Recent revisions to the Conservation of Resources theory have not only reclassified categories of resources, but have also acknowledged the conceptual importance of “gain spirals” and “resource caravans” in enriching the theoretical understanding of resources. Given that teachers’ assessment literacy is a prominent yet underexplored personal constructive resource in teaching, this paper examines its role in teaching efficacy. In addition, personal energy resources are studied as antecedents to teaching efficacy. To this end, a survey based on (...) the Chinese versions of the Teacher Assessment Literacy Scale, the Teaching Efficacy Scale, the Psychological Capital Scale, and the Teacher Professional Identity Scale was administered to secondary school teachers in Henan Province, China, and 351 completed, valid surveys were returned. The findings indicated that the teachers’ assessment literacy and teaching efficacy were positively correlated, verifying that assessment literacy can influence teaching efficacy through the separate and chain mediation effects of psychological capital and professional identity. The identification of such mediating pathways has confirmed that resources owned by teachers can lead to gain spirals and full resource caravans, thus expanding the Conservation of Resources theory by positing that resources can be nested within one another. This study has theoretical implications for teaching efficacy research and the Conservation of Resources theory as well as practical implications regarding how to boost teachers’ constructive and energy resources and professional development. (shrink)

On the basis of the Conservation of Resource theory and using the Job Demands-Resources model, this study examines the relationships among job demands and job resources of online teaching, perceived instructional efficacy of OT, mindfulness in teaching, and emotional exhaustion to understand the psychological stress experienced by teachers engaged in OT and how mindfulness has moderating effects on relieving anxiety and preventing burnout. A total of 476 teachers with OT experience completed online a self-report survey with items (...) adapted from related scales. The hypotheses were validated using structural equation modeling. Causal relationships were assessed using path analysis, and multi-group analysis was performed to examine the moderating effect of MiT. JD-OT has significant and negative impact on PIE-OT, JR-OT has significant and positive impact on PIE-OT, and PIE-OT has significant and negative impact on EE. Moreover, PIE-OT mediates the positive relationship of JD-OT with EE and the negative relationship of JR-OT with EE. The moderating role of MiT in the relationship of JD-OT and JR-OT with PIE-OT was also validated. In OT work environments, teachers have great need and desire for JR, which can have a positive impact on PIE. Mindfulness training contributes to improving OT efficacy and reducing EE. Enhancing teachers’ MiT enables them to deal with demands from work and their superiors and motivates them to respond with ease to the stressful external environment. (shrink)

Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this study examined how and when sense of control influence safety behavior. Linear regression analysis was performed on data collected from 481 students in 58 classes at a university. The results indicated that psychological stress mediated the negative effect of sense of control on safety compliance, as well as the positive effect of sense of control on safety participation. They further showed that perceptions of stronger safety regulations heightened the positive relationship between (...) student psychological stress and safety compliance, and buffered the negative effects of psychological stress on safety participation. These results provide a benchmark against which the effectiveness and relevance of epidemic prevention and control in higher education institutions can be assessed. (shrink)

The research on the dark side of leadership is still in its infancy. We have contributed to this line of research by proposing that work alienation acts as an underlying mechanism through which aversive leadership results in reduced job performance. We further propose that psychological capital acts as an important personal resource that reduces the negative effects of aversive leadership in the form of work alienation. The proposed model gets its support from the conversation of resources theory given (...) by Hobfoll (1981) which suggests that stressful situation like an aversive leadership results in the loss of employee resources as a result of that he/she indulges in work alienation and shows poor job performance to retain back the lost resources. People with better personal resources in the form of psychological capital are better able to cope-up with the aversive leader behavior and make them able to avoid work alienation. It is a time-lagged study. The data for the current study was collected from 321 employees working in the service sector organizations, particularly universities, banks and telecom organizations, through personally administered questionnaires. The results supported the mediation and moderation hypothesis. Limitations and future research along with theoretical and practical implications are given at the end. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, business managers are facing many challenges from a severe challenge. Many organizations have changed their original management mode and organizational behavior to improve employees’ organizational citizenship behavior, thus reducing their sense of anxiety and incapability. Thereinto, job performance of the employees also affects the growth and development of the organization. To explore how to fragment employees’ positive psychology and job performance, this study discusses the influence on employees’ subjective wellbeing and job performance from relevant factors at (...) the organizational and individual levels. Also, to explore the influence of organizational support and occupation self-efficacy on job performance and the mediating role of subjective wellbeing during COVID-19, a total of 618 valid questionnaires were collected from all walks of life in 2020. Hypotheses were tested by structural equation modeling and Bootstrap technology. The results show that: Professional self-efficacy and subjective wellbeing have a significant positive impact on job performance; Subjective wellbeing plays a complete mediating role between organizational support and job performance, and subjective wellbeing plays a partial mediating role between professional self-efficacy and job performance; Compared with the sense of organizational support, the positive effect of self-efficacy on job performance is more significant. (shrink)

Struggles over precious resources such as oil, water, and land are increasingly evident in the contemporary world. States, indigenous groups, and corporations vie to control access to those resources, and the benefits they provide. These conflicts are rapidly spilling over into new arenas, such as the deep oceans and the Polar regions. How should these precious resources be governed, and how should the benefits and burdens they generate be shared? Justice and Natural Resources provides a systematic theory of natural (...) resource justice. It argues that we should use the benefits and burdens flowing from these resources to promote greater equality across the world, and share governance over many important resources. At the same time, the book takes seriously the ways in which particular resources can matter in peoples lives. It provides invaluable guidance on a series of pressing issues, including the scope of state resource rights, the claims of indigenous communities, rights over ocean resources, the burdens of conservation, and the challenges of climate change and transnational resource governance. It will be required reading for anyone interested in natural resource governance, climate politics, and global justice. (shrink)

Fundamental aspects of human use of the environment can be explained by game theory. Game theory explains aggregate behaviour of the human species driven by perceived costs and benefits. In the ‘game’ of global environmental protection and conservation, the stakes are the living conditions of all species including the human race, and the playing field is our planet. The question is can we control humanity's hitherto endless appetite for resources before we irreparably harm the global ecosystem and (...) cause extinction of even more species? The central problem is that some proportion of the individuals or groups will behave selfishly. The inducement for using more than a fair share, or ‘cheating’, increases as that resource becomes rarer, thus the benefits of cheating increase. In addition, the total number of people is increasing, so the proportion of cheaters must decrease to even keep total resource use constant. Cost benefit analysis of the effect of regulation and incentives on potential cheaters may provide a rational approach to controlling environmental problems. While it is debatable that environmental values are constant across cultures, communal use of resources seems to follow global rules. Cooperative use and punishment of those who use more than their share appear to be ubiquitous in human societies. Schemes for controlling human impact on the global environment must take into consideration basic behaviours including development of social norms and the positive feedback created because resources become more valuable with increasing rarity leading to more incentive for consumption. (shrink)

Native peoples have often been portrayed as natural conservationists, living a “balanced” existence with nature. It is argued that this perspective is a result of an imprecise operational definition of conservation. Conservation is defined here in contrast to the predictions of foraging theory, which assumes that foragers will behave to maximize their short-term harvesting rate. A behavior is deemed conservation when a short-term cost is paid by the resource harvester in exchange for long-term benefits in (...) the form of sustainable harvests. An example of the usefulness of such an operational definition is presented using data on patch and prey choice decisions of a group of subsistence hunters, the Piro of Amazonian Peru. Results indicate that the area around the Piro village is depleted of prey, and that hunters allocate more time to patches where return rates are highest. This response is consistent with both a conservation strategy and foraging theory. Contrary to the expectation of the conservation strategy, however, hunters do not restrain from pursing opportunistically encountered prey in the depleted areas. The implications for conservation policy are briefly discussed. (shrink)

This study aims to provide an integrated perspective on job crafting and its antecedents through the exploration of the joint effects of individual-level and team-level job crafting on employee work engagement. Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, we propose that engaging in job crafting behaviors is promoted by the presence of job-related resources. In turn, job crafting is expected to result in higher levels of work engagement. We expect this reasoning to hold for the individual as well (...) as the team/collective levels. The hypotheses were tested using data from 287 medical professionals from 21 hospital units of a Chinese public hospital. Findings from two-level Bayesian structural equation modeling supported the idea that at the individual level, individual job crafting behaviors partially mediated the relationship from individual resources to individual work engagement. Further, collective crafting mediated the relationship from team resources to individual work engagement. In addition, a positive cross-level relation between collective crafting and individual crafting was found. We conclude that stimulated by resources, both job crafting processes at the individual-level and team-level can promote individual work engagement in Chinese employees. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate how workplace ostracism acts as a motive behind customer service sabotage. We examine the role of stress as a meditating variable along with the moderation of perceived organizational support (POS) on the said association by using conservation of resources and equity theory. 217 nurses from hospitals of southern Punjab region in Pakistan participated in the study. Data was collected through survey and structured questionnaires. SPSS and AMOS were used to analyze data with latest (...) techniques of bootstrapping and process macros. The results showed that stress mediated between the association of workplace ostracism and service sabotage behavior. Perceived organizational support was confirmed as a moderator between this relationship. POS buffered the harmful effects of ostracism and stress on customer service, as POS demonstrates to personnel that they are cherished and respected by the organization which lessens the strength of perceived stress due to workplace ostracism. Organizational leadership should take advantage from stress-alleviating effect of POS, which is important in producing adequate levels of work-performance. (shrink)

Drawing from conservation of resources theory, we theorize that spiritual leadership serves as both a resource to enhance employees’ organizational commitment and a passageway to mitigate the negative effects of work–family conflict. Using primary triadic data from leaders, family employees, and nonfamily employees in 77 family firms, results support our theorizing that organizational commitment is enhanced by spiritual leadership but is decreased by work–family conflict. Contrary to theory, however, spiritual leadership exacerbated the negative effects of work–family (...) conflict. Further analysis reveals that family and nonfamily employees respond differently to leadership and work–family stressors. While spiritual leadership has positive effects for family employees, it has negative effects for nonfamily employees experiencing high work–family conflict. (shrink)

What reflective conservatives see as the attenuation and destruction of tradition and traditionalism in Western societies has proceeded apace along a variety of paths. In this cogent study, Paul Gottfried looks at the shape this process has taken in the United States, where ruling elites have directed a so-called “conservative movement” that would capture the efforts and resources of many of those at least putatively opposed to the present-day regime. Gottfried describes how the initial founding of the “conservative movement” in (...) the 1950s (mainly by William F. Buckley, Jr., and Russell Kirk) was based on some authentic traditionalist impulses. Nevertheless,…. (shrink)

Siona-Secoya hunters of the northwest Amazon strive to maximize short-term yields to provision their households with meat. The observed patterns of hunting more closely resemble the predictions of optimal foraging theory (OFT) than they do a conservation ethic. In the past the Siona-Secoya worried little about conservation because they believed that good shamans attracted abundant game. When hunting was poor, shamans performedyagé ceremonies and appealed to supernatural gamekeepers for the release of more animals from the underworld. The (...) sustainability of Siona-Secoya hunting was aided by factors such as low human population density, dispersed settlements within large hunting territories, settlement movement, and limited hunting technology. Today, increasing involvement in the national economy is leading the Siona-Secoya to invest more time in agriculture and wage labor, and less in traditional foraging activities. Colonization, deforestation, and industrial pollution now pose the greatest threats to wildlife in eastern Ecuador. Because of these changes, the Siona-Secoya are becoming interested in environmental protection and conservation. Several of their efforts to protect forest resources and mitigate pollution are discussed and evaluated. (shrink)

Workplace incivility has gotten a lot of attention in recent decades. Researchers have looked at many forms of aggressive conduct in the workplace and their negative impacts on individuals and businesses. The goal of this study was to see how incivility among supervisors leads to work withdrawal and when this link might be mitigated. We argued that supervisor incivility indirectly influences work withdrawal behavior through job insecurity, and that emotional intelligence moderates this connection. This study attempted to evaluate the influence (...) of supervisor incivility on the job withdrawal behavior of personnel working in several banks Lahore by drawing on affective events theory and conservation of resource theory. Data were gathered from 350 workers of banks in Lahore, Gujranwala, and Sheikhupura to test our assumptions, and SPSS 24 was used to generate and analyze data with Hayes Process. The findings revealed a strong link between supervisor incivility and job insecurity but no link between supervisor incivility and work withdrawal behavior. The idea of moderation was validated, since emotional intelligence moderates the relationship between job insecurity and job withdrawal behavior. There are also suggestions for more empirical studies and theoretical and practical ramifications. (shrink)

Despite an impressive number of investigations and indirect evidence, the mechanisms that link patterns and processes across the landscape remain a debated point. A new definition of landscape as a semiotic interface between resources and organisms opens up a new perspective to a better understanding of such mechanisms. If the landscape is considered a source of signals converted by animal cognition into signs, it follows that spatial configurations, extension, shape and contagion are not only landscape patterns but categories of identifiable (...) signals. The eco-field hypothesis, by which cognitive templates are used to identify spatial configurations as carriers of meaning according to an active function, are combined with the sign theory to create an eco-semiotic model of landscape representation. Signs from landscape change in efficacy according to mechanisms of degradation, and metric sign categories have to be considered. An interdisciplinary coalescence is expected by using the theoretical approach in different fields of conservation and resource management and planning. (shrink)

It is commonly believed that disability disqualifies people from full participation in or recognition by society. This view is rooted in eugenic logic, which tells us that our world would be a better place if disability could be eliminated. In opposition to this position, I argue that that disability is inherent in the human condition and consider the bioethical question of why we might want to conserve rather than eliminate disability from our shared world. To do so, I draw together (...) an eclectic, rather than systematic, configuration of counter-eugenic arguments for conserving disability. The idea of preserving intact, keeping alive, and even encouraging to flourish denoted by conserve suggests that disabilities would be better understood as benefits rather than deficits. I present, then, a reading of disability as a potentially generative resource rather than unequivocally restrictive liability. In other words, what I consider here is the cultural and material contributions disability offers to the world. (shrink)

ObjectivesPrevious studies on negative workplace gossip have neglected the role of gossip targets of supervisors. The purpose of this paper is to deepen our understanding of how subordinates’ negative workplace gossip affects supervisors’ work-related behaviors. Drawing upon conservation of resource theory, the authors propose that subordinates’ negative gossip leads to supervisor emotional exhaustion. In turn, such emotional exhaustion provokes supervisors to exhibit undermining toward their subordinates. Additionally, the authors propose that a trait factor, namely, supervisor mindfulness, mitigates (...) the relationship between such negative workplace gossip and supervisors’ emotional exhaustion.MethodData were collected from employees and their immediate supervisors in 35 organizations located in Jiangsu and Anhui Provinces in China. The data were obtained at three time points, each time interval was 2 weeks, and finally, 362 valid data points were obtained.ResultsThe following findings were obtained: perceived subordinates’ negative gossip has a significant positive effect on supervisor undermining; supervisor emotional exhaustion mediates the relationship between perceived subordinates’ negative gossip and supervisor undermining; and supervisor mindfulness moderates the relationship between perceived subordinates’ negative gossip and supervisor emotional exhaustion and moderates the mediating effect of supervisor emotional exhaustion on the relationship between perceived subordinates’ negative gossip and supervisor undermining.ConclusionUsing multisource data and a moderated mediation model, we found that subordinates’ negative workplace gossip predicts supervisor undermining through supervisor emotional exhaustion. We also discovered that supervisor mindfulness can buffer the positive relationship between perceived subordinates’ negative workplace gossip and supervisor undermining. These findings have important implications for the literature on negative gossip in the workforce, especially the impact of subordinates’ negative workplace gossip on supervisors’ responses. (shrink)

Critical theory with emancipatory aims today to find a source of regeneration in ordinary cultures, and in particular, in TV series. Certain series can play a role in reinventing critical theories, drawing on the tradition of the Frankfurt School but shifting some of that School’s formulations through contact with current forms of interpretive sociology and pragmatic sociology. This requires a cross-border dialogue between the “language game” of TV series and the “knowledge game” of political theory, to use concepts (...) inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein. In this article, I will focus on four series: seasons 1 of American Crime and The Sinner ; Sharp Objects ; and Unorthodox. The resources provided by these cultural works can help us formulate a critical decoding of important aspects of the current ideological context, in particular, the intersecting identitarian and ultra-conservative tendencies we find in France, Europe, the United States, and Brazil. These critical resources bear affinities to a political philosophy of the opening of being inspired by the ethical reflections of Emmanuel Levinas. (shrink)

This study investigates the association between work-family conflict and organizational citizenship behavior and examines the mediated role of subjective happiness between and the moderated part of family support. A moderated mediation model is established based on the Conservation of Resources theory. We collected data from 386 employees of nine companies in China. This study shows that the work-family conflict of female professional employees is negatively correlated with organizational citizenship behavior, and that the relationship is mediated by subjective well-being. (...) Furthermore, female professional employees’ family support moderates the effects of work-family conflict on subjective happiness and organizational citizenship behavior, with the relationship weaker when family support is higher. This study enriches the literature on work-family conflict by using family support as a mediating mechanism for work-family conflict. It enhanced our understanding of the influencing mechanisms of organizational citizenship behavior by constructing a more detailed model. (shrink)

In recent years, interest in family-to-work interference and its consequences has increased dramatically. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we propose and test a dual spillover spiraling model which examines the indirect effects of family incivility on workplace interpersonal deviance through increasing family-to-work conflict (resource loss spiral) and decreasing family-to-work enrichment (resource gain spiral). We also examine the moderating effects of family-supportive supervisor behaviors on these indirect effects. The findings from a three-wave survey, with 455 employees (...) and their coworkers in 60 teams, reveal that experienced family incivility (Time 1) induces more interpersonal deviance at work (Time 3) through facilitating family-to-work conflict (Time 2) and inhibiting family-to-work enrichment (Time 2). Such indirect deviation amplifying effects are mitigated by higher supervisor-level family-supportive supervisor behaviors (Time 1). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Many of us have the intuition that we are duty-bound to conserve natural resources for the benefit of future generations. Yet there is a well-known difficulty in trying to identify the source of th...

Critical Legal Theory has conventionally been traced to the social, political, and philosophical movements of the 1960s and, before that, to the early-twentieth-century ‘realist’ critique of modern jurisprudence. In truth, however, its origins go back to classical and pre-modern thought, and to their acknowledgement of the centrality of law in attempts to conceive of the good life, or the just polity—a centrality that is, moreover, also discernible in the recent gravitation of a number of contemporary philosophers and theorists towards (...) law. Against the ‘restricted’ and ‘conservative’ character of modern jurisprudence, Critical Legal Theory constitutes a return to this more general interest in law and legality. Exceeding the limits of jurisprudence, it has, moreover, drawn upon the most ancient and most contemporary traditions of critical thought in order to pursue new ways of understanding, living, and imagining the law. Critical Legal Theory is now an established—if heterogeneous and controversial—field of study, represented by numerous international journals, regional organizations, and global conferences. As the field continues to flourish as never before, this new title in Routledge’s Major Works series, Critical Concepts in Law, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of literature. Indeed, it is a landmark collection of Critical Legal Theory’s principal sources, orientations, movements, and themes. The first volume in the collection illuminates the foundations of Critical Legal Theory in contemporary continental thought, as well as providing an account of its institutional history. Volume II, meanwhile, examines the ways in which Critical Legal Theory has addressed and problematized conventional jurisprudential ideas about law, drawing upon the insights of philosophy, as well as other disciplines. Volume III assembles the best and most influential research to provide an overview of the movements that characterize the field. The scholarship assembled in the final volume brings together the key work to explore a range of substantial themes with which Critical Legal Theorists have engaged. Supplemented with a full index and comprehensive introductions, newly written by the editors, which situate the collected material in the context of more general theoretical traditions, as well as in critical relation to jurisprudence, _Critical Legal Theory_ is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital resource. (shrink)

The Direction of Medical Ethics The direction bioethics, and specifically medical ethics, will take in the next few years will be crucial. It is an emerging specialty that has attempted a great deal, that has many differing agendas, and that has its own identity crisis. Is it a subspecialty of clinical medicine? Is it a medical reform movement? Is it a consumer pro tection movement? Is it a branch of professional ethics? Is it a ra tionale for legal decisions and (...) agency regulations? Is it something physicians and ethical theorists do constructively together? Or is it a morally concentrated attack on high technology, with the prac titioners of scientific medicine and the medical ethicists in an adversarial role? Is it a conservative endeavor, exhibiting a Frankenstein syn drome in Medical Genetics ("this time, they have gone too far"), or a Clockwork Orange syndrome in Psychotherapy ("we have met hods to make you talk-walk-cry-kill")? Or does it suffer the afflic tion of overdependency on the informal fallacy of the Slippery Slope ("one step down this hill and we will never be able to stop") that remains an informal fallacy no matter how frequently it's used? Is it a restricted endeavor of analytic philosophy: what is the meaning of "disease," how is "justice" used in the allocation of medical resources, what constitutes "informed" or "consent?" Is it applied ethics, leading in clinical practice to some recommenda tion for therapeutic or preventive action? This incomplete list of questions indicates just how complex. (shrink)

Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this study examines the curvilinear relationship between harmonious and obsessive work passion and organizational citizenship behavior as well as the moderating effect of collectivistic values. Using 233 paired supervisor-employee responses from Russia, I found that harmonious work passion and OCB are positively related up to a point, after which higher levels of harmonious work passion are associated with declining OCB. The main curvilinear effect of obsessive work passion on OCB was not significant. (...) Collectivistic values were found to significantly interact with obsessive work passion but not harmonious work passion in the way they affect OCB. Employees who score high on collectivistic values tend to engage more in OCB than those who score low on collectivistic values. Interestingly, at low levels of collectivism, the inverted U-shaped curve illustrates the relations between obsessive passion and OCB changes into a U-shaped curve, suggesting that the highest engagement in OCB will no longer be observed at intermediate levels of obsessive work passion but rather at its lowest and highest levels. The findings contribute to work passion research and suggest that curvilinear rather than linear relationships may exist between work passion and work outcomes, which may account for the existing inconsistencies in the previous studies in regards to whether work passion-outcomes relationships are either positive or negative. (shrink)

Drawing on the conservation of resources theory and contingency theories of leadership, this study aims to investigate how sustainable leadership influences employees' wellbeing through employee resilience and to examine the moderating effect of environmental turbulence on the “sustainable leadership-employees' wellbeing” relationship. Data were collected from 593 employees and 373 supervisors adopting two-wave design among small and medium-sized enterprises in China. The authors used structural equation modeling to empirically test the hypothesized model in this study. The research shows that (...) SL is significantly related to the employees' WB in SMEs. Regarding mediating effect, SL also indirectly influences employees' WB through ER. Moreover, the impact of SL on employees' WB becomes more prominent in the presence of lower ET. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no prior study is available about the integrated relationship of SL, ER, ET, and employee WB. (shrink)

Drawing on the conservation of resource theory, we theorized and tested a serial mediation model linking empowering leadership with employee radical creativity through job control and willingness to take risks. We tested our hypotheses using data collected from a time-lagged and multisource survey of 385 employees in 84 research and development teams from 20 different companies. The results demonstrated that empowering leadership had a positive indirect effect on employee radical creativity via job control and willingness to take (...) risks, and the error management climate was found to strengthen this indirect effect. Theoretical and practical implications are also provided in the discussion section. (shrink)

Parents can benefit their offspring by conserving resources that the offspring stand to inherit. Thus, inheritance of resources should promote the evolution of propensities to conserve. But inheritance also has another, less obvious effect: it can reduce the fertility of the conserver’s grandchildren, thus reducing the expected number of great-grandchildren. Consequently, inheritance of resources promotes the evolution of conservation less than might be supposed.

If it can be agreed that health care resources are finite, it follows that choices between competing needs must be made. Cost utility analysis is an application of decision theory which has been proposed as a strategy for making difficult social decisions about health resource allocations. This method is heavily dependent upon the measurement of social utilities for various health outcomes. Recent work in cognitive psychology suggests that there are important sources of distortion in such measurement. Ethical implications (...) of application of cost utility analysis to health resource allocations are discussed. (shrink)

Summary Background The principle of maximization, which roughly means that we should save more lives and more years of life, is usually taken for granted by the health community. This principle is even more forceful in crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, where we have scarce resources which can be allocated only to some patients. However, the standard consequentialist version of this principle can be challenging particularly when we have to reallocate a resource that has already been given to a (...) patient. -/- Methodology Engaging in thought experiments, conceptual analysis, providing counterexamples, and appealing to moral intuitions, we challenge the standard consequentialist version of the maximization principle and make a case for adopting an alternative deontological version. -/- Discussion In certain cases, the standard consequentialist version of the maximization principle is shown to yield intuitively immoral results. The deontological version of this principle is preferable because it can retain the merits of the standard consequentialist version without falling prey to its problems. -/- Conclusion Compared to the standard consequentialist version, the deontological version of the maximization principle can better guide the ethical decisions of the health community, even in cases where we face a scarcity of resources. (shrink)

By incorporating the conservation of resource theory, this study examines how high-performance work practices (HPWPs) affect the employee's in-role performance (EIRP) and employee's task performance (ETP) during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Furthermore, this study investigates how organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) and positive psychological capital (PPC) affect the relationship between HPWPs and outcomes of employees such as EIRP and ETP. A quantitative technique based on the survey method was used to gather the primary data of the investigation. (...) Two hundred and eleven bank employees working in different banks of Punjab and Pakistan participated in the survey process. The PROCESS-macro was used to test the relationship among the study constructs. Our results supported all the study hypotheses, however positive psychological capital did not moderate the indirect effect of high performance work practices on employee's task performance via organization based self-esteem. This study is the earliest of its kind that focuses on HPWPs and outcomes of employees amid the COVID-19 pandemic in a developing country like Pakistan. The findings of this study provide practical implications in the post and continuing pandemic situation for organizations to human resource management to redesign workforce strategies to increase their contribution and responses to realize organizational priorities. Although researchers have explored the topic in different sectors, scant studies have investigated the potential impact, barriers, and enabling mechanisms that function as a catalyst in HPWPs during the pandemic situation. (shrink)

Hartry Field argues that conservative rather than true mathematical sentences facilitate deductions in nominalist (i.e., abstracta-free) science without prejudging its empirical outcomes. In this paper, I identify one branch of mathematics as nonconservative, for its indispensable role in enabling nominalist language about a fundamental scientific property, in a fictional scientific community. The fundamental property is electromagnetic reflectance, and the mathematics is Fourier analysis, which renders reflectance ascribable, and nominalist reflectance claims utterable, by this community. Using a recent characterization of conservativeness (...) by Kenneth Boyce, I argue that infinitudes can be rendered inherently mathematical and non-nominalizable in the fictional community, and that rendering infinitudes inherently mathematical for all real communities would yield a convincing counterexample to Fieldian conservativeness. (shrink)

This study aimed to explore the linking mechanisms and conditional processes underlying the relationship between proactive behavior and work-family conflict. Considering the conservation of resources theory, we argue that workplace anxiety mediates the relationship between proactive behavior and work-family conflict. Furthermore, we suggest that immediate supervisor perspective taking and employee emotional intelligence moderate this proposed indirect effect. Two-wave, multisource lagged data were collected from 450 employees of seven domestic Chinese firms to examine the hypothesized moderated mediation model. Our (...) findings support the hypothesis that proactive behavior is positively related to work-family conflict and that workplace anxiety partially mediates this relationship. Immediate supervisor perspective taking moderates the positive association of proactive behavior with workplace anxiety and the indirect relationship between proactive behavior and work-family conflict through workplace anxiety. Emotional intelligence moderates the positive association of proactive behavior with workplace anxiety and the indirect relationship between proactive behavior and work-family conflict through workplace anxiety. The results deepen our theoretical understanding of the consequences of proactivity by demonstrating the positive associations between proactive behavior and work-family conflict. The current study also contributes to the literature by identifying workplace anxiety as a mediating mechanism explaining the relationship between proactivity and work-family conflict. Furthermore, supervisor perspective taking and employee emotional intelligence moderate the above mediating effect. (shrink)

The Radical Attitude and Modern Political Theory focuses on the appearance of an attitude towards modernity that can be best described as radical. It emerges in discourses of politics and the state from the Sixteenth century onwards and can be discerned in many of the central texts of modern political theory, even those that are usually understood to be conservative in character. Accordingly, the attitude is best seen not as a coherent ideology or tradition but as a series (...) of conceptual resources that continue to inform political discourse in the present. (shrink)

This study examines why and when negative workplace gossip promotes self-serving behaviors by the employees being targeted. Using conservation of resources theory, we find that targets tend to increase their political acts as a result of ego depletion triggered by negative gossip. We also show that sensitivity to interpersonal mistreatment and moral disengagement moderate this process. Specifically, we demonstrate that targets with high levels of sensitivity to interpersonal mistreatment are more likely to experience ego depletion, and that targets (...) with high levels of moral disengagement will find it easier to persuade themselves to engage in political acts. We conducted a three-wave time-lagged survey of 265 employees in Guangdong, China, to test our hypotheses. The results support our theoretical model and indicate that COR theory can be used to explain the impacts of negative workplace gossip. Alongside our important and timely theoretical contributions, we provide new perspectives on how managers can avoid or mitigate these political acts. (shrink)

As men take on more family responsibilities over time, with women still shouldering considerably more childcare and housework, an important ethical matter facing organizations is that of providing a supportive environment to foster employee well-being and balance between work and family. Using conservation of resources theory, this multi-source study examines the association between perceived family responsibility discrimination and work–life conflict as mediated by emotional exhaustion. Employee gender and power distance values are tested as moderators of the perceived family (...) responsibility discrimination to emotional exhaustion relationship. Results suggest that male employees who perceive family responsibility discrimination from their supervisor and hold high power distance values experience increased emotional exhaustion and work–life conflict. Female workers who perceive family responsibility discrimination from their supervisor experience increased emotional exhaustion and work–life conflict regardless of whether they have high or low power distance. Findings are consistent with theory-based predictions from conservation of resources theory: resources that are valued and not provided in the work context deplete emotional energies and ultimately trigger work–life conflict. Findings build on the work–life literature by introducing gender and power distance as factors that shape when employees feel the draining effects of family responsibility discrimination. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a record global crisis, particularly and extremely, for the service sectors. Due to extensive security measures, many service sector employees have to work remotely to maintain services. Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory, this research investigates the impact of servant leadership on the task performance of employees in virtual working environments during the COVID-19 crisis. Our theoretical model was tested using data collected from 335 individual employees in the education sector of Pakistan. (...) SPSS version 26.0 was applied to find the hypothesized relationship between the study variables. To find the indirect mediating effect, we applied Model 4; for moderation, we applied Model 1; and for the moderation and mediation effect, we applied Model 7 of the Process Macro model of Hayes. The results of the study revealed that servant leadership is positively related to task performance in a virtual environment during crises. Furthermore, psychological empowerment partially mediates the relationship between servant leadership and task performance. Perceived supervisor support positively moderates the relationship between servant leadership and task performance. Moreover, the indirect effect of servant leadership on task performance via psychological empowerment is moderated by perceived supervisor support. The results provided guidance to the educational sector on how to lead effectively in times of crisis when service sector employees work predominantly in virtual environments. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 has taken the world by surprise and has impacted the lives of many, including the business sector and its stakeholders. Although studies investigating the impact of COVID-19 on the organizational structure, job design, and employee well-being have been on the rise, fewer studies examined the role of leadership and what it takes to be an effective leader during such times. This study integrates social cognitive theory and conservation of resources theory to argue for (...) the importance of adaptive personality in the emergence of effective leaders during crisis times, utilizing the crisis of COVID-19 as the context for the study. We argue that managers with an adaptive personality tend to have increased self-efficacy levels to lead during a crisis, resulting in increased motivation to lead during the COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore, managers with increased motivation to lead during the COVID-19 crisis are argued to have enhanced adaptive performance, thereby suggesting a serial mediation model where crisis leader self-efficacy and motivation to lead during the COVID-19 crisis act as explanatory mechanisms of the relationship between the adaptive personality and performance of the manager. In order to test our hypotheses, we collected data from 116 full-time managers in Saudi Arabia during the COVID-19 crisis and used hierarchical linear regression as the method of analysis. The findings support all of the hypotheses. A discussion of the results, contributions, limitations, and future directions is included. (shrink)

The standard formalism of quantum theory is derived by analyzing the behavior of single-variable physical systems. These systems, which have a minimal information capacity of only one piece of information, exhibit indeterministic behavior under independent measurements but can be described probabilistically for dependent measurements. By enforcing the principle of probability conservation in the transformations of outcome probabilities across various measurement scenarios, we derive the core components of standard quantum theory, including the Born rule, the Hilbert space structure, (...) and the Schrödinger equation. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the requirements for conducting quantum experiments – specifically, preparing physical systems in coherent states – effectively reduce the number of independent variables to one, thereby transforming these systems into single-variable ones in practice. This completes our first-principles, information-theoretic derivation of quantum theory as the physics of single-variable physical systems. (shrink)

This study provides a cross-lagged examination of the relationships between proactive vitality management, work–home enrichment, and entrepreneurial performance. Specifically, based on the Job Demands-Resources and Conservation of Resources theories, we postulate a mediation model where proactive vitality management leads to entrepreneurs transferring resources developed in their work role to thrive in their home role, resulting in augmented entrepreneurial performance. The hypotheses were tested with data collected at two time points, 1 onth apart—T1 and T2, from Romanian entrepreneurs. We analyzed (...) autoregressive, causal, reversed, and reciprocal models to test the mediation model. In the linkage between predictor and outcome variable, the reversed model is the best-fitting model, showing that proactive vitality management is only a distal precursor of performance. However, the best-fitting models for the relationship between predictor and mediator and between mediator and outcome were the reciprocal models. Thus, proactive vitality management and work–home enrichment have reciprocal effects on each other over time, as was the case between work–home enrichment and entrepreneurial performance. These results are in line with the resource gain cycle perspective of the Conservation of Resources theory. Employing proactive behaviors to optimize functioning at work enables the transfer of resources to the home role. Potentiating one role through aspects of another will thus generate additional resources reflecting on entrepreneurial performance. Hence, this study provides insights into precursors and mechanisms that can shape entrepreneurial performance. (shrink)

There has been little consensus around the sequential relationship between organizational affective commitment and workers’ wellbeing. In line with the Conservation of Resources Theory, results of this two-wave study with a contact center employee sample showed that organizational affective commitment decreases work ill-being and increases work wellbeing. Furthermore, in keeping with the loss spiral assumption of this theory, the mediating role of burnout in the affective commitment-health relationship was supported in this study. However, in accordance with the (...) Job Demand-Resources, work engagement was found not to prevent effects on health. The findings have implications for the organizational affective commitment theory, as well as for organizational occupational health policies and interventions. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to explore the dynamic and intervention mechanisms of daily abusive experience affecting daily work engagement. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we examine the effect of daily abusive supervision on daily work engagement through daily negative emotions from the resource consumption perspective, and the moderation effect of coworker support from the resource provision perspective. Using a daily diary approach and based on a sample of 73 employees for 5 consecutive days (...) in China. The results reveal that daily abusive supervision has a significant negative effect on daily work engagement, daily negative emotions mediate this relationship, and coworker support had a cross-level moderating effect between daily abusive supervision and daily negative emotions. Our study shows ways to boost employees’ daily work engagement and especially ways buffer the negative effect of abused experience on work engagement. (shrink)

Drawing upon conservation of resources theory, we develop and test a theoretical model that specifies how and when employee humor toward leaders affects leader abusive supervision. We propose that employee humor is negatively associated with leader abusive supervision via leader relational energy. Furthermore, the negative indirect relationship between employee humor and leader abusive supervision via leader relational energy is stronger for female leaders than for male leaders. An experiment and a multi-wave, multi-source field study provide substantial support for (...) our hypotheses. Our findings contribute to the abusive supervision literature by identifying employee humor as a safe and effective bottom-up approach to prevent leader abusive supervision. (shrink)

Changes in the external market environment put forward objective requirements for the formulation of organizational strategic plans, making it difficult for the organization’s leaders to make the right and effective decisions quickly on their own. As a result, participative leadership, which encourages and supports employees to participate in the decision-making process of organizations, has received increasing attention in both theory and practice. We searched the literature related to participative leadership in databases such as Web of Science, EBSCO, ProQuest, and (...) China National Knowledge Infrastructure. Based on this, we clarify the concept of participative leadership, propose a definition of participative leadership, summarize measurement scales for this type of leadership, and compare participative leadership with other leadership styles. We also present a research framework for participative leadership that demonstrates its antecedents; the mechanisms for its development based on social exchange theory, conservation of resources theory, social cognitive theory; social information processing theory, and implicit leadership theory; and outcomes. Finally, we identify five potential research areas: Connotation, antecedents, outcomes, mediators and moderators, and study of participative leadership in China. (shrink)

The concept of practice is thematically central to modern conservative thought, as evident in Edmund Burke’s writings on the aesthetic and his diatribe against the French Revolution. It is also the main organizing thread in the framework in the human sciences known as practice theory, which extends back at least to Karl Marx’s ‘Theses on Feuerbach’. This article historicizes ‘practice’ in conservative thought and practice theory, accounts for the family resemblance between the two, and takes apart that family (...) resemblance to reveal differences. The ingredients of practice theory (historical inheritance, embodiment, cognitive limits, loose coupling between conscious thought and action) are in many cases also distinctive traits of conservative thought. But the similarity is deceptive. Practice theory and conservative thought constitute two distinct interpretations of practice, two disparate endeavours for connecting human science with political strategy, and two different formulas for opposing theory and practice. The present study will argue that this is primarily a political opposition for conservative thought, while it is a human-scientific opposition for practice theory. Conservative thought is initially political and then human-scientific; practice theory is initially human-scientific and then political. This article advocates for practice theory against conservative thought as differently amended versions of a politics that recognizes human finitude. (shrink)

In response to calls for greater interdisciplinary involvement from the social sciences and humanities in the development, governance, and study of artificial intelligence systems, this paper presents one sociologist’s view on the problem of algorithmic bias and the reproduction of societal bias. Discussions of bias in AI cover much of the same conceptual terrain that sociologists studying inequality have long understood using more specific terms and theories. Concerns over reproducing societal bias should be informed by an understanding of the ways (...) that inequality is continually reproduced in society—processes that AI systems are either complicit in, or can be designed to disrupt and counter. The contrast presented here is between conservative and radical approaches to AI, with conservatism referring to dominant tendencies that reproduce and strengthen the status quo, while radical approaches work to disrupt systemic forms of inequality. The limitations of a conservative approach to racial bias are discussed through the specific example of biased criminal risk assessments and Indigenous overrepresentation in Canada’s criminal justice system. This illustrates the dangers of treating racial bias as a generalizable problem and equality as a generalizable solution, emphasizing the importance of considering inequality in context. Societal issues can no longer be out of scope for AI and machine learning, given the impact of these systems on human lives. This requires engagement with a growing body of critical AI scholarship that goes beyond biased data to analyze structured ways of perpetuating inequality, opening up the possibility for interdisciplinary engagement and radical alternatives. (shrink)

In Ruling Passions, Simon Blackburn contends that we should reject sensibility theory because it serves to support a conservative complacency. Blackburn's strategy is attractive in that it seeks to win this metaethical dispute – which ultimately stems from a deep disagreement over antireductionism – on the basis of an uncontroversial normative consideration. Therefore, Blackburn seems to offer an easy solution to an apparently intractable debate. We will show, however, that Blackburn's argument against sensibility theory does not succeed; it (...) is no more supportive of conservative complacency than Blackburn's noncognitivism. A victory for noncognitivism cannot be so easily won. (shrink)

Leadership is considered as a significant antecedent of knowledge hiding in SMEs, but the differential dimension of leadership has been evidently neglected in both theoretical and empirical areas. Drawing on conservation of resource theory and social cognitive theory, this research investigates whether and how SME differential leadership influences subordinate knowledge hiding. Specifically, we analyze the underlying mechanisms of a chain-mediator—job insecurity and territorial consciousness and a boundary condition—leadership performance expectation. Multi-wave and multi-source data were collected from (...) a sample of 704 Chinese SME employees and 140 relevant leaders and applied HLM meso-mediational frameworks, and Bootstrap technique with non-parametric percentile residuals for deviation correction. The results show that differential leadership plays a potential role in promoting subordinate knowledge hiding through the serial intervening mechanism of job Insecurity and territorial consciousness in SMEs. Furthermore, the positive relationship between SME differential leadership and job insecurity becomes stronger among subordinates under higher leadership performance expectation; the positive indirect relationship between SME differential leadership and subordinate knowledge hiding is stronger with higher levels of leadership performance expectation. This study contributes to the existing academic literature by empirically analyzing the under-investigated correlation between differential leadership and subordinate knowledge hiding in SMEs, and by exploring the underlying mechanisms and a boundary condition. (shrink)