5,709 research outputs found
Putting context into organizational intervention design:Using tailored questionnaires to measure initiatives for worker well-being
Realistic evaluation emphasizes the importance of exploring the mechanisms through which organizational interventions are effected. A well-known mechanism in organizational interventions is the screening process. Standardized questionnaires, in popular use, neither consider individuals’ appraisals of working conditions nor the specific context of the workplace. Screening with items tailored to intervention contexts may overcome the limitations of standardized questionnaires. In the present study, we evaluate an approach to develop a tailored questionnaire to measure employees’ appraisals of their specific working conditions. First, we interviewed 56 employees and 17 managers and, later, developed tailored items focused on the working conditions in a postal service. In follow-up interviews, we explore participants’ experiences with the tailored questionnaire, including the development of initiatives, compared to their previous experiences with the company´s annual attitude survey that used standardized scales. Results indicated that participants felt the tailored questionnaire highlighted issues that had previously been ignored, that initiatives were easier to develop due to its specificity, and that the feedback strategy was useful in prioritizing questionnaires. Overall, it can be concluded that tailored questionnaires may be appropriate for use in organizational intervention research and more broadly that evaluations of organizational interventions need to be contextually grounded
Power and Revenge
We took an individual differences approach to explain revenge tendencies in powerholders. Across four experimental studies, chronically powerless individuals sought more revenge than chronically powerful individuals following a high power episode (Studies 1 and 2), when striking a powerful pose (Study 3), and when making a powerful hand gesture (Study 4). This relationship vanished when participants were not exposed to incidental power. A meta-analysis revealed that, relative to a lack of power or a neutral context, exposure to incidental power increased vengeance amongst the chronically powerless and reduced vengeance amongst the chronically powerful. These findings add to previous research on relations between power and aggression, and underscore the role of individual differences as a determinant of powerholders' destructive responses
Large current noise in nanoelectromechanical systems close to continuous mechanical instabilities
We investigate the current noise of nanoelectromechanical systems close to a
continuous mechanical instability. In the vicinity of the latter, the
vibrational frequency of the nanomechanical system vanishes, rendering the
system very sensitive to charge fluctuations and, hence, resulting in very
large (super-Poissonian) current noise. Specifically, we consider a suspended
single-electron transistor close to the Euler buckling instability. We show
that such a system exhibits an exponential enhancement of the current noise
when approaching the Euler instability which we explain in terms of telegraph
noise.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures; v2: minor changes, published versio
Discourse revisited : dimensions and employment of first-order strategy discourse during institutional adoption
Despite decades of research on strategy, we still know little about what the concept of strategy means to actual strategists and how they use it in practice. Working at the intersections of institutional and practice theories, we use exploratory interviews with strategy directors and a longitudinal case study to uncover four dimensions of first-order strategy discourse: functional, contextual, identity, and metaphorical. We also reveal three phases in the interrelation between first-order strategy discourse and institutional work: shaping, settling, and selling and a differential emphasis (selective focusing) on dimensions of the first-order strategy discourse during the institutional adoption process. We contribute to a deeper understanding of the concept of strategy in practice, the process of institutional adoption, and of the role of discourse in this process
It Could Not Be Seen Because It Could Not Be Believed on June 30, 2013
Nineteen Prescott Fire Department, Granite Mountain Hot Shot
(GMHS) wildland firefighters (WF) perished in Arizona in June 2013 Yarnell Hill
Fire, an inexplicable wildland fire disaster. In complex wildland fires, sudden,
dynamic changes in human factors and fire conditions can occur, thus mistakes can
be unfortunately fatal. Individual and organizational faults regarding the predictable,
puzzling, human failures that will result in future WF deaths are
addressed. The GMHS were individually, then collectively fixated with abandoning
their Safety Zone to reengage, committing themselves at the worst possible
time, to relocate to another Safety Zone - a form of collective tunnel vision. Our
goal is to provoke meaningful discussion toward improved wildland firefighter
safety with practical solutions derived from a long-established wildland firefighter
expertise/performance in a fatality-prone profession. Wildfire fatalities are
unavoidable, hence these proposals, applied to ongoing training, can significantly
contribute to other well-thought-out and validated measures to reduce them
Organizing to counter terrorism: sensemaking amidst dynamic complexity
publication-status: Acceptedtypes: ArticlePre-print draft (version 1). ‘The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Human Relations September 2013 66(9): 1201–1223,
by SAGE Publications Ltd, All rights reserved. © [The Author]Organizations increasingly find themselves contending with circumstances that are suffused with dynamic complexity. So how do they make sense of and contend with this? Using a sensemaking approach, our empirical case analysis of the shooting of Mr Jean Charles de Menezes shows how sensemaking is tested under such conditions. Through elaborating the relationship between the concepts of frames and cues, we find that the introduction of a new organizational routine to anticipate action in changing circumstances leads to discrepant sensemaking. This reveals how novel routines do not necessarily replace extant ones but instead, overlay each other and give rise to novel, dissonant identities which in turn can lead to an increase in equivocality rather than a reduction. This has important implications for sensemaking and organizing amidst unprecedented circumstances
Discontinuous Euler instability in nanoelectromechanical systems
We investigate nanoelectromechanical systems near mechanical instabilities.
We show that quite generally, the interaction between the electronic and the
vibronic degrees of freedom can be accounted for essentially exactly when the
instability is continuous. We apply our general framework to the Euler buckling
instability and find that the interaction between electronic and vibronic
degrees of freedom qualitatively affects the mechanical instability, turning it
into a discontinuous one in close analogy with tricritical points in the Landau
theory of phase transitions.Comment: 4+ pages, 3 figures, published versio
Parametric amplification of magnetoplasmons in semiconductor quantum dots
We show that the magnetoplasmon collective modes in quasi-two-dimensional
semiconductor quantum dots can be parametrically amplified by periodically
modulating the magnetic field perpendicular to the nanostructure. The two
magnetoplasmon modes are excited and amplified simultaneously, leading to an
exponential growth of the number of bosonic excitations in the system. We
further demonstrate that damping mechanisms as well as anharmonicities in the
confinement of the quantum dot lead to a saturation of the parametric
amplification. This work constitutes a first step towards parametric
amplification of collective modes in many-body fermionic systems beyond one
dimension.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures; published versio
Compression modulus of macroscopic fiber bundles
We study dense, disordered stacks of elastic macroscopic fibers. These stacks
often exhibit non-linear elasticity, due to the coupling between the applied
stress and the internal distribution of fiber contacts. We propose a
theoretical model for the compression modulus of such systems, and illustrate
our method by studying the conical shapes frequently observed at the
extremities of ropes and other fiber structures. studying the conical shapes
frequently observed at theextremities of ropes and other fiber structures
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