Denying What Workers Believe Are Unethical Workplace Requests: Do Workers Use Moral, Operational, or Policy Justifications Publicly?

This message-production experiment demonstrates workers’ tendency to use organizational policy justifications when publicly denying what they privately believe are unethical requests. Working adults (N = 234) responded to an unethical request from a supervisor, coworker, or subordinate. Participants avoided using explicitly moralized justifications for their noncompliance publicly and thus engaged in issue crafting. Specifically, content and statistical analyses revealed that (a) most participants invoked policy justifications to deny requests and (b) differences in hierarchical relationships were not significantly associated with policy justification frequency. These dynamics afford important face-saving functions but hold implications for the moral learning capacity of organizations. The essay concludes with implications for crafting organizational ethics policy.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Approaches to Understanding and Measuring Interdisciplinary Scientific Research (IDR): A Review of the Literature

Interdisciplinary scientific research (IDR) challenges the study of science from a number of fronts, including one of creating output science and engineering (S&E) indicators. This literature review began with a narrow focus on quantitative measures of the output of IDR, but expanded the scope as it became clear that differing definitions, assessment tools, evaluation processes, and measures all shed light on aspects of IDR. Key among the broader aspects are (a) characterizing the concept of knowledge integration, and (b) recognizing that it can occur within a single mind or as the result of team dynamics. Output measures alone cannot adequately capture this process. Among the quantitative measures considered, bibliometrics (co-authorships, collaborations, references, citations and co-citations) are the most developed, but leave considerable gaps in understanding. Emerging measures in diversity, entropy, and network dynamics are promising, but require sophisticated interpretations and thus would not serve well as S&E indicators. Combinations of quantitative and qualitative assessments coming from evaluation studies appear to reveal S&E processes but carry burdens of expense, intrusion, and lack of reproducibility. This review is a first step toward providing a more holistic view of measuring IDR; several avenues for future research highlight the need for metrics to reflect the actual practice of IDR

Advancing the Science of Team Science

The First Annual International Science of Team Science (SciTS) Conference was held in Chicago, IL April 22-24, 2010. This article presents a summary of the Conference proceedings. Clin Trans Sci 2010; Volume 3: 263-266

Investigating the Effect of Conflicting Goals and Transparency on Trust and Collaboration in Multi-Team Systems

In Air Traffic Management (ATM) multiple teams have to collaborate to achieve efficient and safe operation. Multiple-team operations rely on communication and information sharing between the team members. In this field, multi-team systems (MTSs) are the most common form of organization. The interface between the organizations involved (e.g. air traffic control, cockpit crews, airports) is of central importance. Apart from a common goal, different stakeholders may pursue individual goals governed by their own company culture or policies. Therefore, simply sharing all available information may not be enough to ensure safe and efficient operation. As part of the project ITC (Inter-Team Collaboration), an experimental study with 48 teams of three (n=144) has just started to investigate the impact that conflicting goals have on communication and collaboration. Additionally, it examines whether and how transparency in roles, processes, and goals can affect performance, communication, and trust in multi-team systems. In the synthetic task environment (STE) ConCenT (Control Center Task Environment), teams of three have to collaborate to detect system failures in time, determine their causes, and decide on a solution in order to ensure successful production processes. Measurements of performance, perceived trust, communication, and gaze data will be analyzed to examine and compare different coordination and communication patterns on a group level. Results of the study will identify factors that may facilitate or hinder collaborative work processes in an MTS, thus enabling the validation of an approach to improve collaboration through transparency and mutual trust

Selective Exposure to Berita Harian Online and Utusan Malaysia Online: The Roles of Surveillance Motivation, Website Usability and Website Attractiveness

News media allows audiences to be selective in determining both their news sources and type of news stories they read. This study examined factors influencing selective exposure to the online editions of two mainstream Malaysian newspapers, Berita Harian and Utusan Malaysia. Using selective exposure theory as the theoretical lens, this study compared both newspapers in terms of their audiences’ level of surveillance motivation, and how audiences rate the newspapers’ websites with respect to usability and attractiveness. This study used a within-subject experimental research design that exposed 51 subjects to both Berita Harian and Utusan Malaysia online newspapers. The results of the experiment indicate that Berita Harian and Utusan Malaysia online were significantly different in terms of website usability; however, no significant differences were found in terms of surveillance motivation or website attractiveness between the two newspapers. Further analysis indicate that the only significant predictor of selective exposure was website usability. This study highlights the importance of website usability for online newspapers wanting to harness audience selectivity