Anna Maria Manganelli

Bad but Bold : Ambivalent Attitudes Toward Men Predict Gender Inequality in 16 Nations

A 16-nation study involving 8,360 participants revealed that hostile and benevolent attitudes toward men, assessed by the Ambivalence Toward Men Inventory (P. Click & S.T. Fiske, 1999), were (a) reliably measured across cultures, (b) positively correlated (for men and women, within samples and across nations) with each other and with hostile and benevolent sexism toward women (Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, P. Click & S.T. Fiske, 1996), and (c) negatively correlated with gender equality in cross-national comparisons. Stereotype measures indicated that men were viewed as having less positively valenced but more powerful traits than women. The authors argue that hostile as well as benevolent attitudes toward men reflect and support gender inequality by characterizing men as being designed for dominance.

Servant leadership in Italy and its relation to organizational variables

This paper aimed to investigate three issues. First, the validation of the multi-dimensional Servant Leadership Survey (SLS) within the Italian context. Second, to enhance insight into the degree of servant leadership behaviour displayed by Italian leaders in organizational settings. Third, to support the fact that in Italy, too, servant leadership is positively correlated to leadership integrity, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour while it is negatively correlated to cynicism towards one’s own work. A sample of about 800 adults, males and females, currently employed in profit and non-profit organizations, took part in the study. The factorial structure of SLS found support, and the survey showed satisfactory psychometric properties and reliability. Servant leadership expressed by Italian leaders turned out to be lower than in The Netherlands and in the UK. SLS scores were positively associated with leadership integrity, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviour, and negatively associated for cynicism.

THE LOVE OF MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL: PAY SATISFACTION AND CPI AS MODERATORS

By incorporating pay satisfaction at Level 1 and Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) at Level 2, we investigated the relationship between the love of money and self-reported corrupt intent among 6,382 managers in 31 geopolitical entities across six continents. Our significant cross-level three-way interaction effect showed that for managers with high pay satisfaction, the intensity (slope) of the love of money to corrupt intent relationship was almost identical in high or low CPI entities but the former had the lowest magnitude of corrupt intent, whereas the latter had the highest. For those with low pay satisfaction, the slope was the steepest in high CPI entities, but was flat in the low CPI entities and the difference between the two was significant.

Antecedents of hospital nurses’ intention to leave the organization: A cross sectional survey

BACKGROUND Leadership and perceived organizational support inspire trust in the leader and in the organization. Consequently, these aspects may contribute to a reduction in job burnout among nurses and, in the end, of the intention on their part to leave the hospital. It is crucial to develop models in order to simultaneously test the correlations between these relevant psychosocial variables, so that complexity of the nursing work environment may be better understood. OBJECTIVES We expected to give support to and to further corroborate results in the literature linking perceived leadership style – and particularly servant leadership – perceived organizational support, trust in the leader and in the organization, job burnout among nurses and their subsequent intention to leave the hospital. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SETTING Two Italian large size public hospitals. PARTICIPANTS Two samples including both graduates and non-graduates members of the nursing staff. Overall mean age was equal to 42.06 years while the general mean for tenure was 12.99 years. Data were collected in 2012. METHODS A regression model with latent variables was tested via structural equation modeling using LISREL. The multi-sample procedure was also applied in order to test invariance of results between the two samples. RESULTS Servant leadership was positively associated with trust in the leader and perceived organizational support was positively associated with trust in the organization. Trust in the leader and trust in the organization displayed a negative correlation with the emotional exhaustion and cynicism factors of job burnout, and a positive correlation with the professional efficacy factor. Furthermore, trust scores mediated the effects of servant leadership and perceived organizational support on job burnout factors. The cynicism factor was negatively associated with intention to leave the organization and it also mediated the effects of both trust in the leader and servant leadership on intention to leave. On the other hand, trust in the organization turned out to be directly and negatively related to intention to leave. CONCLUSIONS Servant leadership and perceived organizational support showed their relevance in the nursing setting. The role of trust in the leader, trust in the organization and job burnout factors as mediating variables received support. Interestingly enough, the higher the cynicism score the higher the intention to leave the hospital. The results achieved may have practical implications not only for recruitment and training of nurse managers but also for hospital management.

The social representation of telecommunications

For a long time now sociologists have spoken of the domestication of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to indicate their process of integration in everyday life. In this paper, we wish to deal with a crucial aspect of this process, which is the domestication of ICTs at the socio-cognitive level. Our aim is to reconstruct how these technologies have been metabolised in the system of social thought, and the way in which they have been integrated conceptually. At the same time, we wish to propose the methodology of social representations as being particularly suitable for investigating the social meaning of telecommunications. In the course of a telephonic survey of a sample of Italian population of 2,100 persons, 210 interviewees were asked to associate two terms with 10 cue words: telecommunications, fax, television, telephone, computer, mobile phone, radio, video-recorder, stereo, newspapers. The associations obtained were analysed by factor analysis of simple correspondences.

Honor as a value in Finland, Estonia, Italy, Russia, and Switzerland

Using the Schwartz Value Model as a basis, the meaning of the value item, honor (sense of honor) was explored in eight samples in Finland (N = 1877) and in five comparable samples of 15- to 17-year-old adolescents in Estonia, Finland, Italy, Russia, and Switzerland (N = 1788). In Finland, honor was a self-enhancement value in all age and occupational groups, although its importance varied widely. An identical pattern was found for Estonian adolescents, but for Swiss adolescents honor was both a self-enhancement and a conservation value and for Italian and Russian adolescents, a pure conservation value. Male adolescents had higher regard for honor than female adolescents in Finland, Russia, and Switzerland, but no sex differences were found in Estonia, Italy or in the Finnish adult samples. In all adolescent samples, honor was associated with work-related values (e.g., hard work, conscientiousness).

Monetary Intelligence and Behavioral Economics Across 32 Cultures: Good Apples Enjoy Good Quality of Life in Good Barrels

Abstract Monetary Intelligence theory asserts that individuals apply their money attitude to frame critical concerns in the context and strategically select certain options to achieve financial goals and ultimate happiness. This study explores the bright side of Monetary Intelligence and behavioral economics, frames money attitude in the context of pay and life satisfaction, and controls money at the macro-level (GDP per capita) and micro-level (Z income). We theorize: Managers with low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior will have high subjective well-being: pay satisfaction and quality of life. Data collected from 6586 managers in 32 cultures across six continents support our theory. Interestingly, GDP per capita is related to life satisfaction, but not to pay satisfaction. Individual income is related to both life and pay satisfaction. Neither GDP nor income is related to Happiness (money makes people happy). Our theoretical model across three GDP groups offers new discoveries: In high GDP (rich) entities, “high income” not only reduces aspirations—“Rich, Motivator, and Power,” but also promotes stewardship behavior—“Budget, Give/Donate, and Contribute” and appreciation of “Achievement.” After controlling income, we demonstrate the bright side of Monetary Intelligence: Low love of money motive but high stewardship behavior define Monetary Intelligence. “Good apples enjoy good quality of life in good barrels.” This notion adds another explanation to managers’ low magnitude of dishonesty in entities with high Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) (risk aversion for gains of high probability) (Tang et al. 2015. doi:10.1007/s10551-015-2942-4). In low GDP (poor) entities, high income is related to poor Budgeting skills and escalated Happiness. These managers experience equal satisfaction with pay and life. We add a new vocabulary to the conversation of monetary intelligence, income, GDP, happiness, subjective well-being, good and bad apples and barrels, corruption, and behavioral ethics.

Is mobile phone use associated with spatial dimensions? A comparative study on mobile phone use in five European countries

The aim of this paper is to investigate if, and how, mobile phone use is associated with space. In particular, we considered three spatial dimensions, such as the size of the place of residence, the macro-region and the country. We drew the data from a telephone survey designed by us and sponsored by Telecom Italia. The survey was administered in 2009 and conducted on representative samples of the populations of five European countries (Italy, France, Spain, UK and Germany) (N = 7255). Several interesting results emerged. One of these is that there seems to be no longer an association between the volume of use of the mobile phone and the urban environment, but only with the sophistication of its use. On the contrary, the fixed telephone is more intensively used by urbanites. The macro-region assumes a new strength regarding the use of the mobile phone: some macro-regions reoriented themselves towards the mobile phone or the landline phone (like the south of Spain), while others are developing both, such as the south of Italy. The variable ‘culture’ confirms its strong role: Italy is the strongest user of the mobile phone, while the UK and Spain make the most advanced use of it. As to the fixed telephone, Italy shows the least intense use of it, while France the most intense.

The 'Mobile' Face of Contemporary China

The adoption and diffusion of the mobile phone has been exceptionally rapid in mainland China, especially in its capital Beijing and the coastal industrialized towns. With almost half a billion mobile phones, China has rapidly become the biggest market for this technology and one of the world’s leading nations in the production of information and communication technologies. In the last years also the amount of qualitative research devoted to ICTs in China is increased, while that of quantitative studies is still limited. This chapter describes a quantitative research study, specifically focused on the appropriation and domestication of the mobile phone in China. On the basis of questionnaires that were personally administered to a convenience sample of 487 respondents, the design of this research attempts to answer the following research question: How the relational sphere in China is reshaped by the massive use of the mobile phone? And then are there striking differences between the attitudes, behaviours, and practices associated with mobile phone use in China and in the West? This is a very broad research topic, but in this chapter we confine our examination to the social implications of the mobile phone use on some aspects of the relational sphere. A sample of 487 respondents can hardly provide a basis for generalizations about the Chinese population as a whole. However, the results of this study will serve to indicate the most important patterns of mobile phone use, which would be a fruitful subject for future research. Thus, the data presented here will provide direction for further inquiries into various aspects of mobile phone use in China.

La resistenza al cambiamento. Validità della versione italiana della scala di oreg (2003)

La resistenza al cambiamento. Validita della versione italiana della scala di oreg (2003) - The aim of the study is to propose the Italian version of the multifactor resistance to change scale (RTC) developed by Oreg (2003), and to examine its psychometric properties. The research was conducted via self-administered questionnaires on a group of 324 adults, men and women, currently employed. Correlations were computed between RTC and measures of personality factors (Big Five), sensation seeking, need for cognitive closure, emotional control, cognitive abilities, and political orientation. Then, the correlation between RTC and social desirability was computed. Moreover, differences in RTC scores between sub-groups with a different amount of change experiences were analysed. Finally, via multiple regression analysis, the best predictors of RTC were identified. RTC factorial structure, made up of four first-order factors and a single second-order factor, was supported by confirmatory factor analysis results. The internal consistency was also acceptable. RTC measure was negatively correlated with extraversion, agreeableness, emotional stability and openness (Big Five), sensation seeking, and emotional control. The correlation between RTC and need for cognitive closure was high and positive. The correlation between RTC and social desirability was week and negative, and no correlations at all resulted between RTC, cognitive ability and political orientation. Participants with a high number of change experiences had a lower RTC scores when compared with those with a low number of change experiences. Finally, need for cognitive closure was the most important predictor of resistance to change score.