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The present study examined how school-age children's communicative decisions are influenced by the situation, their social partner, and their own characteristics (gender, shyness levels, and history of peer relationships). Children (8-12 years old, N=246) imagined themselves in social scenarios (depicted through comics) and indicated the likelihood of using particular communicative options (e.g., truth, lie, sarcasm, or prosocial response). They also completed measures of shyness and past social experiences with peers. Findings revealed gender differences: Boys were more likely to tell the truth when their social partner blundered, and boys demonstrated increased willingness to use sarcasm. Girls, particularly shy girls, reported increased likelihood of responding with prosocial communicative strategies. Children with a history of peer victimization endorsed using more critical comments, whereas those with positive social experiences (particularly girls) reported more prosocial responses. Together the findings provide insight as to how interpersonal and intrapersonal characteristics and contextual factors affect children's communicative choices.

Young children often deny that improbable events are possible. We examined whether children aged 5-7 (N = 300) might have more success in recognizing that these events are possible if they considered whether the events could happen in a distant country. Children heard about improbable and impossible events (Experiments 1A, 1B, and 2) and about ordinary events (Experiment 2) and either judged whether the events could happen in a distant country or locally (Experiments 1A and 2) or with their location unspecified (Experiment 1B). Children were more likely to judge that extraordinary events could happen in a distant country than when the same events were described locally or with location unspecified; also, older children were more likely to deny these events could happen when they were local compared with when their location was unspecified. We also found some evidence that manipulating distance affects judgments more strongly for improbable events than for impossible one. Together, the findings show that children's assessments of whether hypothetical events are possible are affected by the geographic context of the events. The findings are consistent with accounts holding that children normally assess whether hypothetical events are possible by drawing on their knowledge of the ordinary world but further suggest that children modify this approach when considering events in distant lands.

The role of organizational resilience enabling firms to respond to adversity and survive has become ever more critical in the wake of an increasingly unpredictable external environment. Yet, while we understand the importance of resilience in responding to a major adversity, we have little appreciation for how firms are affected and react when facing multiple adversities over time, or how multilevel factors might impose on this process. These are crucial issues given that adversities are not necessarily single, isolated, or infrequent episodes. By studying a long-established family firm in the United Kingdom that experienced four major adversities, we identify the process that enabled it not only to survive but also to thrive. In this qualitative study, we introduce the notion of organizational fortitude to describe the approach that a firm develops to cope with the challenges of multiple unexpected adversities and highlight how multilevel factors combine to foster organizational fortitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research shows that embedded relations can facilitate the resource acquisition process in entrepreneurship. Yet, as relations are dynamic and subject to change, it remains unclear how entrepreneurs can acquire necessary resources when pre-existing ties may not yet or no longer be relevant, sufficient or accessible. Under these circumstances, acquiring necessary resources is a challenge and one that novice entrepreneurs in project-based enterprises face repeatedly as they seek to sustain their businesses. Evidence from 123 projects developed by six newly formed independent television production companies in the United Kingdom shows that new entrepreneurs can manoeuvre around constraints by engaging in one of four counter-fate relational practices: posturing (i.e. exaggerating interest from key ties), status sequencing (i.e. developing key relations in sequence based on status), geographic sequencing (i.e. attaining key ties in sequence based on location), and opportunistic manoeuvring (i.e. manipulating the opportunism of potential resource holders). We contribute to entrepreneurship research by showing how resources can be acquired despite a lack of key embedded ties, and highlight enabling conditions; and to project studies by illustrating how projects progress past nascence to launch and acquire new clients or repeat commissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since ancient times, legal systems have held owners responsible for harm caused by their property. Across 4 experiments, we show that children aged 3-7 (N = 572) also hold owners responsible for such harm. Older children judge that owners should repair harm caused by property (Experiments 1A and 1B), and younger children may do this as well (Experiment 4). Younger and older children judge that owners should apologize for harm (Experiments 2A and 3), even when children do not believe the owners allowed the harm to occur (Experiment 2B). Children are also as likely to hold owners responsible for harm caused by property as for harm caused by the owners themselves (Experiment 3). The present findings contribute to psychological accounts of ownership by showing that ownership not only confers rights to control property, but also responsibility for harm caused by property. The findings also contribute to our understanding of the attribution of responsibility, and challenge accounts claiming that directly causing harm, or allowing it to happen, is a prerequisite for responsibility. The findings provide support for an account claiming that property is an extension of its owner, and likewise reveal that responsibility for harm caused by property is an early developing aspect of the psychology of ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental jolts are dramatic unexpected events that can seriously affect firm outcomes, yet little is known about how family firms may respond. Research indicates that they will seek to preserve their socioemotional wealth endowments when these are threatened; less clear is how or why they may differ in this process. Drawing on the same environmental jolt this study investigates their behavioral response. It finds they engage to different extents in behavior labeled as engagement intensification, which engenders increasing risk for their business. While there are differences in family firms’ socioemotional wealth these do not sufficiently explain differences in their behavioral response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]