Cynical Response Research Articles

Impression Management and Expectations of Political Cynicism

There are many warnings about growing political cynicism in the news and political science literature. While some people may be truly cynical about politics, for others cynical responses to politics may be a form of impression management—the practice of presenting oneself to others in the way one wishes to be perceived. In three studies, I demonstrate that people report they are cynical in order to avoid giving the impression they do not know much about politics. Political cynicism is not a “socially desirable” characteristic—people do not believe cynicism is normatively good. At the same time, many see value to cynicism in politics, a finding which carries broad implications for the relationship between cynicism and perceived knowledge in political discourse.

Everyday consumption during COVID-19

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted everyday consumption routines and rituals, as well as their accompanying relationships. In doing so, the importance of such familiar activities to social meanings, cohesiveness, and wellbeing was made apparent. Often overlooked in their familiarity, the day-to-day and mundane aspects of consumption that take place in the immediate surroundings of consumers, are shown in this article to help define, preserve, and give meaning to everyday life. Autoethnography of everyday familial consumption during COVID-19 develops themes of retreat, reconfiguration, and resistance, whereby routines initially disrupted by the pandemic were recalibrated using digital technologies and altered habits and reasserted via minor resistances. Illustrated is the resilience of everyday consumption rooted in the practical, imaginative, and cynical responses of family to restrictions upon.

Anatomies of failed revolution in Ovid’s Aeginetan Plague and Mary Shelley’s The Last Man1

This essay examines the way that plague discourse allows two writers, Ovid and Mary Shelley, to contemplate the power of a revolution to transform a civic body. The author focuses initially on Ovid’s rendering of plague on Aegina in Metamorphoses 7, contextualizing it as a response to the changing significance of pietas as well as to the succession crisis faced by the Principate in the 20’s BCE; she interprets King Aeacus’ narrative of the tragedy he witnesses among his people and their replacement by Myrmidons (ant-people) as a cynical response to the Augustan revolution and its ability to implement lasting change in how Roman subjects interact after the prolonged civil wars of the late Roman Republic. The author then turns to Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, in which a plague eradicates all of known humanity except for a single survivor and eye-witness, Lionel Verney. The essay demonstrates that Shelley taps into Ovid’s cynicism regarding the potential for human recovery after widespread devastation as she and her protagonist consider various alternatives for effective governance in England. Shelley’s exploration of the affective bonds born from familial ties (Ovidian pietas) suggest that such ties pose insurmountable problems to implementing permanent transformation within any human social order.

Mapping and countermapping shifting borders

Ayelet Shachar's The Shifting Border deploys a powerful map metaphor to support rethinking of borders and their functions. I interrogate this metaphor, developing some of the representational, constructive, and normative functions of maps, along with their connections to legal mechanisms for decoupling migration from territory. I survey three responses to the extra-territorialization of migration: a cynical response that rejects the possibility of migration justice, an abolitionist response connected to open borders, and a revisionist response that advocates for widescale institutional reform. The revisionist response illuminates how Shachar's essay challenges us to reflect on what sorts of maps and accompanying social and political organizations would best support migrant justice.

A study of organizational cynicism and how it is affected by social exchange relationships at work

Drawing on the social exchange theory, organizational cynicism has been suggested as a central consequence of psychological contract (PC) breach. In this study, we examine the extent to which social exchange relationships with the supervisor and coworkers have an impact on cynical reactions to broken employer promises. Based on two‐wave data with a time lag of three months from a sample of 781 employees, we investigated the influence of employees’ perceived PC breach on cynical thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, and the moderating effects of leader–member exchange (LMX) and coworker exchange (CWX). Using structural equation modelling, we found that PC breach was positively associated with cognitive, affective, and behavioural cynicism. Our analysis further revealed that LMX and CWX moderated different dimensions of organizational cynicism: When LMX was high, employees reacted more sensitively to a PC breach with cognitive and behavioural cynicism. In contrast, CWX attenuated employees’ affective cynical response to a PC breach. The differentiated perspective on cognitive, affective, and behavioural cynicism and the identified moderating effects help explain varying strengths of the PC breach–organizational cynicism association found in previous research and highlight contingencies related to social exchange relationships at work.Practitioner pointsThis study shows that cynicism towards the organization varies with the extent of perceived PC breach, indicating that organizations should actively manage employees’ psychological contracts.LMX tends to reduce cynicism towards the organization (direct effect), but high LMX employees seem to react more sensitively to severe PC breaches (interaction effect). Thus, high LMX cannot completely compensate employees’ cynical reaction to a PC breach. Leaders should be made aware of that and should be trained to effectively manage employees’ expectations to prevent PC breaches.Employees’ cynical emotional reaction to severe PC breaches was buffered by high levels of CWX. Hence, organizations should foster interpersonal relationships among coworkers.

Implementasi Kebijakan Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH) di Kecamatan Jekan Raya Kota Palangka Raya

In the implementation of the Harapan family Program, Several things need to be considered, ranging from how to the stages, the implementation capability, communication that awakened, conformity of implementation with existing guidelines, and the commitment of participants of PKH related Its obligations. 
 Based on the results of the research that has been done, it can be concluded, namely: that the process of implementing the Program family hope in Jekan Raya Sub-district is done through several stages, namely starting from the selection and establishment of PKH participants, The initial meeting, the payment phase, the establishment of a group mother of PKH recipients, verification of commitments, suspension and cancellation, and complaints process. In general, the implementation of the Program family Harapan (PKH) in Jekan Raya subdistrict has been running well and smoothly. Where the process of each stage of implementation of this program has been run properly because it is done by referring to the procedures and mechanisms in the provisions of PKH. The success of PKH implementation in Jekan Raya sub-district is also not separated from its implementation role, communication that awakened, the characteristics of implementing agents as well as from participants of PKH itself in its commitment to carry out its obligations. 
 Some obstacles or obstacles that occurred in the process of implementation of family Harapan Program (PKH) in Jekan Raya Sub-district is concerned with the problem of uncertainty payment date, as well as a cynical response or social jealousy of the community Participants of the PKH community.

UN ESTUDIO EXPLORATORIO SOBRE LA RELACIÓN ENTRE LA LEGITIMIDAD INSTITUCIONAL Y LA TRANSGRESIÓN NORMATIVA EN ARGENTINA

El presente trabajo busca conocer cómo un grupo de estudiantes universitarios caracteriza el sistema normativo en Argentina. Para tal fin, se analizaron las percepciones acerca de la transgresión normativa, la legitimidad del sistema y la vinculación de ambos aspectos. Los resultados muestran que los participantes desconfían del funcionamiento del sistema normativo, pues éste se maneja mediante prácticas corruptas, a través de instituciones ineficaces y con un sistema de dobles normas, piensan, a su vez, que el sistema está pensado para la conveniencia de los políticos y de los ciudadanos con poder. Básicamente, creen que el sistema es injusto e ilegítimo. Los estudiantes dan respuestas cínicas en relación a un posible cambio, piensan que la forma de conducirse en el sistema es mediante una moralidad individual, con un sistema propio de normas que contempla la transgresión y que, al mismo tiempo, procura no perjudicar a alguien en concreto.

What U.S. emergency care value transformation can learn from Canadian efforts to improve emergency department throughput.

What U.S. emergency care value transformation can learn from Canadian efforts to improve emergency department throughput.

Results sky high: “DAMN”ing marking forever

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to stimulate further discussion on divergent institutional and academic needs for effective marking processes to evaluate student work in Australian universities. This is in specific response to institutional stated goals and emerging policies under current economic realities. After identifying the three significant areas of marking that must be addressed: content, consistency and cost; the author proposes that the use of the AERO‐dynamic model of marking will reduce academic workloads and provide institutions with an effective marking process to meet corporate budgets.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual paper is a synthesis of researcher participation and discourse interpretation. It is based on a cynical response to changing realities and resides in the arena of the “Theatre of the Absurd”.FindingsThe AERO‐dynamic model of marking was found to be highly cost effective for institutions with large student cohorts and ever diminishing budgets. Critical analysis identified areas of concern in marking consistency and assignment content and recommends specific actions to address these but also identifies that no process will be perfect and that some tradeoffs between cost, consistency and content need to be made. The role of the academic within this marking process is redefined and the implications of this for both institution and individual acknowledged.Originality/valueThis paper offers a starting point for further debate into the widening gap between student expectations on assignment marking and institutional resource allocation and support.

An Empirical Study on the Effects of Organizational Cynicism and EVLN Responses on Organizational Commitment and Pro-union behavioral Intentions

This paper has investigated the effects of employees' organizational cynicism on their organizational commitment and pro-union behavioral intentions in the context of repetitively implementing business innovation program. The cynical responses about the business innovation program & projects have been classified into four categories; Exit, Voice, Loyalty and Neglect. The research samples have been drawn from managers and office employees at four business sites of conglomerates in Korea. According to the analysis, business innovation program which is continuous and repetitive has made managers and office employees have highly cynical attitudes. In turn, the organizational cynicism has accelerated their Exit and Neglect responses, but shrunk Voice and Loyalty responses. As a result, it has been confirmed that the organizational cynicism has a direct effect on organizational commitment and pro-union behavioral intentions. In addition, it has been concluded that Exit and Neglect had a negative effect on organizational commitment but a positive effect on pro-union behavioral intentions. Even though Voice and Loyalty had a positive effect on organizational commitment, they had no significant effect on pro-union behavioral intentions. Furthermore, no mediating effect has been detected. Implications and suggestions for future research were then discussed.

Funder demands for quality management in the non-profit sector: challenges and responses in a non-profit infrastructure network

External pressure by funders can be a catalyst for a more proactive and strategic approach to quality management in the non-profit sector, however it can also lead to cynical responses which do little to promote learning and improvement. This case study of a national infrastructure organization that supports a network of local non-profit organizations provides insight into the attitudes and challenges that can arise from such external, top-down pressure.

Now Man's Bound to Fail, More

The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths . Produced at a moment when the “put-on” (occupying “a fuzzy territory between simple leg-pulling and elaborate practical joke”) was a fashionable mode of expression, it isn’t hard to imagine why Bruce Nauman’s neon sign, combining beer-light connotations of commercialism with earnest sentiment, might have engendered a skeptical—if not outright cynical—response. 1 As with many of Nauman’s works from the 1960s, The True Artist relies on a semantic confusion produced by the artist’s apparently ironi cal intent, with the statement being both “true and not true at the same time.” 2 (This can be seen even more clearly in a related work that states that “the true artist is an amazing luminous fountain.”) Just as the textual message invites both an embarrassingly romantic and a coolly ironic reading, the sign’s potential mounting on a window offers two modes of viewing the work: one in which the spiraling script is seen frontally, and thus legibly, and one in which the text is viewed from behind, reversed and illegible, thereby suggesting a corresponding visual tension between figuration and abstraction in the work. Nauman’s extensive engagement with the issue of figuration—both in its rhetorical and its morphological manifesta tions—was not simply an exercise in semiotic analysis or postmodern indeterminacy. Acknowledging that the statement conveyed in The True Artist is “a

I'm with Stupid

I really don't consider myself an artist. I make art, but it's a job … this is one profession in which I can be a little bit stupid, and people will say, ‘Oh you are so stupid, thank you, thank you for being so stupid (Maurizio Cattelan1) To the cynical observer, it may seem something of a no-brainer to suggest, as Jean-Yves Jouannais does in L'idiotie, that idiocy is a fundamental and essential characteristic of much late twentieth-century art. Certainly the studied, practised cynicism of a character like Maurizio Cattelan (quoted above) does little to deter the cynical response inevitably returned to the work he produces by the pre-programmed, deep structural cynicism of late twentieth-century art criticism.2 It is, however, a more complex proposition to describe idiocy, stupidity and a host of sub-divisions of these terms as somehow knitting together art, life and politics into a method: the intent signposted by the full title of Jouannais's book. Without a doubt, however, this apparently whimsical book warrants a careful and considered reading (and further, I would argue, demands an English language edition).

EMOTIONS AS MEDIATORS OF PERCEIVED SUPERVISOR SUPPORT AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HARDINESS ON CYNICISM.

The article discusses a study that investigates behaviors and factors that might reduce cynical responses in employees to workplace crisis situations. The article states that research is abundant regarding causes of cynicism in the workplace, but none on ways to reduce it. The article hypothesizes that perceived supervisor support and psychological hardiness will be negatively related to organizational cynicism, and that positive and negative emotion will each account for unique variance in the prediction of organizational cynicism. The article concludes that perceived supervisor support and psychological hardiness had an indirect relationship with employee cynicism through positive and negative emotions.

The ‘Long March’ of the Management Modernizers: Ritual, Rhetoric and Rationality

This article deals with a transition process from a professional engineering archetype to a modernizing managerialist archetype in a British electricity utility. This took place in the context of the substantially changing utility sector characterized by privatization, the introduction of efficiency targets, the introduction of a regulatory system, the prospect of mergers and predatory takeovers. The high-flying rhetoric of modernizing managerialists needs to be seen in the context of institutional templates, which carried substantial mimetic legitimacy, in particular programmes such as total quality management, teamworking and job redesign. They provided a basis to displace entrenched engineering rituals, and establish a new ‘dominant rhetoric’. One reading ascribes such projects as striving towards objectified and technocratic organizational improvements - the modernizers’ rhetoric. An alternative reading is one that problematizes such an understanding by instead drawing attention to the largely ceremonial and rhetoric intensive nature of modernizing managerialism - the critics’ rhetoric. A third perspective is provided by engineers who were fighting a largely rearguard action, as professional expectations emphasizing engineering safety were gradually losing force, but remained in sedimented form. The rhetoric intensive practice of talking ‘spin’ and engaging in elaborate rituals may well, whether in political or in organizational life, lead to critical, and sometimes cynical responses. In this article we highlight the way in which the scripts of ceremonialism, reformism and cynicism have played out among managerial and professional groups in the organization.

A Cynical Response to the Subjection of Women

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The Catholic church and the French nation, 1589-1989

Paris is worth a mass was the cynical response of the Protestant King Henri IV who changed his faith to secure the throne of France. Principle and pragmatism have since been, in alteration, the two prime constituents of French Catholicism. For over 1000 years the Roman Catholic Church in France has played an integral role in the life of the French people. It was once so powerful as to be deemed a threat to the independence and strength of the French state and monarchy. The Bourbon kings of France managed to make the French Church into an effective instrument of political and social conformity and order. But in tying the church so closely to the monarchy they made it so conservative and fearful of change that it was unable to face the challenges of modern life which emerged in the 18th century and the French Revolution. Consequently the Church consciously chose to defend the established order of bourgeois France in the 19th century, despite its fundamental antipathy towards the bourgeoisie. It also directed the revolutionary implications of its own theology and history in an ultra-reactionary direction. This culminated in the Church's support for authoritarian and reactionary movements, such as the Action Francaise and Marshal Petain's National Revolution. Norman Ravitch interprets the interaction of the Roman Catholic Church with the national life of France over the last 400 years. Today, Ravitch argues, this process has left French Catholicism redundant - more a historical monument than a living institution.

Food Aid: Good, Bad, or Indifferent?

Is food aid an effective means of assisting the needy, or a cynical response to inefficient agricultural policies in the rich countries? The second view is increasingly being heard, particularly in the main donor countries;2 yet the World Food Council, on which the developing countries are strongly represented, has called for even greater efforts so that at least 10 million tons of grain are available for food aid each year. This brief article outlines the scope and major conclusions of an O.D.I. research project that has studied the impact of food aid in four African countries in order to answer the question posed in the title.3