Change competence: An integrative literature review.

BACKGROUND: Organizations are in a state of continual evolution, driven by the relentless shifts in their external environments. Numerous theories have been proposed to understand the essential skills and capabilities for successful organizational change. Yet, there remains a gap in capturing a holistic view necessary to fully comprehend the dynamics of competence in today's rapidly changing landscape. OBJECTIVE: This research aims to explore and consolidate the concept of 'competence' in the context of organizational change processes. METHODS: Employing an integrative literature review approach, a total of 3,230 studies were screened. Out of these, 32 studies were selected based on strict relevance and quality criteria, providing a robust foundation for the analysis. RESULTS: The findings reveal a multi-layered nature of organizational change, highlighting that the nature and prerequisites of change vary significantly across different organizational levels. By applying a competence lens, we discern how required competence during change are not uniform but rather vary depending on whether they are applied in an operational or strategic context. This demonstrates a nuanced, level-dependent variability in change competence across the organizational hierarchy. CONCLUSION: We conceptualize 'change competence' as a dual-faceted construct. It encompasses both the capacity to leverage existing organizational competence and the adeptness to develop new competence, thereby meeting the evolving demands imposed by both internal and external drivers of change. This comprehensive understanding paves the way for more effective strategies in managing organizational change.

Oscillatory and non-oscillatory features of the magnetoencephalic sensorimotor rhythm in Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is associated with changes in neural activity in the sensorimotor alpha and beta bands. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we investigated the role of spontaneous neuronal activity within the somatosensory cortex in a large cohort of early- to mid-stage PD patients (N = 78) on Parkinsonian medication and age- and sex-matched healthy controls (N = 60) using source reconstructed resting-state MEG. We quantified features of the time series data in terms of oscillatory alpha power and central alpha frequency, beta power and central beta frequency, and 1/f broadband characteristics using power spectral density. Furthermore, we characterised transient oscillatory burst events in the mu-beta band time-domain signals. We examined the relationship between these signal features and the patients' disease state, symptom severity, age, sex, and cortical thickness. PD patients and healthy controls differed on PSD broadband characteristics, with PD patients showing a steeper 1/f exponential slope and higher 1/f offset. PD patients further showed a steeper age-related decrease in the burst rate. Out of all the signal features of the sensorimotor activity, the burst rate was associated with increased severity of bradykinesia, whereas the burst duration was associated with axial symptoms. Our study shows that general non-oscillatory features (broadband 1/f exponent and offset) of the sensorimotor signals are related to disease state and oscillatory burst rate scales with symptom severity in PD.

The Swedish National Facility for Magnetoencephalography Parkinson's disease dataset.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterised by a loss of dopamine and dopaminergic cells. The consequences hereof are widespread network disturbances in brain function. It is an ongoing topic of investigation how the disease-related changes in brain function manifest in PD relate to clinical symptoms. We present The Swedish National Facility for Magnetoencephalography Parkinson's Disease Dataset (NatMEG-PD) as an Open Science contribution to identify the functional neural signatures of Parkinson's disease and contribute to diagnosis and treatment. The dataset contains whole-head magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings from 66 well-characterised PD patients on their regular dose of dopamine replacement therapy and 68 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. NatMEG-PD contains three-minute eyes-closed resting-state MEG, MEG during an active movement task, and MEG during passive movements. The data includes anonymised MRI for source analysis and clinical scores. MEG data is rich in nature and can be used to explore numerous functional features. By sharing these data, we hope other researchers will contribute to advancing our understanding of the relationship between brain activity and disease state or symptoms.

On the clinical utility of on-scalp MEG: A modeling study of epileptic activity source estimation.

OBJECTIVE: Epilepsy surgery requires localization of the seizure onset zone (SOZ). Today this can only be achieved by intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG). The iEEG electrode placement is guided by findings from non-invasive modalities that cannot themselves detect SOZ-generated initial seizure activity. On scalp magnetoencephalography (osMEG), with sensors placed on the scalp, demonstrates higher sensitivity than conventional MEG (convMEG) and could potentially detect early seizure activity. Here, we modeled EEG, convMEG and osMEG to compare the modalities' ability to localize SOZ activity and to detect epileptic spikes. METHODS: We modeled seizure propagation within ten epileptic networks located in the mesial and lateral temporal lobe; basal, dorsal, central and frontopolar frontal lobe; parietal and occipital lobe as well as insula and cingulum. The networks included brain regions often involved in focal epilepsy. 128-channel osMEG, convMEG, EEG and combined osMEG + EEG and convMEG + EEG were modeled, and the SOZ source estimation accuracy was quantified and compared using Student's t-test. RESULTS: OsMEG was significantly (p-value <0.01) better than both convMEG and EEG at detecting the earliest SOZ-generated seizure activity and epileptic spikes, and better at localizing seizure activity from all epileptic networks (p < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: Our modeling results clearly show that osMEG has an unsurpassed potential to detect both epileptic spikes and seizure activity from all simulated anatomical sites. SIGNIFICANCE: No clinically available non-invasive technique can detect SOZ activity from all brain regions. Our study indicates that osMEG has the potential to become an important clinical tool, improving both non-invasive SOZ localization and iEEG electrode placement accuracy.

A qualitative study of factors that managers in small companies consider important for their wellbeing.

PURPOSE: Given the importance of small businesses for society, and the significance of managers' wellbeing for employee health, leadership, and business performance, more knowledge is needed on the sources of managers' wellbeing. This study explored factors within the small business context that were perceived by managers to hinder or enable their wellbeing. METHODS: Data were collected through qualitative semi-structured interviews with 20 managers from 12 small companies, and analysed with content analysis. RESULTS: The factors that these managers in small businesses experienced as enhancing or hindering their personal wellbeing covered five categories: demands and resources in the daily managerial work, achievement of results, social factors, organizational factors, and individual factors. CONCLUSIONS: The specific context of managerial work in small companies encompasses unique factors. For instance, the small company managers' wellbeing was affected by vulnerability due to the smallness of the business and the absence of available resources. Simultaneously, a small company context provided a strong social climate and close relationships with employees and customers that strengthened the managers' wellbeing. The findings suggest that the availability of financial, personnel, and organizational resources varies between small companies of different size, which may have implications for small business managers' work and wellbeing.

A Brain-To-Brain Mechanism for Social Transmission of Threat Learning.

Survival and adaptation in environments require swift and efficacious learning about what is dangerous. Across species, much of such threat learning is acquired socially, e.g., through the observation of others' ("demonstrators'") defensive behaviors. However, the specific neural mechanisms responsible for the integration of information shared between demonstrators and observers remain largely unknown. This dearth of knowledge is addressed by performing magnetoencephalography (MEG) neuroimaging in demonstrator-observer dyads. A set of stimuli are first shown to a demonstrator whose defensive responses are filmed and later presented to an observer, while neuronal activity is recorded sequentially from both individuals who never interacted directly. These results show that brain-to-brain coupling (BtBC) in the fronto-limbic circuit (including insula, ventromedial, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) within demonstrator-observer dyads predict subsequent expressions of learning in the observer. Importantly, the predictive power of BtBC magnifies when a threat is imminent to the demonstrator. Furthermore, BtBC depends on how observers perceive their social status relative to the demonstrator, likely driven by shared attention and emotion, as bolstered by dyadic pupillary coupling. Taken together, this study describes a brain-to-brain mechanism for social threat learning, involving BtBC, which reflects social relationships and predicts adaptive, learned behaviors.

Cortex-wide topography of 1/f-exponent in Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive and debilitating brain disorder. Besides the characteristic movement-related symptoms, the disease also causes decline in sensory and cognitive processing. The extent of symptoms and brain-wide projections of neuromodulators such as dopamine suggest that many brain regions are simultaneously affected in PD. To characterise brain-wide disease-related changes in neuronal function, we analysed resting state magnetoencephalogram (MEG) from two groups: PD patients and healthy controls. Besides standard spectral analysis, we quantified the aperiodic components (κ, λ) of the neural activity by fitting a power law κ/fλ - f is the frequency, κ and λ are the fitting parameters-to the MEG power spectrum and studied its relationship with age and Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS). Consistent with previous results, the most significant spectral changes were observed in the high theta/low-alpha band (7-10 Hz) in all brain regions. Furthermore, analysis of the aperiodic part of the spectrum showed that in all but frontal regions λ was significantly larger in PD patients than in control subjects. Our results indicate that PD is associated with significant changes in aperiodic activity across the whole neocortex. Surprisingly, even early sensory areas showed a significantly larger λ in patients than in healthy controls. Moreover, λ was not affected by the Levodopa medication. Finally, λ was positively correlated with patient age but not with UPDRS-III. Because λ is closely associated with excitation-inhibition balance, our results propose new hypotheses about neural correlates of PD in cortical networks.

From MEG to clinical EEG: evaluating a promising non-invasive estimator of defense-related muscle sympathetic nerve inhibition.

Sudden, unexpected stimuli can induce a transient inhibition of sympathetic vasoconstriction to skeletal muscle, indicating a link to defense reactions. This phenomenon is relatively stable within, but differs between, individuals. It correlates with blood pressure reactivity which is associated with cardiovascular risk. Inhibition of muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) is currently characterized through invasive microneurography in peripheral nerves. We recently reported that brain neural oscillatory power in the beta spectrum (beta rebound) recorded with magnetoencephalography (MEG) correlated closely with stimulus-induced MSNA inhibition. Aiming for a clinically more available surrogate variable reflecting MSNA inhibition, we investigated whether a similar approach with electroencephalography (EEG) can accurately gauge stimulus-induced beta rebound. We found that beta rebound shows similar tendencies to correlate with MSNA inhibition, but these EEG data lack the robustness of previous MEG results, although a correlation in the low beta band (13-20 Hz) to MSNA inhibition was found (p = 0.021). The predictive power is summarized in a receiver-operating-characteristics curve. The optimum threshold yielded sensitivity and false-positive rate of 0.74 and 0.33 respectively. A plausible confounder is myogenic noise. A more complicated experimental and/or analysis approach is required for differentiating MSNA-inhibitors from non-inhibitors based on EEG, as compared to MEG.

Managers' and employees' experiences of how managers' wellbeing impacts their leadership behaviours in Swedish small businesses.

BACKGROUND: There is a growing interest in managers' wellbeing due to the observed associations between their wellbeing and leadership behaviours, and between leadership behaviours and employees' wellbeing. However, it is still unclear how managers' wellbeing influences their practiced leadership across different workplace contexts, which specific behaviours are affected, and how this varies across time. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was therefore to explore managers' and employees' experiences and perceptions regarding the consequences of managers' wellbeing for their leadership behaviours in small businesses. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 39 participants (20 managers and 19 employees) working at 12 Swedish small firms, and analysed using content analysis. RESULTS: The findings show that managers were more constructive when they felt well, and more passively destructive when unwell. Variations in managers' wellbeing influenced their mood, energy level, and performance, as well as the company's working climate. However, these destructive leadership variations did not have a substantial impact, because several protective factors were present. CONCLUSION: This study shows that the wellbeing of managers in small businesses has perceptible consequences for their leadership behaviours. The study also shows that sustained leadership behaviours may coexist with temporary variations of these behaviours on a constructive-destructive continuum depending on the leader's wellbeing. Overall, the findings contribute to a more nuanced and dynamic understanding of how the interaction between managers' wellbeing and their behaviours unfolds in the particular context of small companies.

Leadership and well-being of employees in the Nordic countries: A literature review.

BACKGROUND: There is a need for more knowledge regarding the importance of managerial leadership for fostering well-being in the workplace and how context has been accounted for in previous research. OBJECTIVE: To carry out a literature review of previous research that empirically examines the importance of leadership for well-being in a Nordic working life context. METHODS: A rapid literature review was conducted with narrative analysis in 5 steps: establish focus, research questions, and inclusion criteria; literature search; relevance screening; quality assessment; data analysis. The search identified 4566 unique studies where 35 quantitative and five qualitative met the relevance and quality criteria. RESULTS: Findings from quantitative and qualitative studies are presented. Transformational and supportive leadership are recurrently associated with employee well-being, although the qualitative studies also highlight adaptive leadership and leaders being available and providing space. Some connections are made to the Nordic context in the reviewed studies, but these connections are not fully elaborated. CONCLUSION: Leadership is related to employee well-being, although this relationship seems to be indirect, mediated by other factors in the working environment. The review identifies the need for more well-designed studies addressing the contextual factors of this relationship, and how leadership should be exercised in practice.

Steady-state responses to concurrent melodies: source distribution, top-down, and bottom-up attention.

Humans can direct attentional resources to a single sound occurring simultaneously among others to extract the most behaviourally relevant information present. To investigate this cognitive phenomenon in a precise manner, we used frequency-tagging to separate neural auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs) that can be traced back to each auditory stimulus, from the neural mix elicited by multiple simultaneous sounds. Using a mixture of 2 frequency-tagged melody streams, we instructed participants to selectively attend to one stream or the other while following the development of the pitch contour. Bottom-up attention towards either stream was also manipulated with salient changes in pitch. Distributed source analyses of magnetoencephalography measurements showed that the effect of ASSR enhancement from top-down driven attention was strongest at the left frontal cortex, while that of bottom-up driven attention was dominant at the right temporal cortex. Furthermore, the degree of ASSR suppression from simultaneous stimuli varied across cortical lobes and hemisphere. The ASSR source distribution changes from temporal-dominance during single-stream perception, to proportionally more activity in the frontal and centro-parietal cortical regions when listening to simultaneous streams. These findings are a step forward to studying cognition in more complex and naturalistic soundscapes using frequency-tagging.

The angry versus happy recognition advantage: the role of emotional and physical properties.

Facial emotional expressions are pivotal for social communication. Their fast and accurate recognition is crucial to promote adaptive responses to social demands, for the development of functional relationships, and for well-being. However, the literature has been inconsistent in showing differentiated recognition patterns for positive vs. negative facial expressions (e.g., happy and angry expressions, respectively), likely due to affective and perceptual factors. Accordingly, the present study explored differences in recognition performance between angry and happy faces, while specifically assessing the role of emotional intensity and global/regional low-level visual features. 98 participants categorized angry and happy faces morphed between neutral and emotional across 9 levels of expression intensity (10-90%). We observed a significantly higher recognition efficiency (higher accuracy and shorter response latencies) for angry compared to happy faces in lower levels of expression intensity, suggesting that our cognitive resources are biased to prioritize the recognition of potentially harmful stimuli, especially when briefly presented at an ambiguous stage of expression. Conversely, an advantage for happy faces was observed from the midpoint of expression intensity, regarding response speed. However, when compensating for the contribution of regional low-level properties of distinct facial key regions, the effect of emotion was maintained only for response accuracy. Altogether, these results shed new light on the processing of facial emotional stimuli, emphasizing the need to consider emotional intensity and regional low-level image properties in emotion recognition analysis.

The impact of leadership on employee well-being: on-site compared to working from home.

BACKGROUND: The Covid-19 pandemic has brought significant changes to the way people work and there are several reasons to believe that working from home will become more common in the future. Yet more knowledge is needed on whether the effectiveness of leadership differs if the work is performed remotely compared to on-site work. PURPOSE: The aim of this study is to examine the place of work as a moderator for the effectiveness of leadership on employee well-being. METHOD: A survey was answered by 364 white-collar workers, employed by a larger Swedish municipality, who because of the covid-19-pandemic were offered to work from home. RESULTS: The employees working in their regular office perceived having more sufficient work equipment. No other differences were found in the investigated variables. Supportive leadership was associated with all investigated well-being variables in the hypothesised directions. Place of work did not moderate the relationship between Support leadership and the investigated well-being outcomes (Job satisfaction, Stress, General well-being). CONCLUSION: This study shows that there are few differences between employees working from home or working on-site during the Covid-19 pandemic. The supportive leadership of the closest manager seem to be important for well-being regardless of the worksite.

Psychosocial work environment and health when entering or leaving a managerial position.

BACKGROUND: Recruiting and retaining managers has become increasingly difficult in recent years, primarily because of a pressured work situation. A better understanding of managers' work situation is required, and of the support they need. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the study is to increase the understanding of managers' psychosocial work environment and health by investigating individuals as they enter or leave a managerial position. METHODS: Longitudinal questionnaire data from 1971 individuals distributed across four groups were used: individuals who 1) entered or 2) left a managerial position between measuring points, and those who remained employed as 3) managers or 4) non-managers at both measuring points. RESULTS: Demands increased between the measuring points for those who entered a managerial position. Their resources and health were, however, rated higher than non-managers already before the transition. Demands decreased for those who left a managerial position, while their resources remained higher than non-managers. Health did not change by changing position. CONCLUSION: This study contributes to knowledge of what happens when someone enters or leaves a managerial position and increases the understanding of differences between managers and non-managers. Organizations should develop supportive strategies through talent management programs to help build resources in employees and future managers. Support should also aim to reduce the increased level of demands in newly hired managers.

Changes in emotion processing in early Parkinson's disease reflect disease progression.

OBJECTIVE: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder which can substantially affect nonmotor functions related to emotional processing. We aimed to examine the underlying differences in emotional processing in PD by comparing how early-stage PD patients recognize, rate, and react to facial, bodily, and vocal emotional stimuli to that of healthy controls (HC). METHOD: We compared emotion recognition, emotional rating bias, and emotional response range between a PD patient group (n = 33) and a HC group (n = 29). Pearson's correlations were conducted to evaluate the relationship between emotion processing measures and clinical outcome measures in each group. RESULTS: PD patients showed an enhanced emotion processing as compared to HC. They were overall more accurate than HC's at identifying correct emotions and furthermore showed an increase in emotional ratings and reactions to both positive and negative stimuli that scaled with increased symptom severity, thereby yielding significant correlations between clinical outcomes and emotional range in the PD patient group. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that alterations in emotional processing reflect disease progression in early PD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Interictal epileptiform discharges in focal epilepsy are preceded by increase in low-frequency oscillations.

OBJECTIVE: Interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs) constitute a diagnostic signature of epilepsy. These events reflect epileptogenic hypersynchronization. Previous studies indicated that IEDs arise from slow neuronal activation accompanied by metabolic and hemodynamic changes. These might induce cortical inhibition followed hypersynchronization at IED onset. As cortical inhibition is mediated by low-frequency oscillations, we aimed to analyze the role of low-frequency oscillations prior the IED using magnetencephalography (MEG). METHODS: Low-frequency (1-8 Hz) oscillations pre-IED ([-1000 milliseconds (ms), IED onset]) were analyzed using MEG in 14 focal epilepsy patients (median age = 23 years, range = 7-46 age). Occurrence of local pre-IED oscillations was analyzed using Beamformer Dynamical Imaging of Coherent Sources (DICS) and event-related desynchronization/synchronization (ERD-ERS) maps constructed using cluster-based permutation tests. The development of pre-IED oscillations was characterized using Hilbert transformation. RESULTS: All patients exhibited statistically significant increase in delta (1-4 Hz) and/or theta (4-8 Hz) oscillations pre-IED compared to baseline [-2000 ms, -1000 ms]. Furthermore, all patients exhibited low-frequency power increase up to IED onset. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrated consistently occurring, low-frequency oscillations prior to IED onset. SIGNIFICANCE: As low-frequency activity mediates cortical inhibition, our study demonstrates that a focal inhibition precedes hypersynchronization at IED onset.

Brain structural and functional correlates to defense-related inhibition of muscle sympathetic nerve activity in man.

An individual's blood pressure (BP) reactivity to stress is linked to increased risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease. However, inter- and intra-individual BP variability makes understanding the coupling between stress, BP reactivity, and long-term outcomes challenging. Previous microneurographic studies of sympathetic signaling to muscle vasculature (i.e. muscle sympathetic nerve activity, MSNA) have established a neural predictor for an individual's BP reactivity during short-lasting stress. Unfortunately, this method is invasive, technically demanding, and time-consuming and thus not optimal for widespread use. Potential central nervous system correlates have not been investigated. We used MagnetoEncephaloGraphy and Magnetic Resonance Imaging to search for neural correlates to sympathetic response profiles within the central autonomic network and sensorimotor (Rolandic) regions in 20 healthy young males. The main correlates include (a) Rolandic beta rebound and an anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) response elicited by sudden stimulation and (b) cortical thickness in the ACC. Our findings highlight the involvement of the ACC in reactions to stress entailing peripheral sympathetic responses to environmental stimuli. The Rolandic response furthermore indicates a surprisingly strong link between somatosensory and autonomic processes. Our results thus demonstrate the potential in using non-invasive neuroimaging-based measures of stress-related MSNA reactions, previously assessed only using invasive microneurography.

Neural correlates of impaired response inhibition in the antisaccade task in Parkinson's disease.

Deficits in response inhibition are a central feature of the highly prevalent dysexecutive syndrome found in Parkinson's disease (PD). Such deficits are related to a range of common clinically relevant symptoms including cognitive impairment as well as impulsive and compulsive behaviors. In this study, we explored the cortical dynamics underlying response inhibition during the mental preparation for the antisaccade task by recording magnetoencephalography (MEG) and eye-movements in 21 non-demented patients with early to mid-stage Parkinson's disease and 21 age-matched healthy control participants (HC). During the pre-stimulus preparatory period for antisaccades we observed: Taken together, the results indicate that alterations in pre-stimulus prefrontal alpha and beta activity hinder proactive response inhibition and in turn result in higher error rates and prolonged response latencies in PD.