In recent years, there has been a shift in the field of psychology to move away from a negative or deficiency focus toward an emphasis on optimal human functioning. Instead of focusing on dysfunctional or problematic behavior, researchers in this relatively new research paradigmreferred to as positive psychology-scientifically investigate positive subjective experience, positive individual traits, and positive institutions (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). The positive institution pillar of positive psychology includes positive organizational psychology, behavior, and scholarship. Positive organizational behavior (POB), specifically, refers to "the study and application of positively oriented human resource strengths and psychological capacities that can be measured, developed, and effectively managed for performance improvement in today's workplace" (F. Luthans, 2002, p. 59).A multidimensional construct that meets these POB criteria and has received a significant amount of research attention and support (Avey, Reichard, Luthans, & Mhatre, 2011;Donaldson & Dollwet, 2013;Donaldson & Ko, 2010) is positive psychological capital (PsyCap). PsyCap refers to an individual's positive psychological state of development (F. Luthans, Youssef, & Avolio, 2007) and consists of four psychological resources, namely, efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience. When occurring together these psychological resources act synergistically to enhance human functioning in many different areas of life such as health, relationships, and work, which have been identified as starting points for the application of positivity and PsyCap (Youssef-Morgan & Luthans, 2013).Of the life areas of health, relationships, and work, the majority of PsyCap research to date has been situated in the work domain resulting in strong empirical support for the importance of this higher order construct . Specifically, empirical findings suggest that workplace PsyCap plays an important role in increasing job satisfaction, job performance, organizational commitment, engagement at work, and organizational citizenship behaviors (e.g.

We used career psychology variables found in the literature to explain the career success of academic women in South Africa. The impact of work centrality (moderated by care-giving), motivation, career anchors, and self-efficacy on career success was examined. The sample ( N = 372) included permanently employed women academics in public universities. Path analysis was used to test the proposed model of career success. Seven independent variables remained in the final path model, namely, work centrality; the motivational factors of self-efficacy, motivational expectations, and motivational valence; and three career anchors ( autonomy, entrepreneurial creativity, and service/dedication to a cause). These variables explained the variance of distinctly different dependent variables. For objective career success, publication output and qualifications were positively related to the career anchor autonomy, and negatively to service and entrepreneurial creativity. Teaching evaluation and community service were positively related to motivational valence. Subjective career success was positively related to work centrality, motivational expectancy, and self-efficacy, and negatively to motivational valence. Care-giving responsibility did not impact on work centrality. When the final path model was examined further for differences based on race, career stage (race combined with age), and career progress (job level combined with length of service), career progress was the only significant participant classification criterion. The results of this study were used to develop a framework of excellence promotion for academic women. The study was limited by the type of modelling used and the convenience sample.

This paper has a two-fold aim: to illustrate the use of qualitative, linguistic data in the study of overt racism; and to focus on the experience of black people at the receiving end of racist acts. Accounts of the experience of covert racism in the context of an 'open' university in South Africa were examined in terms of a method based on attributional principles (Essed, 1988). It was found that black students' accounts of racist experiences did not constitute incoherent stories containing snap judgments about an actor's racism, but followed explicit and logical rules. In addition, these accounts illustrated that when judging an incident as racist or not, black students showed a high degree of tolerance (i.e. testing all possible alternative interpretations before deciding that an incident could be construed as racist) and made clear distinctions between racist and non-racist incidents (i.e. did not react in an 'over-sensitive' manner by classifying all discriminatory instances as racist). It was also found that most students expressed a sense of powerlessness and resignation regarding covert racism on campus. Finally, suggestions were made regarding the extension of this method for socially responsible research in South Africa.

In this study we sought to answer the question: What work activities do industrial psychologists perform on a daily basis? Our results, based on the responses of a sample of 129 registered industrial psychologists, showed that they spent most of their time performing general human resource work. We also found that industrial psychologists identified strongly with their profession and less strongly with voluntary associations like SIOPSA. We found no significant relationship between psychological acts performed by industrial psychologists and their identification with the profession. More men than women indicated that they performed psychological assessment activities in their daily work. Moreover, women tended to perform the more routine psychological assessment activities (e.g., test administration) and men the more high-level assessment activities (e.g., interpretation of test results). The results are explained in terms of social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and specifically the social creativity strategies used by a group whose high status is under threat.

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