Anna Paolillo

Resilience and Emotional Intelligence: which role in achievement motivation

In the framework of Positive Organizational Behavior, the construct of Psychological Capital identifies four psychological capacities that affect motivation and performance in the workplace: self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience. Emotional Intelligence, then, addresses self-regulatory processes of emotions and motivation that enable people to make adjustments to achieve individual, group, and organizational goals; Emotional Intelligence is strongly correlated with individual advancement and success in an organizational setting and with individual performance. Moreover, Emotional Intelligence is considered an antecedent to resilience. The present study aims to investigate the role of resilience and emotional intelligence in achievement motivation, verifying if emotional intelligence mediates the relationship among resilience and achievement motivation. Participants are 488 Italian workers, aged between 18 and 55 years. The findings confirm the significant role played by emotional intelligence on resilience and on motivation to achievement.

Dispositional Optimism as a Correlate of Decision-Making Styles in Adolescence

Despite the numerous psychological areas in which optimism has been studied, including career planning, only a small amount of research has been done to investigate the relationship between optimism and decision-making styles. Consequently, we have investigated the role of dispositional optimism as a correlate of different decision-making styles, in particular, positive for effective styles and negative for ineffective ones (doubtfulness, procrastination, and delegation). Data were gathered through questionnaires administered to 803 Italian adolescents in their last 2 years of high schools with different fields of study, each at the beginning stages of planning for their professional future. A paper questionnaire was completed containing measures of dispositional optimism and career-related decision styles, during a vocational guidance intervention conducted at school. Data were analyzed using stepwise multiple regression. Results supported the proposed model by showing optimism to be a strong correlate of decision-making styles, thereby offering important intervention guidelines aimed at modifying unrealistically negative expectations regarding their future and helping students learn adaptive decision-making skills.

Promoting safety participation through diversity and inclusion climates

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of diversity climate and inclusion climate on safety participation behaviors through the mediating effect of the motivation to actively promote safety at work. Design/methodology/approach Participants were 491 workers employed in four Italian metal-mechanical companies. They completed a paper questionnaire containing measures of psychological diversity climate, psychological inclusion climate, safety motivation participation and safety participation behaviors. Data were analyzed with structural equation modeling. Findings Results showed that safety participation motivation fully mediates the relationship between diversity climate and safety participation behaviors, whereas it partially mediates the relationship between climate for inclusion and safety participation behaviors. Practical implications The present findings can help managers to motivate employees in pursuing safety goals independently of compensation or obligation by creating an organization in which the main concern is caring for each other’s well-being. Originality/value This is the first study which has empirically tested the relationships between diversity climate, inclusion climate and safety behaviors. It has extended previous research which simply tested the effects of objective types of diversity on safety performance.