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This chapter provides an overview of research on dispositional supervisor characteristics as well as specific individual-level antecedents, correlates, boundary conditions and processes of supervisors who display hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviours towards their followers (i.e., abusive supervision). More specifically, empirical research findings on the relationships between specific supervisor characteristics and subordinate-rated perceptions of abusive supervisor behaviours are summarized and critically discussed. To better understand what contributes to abusive supervision, the moderating role of follower characteristics and the greater organizational context are taken into account as well. The chapter closes with an integrated process model of abusive supervision, an outlook and suggestions for future research.

When a crisis occurs, do corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities protect organizational reputation by buffering negative effects or do CSR activities intensify negative effects, potentially leading to a worse reputation compared to if the organization had no prior CSR engagement? The authors hypothesize that if a crisis emerges in a domain aligned with an organization’s CSR initiatives (crisis-congruent CSR) backfire effects would arise, adversely affecting the organization’s reputation. Conversely, in cases of incongruence, where the crisis emerges in a domain not aligned with an organization’s previous CSR involvement, a buffering effect would manifest, protecting the organization’s reputation.

The authors conducted an experiment with a 3 (crisis-congruent, crisis-incongruent, and no CSR activities) × 2 (repeated measures) mixed factorial design. In the first scenario, no information was provided concerning a company’s social commitment. Alternatively, participants were exposed to an article illustrating the company’s dedication either to healthcare (crisis-incongruent commitment) or to combating sexism (crisis-congruent commitment). Afterward, participants were presented with a newspaper article addressing allegations of sexism against the company’s CEO.

The findings demonstrate that prior CSR activities have the potential both to serve as a buffer and to cause backfire effects in times of crisis. Domain congruence is the decisive moderator of these effects: Crisis-incongruent CSR activities acted as a buffer, crisis-congruent CSR activities “backfired” and led to more negative perceptions of the company’s reputation.

The study directly contributes to the understanding of CSR effects in crisis communication, while also addressing the often paradoxical and contradictory findings of prior studies.

This chapter puts practices of everyday violence at the center of its analysis of colonial order. It examines the micro-mechanisms and manifold forms of threatening and hurting people. While a quotidian part of colonial life, such practices – accepted and normal within the colonial moral economy – are not normally seen as state actions. However, they reveal the workings of a powerful state: one that was built in an improvised fashion by low-level state representatives.

Based on an analysis of everyday police work in German Southwest Africa, this chapter offers a theoretical reframing of the colonial state that aims to provincialize the modern European state. It shifts the perspective away from the legal and institutional aspirations and structures of the state, instead turning attention to less rationalized processes: the idiosyncratic, makeshift, affective procedures of low-ranking officials. On this plane, everyday violence played a key role in generating a new social order. Ultimately, it had constructive effects which were a fundamental and inherent part of the colonial state’s power.

If stranded on a desert island, which ten sources would I pick to take with me to form a core reference collection? As I pondered Jim Rettig's question, my reading of its meaning shifted. Initially I thought of the Congressional Record, New York Times on microfilm, and Encyclopaedia Britannica 3 — the Congressional Record because of its mirroring of contemporary America's political life with all of its unin‐tentional humor, hokey homiletics, wealth of information and insight into the workings of government; the New York Times for retrospective news coverage and because for me New York City will always be the world capital of culture and intellectual ferment; and EB 3 because it is the most generously endowed encyclopedia, and the lack of an efficient key to its content would be a minor failing in the languid, sultry, South Seas setting I had established in my mind.