Shame 4.0 (eBook)

This edited volume provides new perspectives on how shame is experienced and transformed within digital worlds and Industry 4.0. The editors and authors discuss how individuals and organisations can constructively transform shame at work, in professional and private contexts, and with regard to socio-cultural lifestyle changes, founded in digitalisation and Industry 4.0. The contributions in this volume enable researchers and practitioners alike to unlock the topic of shame and its specifics in the highly dynamic and rapidly changing times to explore this emotion in depth in connection with remote workplaces, home office, automated realities and smart systems, or digitalised life- and working styles. By employing transdisciplinary and transcultural perspectives, the volume further discusses shame in the context of new lifestyles, religion, gender, sexual suppression, mental illness, and the nature of citizenship. Researchers, practitioners and students in the fields of industrial and organisational psychology, positive psychology, organisational studies, future studies, health and occupational science and therapy, emotion sciences, management, leadership and human resources will find the contributions highly topical, insightful and applicable to practice. 

Fresh, timely, thought-provoking with each turn of the page, this impressive volume explores shame in today's world.  Moving beyond the simple 'guilt is good; shame is bad' perspective, authors from diverse disciplines examine adaptive and maladaptive aspects of shame in the context of contemporary issues (e.g., social media use, COVID-19) via multiple cultural and social lenses.  Aptly named, Shame 4.0 is a treasure trove of rich ideas ripe for empirical study - a blueprint for the next generation of research on this complex and ubiquitous emotion.  Bravo!

--June Tangney, PhD, University Professor and Professor of Psychology, George Mason University, USA

Uncovering Shame - To a much greater extent than other emotions like anger, grief, and fear, until recently most shame in modern societies has been hidden from sight. The text you see in this book is one of the steps that is being taken to make it more visible and therefore controllable.

Claude-Hélène Mayer (Dr. habil., PhD, PhD) is Professor in I/0 Psychology at the Department of Industrial Psychology and People Management at the University of Johannesburg; Adjunct Professor at the Europa Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany and Senior Research Associate at the Department of Management at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. She holds various degrees from Germany, the UK and South Africa. Her Venia Legendi is in Psychology with focus on Work, Organizational, and Cultural Psychology. Her research areas are transcultural mental health, salutogenesis and sense of coherence, shame, transcultural conflict management and mediation, women in leadership in culturally diverse work contexts, coaching and consulting psychology, and psychobiography.

Elisabeth Vanderheiden is a pedagogue, theologian, intercultural mediator. She is the CEO of the Global Institute for Transcultural Research and the President of Catholic Adult Education in Germany. Her publishing activities focus on pedagogy, in particular on the further education of teachers and trainers in adult education, vocational and civic education, but also on the challenges of digitalisation. She has also edited books on intercultural and transnational issues. Her most recent publications deal with shame as a resource as well as with mistakes, errors and failures and their hidden potentials in the context of Culture and Positive Psychology 1.0 and 2.0. Current research projects deal with love in transcultural contexts, with life crises as well as humour in the context of Positive Psychology 2.0. Another focus of her work is Design Thinking in transcultural contexts.

Paul T. P. Wong, PhD, C.Psych. is Professor Emeritus of Trent University and Adjunct Professor at Saybrook University. He is a Fellow of the APA and CPA and President of the International Network on Personal Meaning and the Meaning-Centered Counselling Institute. He is editor of the International Journal of Existential Psychology and Psychotherapy, and has also edited two influential volumes on The Human Quest for Meaning. A prolific writer, he is one of the most cited existential and positive psychologists. The originator of Meaning Therapy and International Meaning Conferences, he has been invited to give keynotes and meaning therapy workshops worldwide. He is the recent recipient of the Carl Rogers Award from the Society for Humanistic Psychology (Div. 32 of the APA).