Management

What is it that actuates a person to truly engage with their work instead of simply going through the motions? Through what means can an individual become involved and immersed in their appointed task? Motivation is often seen as the sum of ‘the processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of effort towards attaining a goal’ (Robbins & Judge, 2015), and adjudged as a ‘psychological process resulting from the interaction between the individual and the environment’ (Latham & Pinder, 2005). Since the 1940s a succession of theories has interrogated the interaction of the various needs and values of the individual with those of the organisation: for example, external motivation arising from incidentals associated with but outside the work itself, or internal motivation emerging from the enjoyment derived from the task  (Ryan & Deci, 2000), or prosocial motivation, developing from the desire to protect and care for others (Grant & Berg, 2011).
However, one class of influential values with the potential to motivate has hitherto been ignored: religious beliefs. This is especially puzzling as religiosity or religiousness has experienced a recent surge, especially during the past few decades. For example, in 2014 around 41% religiously affiliated American adults affirmed that they rely mainly on their religion’s tenets to guide them morally, a startling increase from the 34% who answered accordingly in 2007 (Pew Research Center, 2015). Closely associated with and reinforcing this motivational source is a second unexplored possible wellspring of motivation: one’s sense of chosenness in the religious sense. Present mainly in the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), chosenness is the feeling that one has been selected, by a supernatural entity for a specific reason or a special mission. Thus, drawing on theories of prosocial and family motivation, I postulate the existence of a novel phenomenon, religious motivation, which I define as the impulse to work to the best of one’s ability in order to honour or bring happiness to someone the worker cares about, in this case, God.

The current paper examines the psychological characteristics of people who link tightly connected cliques to each other with friendship ties. Based on the work of sociologist Georg Simmel, I argue that these people are characterized by two separate motivations, which I call entrepreneurial and relationship-building motivations. Using a complete network from a heterogeneous class of Jewish-, Arab-, and Druze-Israelis, I provide the first empirical evidence of their existence. Gould and Fernandez's brokerage roles were calculated for each participant, and triad proportions from each brokerage type were correlated with well-established psychological questionnaires. Results indicate the existence of two psychologically distinct network orientations, easily interpretable in terms of Simmel's analysis of processes in triads.

Relations between family type and psychological and parental distress and the moderating role of social support were studied for 90 Israeli lesbian mothers, single heterosexual mothers by choice and 2-parent heterosexual mothers who completed measures of psychological distress, well-being, parental distress, and direct and indirect social support. Findings indicated differences on psychological and parental outcome between mothers from the two heterosexual groups. Social support was higher for lesbian than single heterosexual mothers and was correlated with psychological and parental indices. Unique because of the distinctive demographics of Israeli society (especially in relation to Western Europe and North America), this study highlights ways in which social and individual processes affect psychological outcomes among minority groups.

We suggest that the simple measure used in peer assessment (i.e. the number of peer
nominations) does not capture the complexity of social information processing and is
therefore limited in its predictive validity. Based on indicators derived from social
network analysis and social information processing theories, we suggest new
measures (nominations by nominees and nominations not returned) that enhance the
predictive validity of peer assessment. We compare the validity of existing measures
of peer assessment with our more complex measures using a longitudinal sample of
249 soldiers, divided into 18 groups. More than six months later, the commanders of
the 132 soldiers that were selected for the unit under review provided evaluations of
their performance on three dimensions: performance under stress, engagement, and
leadership. We found that the new measures predicted performance above and beyond
the traditional measure. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.

This study investigates learning disability (LD) as an individual-differences variable predicting leadership emergence,
role occupancy, and effectiveness.We hypothesize that individuals with LD are less likely to occupy leadership
roles, and that informal group processes (leadership emergence) will mediate the relationship between LD
and leadership role occupancy. We also hypothesized that, among leaders promoted and selected for leadership
training, there would be a negative relationship between LD and effective leadership.We first checked for LD in a
sample of 1076 soldiers, measuring cognitive ability with a geometric-analogies test as a control. Some months
later, during the soldiers’ basic training, we measured leadership emergence. We then identified those who were
selected for leadership training, recording, and measuring their effectiveness according to supervisory and peer
evaluations. Leadership emergence was found to mediate the negative relationship between LD and leadership
role occupancy. There were no significant differences among leaders (n = 308) with and without LD in regard
to leadership effectiveness.