Digital Transformation of Adaptation and Personnel Involvement Management After the Global Pandemic

The problem that is described in the article has become one of the most crucial and important during first pandemic months of 2020. All new working conditions were a tough challenge for companies that should change all their process to keep the business alive. But even in that crisis times companies have to hire the new personnel and especially crucial not only hire but to adapt people to work both in new company and new remote or partly remote conditions. In this article the manager’s adaptation and involvement management process is reviewed from the point of view of restricted communication methods. The implementation of project management theory approach is described as a tool that could improve and secure the adaptation aspect of human resource management.

The Underlying Process of Prosocial Behavior Among Soldiers: A Terror Management Theory Perspective

The mortality salience (MS) hypothesis postulates that anxiety elicited by mortality awareness leads people to develop negative emotions toward those who hold values inconsistent with their worldview faith. We explored this hypothesis in a sample of 76 Israeli combat soldiers, who were asked to reflect on either their mortality or dental pain. Subsequently, participants reported their motivation to help a father in need who was either an Arab (outgroup) or a Jewish Israeli (ingroup), as well as their perceptions of threat by Arab Israelis. Regression analysis indicated that mortality reminders intensified soldiers’ perception of threat by the outgroup, leading to an increased desire to assist a Jewish-Israeli father, and a decreased motivation to help an Arab-Israeli one. The findings demonstrate the pronounced effects of MS on soldiers involved in frequent combat actions in terms of evoking negative emotions leading to reluctance to help unarmed civilian outgroup members. Recommendations for soldiers’ pre-deployment psychoeducation sessions are provided.

Managing the terror of publication bias: A comprehensive p-curve analysis of the Terror Management Theory literature

A key prediction of Terror Management Theory is that people affirm their cultural worldview after they are reminded of death. This mortality salience (MS) hypothesis has been widely explored, yet the presence of questionable research practices may impact the replicability of this literature. We assess the evidential value of the MS hypothesis by conducting a pre-registered p-curve analysis of 860 published studies. Our results suggest that there are nonzero effects in this literature and that power is larger for studies conducted with multiple delays between the independent and dependent variables, for studies that test for main effects in comparison to those that test for interactions, and for studies conducted more recently. However, since the estimated average power of MS studies is 26%, direct replications are unlikely to succeed. We recommend researchers consider our evidence when planning their samples, and that they anticipate smaller effects by increasing their sample sizes.

Do Materialistic Consumers Buy More During the COVID-19 Pandemic?

This study investigates the mediated moderating relationship of self-concept clarity, materialism, and social consumption motivation in the context of Covid-19 pandemic based on the terror management theory. The findings suggest that Malaysian consumers have high self-concept clarity about their materialistic orientation. This materialistic orientation may be of hedonistic-utilitarian nature that is internally directed for self-satisfaction and not exclusively directed externally in material consumption to portray an image to others. Furthermore, this study posits that cultural factors like collectivism and uncertainty avoidance delimits the applicability of terror management theory in Malaysia, suggesting that the development of the theory draw heavily from Western ideology of individualism not directly relevant in the Asian context. Finally, this study offers an understanding of the self-concept clarity from the Asian context, addressing the the appeal by Dunlop (2017) to investigate the construct of self-concept clarity particularly in non-Western context.

Sin and Missing the Mark in Management: A Lukan Perspective

This paper draws on biblical writings to contribute to our understanding of sin, a catchphrase commonly used in everyday discourse and the scholarly literature with little reference to its underlying meaning. A biblical understanding of “sin” draws attention to whether behaviors are consistent with religious teachings and/or with the will of God. This study develops a Lukan understanding of sin and management—grounded in the socio-economic context in which the biblical text was written—that calls for the development of management theory and practices that liberate relationships (rather than promote patron-client relationships), de-marginalize the poor and oppressed (rather than widen gaps between rich and poor), promote positive deviance (rather than stigmatize diversity), provide fresh ways of thinking (rather than perpetuate the status quo), and facilitate connection to the spiritual (rather than reject spirituality). The conclusion describes practical examples and implications associated with the Lukan approach.

Perceived Similarity of the Self to Animals, Creativity, and Anxiety—: A Terror Management Analysis

According to terror management theory, humans avoid death anxiety by embedding themselves within cultural worldviews that allow them to perceive themselves as more than mortal animals. However, individuals also differ in their trait-like tendency to dissociate from other animals. In six studies, we tested whether individuals who perceive themselves as more similar to animals (high-perceived similarity of the self to animals [PSSA]) invest more in creativity for terror management than low-PSSA individuals, but are also more vulnerable to experiencing anxiety and existential concerns. Supporting our hypotheses, PSSA was associated with investment in creativity and arts, especially after death primes (Studies 3 and 4). High-PSSA individuals had heightened trait anxiety and death-thought accessibility (Studies 5 and 6), and showed increased state anxiety following a negative feedback about their creativity (Study 6). Findings highlight the role of PSSA as a personality variable predicting human motivation and emotion.

The relationship between COVID-19-induced death thoughts and depression during a national lockdown

Evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic has increased rates of depression worldwide. Many factors have been identified to relate to this increase depression, but according to Terror Management Theory, the heightened awareness of death during the pandemic has the potential to increase depression for those with low self-esteem. This hypothesis was examined in a U.K. sample during the first national lockdown where depression, self-esteem and death-thought accessibility (DTA) were measured, and a COVID Index (COVID-19 cases and deaths on date of participation) was produced. The COVID Index was positively related to DTA. Additionally, DTA mediated the relationship between the COVID Index and depression scores when participants had low levels of self-esteem. These findings suggest that heightened existential concerns may be a neglected factor increasing depression during the pandemic.

Research on the Evaluation Model of Educational Management Theory Based on Data Mining from the Perspective of Neural Network

The improvement of the theoretical quality of education management is an indispensable part of a country’s education modernization. However, the existing research on the evaluation of educational management theory is still relatively small, and there is a lack of scientific educational management theory evaluation model. Designing a comprehensive and accurate educational management theory evaluation model has important theoretical value and practical significance. It is possible to process a lot of information in parallel using the artificial neural network method. By optimizing the artificial neural network, data mining of characteristic information data can be realized. Therefore, this paper uses neural network to conduct data mining on education management theory and conduct a comprehensive system evaluation of education management theory. At the same time, the traditional BP algorithm is improved. To train a neural network with large amounts of data, the BP algorithm uses a lot of gradient calculation, which takes a long time and often results in training going to extremes in the local area. BP neural networks are trained using the particle swarm optimization algorithm, and the backward propagation process in the BP algorithm is replaced with particle swarm iteration. To improve algorithm execution efficiency and speed up neural network training, a large number of gradient operations can be avoided. This can help overcome the limitations of the BP algorithm when dealing with large amounts of data. The improved BP algorithm is applied to the evaluation system of education management theory, and the quality evaluation prediction of management education theory is realized.