Energy’s Role in the Extraversion (Dis)advantage: How Energy Ties and Task Conflict Help Clarify the Relationship Between Extraversion and Proactive Performance

While academic and practitioner literatures have proposed that extraverts are at an advantage in team-based work, it remains unclear exactly what that advantage might be, how extraverts attain such an advantage, and under which conditions. Theory highlighting the importance of energy in the coordination of team efforts helps to answer these questions. We propose that extraverted individuals are able to develop more energizing relationships with their teammates and as a result are seen as proactively contributing to their team. However, problems in coordination (i.e., team task conflict) can reverse this extraversion advantage. We studied 27 project-based teams at their formation, peak performance, and after disbandment. Results suggest that when team task conflict is low, extraverts energize their teammates and are viewed by others as proactively contributing to the team. However, when team task conflict is high, extraverts develop energizing relationships with fewer of their teammates and are not viewed as proactively contributing to the team. Our findings regarding energizing relationships and team task conflict clarify why extraversion is related to proactive performance and in what way, how, and when extraverts may be at a (dis)advantage in team-based work

Alter ego, state of the art on user profiling: an overview of the most relevant organisational and behavioural aspects regarding User Profiling.

This report gives an overview of the most relevant organisational and\ud behavioural aspects regarding user profiling. It discusses not only the\ud most important aims of user profiling from both an organisation’s as\ud well as a user’s perspective, it will also discuss organisational motives\ud and barriers for user profiling and the most important conditions for\ud the success of user profiling. Finally recommendations are made and\ud suggestions for further research are given

For better or for worse? Investigating the meaning of change

For most, change makes a regular appearance in everyday life and has the capacity to usher in excitement, growth, and chaos. Due to the variable nature of change, people may hold subjective definitions of what “change” typically means. Across four studies, we examine the possibility that there are meaningful individual differences in the dominant subjective definitions people hold about the nature of change. Study 1 and 2 investigated the spontaneous associations participants make when asked to think about change, and found that holding a positive or negative general view about change (as measured by the Nature of Change scale, developed by the researchers) predicts the valence of self-generated associations. Studies 1 and 2 also demonstrate that people with an implicit entity theory of change (believing that people largely cannot change) report more negative and less positive dominant definitions of change than incremental theorists who believe people’s attributes are changeable. Study 3 expands on this finding to demonstrate a link between beliefs about the Nature of Change and beliefs about the role of effort in attributions of success. Participants who believe change is positive, predictable and controllable are more likely to believe that success is a product of effort than participants who believe change is negative, unpredictable and uncontrollable. Definitions of change predict success attributions over and above people’s implicit incremental or entity theories, which have previously been shown to predict attributions. Finally, Study 4 investigates the possibility that more precise definitions of change (as improvement, decline, or random) would alter people’s responses to the implicit theories scale, demonstrating that responses are somewhat contingent on definitions of change Further, change defined as improvement, decline, or random differentially predicted success attributions, which are also again predicted by people’s Nature of Change definitions. Overall, the current set of studies demonstrates that individual differences in people’s reactions to change are important to consider and may be as dynamic and diverse as change itself

Criteria for assessment of welfare impacts within regional planning of transport

Regional transport system plans present the wide framework for local transport planning, and are the means of applying the national high-level objectives regionally. Transport system plans are usually created interactively with the regional land use planning. Prediction and appraisal of the potential impacts of the alternatives under discussion form an important part of the planning process. This paper presents Finnish experience in defining criteria for assessing the potential welfare impacts of a transport plan or policy. These criteria are to be used co-operatively by the planners and decision-makers. An important issue is the link between the formation of the objectives and the actual evaluation of impacts, as well as the underlying values and views that influence the selection of planning methods and practises. The criteria were drafted based on a literature review and preliminary discussions with national transport authorities. The preliminary criteria were selected and put into order by using the multi-criteria method MACBETH. The process involved active co-operation with the national transport authorities, as well as with other interest groups. The draft criteria were prioritised based on the opinions of selected representatives of national and regional authorities and transport planners. In this paper we focus on the priorisation process of the criteria, as well as discuss the validity and usability of the criteria created. Furthermore, the suitability of multi-criteria analysis in the context of regional transport planning is discussed, in addition to the consistency requirements between the criteria and the multi-criteria model. The criteria have been created in an ongoing Finnish study that aims at supporting regional transport planning, concerning the impacts that changes in the transport system may have on the welfare of the communities and individuals. Furthermore, the suitability of certain Multi-Criteria Decision Aid (MCDA) methods in creating consensus in the planning process is tested.

Trust conceptualized as a corporate knowledge asset

To most individuals, "trust" can be viewed as a knowledge corporate asset that may add, or rest, value to the company. The role of knowledge in achieving a competitive advantage is becoming and increasingly important management issue in all business and non-business sectors. As such, our Throughput Modeling approach indicates how six different trust behaviors can be guided, how trust decision making can be improved and made defensible, and how special problems facing individuals can be dealt with via decision-making pathways leading to an action

Individual trust and the internet

The emergence of Web 2.0 technologies and associated services heralded a second generation of the Internet emphasising collaboration and sharing amongst users. This resulted in a seismic shift in the relationship between individual consumers and firms but also between individual consumers and the Internet as a system. Consumers, not firms, became an emerging locus of value production and through the ability to publish and connect with known and unknown others, an emerging locus of power (Berthon, Pitt, Plangger, & Shapiro, 2012). Powered by broadband telecommunications and device connectivity, the intensity of these changes was further deepened by being freed from the desktop to the mobile web. We are more connected now than ever before. The high levels of societal interconnectedness encouraged by the internet have made trust an even more vital ingredient in today’s society (Hardin, 2006). The more recent development of Web 3.0 technology emphasises ubiquitous connectivity and a machine-facilitated understanding of information that may once more change the locus of activity, value production and control. In order to keep pace with the issues of contemporary society, trust researchers must consider the how trust relationships and perceptions operate and are influenced by the online environment. This chapter will discuss how traditional trust concepts translate to the online context and will examine empirical literature on online trust at three different levels. Interpersonal trust between individuals using the internet as a medium for communication is particularly relevant in a world where personal and professional relationships are increasingly mediated by technology. We will also discuss the role of the internet in relationships between individuals and organisations with particular attention to the provision of e-services. Finally, we discuss trust in the system of the internet itself as a distributed connected infrastructure made up of indirect system service providers which are often nameless or in the background. Our focus in the chapter is on individual trust in other individuals, organisations and the system of the internet itself. Trust from the perspective of the organisation may also be of interest to trust scholars. This includes issues relating to organisational trust in individuals, inter-organisational trust, and organisational trust in the system of the Internet itself however these topics are outside of the scope of this chapter (see Perks & Halliday, 2003; Ratnasingam, 2005)

Homogeneity in Social Groups of Iraq

Homogeneity in Social Groups of Iraqis Jon Gresham, Farouk Saleh, Shara Majid June 2006 With appreciation to the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies for initiating the Second World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies, this paper summarizes findings on homogeneity in community-level social groups derived from inter-ethnic research conducted during 2005 among Iraqi Arabs and Kurds living in the city of Basra, Iraq, and in the Netherlands. We found that perceptions towards out-groups were not based on religion, ethnicity, class, or location as in traditional individual-focused social networks. Patterns of perception towards out-groups seemed to be rooted in homogeneous social sub-groups with combinations of these factors. This research project used a 192-item survey of two hundred Iraqi business owners and managers in Iraq and in the Netherlands. It measured homogeneity of social group memberships. Survey elements included items drawn from the World Values Surveys (Inglehart), the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (Roper Center), and the Social Capital Inventory (Narayan and Cassidy). Homogeneity, relationship segregation, social trust, and community influence in social networks were estimated through indices reflecting components of social relationships in priority in-groups emerging from factor analysis of survey responses. Other indices included civic participation (socialization), perceptions of threat from out-groups, ethnic and religious identity, social trust, personal security, and contribution to community-based resources. Uniformity of responses to certain items about out-groups corresponded to findings by other authors on segregation and membership in social networks (Burt 1997, Buskins 2005, Inglehart 2004, Narayan and Cassidy 2001, Putnam 1995). This work was an expansion on a study on perceptions of threat from out-groups among Iraqis in five locations conducted in 2003 (Gresham 2004). This paper presents the following major sections: I. Introduction II. Purpose III. Background IV. Methodology V. Results VI. Reporting Process VII. Conclusions VIII. Further Work IX. Appendix X. End Notes *Jon Gresham, European Research Centre On Migration & Ethnic Relations, University of Utrecht, Netherlands Farouk Saleh, University of Tilburg, Netherlands Shara Majid, Erasmus University, Netherlands See other reports at: http://www.CivilSocietyIraq.seedwiki.co

From Biological to Synthetic Neurorobotics Approaches to Understanding the Structure Essential to Consciousness (Part 3)

This third paper locates the synthetic neurorobotics research reviewed in the second paper in terms of themes introduced in the first paper. It begins with biological non-reductionism as understood by Searle. It emphasizes the role of synthetic neurorobotics studies in accessing the dynamic structure essential to consciousness with a focus on system criticality and self, develops a distinction between simulated and formal consciousness based on this emphasis, reviews Tani and colleagues' work in light of this distinction, and ends by forecasting the increasing importance of synthetic neurorobotics studies for cognitive science and philosophy of mind going forward, finally in regards to most- and myth-consciousness