Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS
Education
Sibling aggression linked to poor mental health
Excerpts from article published in Science Daily. Source: University of New Hampshire
Fights between siblings are so common they’re often dismissed as simply part of growing up. Yet, study finds that sibling aggression is associated with significantly worse mental health in children and adolescents. In some cases, effects of sibling aggression on mental health were the same as those of peer aggression.
“It’s not fair!” ” “You’re not the boss of me.” “She hit me!” “He started it.” Fights between siblings — from toy-snatching to clandestine whacks to more — are so common they’re often dismissed as simply part of growing up. Yet a new study from researchers at the University of New Hampshire finds that sibling aggression is associated with significantly worse mental health in children and adolescents.
“Even kids who reported just one instance had more mental health distress,” says Corinna Jenkins Tucker, associate professor of family studies at UNH and lead author of the research. “Our study shows that sibling aggression is not benign for children and adolescents, regardless of how severe or frequent.”
The study, among the first to look at sibling aggression across a wide age and geographic range, is unique in its size and scope. It looked at:
- The effects of physical assault with and without a weapon or injury
- Property aggression like stealing something or breaking a sibling’s things on purpose and
- Psychological aggression such as saying things that made a sibling feel bad, scared or not wanted around.
The researchers found that of the 32 percent of children who reported experiencing one type of sibling victimisation in the past year, mental health distress was greater for children (till age 9 years) than for adolescents (age 10 — 17) who experienced mild sibling physical assault. However, children and adolescents were similarly affected by other psychological or property aggression from siblings.
Their analyses also showed that, while peer aggression like bullying is generally thought to be more serious than sibling aggression, sibling and peer aggression had independent effects on mental health. The mental health of those experiencing property and psychological aggression, whether from siblings or peers, did not differ.
An important implication of this research, Tucker says, is that parents and caregivers should take sibling aggression seriously. “If siblings hit each other, there’s a much different reaction than if that happened between peers,” she says. “It’s often dismissed, seen as something that’s normal or harmless. Some parents even think it’s beneficial, as good training for dealing with conflict and aggression in other relationships.”
This research indicates that sibling aggression is related to the same serious mental health effects as peer bullying.
The authors suggest that pediatricians take a role in disseminating this information to parents at office visits, and that parent education programmes include a greater emphasis on sibling aggression and approaches to mediate sibling conflicts.
Career
The post-COVID future of “everything as a service”
Excerpts from article by Wolfgang Ulaga, INSEAD Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing, published in knowledge.insead.edu
If you work in the B2B space, you have almost certainly encountered the term “servitisation”. Across industries ranging from aviation to telecommunications, B2B companies are supplementing (in some cases, replacing) conventional product sales with services and solutions.
With the shift from supplier to solution provider, customers purchase a guaranteed outcome, instead of a tool and the risk that goes with it. This can transform a standard vendor-client relationship into a collaborative quest to unlock mutual value.
There is evidence that service-based businesses have greater profit potential on the whole, despite the heavy costs involved in adapting to this new business model.
The pandemic’s implications for the future of solutions are both sobering and encouraging. They also highlight how providers can put the lessons of this crisis to good use.
Downsides exposed
COVID-19 precipitated a demand shock that resounded throughout the economy. Ideally, solution-based businesses would have played an active, agile role in their customers’ recovery. The reality in many cases, however, was that solutions were rendered ineffective practically overnight, replacement offerings were not developed or took longer than they should have, and providers were left to shoulder all the risks. Supplying “power by the hour”, after all, is a bad business to be in when factories are shuttered, airplanes are grounded and international supply chains are in shambles.
For some companies, the sense of vendor-client connectedness that servitisation was intended to foster gave way to a mutually accusatory, “me versus them” mentality.
The unexpected fragility of these relationships, as well as the rigidity of solutions agreements, contributed to many providers’ lack of agility during the pandemic.
Future growth directions
None of this means, however, that companies should abandon solution-based business models. The shift towards solutions is driven by fundamental business trends that transcend B2B. For example, cloud platforms, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), increasingly provide comprehensive cloud services and solutions globally. The fast-paced trend enables solutions growth across many other industries.
However, the experience of Covid-19 will not – and should not – be lost on companies. After the pandemic, providers will try to boost their resilience in preparation for the next crisis. This will bring about two major developments:
- First, solutions as we now know them are set to become far more complicated and technologically advanced. This will be partly an outgrowth of rising digital transformation, a phenomenon that preceded the pandemic. But it will also be informed by Covid lessons learned the hard way, such as the need for real-time, remote response to customer issues.
- Second, new organisational roles will come to the fore to operationalise innovations in solution design and deployment. For instance, the burgeoning field of customer success management (CSM), which is all about ensuring customers recognise and capture the benefits of technologically innovative solutions.
B2B providers may find that massively ramping up communications is an ideal first step in optimising their relationships and increasing their responsiveness to changes in customer priorities.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)
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