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The idea of economic peace is a “counterpoint” to a warlike view of the economy. Viewing things in terms of economic peace makes it possible to develop a different economic anthropology. The idea of economic peace is used to think about a fundamental revision of the relationships to self and between actors. It sits at the intersection of peace studies, social and cognitive psychology, institutional conventionalist approaches, postmodernist philosophy and sinology. By employing the inchoate concept of economic peace, this article explores the opportunity to extend and deepen the relationship between individual and collective responsibility. The article describes individual and collective practices or avenues which could be useful when reacting to complex situations.

Au cours des dernières années, bon nombre d’interventions ont été implantées dans les organisations afin d’aider les employés à cultiver leur pleine conscience. Dans cet article, nous mettons en lumière les dangers liés à l’instrumentalisation de la pleine conscience en milieu de travail et déplorons le fait que les interventions soient souvent mises en place, non pas pour favoriser l’épanouissement et la qualité de vie des employés, mais plutôt pour optimiser le rendement et la motivation de ces derniers. Nous proposons également certaines pistes d’intervention afin que ces interventions prometteuses soient enseignées dans les organisations de manière plus conséquentes avec leurs objectifs.

Introduction Organizations which engage in the promotion of well-being are likely to prevent mental health issues in workers. Mindfulness-based interventions offer new perspectives to increase well-being at work. However, the issue of finding time and framework to practice at work is important. Recent studies suggested that informal mindfulness practices could be useful in reducing stress and increasing well-being. Objective The present study aimed to study how the duration and type of mindfulness practice may enhance employees’ well-being. Method A multi-method (qualitative and quantitative), controlled pre/post design study (N = 72) was conducted to collect data about the type of preferred mindfulness practices used during an 8-week MBSR program, and to analyse the effects of the program on employees’ well-being. Number of sessions, number of days of practice, and practice time per day were used as moderators. Results Participants reported a preferential use of brief, informal practices. Employees who followed the MBSR program reported higher levels of well-being compared to the wait-list control group (η2 = .194). Those who preferentially used informal practices showed the same increase in well-being as those who reported preferentially using formal practices. The number of days of practice did not moderate the effect of the intervention on well-being. Conclusion Brief and informal mindfulness practices appear to be a promising means of increasing well-being in everyday life. Further research is needed to compare an 8-week mainly informal mindfulness-based program to a classical MBSR program to identify whether informal practices may be sufficient to increasing employees’ well-being.

Resume Introduction La mindfulness, ou pleine conscience, est une competence psychologique qui se caracterise par une attention et une acceptation, sans jugement, envers tout ce qui est vecu dans le moment present. Elle est un objet d’etude pour les cliniciens et pour les chercheurs en raison de son interet en termes de bien-etre et de sante. Elle s’acquiert par la pratique de certaines techniques de meditation. L’un des problemes actuels est celui de l’evaluation du niveau de mindfulness d’un sujet et de son evolution. Objectif Ce papier se propose de faire le point sur le concept de mindfulness afin de reflechir a une amelioration des outils d’evaluation du niveau de mindfulness pour les patients et les sujets sains. Methodes Premierement, les problemes de l’utilisation d’outils psychometriques pour la mesure de la mindfulness sont analyses. Deuxiemement, l’analyse des processus cognitifs mis en jeu dans la mindfulness montre l’interet des outils cognitifs pour evaluer plus justement le niveau de mindfulness des individus. Conclusion La capacite d’autoregulation attentionnelle et l’ouverture a l’experience apparaissent comme les deux processus cognitifs pertinents pour la mesure de la mindfulness. L’applicabilite des paradigmes deja developpes pour l’evaluation de ces deux processus cognitifs est discutee.

The first part of this paper describes the long history of the concept of Mindfulness. Contrary to the belief that Mindfulness only has Buddhist and Hindu origins, it is also rooted in Jewish, Islamic and Christian religions. Furthermore, western philosophers have described a mindful path to become more aware of thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. Mindfulness can be considered as a universal human ability embodied to foster clear thinking and open-heartedness. As such, this form of being requires no particular religious or cultural belief system. The current acceptance of what a mindful path is, refers to a psychological quality that involves bringing one's complete attention to present experience on a moment-to-moment basis, in a particular way: in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally. Although such a definition is well accepted in France, the French translation for Mindfulness is not easy to use: being conscious and being aware are translated with the same French word. The French language fails to clearly separate the dimensional attributes of a mindful subject from the ways for developing mindfulness through formal meditation practice. In line with this conception, stability and assessments of Mindfulness mainly were examined. How this disposition allows the development of concentration, attention and acceptance moment by moment in a nonjudgmental way is described in the second part. Particular attention is paid to its positive effects in several aspects of mental and physical health. In particular, positive effects on the ability to cope with stress are described from a physiological point of view. Third, this article intends to present neurobiological aspects currently proposed to explain the benefits of Mindfulness meditation. Modifications of cerebral networks and neurobiological functioning are described in relation to expertise in meditation practice. The hypothesis of the role of meditation on neuroplasticity is also discussed. Furthermore, the specific impact of Mindfulness meditation practice on these mechanisms will be considered in comparison with relaxation techniques. With the increasing growth of well-designed and well-controlled meditation research, however, future studies will be needed to compare between different meditation techniques. This will enable researchers to outline the effects of the technique-specific differences on behavior, cognitive function, underlying physiology and neurobiology and clinical effectiveness. Finally, the most recent data on the changes in functioning of a resting brain (Brain Default Mode) induced by a Mindfulness practice, demonstrate differences in the default-mode network that are consistent with decreased mind-wandering. That is a way to better understand possible neural mechanisms of meditation for health benefits of Mindfulness.

Although interest in incorporating mindfulness into medical interventions is growing, data on the relationships between mindfulness, stress and coping in military personnel is still scarce. This report investigates the relationship between psychological adjustment and mindfulness in soldiers according to their repeated deployments and confrontations with stressors. Our findings indicate that soldiers’ mindfulness levels were in the range of the middle-aged civilian working population, and were negatively correlated with emotional disturbance measures, and positively correlated with their subjective assessments of their own well-being. Individuals confronted with conflict deployments and stressors recorded lower mindfulness scores, and appeared high in emotional disturbance measures.

Ce travail presente un etat de l’art des strategies d’entreprises pour faire face au stress professionnel des situations de fusions-acquisitions. Les auteurs constatent que les strategies preconisees dans la litterature de management sont limitees et centrees principalement sur la reduction des effets du stress sur les personnes. Enfin, emergent certains paradoxes organisationnels auxquels se confronte la gestion du stress dans une situation de fusion - acquisition.

This research presents the validation of a French version of the Cooper, Sloan and Williams’ Occupational Stress Indicator – OSI – (1988), which consists of seven specific scales: Sources of Pressure, Type A Behaviour, Locus of Control, Coping Strategies, Mental Health, Physical Health and Job Satisfaction. After a translation and back-translation procedure, committee evaluation and a pilot trial on 20 managers, 290 volunteer managers provided data to test its psychometric qualities. Confronted with the difficulty of reproducing and validating the original factorial structure and the weakness of some subscales reliability results, a complementary procedure, including exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, was used to further improve the psychometric qualities of the French OSI. Even though the main seven-factor structure was maintained, little similarity existed between the published 25-subscale score keys of the original version and the more parsimonious 12-subscale structure, which the present study brought to light.

The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (WEMWBS) has been validated in general population samples in many countries. Interest in using this measure in clinical populations is growing, particularly for tertiary prevention and mental health promotion. This paper reports validation of the French WEMWBS in healthy and chronic remitted schizophrenia populations. The French WEMWBS was administered to 319 workers, 75 students and 121 patients. For non patients, self-reported Trait- and State-Anxiety, Mindfulness, Positive and Negative Affect and the General Health Questionnaire were completed. For patients, the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, Clinical Global Impression Severity Scale, Birchwood Insight Scale, Social Adjustment Scale, and Global Assessment of Functioning scale were completed. Test-retest reliability and responsiveness to intervention was assessed at 6 months. Whatever the sample, response frequencies showed normal distributions, and internal consistency was good (Cronbach's alpha). Scree plots of eigenvalues suggested a single factor in the samples. The one-dimensional solution yielded suboptimal fit indices. Construct validity was confirmed. Significant improvement in scores was observed before and after intervention. Test-retest variation was non-significant. Impairment of insight and cognition in the assessed patients implies that attention must be paid before applying WEMWBS to all patients. Nevertheless, WEMWBS proved valid and reliable in a further European population, suggesting transcultural validity for both monitoring and evaluation of interventions in healthy as well as chronic remitted schizophrenia populations.

Cet article se propose de presenter une pratique de coaching specifique et d’en fournir divers moyens d’analyse. Apres la narration d’une experience concrete, il definira dans un premier temps les grands elements qui la differencient des approches plus conventionnelles. Un detour par la science du concret et par la pensee chinoise donnera ensuite la possibilite d’une lecture plus generale de cette approche. L'objet de ce travail n’est nullement de definir ou de justifier un nouveau modele, mais bien plus de partager et d’ouvrir de nouvelles perspectives de recherche et de developpement de pratiques.

This article offers a preliminary assessment of the psychometric quality of the French version of the Occupational Stress Indicator (OSI). The OSI is a diagnostic tool that assesses seven different aspects of occupational stress by means of one independent variable (sources of pressure), three moderating factors (Type A behaviour, locus of control and coping strategies), and three dependent variables (job satisfaction, mental health and physical health). The purpose of the present study is to test the French translation of the OSI and investigate the reliability of all seven scales, as well as the convergent and discriminant validity of six of them, excluding job satisfaction. Cronbach's α revealed that six of the seven OSI scales were statistically very reliable. In accordance with previous studies, the seventh scale, locus of control, proved to be less reliable. Significant and acceptable levels of construct validity were also found for the Type A, locus of control, mental health, physical health scales and for one of the coping strategy subscales: social support. These encouraging results should lead to further, broader and more complete assessments of the psychometric quality of the French version of the OSI. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Leaders of global virtual teams (GVTs) during the economic crisis of 2008–2009 faced a leadership challenge very different from leadership of traditional, face-to-face teams during normal economic conditions. Previous research has shown that the effect of leadership tends to become diminished in virtual team situations, due to well-known challenges of virtual working (geographic dispersion, computer-mediated communication, time zone, cultural and language differences); however, little empirical research has been undertaken during crisis periods such as experienced in 2008–2009 to evaluate the effect of leadership on team outcomes during times of crisis. We present findings which shed light on the impact of three sets of leadership behaviour, as described by FIRO theory (Schutz, 1958), that is, inclusion (participation), control (structure) and affection (personal support), on virtual team motivation and cohesiveness spanning the time of the recent global economic recession. Beginning in March 2008 spanning one year to March 2009, 221 team members within 31 operational GVTs located across 22 countries responded to a three-part, online survey relating to perceptions of team leader behaviour, team motivation and cohesiveness. Findings showed significant positive relationships between leaders' perceived expression of inclusion and personal support and motivation and cohesiveness outcomes. In addition, perceived team cohesiveness was positively correlated to perceived team motivation. Results suggest the need for virtual leaders to ‘turn up the volume’ in their initiated inter-personal behaviour, that is, to increase efforts in participation and supportiveness to bridge the considerable gaps between themselves and team members working virtually and to maintain motivation during difficult times. Correspondent to these findings, we surmise that leadership development programs need to be adjusted to include training and feedback mechanisms to support these types of GVTs leadership behaviours.

As a preliminary study of the validation of the French version of the OSI, this paper examines the first steps of the validity and the reliability of the Occupational Stress Indicator (OSI) for use in France. The OSI is a diagnostic research tool, which assesses seven different aspects of the stress-strain relationship. On the strain side, the scope of the outcomes focuses on three indicators: job satisfaction, mental health and physical health. On the stress side, the assessment includes sources of job stress, type A behaviour, locus of control and coping styles. Although workplace stress costs are now well recognized in France, there is little research or methodology available to assess job and organizational stress. The aim of the global research will be to bridge the gap. The purpose of the present study was to test a French translation of the OSI and investigate the reliability as well as the convergent and discriminant validity for six of its scales - Mental and Physical health, Type A, Locus of Control, Sources of Pressure, and Coping Styles. Six of the seven scales of the OSI showed statistically good reliability through Cronbach's α. The seventh scale, Locus of control, showed a lower and unsatisfactory level of reliability, confirming previous studies on the original version and various foreign versions. Significant and acceptable construct validity was also found for the Type A, Locus of Control, Mental Health, Physical Health scales and for one of the coping subscales: Social Support. These findings are encouraging for a future, broader and more complete assessment of the psychometric quality of the French version of the OSI., Approche préliminaire d'un travail de validation global de la version française de l'OSI, cette étude en examine les premières étapes de validité et de fidélité pour une utilisation en France. L'OSI est un outil d'audit du stress qui mesure différents aspects de la relation « stress-strain ». Bien que les coûts du stress professionnel soient reconnus en France, il existe peu de recherches ou de méthodologies disponibles pour évaluer le stress au travail. Le but de l'étude globale sera de combler en partie se vide. Dans une approche préliminaire, l'objet de ce travail est de tester une version traduite de l'OSI et d'investiguer autant sa fidélité que sa validité convergente et discriminante pour six des sept échelles : santé physique et mentale, Type A, Lieu de Control, Sources de Pressions et stratégies de Coping. Six des sept échelles montrent une bonne fidélité par la mesure de l'Alpha de Cronbach. La septième, Lieu de Contrôle, montre un niveau de fidélité plus bas et non satisfaisant, confirmant ainsi les études précédentes sur la version originale et sur d'autres versions étrangères. Une validité de construit significative a également été trouvée pour Type A, Lieu de Contrôle, Santé Mentale et Physique et pour l'une des sous-échelles des stratégies de Coping : le Support Social. Ces résultats sont encourageants pour engager une recherche plus approfondie et complète des qualités psychométriques de la version française de l'OSI

Even if stress management is a matter of interest in companies, it is not integrated as a real component of present organizational performance. However, some collaborators, in High-Tech companies, ask for a pro-active stress management process beyond punctual stress seminars. The purpose of this article is to present an occupational stress model and to show the results of a stress audit procedure in the support service of a computing company. This audit is based on two stress assessment tools. The first one with the aim of a subjective stress appraisal (MSP) and the second one as an auto-diagnosis on causes, effects and coping processes (NAT). The results are presented in the scope of primary prevention, that is cause oriented, and secondary prevention, which focus on the acquisition of personal stress management techniques, Le stress professionnel, même s'il commence à susciter certaines démarches, n'est pas encore intégré comme l'un des éléments de la performance organisationnelle. Cependant, et c'est là peut-être la meilleure chose, certaines sociétés souvent du domaine High-Tech, par l'intermédiaire de leurs collaborateurs deviennent demandeuses de démarches qui vont au-delà d'une formation ponctuelle. L'objectif de cet article est de proposer un modèle du stress professionnel et de montrer les résultats d'une démarche d'audit du stress dans le service support d'une société informatique. Cet audit repose sur l'utilisation et l'exploitation de deux outils d'évaluation du stress. L'un plus axé sur la recherche d'un niveau de stress perçu en rapport à une population normée (MSP), l'autre, en tant qu'auto-diagnostic, plus enclin à repérer les causes, les conséquences et les moyens de faire face mis en oeuvre dans ce groupe (NAT). Les résultats seront enfin regroupés en fonction des préconisations d'intervention dans le cadre d'une prévention primaire, d'action sur les causes, et secondaire d'apprentissage d'habiletés nouvelles pour une diminution de l'impact du stress

Cet article fait suite a une precedente publication sur les outils de mesure du stress professionnel : l’observation, l’interview, le questionnaire. Par une presentation concrete, ce sont ici les differentes methodologies de mesure du stress professionnel, avec leurs avantages et inconvenients qui seront abordees. L’objet de cet article est de fournir des criteres de choix pragmatiques aux lecteurs desireux d’aller plus avant dans la mesure de ce phenomene. Apres avoir expose les dimensions conceptuelles du stress professionnel avec leurs problematiques de mesure, nous aborderons trois approches operationnelles de cette evaluation. Enfin, dans une derniere partie nous presenterons une version francaise d’un outil de mesure composite du stress.

Background Whereas interest in incorporating mindfulness into interventions in medicine is growing, data on the relationships of mindfulness to stress and coping in management is still scarce. This report first presents a French validation of the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory-short form (FMI) in a middle-aged working population. Secondly, it investigates the relationship between psychological adjustment and mindfulness. Methods Five hundred and six non-clinical middle-aged working individuals rated themselves on the self-report French version FMI and completed measures of psychological constructs potentially related to mindfulness levels. Results Results were comparable to results of the original short version. Internal consistency of the scale based on the one-factor solution was .74, and test-retest reliability was good. The one-dimensional solution as the alternative to the two-factor structure solution yielded suboptimal fit indices. Correlations also indicated that individuals scoring high on mindfulness are prone to stress tolerance, positive affects and higher self-efficacy. Furthermore, subjects with no reports of stressful events were higher on mindfulness. Conclusion These data showed that mindfulness can be measured validly and reliably with the proposed French version of the FMI. The data also highlighted the relationship between mindfulness and stress in an adult population. Mindfulness appears to reduce negative appraisals of challenging or threatening events.