On the Predictability of Talk Attendance at Academic Conferences

This paper focuses on the prediction of real-world talk attendances at academic conferences with respect to different influence factors. We study the predictability of talk attendances using real-world tracked face-to-face contacts. Furthermore, we investigate and discuss the predictive power of user interests extracted from the users' previous publications. We apply Hybrid Rooted PageRank, a state-of-the-art unsupervised machine learning method that combines information from different sources. Using this method, we analyze and discuss the predictive power of contact and interest networks separately and in combination. We find that contact and similarity networks achieve comparable results, and that combinations of different networks can only to a limited extend help to improve the prediction quality. For our experiments, we analyze the predictability of talk attendance at the ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia 2011 collected using the conference management system Conferator

Time To Change the Bathwater: Correcting Misconceptions About Performance Ratings

Recent commentary has suggested that performance management (PM) is fundamentally “broken,” with negative feelings from managers and employees toward the process at an all-time high (Pulakos, Hanson, Arad, & Moye, ; Pulakos & O\u27Leary, ). In response, some high-profile organizations have decided to eliminate performance ratings altogether as a solution to the growing disenchantment. Adler et al. () offer arguments both in support of and against eliminating performance ratings in organizations. Although both sides of the debate in the focal article make some strong arguments both for and against utilizing performance ratings in organizations, we believe there continue to be misunderstandings, mischaracterizations, and misinformation with respect to some of the measurement issues in PM. We offer the following commentary not to persuade readers to adopt one particular side over another but as a call to critically reconsider and reevaluate some of the assumptions underlying measurement issues in PM and to dispel some of the pervasive beliefs throughout the performance rating literature

Race and Gender Differences in Regulatory Focus: Examining Measurement Invariance

We investigated race and gender differences in regulatory focus, which distinguishes between two modes of motivational regulation: promotion and prevention focus. Item response theory was used to examine measurement equivalence/invariance and mean differences across groups were examined. Several items functioned differently across groups, but differences cancelled out at the test-level. Analyses using an undergraduate student sample (N = 1,845) revealed that females were significantly more promotion and prevention focused than males and African Americans were significantly more promotion and prevention focused than Caucasians. Interestingly, both gender and racial minority groups scored higher on regulatory focus indicators than the majority groups. Arguably, unlike minority group members, majority group members would have less of a necessity to prevent failure or to promote their own success. Implications for these motivation regulation differences can be applied to workforce settings in which managers seek to provide equal opportunities for both genders and racial groups

Time to Change the Bathwater: Correcting Misconceptions About Performance Ratings

Recent commentary has suggested that performance management (PM) is fundamentally broken, with negative feelings frommanagers and employees toward the process at an all-time high (Pulakos, Hanson, Arad, &Moye, 2015; Pulakos & O\u27Leary, 2011). In response, some high-profile organizations have decided to eliminate performance ratings altogether as a solution to the growing disenchantment. Adler et al. (2016) offer arguments both in support of and against eliminating performance ratings in organizations. Although both sides of the debate in the focal article make some strong arguments both for and against utilizing performance ratings in organizations, we believe there continue to be misunderstandings, mischaracterizations, and misinformation with respect to some of the measurement issues in PM. We offer the following commentary not to persuade readers to adopt one particular side over another but as a call to critically reconsider and reevaluate some of the assumptions underlying measurement issues in PM and to dispel some of the pervasive beliefs throughout the performance rating literature