The phase of emerging adulthood is defined as a new life stage from late teens to early adulthood (Arnett, 2004). It is considered, by developmental research, a critical life-phase, whose positive outcome is related to the presence of resources such as social capital, civic engagement and civic participation (Masten et al., 2004; Hawkins et al., 2009). The study has analyzed the role of proactive personality, a stable disposition toward an agentic intervention in the environment and persevere until the individual is able bring about meaningful change, on two facets of positive development, namely Social well-being and civic participation in the stage of emerging adulthood. 388 undergraduates of University Campus of Rimini (mean age = 20.08; SD = 1.72, range 18-31; 19% males and 81% females) participated in the study. They filled in three self-report questionnaire, the Proactive Personality Scale (Bateman & Crant, 1993), the Civic Participation Questionnaire (Albanesi et al., 2007), the Social Well-being Questionnaire (Keyes, 1998). We found positive correlations between proactive personality, civic engagement and Social well-being. Hierarchical regression models highlighted that the two dimensions of proactive personality, proactive persistence in front of obstacles and proactive constructive environmental agency constitute the most important predictors of overall Social well-being, Social integration, Social contribution as its sub-components. They also give an important contribution to civic engagement after controlling for structural variables age, gender and degree course.

The General Ability Index (GAI) and the Cognitive Proficiency Index (CPI) have been proposed along with the Full Scale IQ of the WAIS-IV. The GAI is formed by the scores of Verbal Comprehension and Perceptual Reasoning subtests, while the CPI is formed by Working Memory and Processing Speed subtests. This work provides tables to help identify the GAI and CPI for the Italian standardization sample, and also two tables for the calculation of differences between the FSIQ and the GAI and between the FSIQ and the CPI, with the cumulative percentages of differences for the total sample and for all seven levels of the GAI and CPI. Furthermore, the table also compares the GAI and CPI. The use of these indices in many clinical settings will also be discussed as an additional lens to focus on adult abilities using the WAIS-IV.

This paper reports a cross-country study on the ideological aspects of the psychological contract. The study was conducted among Colombian (N = 335) and Italian (N = 327) employees working in social enterprises. The aim of the study was threefold: first, we wanted to establish the relevance of ideological contracts among social enterprises, which are value-driven organizations; second, the study was aimed at establishing the degree of invariance of a measure that assesses the ideological obligations of employers and employees; third, a mediated model of organizational and employee ideological obligations was tested using employee pride as the outcome. Findings provide support for the study’s hypotheses and objectives. We discuss the implications of our findings for our understanding of the ideological dimension of psychological contracts among social enterprises.

The Competing Values Framework (CVF) has been widely used in organizational research to assess organizational culture. The best-known instrument derived from CVF model, the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI), which measures organizational culture according to four dimensions, is generally presented as valid and reliable. However, only few studies have been conducted for the purpose of validation considering both its ipsative and Likert version; also, this instrument has never been adapted to the Italian context. We used exploratory and confirmatory analyses to examine the underlying structure of data from an Italian adaptation of the OCAI. In the first study, we performed an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on data from Likert response scale, and multidimensional scaling (MDS) on data from ipsative response scale, and, in the second study, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on data from Likert response scale, obtained from an independent sample. Both MDS and EFA in the first study and CFA in the second study supported the hypothesized four-factor structure, thus indicating that the OCAI Italian version yields good validity and reliability estimates to measure the CVF model.