Leaders laughing in the line of fire: An emotional aperture perspective on leader laughter in response to critical questions.

Leaders are frequently put in the difficult position of repudiating critical questions in front of their followers. To help manage this situation, leaders sometimes express laughter in the hopes that it will "lubricate" their interaction and reduce perceptions that they are aggressive or confrontational with the critical questioner. Ironically, leaders' laughter may backfire by diminishing their apparent friendliness and approachability in the eyes of the witnessing followers. In this article, we employ an emotional aperture perspective to examine two seemingly contradictory theoretical perspectives regarding the potential impact of laughter on the witnessing followers' perception of a leader's warmth and effectiveness. Findings from nine studies across 2,012 adults show that leader laughter-even expressed briefly-bolsters or damages leader effectiveness depending on one important contingency: whether the leader's laughter is shared by the questioner. Unshared laughter reduces leader effectiveness by undermining leaders' apparent warmth, while shared laughter increases leader effectiveness by enhancing leaders' apparent warmth. We discuss implications for the literature on emotion expression, leadership events, and leader perception and influence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Inequalities, barriers, intersectionality, and facilitators of careers of women with disabilities: Themes and future research agenda from a scoping review.

This article examines the career motivations, opportunities, and development of women with disabilities. The increasing number of women in paid work over recent decades has resulted in substantive research on all aspects of women's careers, yet examination of women in some minority groups has received much less attention. Extant research has found that although people with disabilities exhibit strong organisational loyalty and less absenteeism from work, they experience a disability pay gap, and are less likely to be working as managers or directors or in professional occupations. Experiences of prejudice, ableism, and discrimination lead to fear of disclosure, and this may be accentuated in some economies and communities where there is stigma associated with having disabilities, especially mental illness. As estimates suggest that one billion people in the world have a disability, and women may experience a double disadvantage based on their gender and disability and thus have lower levels of employment than men with disabilities and women without disabilities, it is important to understand factors affecting the career motivations, opportunities, and development of this significant proportion of the (potential) workforce. This article presents a rapid review of the relevant literature and identifies key themes including career inequalities for women with disabilities, career barriers for women with disabilities, educational interventions to improve career motivations and opportunities for women with disabilities, facilitators for careers and career development of women with disabilities, and intersectionality of gender, disability, and other identities for women's career development. Limitations of the review include the exclusion of grey literature and certain databases in the search process. Based on the analysis of the themes developed from peer reviewed academic literature examined, suggestions for organisations and governments are presented, and a future research agenda established.

Associations between Work-Family Balance, Parenting Stress, and Marital Conflicts during COVID-19 Pandemic in Singapore.

As part of the "Circuit-breaker" social distancing measure to address COVID-19, the government of Singapore closed schools and workplaces from April to May 2020. Although this helped reduce transmission rates, for working parents, this period had been a challenging experience of working from home while providing care for children full-time. Problems in the work-home interface can have a significant impact on parenting and marital harmony. We analyzed data from 201 married and employed parents in Singapore using online surveys. Latent profile analysis was used to identify profiles of parents' work-family balance (WFB) and spousal and employer support. Linear regression was used to examine links between profiles with parenting stress and marital conflicts. Results indicated three distinct profiles of WFB and social support levels: (a) Strong (43%), (b) Moderate (38%), and (c) Poor (19%). Mothers were more likely than fathers to be in the Moderate and Poor profiles. One key finding is that profiles characterized by poorer WFB were found to be linked with higher parenting stress and increased marital conflicts. There are important variations in parents' abilities to balance work and family and levels of social support received. Lock-downs can affect parenting and marital harmony especially for parents with poor WFB and weak social support. Any attention given to supporting working parents is vital and urgent to counter any problems in the work-family interface during a lockdown.

Suicide among transport industry workers: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVES: Working in high-stress and male-dominated occupations is associated with an elevated risk of suicide. The current study sought to conduct the first systematic literature review and meta-analysis aimed at determining suicide risk across the diverse, high pressure and male-dominated transport industry (commercial aviation, merchant seafaring, transit/driving) as compared to the general/employed population. METHODS: Searches of PubMed/Medline, Scopus and PsycINFO databases were conducted without date restriction until March 2021. Studies were included if they were written in English, were peer reviewed, and presented primary observational research data. Studies referring exclusively to suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, self-harm, and/or accidents were excluded. RESULTS: Following deletion of duplicates and non-English titles, a total of 4201 titles/abstracts were screened and 92 full-texts were read against inclusion/exclusion criteria. The final included sample consisted of 23 articles (16 used for meta-analysis). Results from the meta-analysis indicated that transport workers had a significantly elevated risk for suicide as compared to the general/employed population. Results were consistent across sensitivity analyses, and there was some variation across subgroup analyses. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, we found transport workers had a significantly higher risk for suicide than the general/employed population, and this appeared to be driven by the association for those working in merchant seafaring/maritime occupations. The findings are discussed in relation to an identified need for the development, implementation, and evaluation of tailored workplace suicide prevention strategies for transport industry workers.

How does family support facilitate job satisfaction? Investigating the chain mediating effects of work-family enrichment and job-related well-being.

While a direct relationship between family support and job satisfaction has received empirical support, few work-family studies have examined how family support leads to job satisfaction. Drawing on the work-home resources model, we investigate the chain mediating roles of work-to-family enrichment (WFE), family-to-work enrichment (FWE), and job-related well-being on the relationship between family support and job satisfaction. Based on data collected from 439 social workers across Australia, structural equation modeling results revealed that the chain mediating effects of WFE and job-related well-being were supported. Our findings emphasize the important combination of work-family enrichment and job-related well-being in helping employees to harness support from their family members to achieve job satisfaction. We discuss both the theoretical and practical implications of the WFE, FWE, and job-related well-being mechanisms underlying the family support-job satisfaction relationship.

Contemporary Knowledge Workers and the Boundaryless Work-Life Interface: Implications for the Human Resource Management of the Knowledge Workforce.

In the last decade, knowledge workers have seen tremendous change in ways of working and living, driven by proliferating mobile communication technologies, the rise of dual-income couples, shifting expectations of ideal motherhood and involved fatherhood, and the rise of flexible working arrangements. Drawing on 54 interviews with Australian knowledge workers in the information technology sector, we argue that the interface between work and life is now blurred and boundaryless for knowledge workers. By this, we mean that knowledge workers are empowered and enslaved by mobile devices that bring work into the home, and family into the workplace. Knowledge workers take advantage of flexible working to craft unique, personal arrangements to suit their work, family, personal and community pursuits. They choose where and when to work, often interweaving the work domain and the home-family domain multiple times per day. Teleworkers, for example, attain rapid boundary transitions rending the work-home boundary, thus making their experience of the work-life interface boundaryless.