Lucia Ratiu | Universitatea Babeș Bolyai (original) (raw)
Papers by Lucia Ratiu
Psihologia resurselor umane, Aug 18, 2015
Coaching is now a common practice for human development and change and, especially an instrument ... more Coaching is now a common practice for human development and change and, especially an instrument for organizational development. Although widely used, coaching does not have a precise scientific framework, as it is a field in the theoretical construction phase. This article provides a critical review of studies on coaching in order to summarize the theoretical models which support research, to identify the results in this field, and to present the mechanisms for change and efficiency in coaching. The results reported are still insufficient to conclude on the relationship between certain factors and the benefits of coaching. Finally future research directions are presented to clarify the components and the purpose of the coaching process.
Psihologia resurselor umane, Dec 8, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought dramatic changes both for work and employees' personal and fami... more The COVID-19 pandemic has brought dramatic changes both for work and employees' personal and family life domains. In this context, this research investigates the mediating role of the work-family conflict in the relationship between technostress creators (techno-overload and techno-invasion) and psychological well-being. We conducted a survey of 217 employees and the results indicated that the work-family conflict fully mediated the relationship between technooverload and psychological well-being, thus strongly affecting the psychological well-being of employees in the context of exposure to the stress generated by ICTs overload. Similar results were identified regarding the mediating role of work-family conflict in the relationship between techno-invasion and psychological well-being. The findings suggest the need to increase the coping capacity of employees with technostress and their psychological well-being by reducing the work-family conflict and technostress.
Psihologia resurselor umane, May 16, 2023
Death awareness in the military context has received little research attention despite the high e... more Death awareness in the military context has received little research attention despite the high exposure of military employees to death. Drawing on Terror Management Theory (TMT), Meaning Management Theory (MMT), and Conservation of Resources Theory (COR), this study investigated the impact of death anxiety on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) and counterproductive work behaviors (CWB) through meaningful work (MW). It also investigated the moderating role of type of profession (military vs. non-military) and death reflection on the relationship between death anxiety, on one hand, and OCB and CWB, on the other hand. Data were collected through self-reports from 177 employees from an Air Force military organization (N = 81) as well as non-military professions (N = 96) using a time-lagged research design. The most obvious finding was the positive relationship between meaningful work and OCB. Our data did not provide empirical support for the other hypotheses developed. The implications of these findings are presented and future research directions are proposed.
Journal of Rational-emotive & Cognitive-behavior Therapy, Sep 11, 2018
While coaching has been conceived as a new managerial strategy and effective leadership initiativ... more While coaching has been conceived as a new managerial strategy and effective leadership initiative in organizations, the concept of 'manager as coach' has gained considerably popularity. In this context, the interest for reliable and valid tools to assess managers' coaching skills increased among practitioners and organizations. This paper provides additional analyses of an instrument assessing managers' coaching skills in business settings and examines a theoretical model in identifying manager coaching skills from two informational sources, namely self-report and other-report. This work does not only continue the development of the base of empirical research on managerial coaching, but also offers some guidelines for further testing and development of valid and reliable instruments for the assessment and understanding of managers' coaching skills.
Psihologia Resurselor Umane, 2020
Coaching is now a common practice for human development and change and, especially aninstrument f... more Coaching is now a common practice for human development and change and, especially aninstrument for organizational development. Although widely used, coaching does not have aprecise scientific framework, as it is a field in the theoretical construction phase. This articleprovides a critical review of studies on coaching in order to summarize the theoretical modelswhich support research, to identify the results in this field, and to present the mechanisms forchange and efficiency in coaching. The results reported are still insufficient to conclude on therelationship between certain factors and the benefits of coaching. Finally future researchdirections are presented to clarify the components and the purpose of the coaching process.
Psihologia resurselor umane, Aug 18, 2015
Cognition, Brain, Behavior. An interdisciplinary journal
This study investigates the mechanisms underlying the relationship between intrateam learning beh... more This study investigates the mechanisms underlying the relationship between intrateam learning behaviors and team performance in student project teams in terms of contribution conflict as an antecedent of the team shared mental model on team tasks. The data collected from a sample of 201 Romanian student teams show that only team shared mental model on team tasks totally mediates the relationship between intrateam learning behaviors and team performance. Moreover, contribution conflict and team shared mental model on team tasks taken together fully mediate the relationship between intrateam learning behaviors and team performance. We conclude our study by suggesting future research on the main topic of team learning and team effectiveness.
Police Practice and Research, 2020
The globalisation of crime means there is an increasingly vital need for effective sharing of kno... more The globalisation of crime means there is an increasingly vital need for effective sharing of knowledge by police organisations across international borders. However, identifying the complexities and challenges of this aspect of international collaboration has been relatively neglected in previous research. The research reported in this paper therefore set out to identify the major barriers and facilitators of international knowledge sharing. Research teams in ten European countries produced ten case studies of knowledge sharing across borders, either involving direct cooperation between police forces in different countries or through international agencies such as CEPOL or INTERPOL. The integrative findings showed that the major influences on knowledge sharing could be theoretically categorised in terms of organisational factors (e.g. technological and staff capabilities), inter-organisational factors (e.g. quality of relationships, shared visions and systems), inter-country factors (e.g. bilateral conventions, legislation) and knowledge characteristics (e.g. clarity, legal sensitivity). Practical implications include standardising technology systems across countries, improving interorganisational trust through exchanges and physical co-working, developing police members' knowledge and skills with regards to collaborative working and creating joint agreements and visions. Research implications highlighted the need to test the findings in non-European contexts and to comparatively focus on specific types of collaboration.
Healthcare, 2021
Our study evaluates the role of exposure to COVID-19 messaging in negativity towards COVID-19 and... more Our study evaluates the role of exposure to COVID-19 messaging in negativity towards COVID-19 and the intentions to engage in protective behaviors. Building on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), we derive a mediation model and test it in a sample of 737 participants (556 Romanians and 181 Kazakhs). The exposure to general information concerning COVID-19 positively predicts negative attitudes, negative emotions and the emergence of subjective norms in relation to COVID-19, as well as the likelihood of engaging in protective behavioral intentions. The exposure to humoristic communication, however, diluted the positive association between exposure to general information and negative attitudes, as well as negative emotions. The results support the overall predictions of the TPB and report positive associations between negative attitudes towards COVID-19, subjective norms and behavioral control on the one hand, and protective behavioral intentions on the other. Negative emotions signi...
Psihologia Resurselor Umane, 2020
There is a large body of literature devoted to factors that shape performance in organizations. A... more There is a large body of literature devoted to factors that shape performance in organizations. Although much of this literature focuses on the relationships between job demands, job resources and performance, Bakker and his colleagues (2014; 2018) have recently drawn attention to self-undermining effects that can add support for a deeper understanding of such a relationship. The following contribution explores self-undermining related to exhaustion at work and its mediating role in the perception of three types of job demands in a sample of employees working in IT companies. More specifically, the paper draws on the concept of self-undermining to reflect on how it activates a loss cycle of job demands and potential negative reactions at work. We argue that (i) exhaustion has an indirect effect on the perception of job demands through self-undermining; and so on referring to each dimension of job demands: (ii) exhaustion has an indirect effect on the perception of workload through s...
Current Psychology, 2021
Our study investigates several antecedents and consequences of negative emotional reactions to th... more Our study investigates several antecedents and consequences of negative emotional reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic in a cross-national sample of 737 participants. Our results show that COVID-19 anxiety and negative mood are positively predicted by death anxiety and the use in communication of general COVID-19 information. Death reflection reduces negative mood in relation to COVID-19 and attenuates the positive association between death anxiety on the one hand and the negative mood and anxiety in relation to COVID-19 on the other hand. The use of humoristic information about COVID-19 reduces anxiety and social distance towards people infected with COVID-19 and also attenuates the positive association between the use in communication of general COVID-19 information and negative mood in relation to COVID-19. Our results also show that the association between death anxiety and social distance towards those infected with COVID-19 is mediated by anxiety and negative mood in relation to COVID-19. Finally, the association between the use of COVID-19 information in interpersonal communication and social distance is mediated by anxiety and negative mood in relation to COVID-19. The study thus reveals specific insights for tailored interventions to reduce negativity towards people infected with COVID-19.
Administrative Sciences, 2019
Team rivalry has been mostly studied in competition settings, between competing individuals or te... more Team rivalry has been mostly studied in competition settings, between competing individuals or teams, and has been linked to positive performance outcomes due to its impact on increasing motivation. However, rivalry is not limited to such contexts, it can also occur in collaborative settings, among team members working on a collaborative task. We argue that in such settings rivalry in teams has a negative impact on team performance, due to its negative impact on team learning behaviors. We employed a time-lagged, survey-based design with a sample of 176 students (55 teams) to investigate the relationship between rivalry and team performance through team learning behaviors. Our results based on simple mediation analyses show that, for our sample, rivalry in teams was not in fact negatively correlated to learning behaviors. Furthermore, we did not find support for the hypothesized positive relationship between learning behaviors and team performance, nor for the partial mediation mode...
Small Group Research, 2019
This study explores the effects of group size, group composition, and group argument frequency on... more This study explores the effects of group size, group composition, and group argument frequency on group cognitive complexity (GCC). We evaluated a sample of 509 students organized into 106 groups who participated in a group cognitive mapping activity. As hypothesized, we found that group argumentation has an inverted U-shaped association with GCC. Group member familiarity did not moderate this relationship. We also found that task-related arguments mediate the relationships between group size and gender diversity on one hand, and GCC, on the other. Moreover, we found that optimal group-level cognitive benefits were observed in group discussions in which the ratio between task-related and nontask-related group arguments was 3 to 1. The discussion focuses on the practical and theoretical implications of these findings.
Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 2015
Managerial coaching is currently seen as an effective leadership practice facilitating learning p... more Managerial coaching is currently seen as an effective leadership practice facilitating learning process of the employees for performing better and being more effective in organizations. This article builds on recent research on the importance of the managerial coaching by empirically investigating the effects of a cognitive-behavioral coaching programme over mid-level managers. Due to the similarities between managerial coaching behaviors and transformational leadership behaviors, we have adopted the transformational leadership model as theoretical framework for evaluating management behaviors. The study used a pre-posttest approach to test the effects of the coaching program especially designed for 23 mid-level managers having as responsibility the supervision of production teams in a multinational organization. The major aims of the program consisted of: developing managerial coaching skills, assertive communication skills, motivation of subordinates. Overall, the analysis of results elicited an increase of scores in the leadership behavior dimensions measured by multifactor leadership questionnaire that are part of the managerial coaching skills. Besides, the effectiveness perceived as an indicator of performance was significantly higher upon completion of the coaching program. Findings suggest that coaching, as a professional development method, has great potential to contribute to the managerial behaviors that facilitate development at subordinate level, as they are captured by some transformational and transactional scales. Such knowledge can be informative for practitioners as well in developing effective managers and leaders and understanding and managing employee attitudes and behaviors in organizations.
In this report we present the result from interviews and document analyses of knowledge sharing w... more In this report we present the result from interviews and document analyses of knowledge sharing within police organisations and with three other stakeholders. A new diagnostic tool designed specifically for police organisations is presented in this report.
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2012
The purpose of this research was to provide a better understanding of police performance, more sp... more The purpose of this research was to provide a better understanding of police performance, more specific, to examine how police officers perceive their professional performance and performance management procedures, to find out possible differences between hierarchical levels and to identify factors that could explain these differences. 40 police employees were interviewed individually and 29 of them provided the quantitative data also. The results suggested that, although the police force was passing through a very dynamic and pressing period, levels of professional performance were kept at the highest level, in the perception of its employees, due to performance management procedures.
Psihologia resurselor umane, Aug 18, 2015
Coaching is now a common practice for human development and change and, especially an instrument ... more Coaching is now a common practice for human development and change and, especially an instrument for organizational development. Although widely used, coaching does not have a precise scientific framework, as it is a field in the theoretical construction phase. This article provides a critical review of studies on coaching in order to summarize the theoretical models which support research, to identify the results in this field, and to present the mechanisms for change and efficiency in coaching. The results reported are still insufficient to conclude on the relationship between certain factors and the benefits of coaching. Finally future research directions are presented to clarify the components and the purpose of the coaching process.
Psihologia resurselor umane, Dec 8, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought dramatic changes both for work and employees' personal and fami... more The COVID-19 pandemic has brought dramatic changes both for work and employees' personal and family life domains. In this context, this research investigates the mediating role of the work-family conflict in the relationship between technostress creators (techno-overload and techno-invasion) and psychological well-being. We conducted a survey of 217 employees and the results indicated that the work-family conflict fully mediated the relationship between technooverload and psychological well-being, thus strongly affecting the psychological well-being of employees in the context of exposure to the stress generated by ICTs overload. Similar results were identified regarding the mediating role of work-family conflict in the relationship between techno-invasion and psychological well-being. The findings suggest the need to increase the coping capacity of employees with technostress and their psychological well-being by reducing the work-family conflict and technostress.
Psihologia resurselor umane, May 16, 2023
Death awareness in the military context has received little research attention despite the high e... more Death awareness in the military context has received little research attention despite the high exposure of military employees to death. Drawing on Terror Management Theory (TMT), Meaning Management Theory (MMT), and Conservation of Resources Theory (COR), this study investigated the impact of death anxiety on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) and counterproductive work behaviors (CWB) through meaningful work (MW). It also investigated the moderating role of type of profession (military vs. non-military) and death reflection on the relationship between death anxiety, on one hand, and OCB and CWB, on the other hand. Data were collected through self-reports from 177 employees from an Air Force military organization (N = 81) as well as non-military professions (N = 96) using a time-lagged research design. The most obvious finding was the positive relationship between meaningful work and OCB. Our data did not provide empirical support for the other hypotheses developed. The implications of these findings are presented and future research directions are proposed.
Journal of Rational-emotive & Cognitive-behavior Therapy, Sep 11, 2018
While coaching has been conceived as a new managerial strategy and effective leadership initiativ... more While coaching has been conceived as a new managerial strategy and effective leadership initiative in organizations, the concept of 'manager as coach' has gained considerably popularity. In this context, the interest for reliable and valid tools to assess managers' coaching skills increased among practitioners and organizations. This paper provides additional analyses of an instrument assessing managers' coaching skills in business settings and examines a theoretical model in identifying manager coaching skills from two informational sources, namely self-report and other-report. This work does not only continue the development of the base of empirical research on managerial coaching, but also offers some guidelines for further testing and development of valid and reliable instruments for the assessment and understanding of managers' coaching skills.
Psihologia Resurselor Umane, 2020
Coaching is now a common practice for human development and change and, especially aninstrument f... more Coaching is now a common practice for human development and change and, especially aninstrument for organizational development. Although widely used, coaching does not have aprecise scientific framework, as it is a field in the theoretical construction phase. This articleprovides a critical review of studies on coaching in order to summarize the theoretical modelswhich support research, to identify the results in this field, and to present the mechanisms forchange and efficiency in coaching. The results reported are still insufficient to conclude on therelationship between certain factors and the benefits of coaching. Finally future researchdirections are presented to clarify the components and the purpose of the coaching process.
Psihologia resurselor umane, Aug 18, 2015
Cognition, Brain, Behavior. An interdisciplinary journal
This study investigates the mechanisms underlying the relationship between intrateam learning beh... more This study investigates the mechanisms underlying the relationship between intrateam learning behaviors and team performance in student project teams in terms of contribution conflict as an antecedent of the team shared mental model on team tasks. The data collected from a sample of 201 Romanian student teams show that only team shared mental model on team tasks totally mediates the relationship between intrateam learning behaviors and team performance. Moreover, contribution conflict and team shared mental model on team tasks taken together fully mediate the relationship between intrateam learning behaviors and team performance. We conclude our study by suggesting future research on the main topic of team learning and team effectiveness.
Police Practice and Research, 2020
The globalisation of crime means there is an increasingly vital need for effective sharing of kno... more The globalisation of crime means there is an increasingly vital need for effective sharing of knowledge by police organisations across international borders. However, identifying the complexities and challenges of this aspect of international collaboration has been relatively neglected in previous research. The research reported in this paper therefore set out to identify the major barriers and facilitators of international knowledge sharing. Research teams in ten European countries produced ten case studies of knowledge sharing across borders, either involving direct cooperation between police forces in different countries or through international agencies such as CEPOL or INTERPOL. The integrative findings showed that the major influences on knowledge sharing could be theoretically categorised in terms of organisational factors (e.g. technological and staff capabilities), inter-organisational factors (e.g. quality of relationships, shared visions and systems), inter-country factors (e.g. bilateral conventions, legislation) and knowledge characteristics (e.g. clarity, legal sensitivity). Practical implications include standardising technology systems across countries, improving interorganisational trust through exchanges and physical co-working, developing police members' knowledge and skills with regards to collaborative working and creating joint agreements and visions. Research implications highlighted the need to test the findings in non-European contexts and to comparatively focus on specific types of collaboration.
Healthcare, 2021
Our study evaluates the role of exposure to COVID-19 messaging in negativity towards COVID-19 and... more Our study evaluates the role of exposure to COVID-19 messaging in negativity towards COVID-19 and the intentions to engage in protective behaviors. Building on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), we derive a mediation model and test it in a sample of 737 participants (556 Romanians and 181 Kazakhs). The exposure to general information concerning COVID-19 positively predicts negative attitudes, negative emotions and the emergence of subjective norms in relation to COVID-19, as well as the likelihood of engaging in protective behavioral intentions. The exposure to humoristic communication, however, diluted the positive association between exposure to general information and negative attitudes, as well as negative emotions. The results support the overall predictions of the TPB and report positive associations between negative attitudes towards COVID-19, subjective norms and behavioral control on the one hand, and protective behavioral intentions on the other. Negative emotions signi...
Psihologia Resurselor Umane, 2020
There is a large body of literature devoted to factors that shape performance in organizations. A... more There is a large body of literature devoted to factors that shape performance in organizations. Although much of this literature focuses on the relationships between job demands, job resources and performance, Bakker and his colleagues (2014; 2018) have recently drawn attention to self-undermining effects that can add support for a deeper understanding of such a relationship. The following contribution explores self-undermining related to exhaustion at work and its mediating role in the perception of three types of job demands in a sample of employees working in IT companies. More specifically, the paper draws on the concept of self-undermining to reflect on how it activates a loss cycle of job demands and potential negative reactions at work. We argue that (i) exhaustion has an indirect effect on the perception of job demands through self-undermining; and so on referring to each dimension of job demands: (ii) exhaustion has an indirect effect on the perception of workload through s...
Current Psychology, 2021
Our study investigates several antecedents and consequences of negative emotional reactions to th... more Our study investigates several antecedents and consequences of negative emotional reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic in a cross-national sample of 737 participants. Our results show that COVID-19 anxiety and negative mood are positively predicted by death anxiety and the use in communication of general COVID-19 information. Death reflection reduces negative mood in relation to COVID-19 and attenuates the positive association between death anxiety on the one hand and the negative mood and anxiety in relation to COVID-19 on the other hand. The use of humoristic information about COVID-19 reduces anxiety and social distance towards people infected with COVID-19 and also attenuates the positive association between the use in communication of general COVID-19 information and negative mood in relation to COVID-19. Our results also show that the association between death anxiety and social distance towards those infected with COVID-19 is mediated by anxiety and negative mood in relation to COVID-19. Finally, the association between the use of COVID-19 information in interpersonal communication and social distance is mediated by anxiety and negative mood in relation to COVID-19. The study thus reveals specific insights for tailored interventions to reduce negativity towards people infected with COVID-19.
Administrative Sciences, 2019
Team rivalry has been mostly studied in competition settings, between competing individuals or te... more Team rivalry has been mostly studied in competition settings, between competing individuals or teams, and has been linked to positive performance outcomes due to its impact on increasing motivation. However, rivalry is not limited to such contexts, it can also occur in collaborative settings, among team members working on a collaborative task. We argue that in such settings rivalry in teams has a negative impact on team performance, due to its negative impact on team learning behaviors. We employed a time-lagged, survey-based design with a sample of 176 students (55 teams) to investigate the relationship between rivalry and team performance through team learning behaviors. Our results based on simple mediation analyses show that, for our sample, rivalry in teams was not in fact negatively correlated to learning behaviors. Furthermore, we did not find support for the hypothesized positive relationship between learning behaviors and team performance, nor for the partial mediation mode...
Small Group Research, 2019
This study explores the effects of group size, group composition, and group argument frequency on... more This study explores the effects of group size, group composition, and group argument frequency on group cognitive complexity (GCC). We evaluated a sample of 509 students organized into 106 groups who participated in a group cognitive mapping activity. As hypothesized, we found that group argumentation has an inverted U-shaped association with GCC. Group member familiarity did not moderate this relationship. We also found that task-related arguments mediate the relationships between group size and gender diversity on one hand, and GCC, on the other. Moreover, we found that optimal group-level cognitive benefits were observed in group discussions in which the ratio between task-related and nontask-related group arguments was 3 to 1. The discussion focuses on the practical and theoretical implications of these findings.
Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 2015
Managerial coaching is currently seen as an effective leadership practice facilitating learning p... more Managerial coaching is currently seen as an effective leadership practice facilitating learning process of the employees for performing better and being more effective in organizations. This article builds on recent research on the importance of the managerial coaching by empirically investigating the effects of a cognitive-behavioral coaching programme over mid-level managers. Due to the similarities between managerial coaching behaviors and transformational leadership behaviors, we have adopted the transformational leadership model as theoretical framework for evaluating management behaviors. The study used a pre-posttest approach to test the effects of the coaching program especially designed for 23 mid-level managers having as responsibility the supervision of production teams in a multinational organization. The major aims of the program consisted of: developing managerial coaching skills, assertive communication skills, motivation of subordinates. Overall, the analysis of results elicited an increase of scores in the leadership behavior dimensions measured by multifactor leadership questionnaire that are part of the managerial coaching skills. Besides, the effectiveness perceived as an indicator of performance was significantly higher upon completion of the coaching program. Findings suggest that coaching, as a professional development method, has great potential to contribute to the managerial behaviors that facilitate development at subordinate level, as they are captured by some transformational and transactional scales. Such knowledge can be informative for practitioners as well in developing effective managers and leaders and understanding and managing employee attitudes and behaviors in organizations.
In this report we present the result from interviews and document analyses of knowledge sharing w... more In this report we present the result from interviews and document analyses of knowledge sharing within police organisations and with three other stakeholders. A new diagnostic tool designed specifically for police organisations is presented in this report.
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2012
The purpose of this research was to provide a better understanding of police performance, more sp... more The purpose of this research was to provide a better understanding of police performance, more specific, to examine how police officers perceive their professional performance and performance management procedures, to find out possible differences between hierarchical levels and to identify factors that could explain these differences. 40 police employees were interviewed individually and 29 of them provided the quantitative data also. The results suggested that, although the police force was passing through a very dynamic and pressing period, levels of professional performance were kept at the highest level, in the perception of its employees, due to performance management procedures.