46,451 research outputs found
Influence, Information Technology & Group Polarization: A Field Study of a Virtual Team
This study examines influence and IT in group polarization. Group polarization is the tendency of group members to shift their initial positions to a more extreme direction following discussion. We hypothesize that informational influence is relatively more important than normative influence in causing group members to shift their positions and that IT can be used to enhance the effects of informational influence. Our investigation of group processes, influence and IT use by a virtual team responsible for forecasting ozone levels reveals several important findings. First, we find the heterogeneity of pre-discussion individual decisions and greater task uncertainty increase group polarization through a greater relative use of informational influence. Second, surprisingly, we find that the relative use of informational influence and the use of IT for persuasion are substitutive not complementary in their effects on group polarization. These findings have significant theoretical and practical implications for decision making in virtual teams
Legislative Organization and Administrative Redundancy
Congress regularly enacts legislation providing for redundant administrative programs. For example, there are more than 100 federal programs for surface transportation, 82 programs to ensure teacher quality, 80 programs to promote domestic economic development, and 47 programs to provide employment and job-training services. Recent high-profile legislationâ-such as the financial-industry reform measure and the health-care reform measureâ-add new programs without repealing existing ones directed at the same policy goals. Prior academic analyses generally have not considered why Congress pursues redundancy. This article addresses that question through both theoretical and institutional analysis.
The article first constructs an organizational theory that attributes redundancy in administrative programs to the congressional committee system. Specifically, the article demonstrates that two critical components of the existing committee system-âfragmented jurisdictions and parliamentary prerogativesâ-systematically bias legislative outcomes in favor of redundancy. Building on leading theoretical accounts of congressional committees from political science, the article then presents a novel cost-benefit analysis of this tendency toward redundancy. It shows that redundancy allows legislators to increase distributive favors for constituents and interest groups but that redundancy is also linked to the desirable pursuit of informational efficiency. Thus, the institutional structures facilitating redundancy have mixed effects.
Consequently, the article describes and analyzes specific institutional reforms that trade off the distributive costs and the informational benefits associated with redundancy. One approach would subject more legislative decisions to external advisory processes such as that used to close unneeded military facilities. A second and more promising approach would preserve existing committee jurisdictions but would scale back committeesâ parliamentary prerogatives, thereby encouraging redundancy in program design but discouraging redundancy in program implementation
A Workplace Study of Three Childrenâs Mental Health Centres in Southern Ontario
Rationale Recent cuts to resources for children and families requiring childrenâs mental health services coupled with an increase in the number of children needing these services have left staff in many agencies feeling extremely challenged in providing positive service environments for children and families. In this context, agencies are faced with the challenge of providing working environments that attract and retain staff, particularly in childrenâs residential mental health services. The purpose of this study was to explore sources of job satisfaction and stress, and why employees stay with and leave these organizations, in an effort to understand what contributes to a positive work environment in childrenâs mental health services.
Research Design A survey was distributed to employees of three childrenâs mental health services agencies. Completion of the survey was voluntary and all individual responses were kept confidential. Completed surveys were returned directly to researchers.
Survey Results Ninety-eight surveys were completed (for a return rate of 44.3%). Forty-eight percent of employees reported low levels of intention to leave, and 18% reported strong intention to leave their organization. However, strong intention to leave ranged from 13.5% to 35.3% across the three participating childrenâs mental health agencies.
Over 55% of all employees who responded to the survey indicated high levels of overall job satisfaction. Across the three participating agencies overall job satisfaction ranged from 43.2% to 70.6%. The majority of respondents, however, were only moderately satisfied with salary and benefits, as well as with promotion availability and process.
Twenty-three percent of all employees responding to the survey reported high levels of emotional exhaustion, suggesting that high levels of stress are affecting almost a quarter of survey respondents. However, the majority of respondents reported low to moderate levels of emotional exhaustion. Over 70% of childrenâs mental health employees who responded to the survey reported high levels of personal accomplishment, or a feeling of competence and successful achievement in their work with people.
Discussion & Implications The majority of employees in all three organizations are only moderately satisfied with the financial rewards and benefits, and in all of the organizations it seems that the front-line staff are the group least satisfied with this aspect. Front-line staff and clinicians are more likely to be high on intention to leave, and less likely to be highly satisfied with their jobs overall. They are less likely to feel that their jobs are highly âdoableâ and more likely to be unsatisfied with promotional opportunities. Clinicians, along with front-line staff, are also less likely than employees in other positions to be highly satisfied with their pay. Overall job satisfaction, while in the high range for 55% of childrenâs mental health employees as a whole, varies considerably across the three organizations. Employees with low job satisfaction are 4 more likely to have high levels of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, to perceive a lack of fit between their personal values and goals and those of the organization (image violation), and to see the employment relationship as inequitable. The scales that are statistically associated with high intention to leave for all three organizations include âperceived inequitable employment relationshipâ and âimage violationâ. It may be that those employees who are feeling most strongly about pay levels and limited promotional opportunities perceive that they are giving more than they are receiving from the organization
How friends and non-determinism affect opinion dynamics
The Hegselmann-Krause system (HK system for short) is one of the most popular
models for the dynamics of opinion formation in multiagent systems. Agents are
modeled as points in opinion space, and at every time step, each agent moves to
the mass center of all the agents within unit distance. The rate of convergence
of HK systems has been the subject of several recent works. In this work, we
investigate two natural variations of the HK system and their effect on the
dynamics. In the first variation, we only allow pairs of agents who are friends
in an underlying social network to communicate with each other. In the second
variation, agents may not move exactly to the mass center but somewhere close
to it. The dynamics of both variants are qualitatively very different from that
of the classical HK system. Nevertheless, we prove that both these systems
converge in polynomial number of non-trivial steps, regardless of the social
network in the first variant and noise patterns in the second variant.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure
Canguilhem and the logic of life
In this paper we examine aspects of Canguilhemâs philosophy of biology, concerning the
knowledge of life and its consequences on science and vitalism. His concept of life stems
from the idea of a living individual, endowed with creative subjectivity and norms, a Kantian
view which âdisconcerts logicâ. In contrast, two different approaches ground naturalistic
perspectives to explore the logic of life (Jacob) and the logic of the living individual
(Maturana and Varela) in the 1970s. Although Canguilhem is closer to the second, there are
divergences; for example, unlike them, he does not dismiss vitalism, often referring to it in
his work and even at times describing himself as a vitalist. The reason may lie in their different
views of science
Inequality in new global governance arrangements: the North South Divide in city networks for global environmental governance
Networks are often portrayed as more equal governance arrangements. Their horizontal character easily leads to the assumption that they go beyond traditional divides. Power relations within networks are neglected because the collaborative activities receive the bulk of attention. However, from a critical reading of the network and flows literature we know that networks are not free of power relations, and that they create new inequalities and sometimes even intensify existing ones. Increasingly, city governments pursue innovative policies by exchanging knowledge and best practices in city networks. The revolution in communication technologies has facilitated the development and maintenance of such networks and some operate at a global scale, including cities from both the Global North and the Global South. It is believed that these governance arrangements empower cities because they (1) provide them with resources (access to information, financial and technical assistance etc.), (2) strengthen citiesâ capacities to deal with complex (environmental) problems, (3) make that cities establish relationships with actors that would otherwise be inaccessible and (4) voice citiesâ concerns at the international level. Despite the potential for empowerment, I argue that the inclusion of cities from the Global South in global city networks does not assure equal voices and positions for cities from the Global North and the Global South. In response to the critique that literature on the network society has silenced power, Manuel Castells (2009) has distinguished four types of power in networks. Using Castellsâs conceptual framework, this paper addresses power relations in two city networks for global environmental governance: the World Association of the Major Metropolises and the C40 Climate Leadership Group. A large number of interviews and direct observations of network meetings have provided the author with significant empirical evidence on the day-to-day reality of network interactions. Power relations that result from informational, ideational and financial flows are at the core of attention. The paper reveals contributor/receiver linkages and their consequences for the networksâ functioning. The conclusions are framed by theoretical considerations on the significance of cities from the Global South in processes of political globalization
Foreword: Revisiting Gilson and Kraakmanâs Efficiency Story
Gilson and Kraakman\u27s âMechanisms of Market Efficiencyâ is part of the canon of modem corporate law scholarship, one of a handful of articles that has profoundly influenced the way we think about the field. It is also enigmatic, warranting a fresh look by those who think they know what it says from some long-ago reading or second-hand references by other authors
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