Business Commons^™

Take Two Tablets And Do Not Call For Judicial Review Until Our Heads Clear: The Supreme Court Prepares To Demolish The 'Wall Of Separation' Between Church And State, Terence Lau, William Wines

Terence Lau

In this article, we examine the issues that bring First Amendment jurisprudence to the grant of certiorari in Pleasant Grove v. Summum, scheduled for oral argument in the Supreme Court of the United States in November. We examine the historical basis for America’s religious heritage, the historical judicial treatment of the religious clauses, and the erosion of the wall of separation between church and state. We examine the Ten Commandments, finding inherent discrimination present in modern-day attempts to advance a particular version of the Ten Commandments as secular. By drawing upon Rousseau’s civic religion, we suggest alternative routes for the …

The Informal Sector As A Path To Expanding Opportunities, Colin C. Williams

Colin C Williams

Parole And Probation Officers' Perceptions Of Management Effectiveness In Baltimore County, Maryland, Valencia Tamir Johnson Dr.

Valencia T Johnson

Management practices in the rehabilitation and criminal justice system are primarily concerned with how employees sense, collect, organize, and process information regarding the criminal offender. The purpose of this quantitative study was to measure parole and probation officers' perceptions regarding management support and effectiveness in the workplace, with particular emphasis on communication, collaboration, and conflict resolution. Herzberg's 2-factor theory of motivation served as the theoretical framework for the study, supporting the concept of participatory management as a central factor in job satisfaction. A researcher-designed, Likert-type questionnaire was administered to a randomly selected sample of 31 parole and probation officers in …

Thinking About You: Perspective Taking, Perceived Restraint, And Performance, Michele Williams

Michele Williams

Conflict often arises when incompatible ideas, values or interests lead to actions that harm others. Increasing people’s willingness to refrain from harming others can play a critical role in preventing conflict and fostering performance. We examine perspective taking as a relational micro-process related to such restraint. We argue that attending to how others appraise events supports restraint in two ways. It motivates people to act with concern and enables them to understand what others view as harmful versus beneficial. Using a matched sample of 147 knowledge workers and 147 of their leaders, we evaluate the impact of appraisal-related perspective taking …

Affect, Emotion And Emotion Regulation In The Workplace: Feelings And Attitudinal Restructuring, Michele Williams

Michele Williams

[Excerpt] Almost 40 years after publishing A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations in 1965, the fields of negotiations and organizational behavior experienced an “affective revolution” (Barsade, Brief and Spataro 2003). Although Walton and McKersie could not have predicted the widespread academic and public interest in emotion and emotional intelligence, they foreshadowed this affect-laden direction in the section of their book on attitudinal structuring, which identified the dimension of friendliness-hostility as a critical aspect of the relationship between negotiating parties in the workplace and other settings.

Generational Diversity Can Enhance Trust Across Boundaries, Michele Williams

Michele Williams

In interorganizational project teams, generational diversity among team members undermines the experience of trust within demographically similar dyads but enhances the experience of trust within demographically dissimilar dyads.

Being Trusted: How Team Generational Age Diversity Promotes And Undermines Trust In Cross-Boundary Relationships, Michele Williams

Michele Williams

We examine how demographic context influences the trust that boundary spanners experience in their dyadic relationships with clients. Because of the salience of age as a demographic characteristic as well as the increasing prevalence of age diversity and intergenerational conflict in the workplace, we focus on team age diversity as a demographic social context that affects trust between boundary spanners and their clients. Using social categorization theory and theories of social capital, we develop and test our contextual argument that a boundary spanner’s experience of being trusted is influenced by the social categorization processes that occur in dyadic interactions with …

Does Self-Efficacy Influence The Application Of Evidence-Based Practice?, Kathleen Abrahamson, Priscilla Arling, Jenna Gillette

Priscilla Arling

Background: Implementation of Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) is complex and consequently, even within organizations that have made efforts to promote EBP use, EBP is often underutilized by individual clinicians. Purpose: The aim of our study was to better understand the relationship between self-efficacy and EBP implementation in clinical environments that have undergone efforts to increase EBP utilization. We suggest that EBP is a set of behaviors that result from individuals acquiring, applying, and sharing new knowledge with others in the organization. We hypothesize, based upon a social cognitive theoretical approach, that these behaviors are influenced by clinician perception of self-efficacy. Methods: …

Organizational Performance In Services, Rosemary Batt, Virginia Doellgast

Rosemary Batt

The question of performance in service activities and occupations is important for several reasons. First, over two-thirds of employment in advanced economies is in service activities. Second, productivity growth in services is historically low, lagging far behind manufacturing, and as a result, wages in production-level service jobs remain low. In addition, labor costs in service activities are often over 50% of total costs, whereas in manufacturing they have fallen to less than 25% of costs. This raises the question of whether management practices that have improved performance in manufacturing, such as investment in the skills and training of the workforce, …

Introduction To Part 1: The Division Of Labor, Rosemary Batt

Rosemary Batt

The changing nature of work, technology, and the division of labor in the last quarter of the twentieth century has been a central preoccupation of scholarship on organizations. Debate has centered on the extent to which a fundamental shift in employment systems has occurred—from so-called Fordist to post-Fordist models. The stylized facts portray the former as characterized by internal labor market systems in large organizations, narrow jobs in hierarchical career ladders, and long-term employment relations. The latter include decentralized organizations, flatter hierarchies, team-based forms of work organization, and shorter employment relations that reflect external market pressures. The accumulated body of …

An Analysis Of Variance Approach To Content Validation, Timothy R. Hinkin, J. Bruce Tracey

Timothy R. Hinkin

Although procedures for assessing content validity have been widely publicized for many years, Hinkin noted that there continue to be problems with the content validity of measures used in organizational research. Anderson and Gerbing, and Schriesheim, Powers, Scandura, Gardiner, and Lankau discussed the problems associated with typical content validity assessment and presented techniques that can be used to assess the empirical distinctiveness of a set of survey items. This article reviews these techniques and presents an analysis of variance procedure that can provide a higher degree of confidence in determining item integrity and scale content validity. The utility of this …

The Problem Of Unwanted Pets: A Case Study In How Institutions “Think” About Clients’ Needs, Leslie Irvine

Leslie Irvine, PhD

The research on organizational framing and the metaphor of institutional “thinking” highlight the ways that social problems organizations shape the ameliorative services they deliver. Social problems work then perpetuates representations of problems that may not match the conditions clients face. This study extends social problems literature to argue that organizations sometimes “think” differently about the problems they intend to solve than do persons involved with these problems in everyday life. Using ethnographic research and interviews, this article contrasts the way in which animal sheltering, as an institution, frames the problem of unwanted animals with how the public interprets that problem. …

‘Concentration Camps For Lost And Stolen Pets’: Stan Wayman’S Life Photo Essay And The Animal Welfare Act, Bernard Unti

Bernard Unti, PhD

In the 1960s, LIFE was America's single most important general weekly magazine, its photo-essay formula catering to a middle class constituency of millions. By the halfway point of that tumultuous decade, readers were accustomed to seeing searing and unpleasant images of a changing nation, one racked by civil unrest and entangled in a bloody war in Southeast Asia. But when LIFE's February 4, 1966 issue landed on newsstands and in mailboxes across the United States, with the cover's warning "YOUR DOG IS IN CRUEL DANGER," tens of millions of readers became acquainted for the first time with another kind of …

The Class B Dealer: Down And Out?, Bernard Unti

Bernard Unti, PhD

The supply of dogs and cats to laboratories by Class B animal dealers has been a contentious matter for decades. The subject engenders heated debate whenever it surfaces, most recently in September 2005 when Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) proposed an amendment to the FY 2006 agriculture funding bill to withhold federal monies to research institutions that purchase animals from Class B dealers.

Hedonic And Transcendent Conceptions Of Value, Joel M. Podolny, Marya Besharov

Marya Besharov

In this paper we introduce a conceptual distinction between a hedonic and transcendent conception of value. We posit three linguistic earmarks by which one can distinguish these conceptions of value. We seek validation for the conceptual distinctions by examining the language contained in reviews of cars and reviews of paintings. In undertaking the empirical examination, we draw on the work of M.A.K. Halliday to identify clauses as fundamental units of meaning and to specify process types that can be mapped onto theoretical distinctions between the two conceptions of value. Extensions of this research are discussed.

Deification Of Market; Homogenization Of Cultures: 'Free Trade' And Other Euphemisms For Global Capitalism, Gwendolyn Yvonne Alexis

Gwendolyn Yvonne Alexis

In this book chapter, I argue that states and MNCs enter into extraterritorial pacts with global institutions like the WTO, UN, and IMF to derive economic benefit from international trade. Given that both entities are drawn to international trade by the quest for financial gain, there is no justification for attributing to either corporations or their countries of national origin malevolent intent such as colonization of the world under the banner of a particular culture. Economic actors direct their deliberate and intentional activities towards achieving economic goals; and this is done to such an extent that they are often willing …

Is It Me Or Her? How Gender Composition Evokes Interpersonally Sensitive Behavior On Collaborative Cross-Boundary Projects, Michele Williams, Evan Polman

Michele Williams

This paper investigates how professional workers’ willingness to act with interpersonal sensitivity is influenced by the gender and power of their interaction partners. We call into question the idea that mixed-gender interactions involve more interpersonal sensitivity than all-male interactions primarily because women demonstrate more interpersonal sensitivity than do men. Rather, we argue that the social category “women” can evoke more sensitive behavior from others such that men as well as women contribute to an increase in sensitivity in mixed-gender interactions. We further argue that the presence of women may trigger increased sensitivity such that men can also be the recipients …

Navigating Uncertainty: The Survival Strategies Of Religious Ngos In China, Jonathan Tam, Reza Hasmath

Reza Hasmath

Deification Of Market; Homogenization Of Cultures: 'Free Trade' And Other Euphemisms For Global Capitalism, Gwendolyn Yvonne Alexis

Gwendolyn Yvonne Alexis

In this book chapter, I argue that states and MNCs enter into extraterritorial pacts with global institutions like the WTO, UN, and IMF to derive economic benefit from international trade. Given that both entities are drawn to international trade by the quest for financial gain, there is no justification for attributing to either corporations or their countries of national origin malevolent intent such as colonization of the world under the banner of a particular culture. Economic actors direct their deliberate and intentional activities towards achieving economic goals; and this is done to such an extent that they are often willing …

Humane Society International’S Global Campaign To End Animal Testing, Troy Seidle

Troy Seidle, PhD

The Research & Toxicology Department of Humane Society International (HSI) operates a multifaceted and science-driven global programme aimed at ending the use of animals in toxicity testing and research. The key strategic objectives include: a) ending cosmetics animal testing worldwide, via the multinational Be Cruelty-Free campaign; b) achieving near-term reductions in animal testing requirements through revision of product sector regulations; and c) advancing humane science by exposing failing animal models of human disease and shifting science funding toward human biology-based research and testing tools fit for the 21st century. HSI was instrumental in ensuring the implementation of the March 2013 …

La Gestión Del Consumo En La Experiencia Museística: Un Estudio En Las Ciudades De Buenos Aires Y La Plata, Fernando R. Simonato, Federico Del Giorgio Solfa

Federico Del Giorgio Solfa

Linking Innovation & Creativity With Diversity & Inclusion Using Lean Six Sigma, Robin A. Roberts

Robin A. Roberts

“The SHRM Workplace Diversity Conference & Exposition fosters awareness and appreciation of workplace diversity issues through thought leadership, strategy development, resources, publications and professional development for HR professionals and other business leaders. Making the business case for diversity, helping HR professionals to better articulate its strategic business value, and enabling them to build more diverse and inclusive cultures, are the cornerstones of the initiative.”—Society for Human Resource Management website

The Relational Ecology Of Identification: How Organizational Identification Emerges When Individuals Hold Divergent Values, Marya Besharov

Marya Besharov

This research builds on theory about how identification develops when members differ in which organizational values they hold to be important. It is relatively well established that conflict and dis-identification arise under such conditions. In the socially responsible retail company I studied, in contrast, I found identification as well as dis-identification. Both outcomes emerged from members’ interactions with others whose values and behaviors differed from their own. Identification arose when managers interpreted and enacted organizational values for frontline employees by developing integrative solutions, removing ideology, and routinizing ideology. Dis-identification developed in the absence of these practices. The resulting process model …

Evolving Chineseness, Ethnicity And Business: The Making Of Ethnic Chinese As A 'Market-Dominant Minority' In Indonesia, Chang Yau Hoon

Chang Yau HOON

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Coping With Change - Understanding Ethnic Chinese Business Behavior, Chang Yau Hoon

Chang Yau HOON

No abstract provided.

Management Regimes And Its Impact On The Wetland Fisheries Management In Assam, Ganesh Chandra

Ganesh Chandra

Assam is endowed with copious aquatic wealth in the form of beels, swamps, ponds and rivers. The floodplain wetlands (beels) extending over one lakh hectare, constitute the most important fishery resource of the state. The beels are considered as one of the most productive ecosystems owing to their characteristic interactions between land and water system. These wetlands are the common property resource and under different management regimes. These wetlands are under various management regimes, i.e., private management (individuals and groups), fishermen cooperative management, Community-based fisheries management (decentralized management, Government works as facilitator) and open access. Most of the unregistered beels …

Axiomatic Social Choice Theory, David Randall Jenkins

David Randall Jenkins

Ordered Relations Theory’s two axioms ultimately enable (individual: society) well-being transitivity inasmuch as they impound Social Choice Theory’s impossibility theorem, impossibility-resolving axioms, and all such further regressive impossibility theorems and impossibility-resolving axioms.

Multiple Institutional Logics In Organizations: Explaining Their Varied Nature And Implication, Marya Besharov, Wendy K. Smith

Marya Besharov

Multiple institutional logics present a theoretical puzzle. While scholars recognize their increasing prevalence within organizations, research offers conflicting perspectives on their implications, causing confusion and inhibiting deeper understanding. In response, we propose a framework that delineates types of logic multiplicity within organizations, and we link these types with different outcomes. Our framework categorizes organizations in terms of logic compatibility and logic centrality and explains how field, organizational, and individual factors influence these two dimensions. We illustrate the value of our framework by showing how it helps explain the varied implications of logic multiplicity for internal conflict. By providing insight into …

Understanding The Influence Of Blog On The Development Of Social Capital, Reza Vaezi, Gholamreza Torkzadeh, Jerry Cha-Jan Chang

Reza Vaezi

The rapid use and application of blogs in diverse areas such as education, marketing, journalism, and human resource management in recent years underlines the need for a better understanding of the impact of this new technology on social capital. Social capital reflects the norm of reciprocity and the level of trust among individuals who connect, interact, and benefit from one another. Blog is expected to influence the extent and the scope of this interaction by providing new means of networking among people. This paper examines the relationship between blog use and social capital and reports on the results of an …

Validation Of The Employment Hope Scale: Measuring Psychological Self-Sufficiency Among Low-Income Jobseekers, Philip Young P. Hong, Joshua R. Polanin, Terri D. Pigott

Philip Hong

The Employment Hope scale (EHS) was designed to measure the empowerment-based self-sufficiency (SS) outcome among low-income job-seeking clients. This measure captures the psychological SS dimension as opposed to the more commonly used economic SS in workforce development and employment support practice. The study validates the EHS and reports its psychometric properties. Method: An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted using an agency data from the Cara Program in Chicago, United States. The principal axis factor extraction process was employed to identify the factor structure. Results: EFA resulted in a 13-item two-factor structure with Factor 1 representing “Psychological Empowerment” and Factor …