The big questions of personality psychology: Defining common pursuits of the discipline

Big questions of personality are those that are simple, important, and often have been asked repeatedly over time, such as “Who am I?” “What is human nature?” and “How does personality work?” This article identifies 20 big questions relevant to personality psychology. The historical background of each question is briefly described, and the questions are arranged into a model of big questions about personality. The questions, it is argued, both reflect and help to clarify the intrinsic interest in studying personality psychology. They offer insight into the cohesive nature of the field of personality by helping to define its common pursuits

In Search of The IS Question: Stalking the Wild Information Event in its Amorphous Habitat

The problem of defining the IS discipline has been approached from two perspectives: purpose and practice. While both of these approaches provide useful windows into the science of IS, they include a common limitation in capturing and defining its amorphous character. This paper examines defining statements of two IS-related disciplines to identify their components. We examine the components in the context of the IS discipline to identify key problems which impede progress in distinguishing a discipline-generative statement. Two characteristics of the definition components appear to sidetrack a clear disciplinary focus in IS: 1) Our concepts of information, far from uniform, affect our perceptions of what we do and why.2) The practice of IS science itself is operating on its context in a manner which increasingly redefines and undermines traditional definitions of the business organizational context

Cultural Rights and Internal Minorities: Of Pueblos and Protestants

This article considers the question: should rights extended to cultural communities to help them preserve themselves include the right to discipline dissident members who violate cultural norms? The case of the Pueblo Protestants is employed to consider two important defenses of cultural rights (revisionist liberal and cultural communitarian) that offer conflicting answers. Both are found unsatisfactory because of their implicit reliance on “cultural monism” (that is, the assumption that individuals identify with only one cultural community). An approach to defining cultural rights is then outlined that avoids this assumption and its application is illustrated with respect to the Pueblo case

Whatever Happened to Military Good Order and Discipline?

Discipline is often called “the soul of an army.” If this is so, the United States military seems to be experiencing a spiritual crisis. Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) allows commanders to punish acts prejudicial to “good order and discipline,” but the reach of this provision has been increasingly limited in recent years. Appellate courts have repeatedly overturned convictions of conduct charged as prejudicial to good order and discipline, and in recent years, the military’s high court has issued a series of decisions limiting the reach of the UCMJ’s “general article.” Congress has also recently acted to dramatically scale back the scope of Article 134. The result is that while military leaders might talk about the criticality of maintaining good order and discipline, commanders’ authority to actually punish behavior that detracts from good order and discipline is increasingly constrained. This Article ties the developments regarding Article 134 to a larger issue: the difficulty the military has demonstrated in defining what “good order and discipline” actually means. The term lacks an agreed-upon definition, and the military has not explored how changes in society and the military mission affect the term’s meaning. In a series of policy reforms in recent decades, military leaders have generally cited “good order and discipline” as a basis for their opposition without defining the term or substantively exploring this concept. These reforms were ultimately enacted over military leaders’ objections without any apparent impact on good order and discipline. As a result, Congress and the media have grown increasingly wary of the good order and discipline term, diminishing its rhetorical weight. The military must take a more orderly, disciplined approach to defining this term, and this Article proposes a definition as a first step toward igniting this discussion

Review of Defining a Discipline: Archival Research and Practice in the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of Richard J. Cox

Review of Defining a Discipline: Archival Research and Practice in the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of Richard J. Cox

NASA human factors programmatic overview

Human factors addresses humans in their active and interactive capacities, i.e., in the mental and physical activities that they perform and in the contributions they make to achieving the goals of the mission. The overall goal of space human factors in NASA is to support the safety, productivity, and reliability of both the on-board crew and the ground support staff. Safety and reliability are fundamental requirements that human factors shares with other disciplines, while productivity represents the defining contribution of the human factors discipline