Leadership and capability development and deployment in the New Zealand State Service

This article describes the design during 2013 of a model and implementation principles of a leadership and capability development and deployment (LCDD) model for the state services system. In this process, an initial prototype model was developed to describe a desired future state. It was informed by the best traditions of state services leadership development, together with models used by the world’s best companies, such as Procter & Gamble, for leadership development (Filipkowski and Donlon, 2013). The model was then enhanced based on our research in other jurisdictions, including Australia, Singapore and the United Kingdom, and co-creation with stakeholders. This is further discussed in the article. Dr Mike Pratt is Professor of Leadership and Sustainability at the University of Waikato, and a professional director and business adviser. Dr Murray Horn is a former Secretary to the Treasury of New Zealand and bank chief executive, and a professional director and business adviser

Marriages of Convenience and Other Trade-offs: Exploring the Ambivalent Nature of Organizational Relationships

Depictions of organizational life have ranged from depictions of extreme alienation (Erikson, 1986) to extreme commitment (Butterfield, 1985; Kunda, 1992). However, the emotional portrait of workers may not be so easily captured by simple shades of positive or negative feelings. Rather, the rapid rate of change, the ever-increasing complexity, and the seeming incompleteness characteristic of social life in the twentieth century suggest that this is an "age of ambivalence" (Weigert & Franks, 1989). In the work place, individuals confront the realities of hyper-competitive market places, technologically mediated relationships, empowerment, and economic insecurity. These and other issues have become embedded in the social structure of organizations and affect the bonds between individuals and between individuals and their organization. The result, we argue, is that individuals often experience ambivalence: "overlapping approach-avoidance tendencies" (Sincoff, 1990) characterized by "mixed feelings" about their work groups and organizations. Despite the fact that ambivalence is inherent in modern life, and is a central concept in many social sciences (cf. Boehm, 1989; Freud, 1950/1920; Bowlby, 1982; Merton, 1976; Smelser, 1998), our understanding of ambivalence in organizations is limited. In this chapter, we examine the topic of emotional ambivalence in the context of work relationships. We have four major goals in this regard: (1) to briefly review the concept of ambivalence, especially emotional ambivalence; (2) to argue for the prevalence of ambivalence in individuals' relationships both with and in organizations; (3) to propose two major sources of ambivalence in these relationships; and (4) to offer a typology of responses that individuals use to cope with emotional ambivalence. To illustrate these goals, we draw upon two different cases, rural doctors whose practices have been recently bought out by a large managed care organization (referred to hereafter as HealthCo), and employees at bank call-centers. These cases reveal two types of ambivalent relationships in organizations. The case of the rural doctors illustrates how individuals can become ambivalent with their employing organization. Thus, it illustrates an individuals' ambivalence with their collective. The call-center, by contrast, primarily illustrates ambivalent relationships between bank call-center employees and co-workers, as well as between employees and customers. Thus, it shows us ambivalent relationships within (rather than with) an organization. We believe that both types of ambivalent relationships (both with and within) are likely to be common in modern organizations.

Redefining the Class of Qualitative States—A Reply to Shoemaker

The so-called qualia-type objections to functionalism seem to imply that some qualitative states are not functionally definable (or identical to some functional state type). In “Functionalism and Qualia,” Sydney Shoemaker concedes that functionalists can allow for some types of mental states to be functionally undefinable without committing themselves to a view that cannot account for the class qualitative states. If qualitative states are construed as a relation of qualitative similarity, Shoemaker argues that qualia are functionally definable, and thus do not pose a serious problem for functionalists. In this paper I argue that (i) Shoemaker’s argument against the possibility of absent qualia is untenable, (ii) if cases of absent-qualia are possible, then Shoemaker’s reconciliation fails, and (iii) even if his reconciliation succeeds in functionally defining the class of qualitative states, it still fails to account for qualitative states being capable of existing independently from functional characterization

A Content Analysis of Stereotyping of the American Indian in Selected Mass Media

This study was conducted to see to what extent, if any, the American Indian was stereotyped. In three magazines, two aimed at the young reader and one for a specialized adult audience, two areas of the publications were content analyzed. First, all of the cartoons that dealt specifically with American Indians were surveyed and categorized. Next, all magazine articles about American Indians were collected, read thoroughly and placed into categories. The magazines were the Boy\u27s Life, Jack and Jill , and the Western Horseman . To gather data on media presentations of Indians eight categories were used, they were: (1) Personal appearance, (2) Dress, (3) Communications, (4) Transportation, (5) Family dwellings, (6) Daily routines, (7) Intelligence, and (8) Names. The study showed that the American Indian men presented in the stories and cartoons were dressed in buckskin leggings, wore a breechcloth, had long braided hair, wore feathers or war bonnets, moccasins and had painted faces. Generally, the magazines presented all Indian characters patterned after the plains Indian. In all of the cartoons where living conditions were portrayed, the Indians occupied teepees, hogans, log cabins or pueblo apartments. The Indians traveled on horses, and when communicating over long distances they used smoke signals or drumbeats. The Indian\u27s everyday life was presented as spent in hunting for game for food, tending to animal herds, constructing clothes, shelter, and hunting weapons, and producing Indian handicrafts. The stories and cartoons depicted the Indians as easily outwitted by a superior white man. The Indians were nomadic hunters in the stories. The stories and cartoons described the Indians in terms of life-styles prevelent over 150 years ago. No distinction was made among tribes, all Indians were cast the same. The Indians were characters who had names of animals or titles that were tagged on them by the white man. Squaw, papoose, buck and chief were general character names used in the stories and cartoons

Defending Downward Causation Only To Bring It Back Down

The so-called bottom-up threat to free will assumes a bottom-up metaphysics: the view that atoms (or whatever the most basic and fundamental element of material substances is) at the microphysical level dictate the behavior and ontology of material substances at higher macrophysical levels of composition. More specifically, bottom-up metaphysics maintain that all macrophysical states of affairs supervene on their constituent microphysical properties, such that any macrophysical change requires a change at the microphysical level. This metaphysical picture implies that human persons—and consequently, human actions—supervene on what their constituent atoms do or are like. In Objects and Persons, Trenton Merricks argues that a human person having the capacity for downward (mental-physical) causation is both necessary and sufficient for that person to have a choice about what her atoms do or are like, and moreover, that downward causation blocks the bottom-up threat to free will. In “Can Downward Causation Save Free Will?” Justin Capes argues that Merricks’s response to the bottom-up threat is unsuccessful. In this paper, I will (i) explain the bottom-up threat and Merricks’s response to it, (ii) explain Capes’s criticisms of Merricks’s response, (iii) argue that Capes’s criticisms are unsuccessful in rebutting Merricks’s response, and (iv) suggest an alternative way to object to Merricks’s response

Redefining the Class of Qualitative States—A Reply to Shoemaker

The so-called qualia-type objections to functionalism seem to imply that some qualitative states are not functionally definable (or identical to some functional state type). In “Functionalism and Qualia,” Sydney Shoemaker concedes that functionalists can allow for some types of mental states to be functionally undefinable without committing themselves to a view that cannot account for the class qualitative states. If qualitative states are construed as a relation of qualitative similarity, Shoemaker argues that qualia are functionally definable, and thus do not pose a serious problem for functionalists. In this paper I argue that (i) Shoemaker’s argument against the possibility of absent qualia is untenable, (ii) if cases of absent-qualia are possible, then Shoemaker’s reconciliation fails, and (iii) even if his reconciliation succeeds in functionally defining the class of qualitative states, it still fails to account for qualitative states being capable of existing independently from functional characterization

On the Decidability of Connectedness Constraints in 2D and 3D Euclidean Spaces

We investigate (quantifier-free) spatial constraint languages with equality, contact and connectedness predicates as well as Boolean operations on regions, interpreted over low-dimensional Euclidean spaces. We show that the complexity of reasoning varies dramatically depending on the dimension of the space and on the type of regions considered. For example, the logic with the interior-connectedness predicate (and without contact) is undecidable over polygons or regular closed sets in the Euclidean plane, NP-complete over regular closed sets in three-dimensional Euclidean space, and ExpTime-complete over polyhedra in three-dimensional Euclidean space.Comment: Accepted for publication in the IJCAI 2011 proceeding

Quasi-chemical theory with a soft cutoff

In view of the wide success of molecular quasi-chemical theory of liquids, this paper develops the soft-cutoff version of that theory. This development has important practical consequences in the common cases that the packing contribution dominates the solvation free energy of realistically-modeled molecules because treatment of hard-core interactions usually requires special purpose simulation methods. In contrast, treatment of smooth repulsive interactions is typically straightforward on the basis of widely available software. This development also shows how fluids composed of molecules with smooth repulsive interactions can be treated analogously to the molecular-field theory of the hard-sphere fluid. In the treatment of liquid water, quasi-chemical theory with soft-cutoff conditioning doesn't change the fundamental convergence characteristics of the theory using hard-cutoff conditioning. In fact, hard cutoffs are found here to work better than softer ones.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure