health authorities in charge of the public communication of food risks.     

Paradoxien und Eiert?nze um Wertsch?tzung in Organisationen

This text answers to the critique by Ferdinand Buer on our article ??The Function of the Lack of Appreciation in Organizations??. Those who just read Buer??s text might get an impression of our point of view that was neither articulated nor intended by the authors. Therefore possible misunderstandings are corrected. Furthermore an understanding of organizations that expects paradoxes as normal is promoted.