Lucía Ceja

‘Suddenly I get into the zone’: Examining discontinuities and nonlinear changes in flow experiences at work

Work-related flow is defined as a sudden and enjoyable merging of action and awareness that represents a peak experience in the daily lives of workers. Employees’ perceptions of challenge and skill and their subjective experiences in terms of enjoyment, interest and absorption were measured using the experience sampling method, yielding a total of 6981 observations from a sample of 60 employees. Linear and nonlinear approaches were applied in order to model both continuous and sudden changes. According to the R2, AICc and BIC indexes, the nonlinear dynamical systems model (i.e. cusp catastrophe model) fit the data better than the linear and logistic regression models. Likewise, the cusp catastrophe model appears to be especially powerful for modelling those cases of high levels of flow. Overall, flow represents a nonequilibrium condition that combines continuous and abrupt changes across time. Research and intervention efforts concerned with this process should focus on the variable of challenge, which, according to our study, appears to play a key role in the abrupt changes observed in work-related flow.

Organisational contexts that foster positive behaviour and well-being: A comparison between family-owned firms and non-family businesses

Abstract This study seeks to extend the three-way model of mobbing by emphasising the positive influence of the organisational context on employee behaviour (i. e. more altruism, less mobbing and more perceived job performance) and well-being (i. e. more work engagement and more job satisfaction), comparing family-owned firms (FB) and non-family businesses (NFB). A total of 10 organisations (5 FB and 5 NFB) composed the final sample. The associations between the different study variables were assessed through several analyses (MCA, chi-square and Pearson correlation). The results revealed that, as compared to non-family firms, family-owned businesses are perceived as having a balanced task/employee organisational focus; and as being associated with higher levels of altruistic behaviours, work engagement, job satisfaction, and lower levels of mobbing.

A Model of Psychological Ownership in Next-Generation Members of Family-Owned Firms: A Qualitative Study

The present research study is intended to provide further insights into the psychological ownership experienced by next-generation members in relation to their family firms. As this is still a very young area of research, explorative research is needed. Therefore, a mixed-methods qualitative investigation, using a sample of 20 next-generation members of family-owned firms of different sizes, generational stages and business sectors, was performed. Through interpretative phenomenological and ethnographic analyses, the origin, transmission and manifestations of psychological ownership towards the family business were studied. The study also explored the factors that foster or undermine the development of a healthy and fulfilling relationship between next-generation members and the family business. Our findings suggest that next-generation members generally experience strong levels of psychological ownership. The development of positive psychological ownership is associated with factors including shared experiences, well-functioning governance bodies, structured and planned entry to the business, psychological empowerment, and share ownership, among others.

Dinámicas complejas en el flujo: diferencias entre trabajo y no trabajo

Resumen Esta investigación se interesó por la dinámica del flujo (flow) en contextos laborales y no laborales con el objetivo de conocer diferencias y semejanzas de dicha experiencia motivational. Sesenta empleados de ocupaciones variadas contestaron un diario de flujo seis veces al día durante veintiún días consecutivos (6982 registros). Los datos fueron analizados a nivel entre e intra-sujeto y se utilizaron modelos lineales (i.e. regresión lineal) y no lineales (i.e. modelo de catástrofes) para conocer la capacidad predictiva del ajuste reto-habilidades sobre el flujo. Contextos laboral y no laboral han mostrado dos diferencias fundamentales: mayores fluctuaciones en el flujo en el segundo (desviaciones tipo mayores en las variables habilidades, disfrute, interés y absorción) y un significado distinto del reto. Por otro lado, la capacidad de predicción del modelo no lineal ha sido claramente mayor que su homólogo lineal (42% frente al 19%, en el caso del no trabajo; 44% frente a 33% en el trabajo). El flujo, tanto en contextos laborales como no laborales, muestra dinámicas no lineales que combinan cambios graduales y cambios abruptos. La investigación e intervención interesadas en este proceso deberían centrarse en la variable reto que se ha mostrado clave para entender dichas dinámicas complejas en el flujo.

Flow: Flourishing at Work

After framing Csikszentmihalyi’s conception of flow as a feature of the most intense human activities, the authors explain the positive impact it has on both the person (gratification) and on results, i.e., the quality of their work. They then take on an organizations’ greatest challenge: that is, how to create a collaborative environment in which people find a state of concentration that leads them perform better. The aim is not to achieve a momentary psychological state of being, but rather to work and collaborate better, resulting in improved general welfare. Moreover, this improvement is mutually beneficial to the individual’s self-fulfillment and to the improvement of social life. There is a common ground between the Aristotelian treatment of pleasure, seen as a side effect of advantageous action, and the classical distinction between pleasure and gratification, with advances from contemporary psychology. Moreover, these findings lay the groundwork for developing a theory of action that transcends intellectual aspects in order to better understand the kind of action in which the agent tends to identify with his action.

Key Issues in Family Councils: Insights from the Spanish Experience

As successful families in business grow in family size and number of shareholders, they commonly develop a particular kind of family organization, often referred to as the family council. This family organization usually becomes the familys central governing body. Although family councils are very common among highly complex multigenerational family-owned businesses, implementing them appears to be a challenging task, as each family has its own idea and this idea is likely to evolve over time. With the aim of helping families in business reflect upon or review their family governance system, the present study aims at learning from the experience of 16 Spanish family-owned businesses by analyzing different areas of interest such as the different types of family councils, their key features, the reasons for starting a family council, the objectives of creating a family council, the stages of a family council and the characteristics of other governance structures connected to the family council. Investigating these issues can help multigenerational family-owned businesses to succeed as well-structured organizations that keep the family connected and committed towards a common mission, vision and values. Limitations and future research are also discussed.