Investigating Organizational Self-control: A Willpower Perspective

Behavioral control theory attempts to explain how controllers can ensure controlees work towards controller goals. Prior studies underinvestigate organizational self-control, and produces mixed results. This paper theorizes and elaborates on the construct of organizational self-control, and how controllers can encourage controlees’ organizational self-control. Organizational self-control differs from “personal” self-control in that organizational self-control focuses on getting another individual (e.g., employee) to exert self-control to perform a controller’s task. Consonant with the personal self-control literature, we argue organizational self-control comprises (self) goals, (self) monitoring, and willpower. We further argue organizational self-control is a mediator between external controls (formal and clan control) and controlee performance. While the literature considers external controls’ influence on one’s goal and self-monitoring, it does not consider external controls’ impact on willpower. We demonstrate through a case study in product development that how control is enacted can impact willpower positively, leading to positive control outcomes

Obtaining Top Management Support in IT Projects: A Case Study

Research has argued that one reason for IT project failure is the lack of top management support. However, obtaining top management support is often considered outside the IT project team’s locus of control. Our research demonstrates that top management support can be obtained through continuous engagement. Also, a failure to engage can decrease top management support. We reveal an engagement strategy that starts with small favor requests followed by increasingly onerous favors rewarded by small concessions. This is demonstrated through a case study of the support of three division heads and their corresponding divisions in the implementation of an enterprise system. In case 1, an indifferent division head withdrew support after a lack of IT engagement. In case 2, a hostile division head became an advocate of the system after continuous IT engagement. Finally, in case 3, a supportive division head became more supportive as a result of continuous engagement by IT

Effects of R-parity violating supersymmetry in top pair production at linear colliders with polarized beams

In the minimal supersymmetric standard model with R-parity violation, the lepton number violating top quark interactions can contribute to the top pair production at a linear collider via tree-level u-channel squark exchange diagrams. We calculate such contributions and find that in the allowed range of these R-violating couplings, the top pair production rate as well as the top quark polarization and the forward-backward asymmetry can be significantly altered. By comparing the unpolarized beams with the polarized beams, we find that the polarized beams are more powerful in probing such new physics.Comment: 10 pages, 6 fig

Homeostasis Meets Motivation in the Battle to Control Food Intake.

Signals of energy homeostasis interact closely with neural circuits of motivation to control food intake. An emerging hypothesis is that the transition to maladaptive feeding behavior seen in eating disorders or obesity may arise from dysregulation of these interactions. Focusing on key brain regions involved in the control of food intake (ventral tegmental area, striatum, hypothalamus, and thalamus), we describe how activity of specific cell types embedded within these regions can influence distinct components of motivated feeding behavior. We review how signals of energy homeostasis interact with these regions to influence motivated behavioral output and present evidence that experience-dependent neural adaptations in key feeding circuits may represent cellular correlates of impaired food intake control. Future research into mechanisms that restore the balance of control between signals of homeostasis and motivated feeding behavior may inspire new treatment options for eating disorders and obesity

Off-Diagonal Long Range Order and Scaling in a Disordered Quantum Hall System

We have numerically studied the bosonic off-diagonal long range order, introduced by Read to describe the ordering in ideal quantum Hall states, for noninteracting electrons in random potentials confined to the lowest Landau level. We find that it also describes the ordering in disordered quantum Hall states: the proposed order parameter vanishes in the disordered ($\sigma_{xy}=0$) phase and increases continuously from zero in the ordered ($\sigma_{xy}=e^2/h$) phase. We study the scaling of the order parameter and find that it is consistent with that of the one-electron Green's function.Comment: 10 pages and 4 figures, Revtex v3.0, UIUC preprint P-94-03-02

Anomalous particle-number fluctuations in a three-dimensional interacting Bose-Einstein condensate

The particle-number fluctuations originated from collective excitations are investigated for a three-dimensional, repulsively interacting Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) confined in a harmonic trap. The contribution due to the quantum depletion of the condensate is calculated and the explicit expression of the coefficient in the formulas denoting the particle-number fluctuations is given. The results show that the particle-number fluctuations of the condensate follow the law $\sim N^{22/15}$ and the fluctuations vanish when temperature approaches to the BEC critical temperature.Comment: RevTex, 4 page

Membrane paradigm realized?

Are there any degrees of freedom on the black hole horizon? Using the `membrane paradigm' we can reproduce coarse-grained physics outside the hole by assuming a fictitious membrane just outside the horizon. But to solve the information puzzle we need `real' degrees of freedom at the horizon, which can modify Hawking's evolution of quantum modes. We argue that recent results on gravitational microstates imply a set of real degrees of freedom just outside the horizon; the state of the hole is a linear combination of rapidly oscillating gravitational solutions with support concentrated just outside the horizon radius. The collective behavior of these microstate solutions may give a realization of the membrane paradigm, with the fictitious membrane now replaced by real, explicit degrees of freedom.Comment: 8 pages, Latex, 3 figures (Essay given second place in Gravity Research Foundation essay competition 2010

Pattern induced ordering of semiconducting graphene ribbons grown from nitrogen-seeded SiC

International audienceA wide band gap semiconducting form of graphene can be produced by growing a buckled form of graphene from a SiC(0001) surface randomly seeded with nitrogen. In this work, we show that the disorder observed in this form of graphene can be substantially reduced by pre-patterning the nitrogen seeded SiC surface into trenches. The result of the patterning is highly improved film thickness variations, orientational epitaxy, domain size, and electronic structure. The ordering induced by this patterned growth offers a way to take advantage of the extremely high mobilities and switching speeds in C-face graphene devices while having the thickness uniformity and fabrication scalability normally only achievable for graphene grown on the SiC(0001) Si-fac

A cluster theory for a Janus fluid

Recent Monte Carlo simulations on the Kern and Frenkel model of a Janus fluid have revealed that in the vapour phase there is the formation of preferred clusters made up of a well-defined number of particles: the micelles and the vesicles. A cluster theory is developed to approximate the exact clustering properties stemming from the simulations. It is shown that the theory is able to reproduce the micellisation phenomenon.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures, 6 table