Goal-setting participation and goal commitment: examining the mediating roles of procedural fairness and interpersonal trust in a UK financial services organisation

This study investigates whether participation in goal-setting within performance measurement and evaluation processes affects goal commitment and if so, whether the effect is mediated by procedural fairness and interpersonal trust. Using a sample of 54 managers within a UK financial services organisation, this study finds that participation in goal-setting is positively associated with goal commitment. Further analysis arising from introducing procedural fairness and interpersonal trust as mediating variables reveals that the association is significantly mediated by procedural fairness. Overall, these findings offer empirical evidence on the importance of procedural fairness on the relationship between participation and goal commitment

Procedural justice in punishment systems: Inconsistent punishment procedures have detrimental effects on cooperation

The current research examines a moderator who predicts in what situations punishment can have detrimental effects on cooperation. We hypothesized that when a punishment system is perceived as procedurally unfair, people's cooperation level decreases. Results of two experiments indicated that participants cooperated less in a group-based trust game when punishment was inconsistent between persons (i.e. not all group members would be punished for defection) than when punishment was consistent between persons (i.e. any group member who defected would be punished) or when there was no punishment. These effects were mediated by perceived belongingness. The authors conclude that an unfair punishment system leads people to feel marginalized as a group member, and this prompts them to display less cooperation. © 2008 The British Psychological Society

Zinc phthalocyanine absorbance in the near-infrared with application for transparent and colorless dye-sensitized solar cells

Transparent and colorless solar cells are attractive new photovoltaic devices as they could bring new opportunities to harness sunlight energy and particularly for their integration in windows. In this work, a new zinc phthalocyanine was synthesized and investigated as sensitizer in dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) for this purpose. The zinc phthalocyanine features a benzoic acid anchoring group and six thio(4-tertbutylphenyl) substituents in ${\alpha }$ position of the phtalocyanine. The dye was characterized by absorption and emission spectroscopy and by electrochemistry. The physico-chemical properties show that the dye fulfills the criteria for such an application. A detailed computational study indicates that the electronic communication with $\mathrm{TiO}_{2}$ conduction is weak owing to the absence of overlapping of the wavefunctions of the dye with those of the $\mathrm{TiO}_{2}$ semiconductor. The photovoltaic performances of the zinc phthalocyanine were measured in $\mathrm{TiO}_{2}$-based DSSC that revealed inefficient electron injection, which certainly can be explained by the weak electronic coupling of the dye with $\mathrm{TiO}_{2}$ that limits electron injection efficiency. A strategy is proposed to make better-performing sensitizers

When Do Rewards Have Enhancement Effects? An Availability Valence Approach

It is commonly argued that although rewards induce behaviors, they undermine attitudes and motivation for subsequent action. This perspective has been applied in a consumer setting to suggest that sales promotions such as coupons will undermine consumer brand evaluations and brand loyalty. Instead of focusing on the undermining effects of promotional rewards, this research applies the availability valence hypothesis (Tybout, Sternthal, & Calder, 1983) to predict and explain when rewards will enhance recipient response. Two experiments demonstrate that an immediate reward from a product-related source enhances product evaluations by making favorable information more accessible than unfavorable information. Promotions enhance the relative accessibility of favorable information when their benefits are directly experienced and the salience of the promotion’s task-contingency is diminished by maximizing consumer behavioral freedom

THE ROLE OF INTERDEPENDENCE IN THE MICRO-FOUNDATIONS OF ORGANIZATION DESIGN: TASK, GOAL, AND KNOWLEDGE INTERDEPENDENCE

Interdependence is a core concept in organization design, yet one that has remained consistently understudied. Current notions of interdependence remain rooted in seminal works, produced at a time when managers’ near-perfect understanding of the task at hand drove the organization design process. In this context, task interdependence was rightly assumed to be exogenously determined by characteristics of the work and the technology. We no longer live in that world, yet our view of interdependence has remained exceedingly task-centric and our treatment of interdependence overly deterministic. As organizations face increasingly unpredictable workstreams and workers co-design the organization alongside managers, our field requires a more comprehensive toolbox that incorporates aspects of agent-based interdependence. In this paper, we synthesize research in organization design, organizational behavior, and other related literatures to examine three types of interdependence that characterize organizations’ workflows: task, goal, and knowledge interdependence. We offer clear definitions for each construct, analyze how each arises endogenously in the design process, explore their interrelations, and pose questions to guide future research

R&D managers’ adaptation of firms’ HRM practices

The heads of R&D departments are those most responsible for the adaptation of firms’ human resource management (HRM) practices to the idiosyncrasies of their departments. From their description, this paper analyzes the HRM practices in R&D departments and the adaptation achieved in four different firms. The data suggest that the main adaptations are produced primarily in recruiting and organizing the work of R&D personnel. In contrast to suggestions in the specialized literature, less adaptation is found in other HRM practices analyzed (managerial support and degree of delegation, compensation and career plans). Psychological theories of procedural justice and social comparison can improve our understanding of such results. The organizational structure affects the reference group for such comparisons and, consequently, the R&D managers’ capacity to adapt such practices. Based on these arguments, the delegation of HRM practices to R&D departments will enhance the degree of adaptation of such policiesPublicad

Lattice QCD at the physical point meets S U (2 ) chiral perturbation theory

We perform a detailed, fully-correlated study of the chiral behavior of the pion mass and decay constant, based on 2+1 flavor lattice QCD simulations. These calculations are implemented using tree-level, O(a)-improved Wilson fermions, at four values of the lattice spacing down to 0.054 fm and all the way down to below the physical value of the pion mass. They allow a sharp comparison with the predictions of SU(2) chiral perturbation theory (\chi PT) and a determination of some of its low energy constants. In particular, we systematically explore the range of applicability of NLO SU(2) \chi PT in two different expansions: the first in quark mass (x-expansion), and the second in pion mass (\xi-expansion). We find that these expansions begin showing signs of failure around M_\pi=300 MeV for the typical percent-level precision of our N_f=2+1 lattice results. We further determine the LO low energy constants (LECs), F=88.0 \pm 1.3\pm 0.3 and B^\msbar(2 GeV)=2.58 \pm 0.07 \pm 0.02 GeV, and the related quark condensate, \Sigma^\msbar(2 GeV)=(271\pm 4\pm 1 MeV)^3, as well as the NLO ones, l_3=2.5 \pm 0.5 \pm 0.4 and l_4=3.8 \pm 0.4 \pm 0.2, with fully controlled uncertainties. We also explore the NNLO expansions and the values of NNLO LECs. In addition, we show that the lattice results favor the presence of chiral logarithms. We further demonstrate how the absence of lattice results with pion masses below 200 MeV can lead to misleading results and conclusions. Our calculations allow a fully controlled, ab initio determination of the pion decay constant with a total 1% error, which is in excellent agreement with experiment

Perceived Conflict of Interest in Health Science Partnerships

University scientists conducting research on topics of potential health concern often want to partner with a range of actors, including government entities, non-governmental organizations, and private enterprises. Such partnerships can provide access to needed resources, including funding. However, those who observe the results of such partnerships may judge those results based on who is involved. This set of studies seeks to assess how people perceive two hypothetical health science research collaborations. In doing so, it also tests the utility of using procedural justice concepts to assess perceptions of research legitimacy as a theoretical way to investigate conflict of interest perceptions. Findings show that including an industry collaborator has clear negative repercussions for how people see a research partnership and that these perceptions shape people’s willingness to see the research as a legitimate source of knowledge. Additional research aimed at further communicating procedures that might mitigate the impact of industry collaboration is suggested

Altimetry for the future: Building on 25 years of progress

In 2018 we celebrated 25 years of development of radar altimetry, and the progress achieved by this methodology in the fields of global and coastal oceanography, hydrology, geodesy and cryospheric sciences. Many symbolic major events have celebrated these developments, e.g., in Venice, Italy, the 15th (2006) and 20th (2012) years of progress and more recently, in 2018, in Ponta Delgada, Portugal, 25 Years of Progress in Radar Altimetry. On this latter occasion it was decided to collect contributions of scientists, engineers and managers involved in the worldwide altimetry community to depict the state of altimetry and propose recommendations for the altimetry of the future. This paper summarizes contributions and recommendations that were collected and provides guidance for future mission design, research activities, and sustainable operational radar altimetry data exploitation. Recommendations provided are fundamental for optimizing further scientific and operational advances of oceanographic observations by altimetry, including requirements for spatial and temporal resolution of altimetric measurements, their accuracy and continuity. There are also new challenges and new openings mentioned in the paper that are particularly crucial for observations at higher latitudes, for coastal oceanography, for cryospheric studies and for hydrology. The paper starts with a general introduction followed by a section on Earth System Science including Ocean Dynamics, Sea Level, the Coastal Ocean, Hydrology, the Cryosphere and Polar Oceans and the ‘‘Green” Ocean, extending the frontier from biogeochemistry to marine ecology. Applications are described in a subsequent section, which covers Operational Oceanography, Weather, Hurricane Wave and Wind Forecasting, Climate projection. Instruments’ development and satellite missions’ evolutions are described in a fourth section. A fifth section covers the key observations that altimeters provide and their potential complements, from other Earth observation measurements to in situ data. Section 6 identifies the data and methods and provides some accuracy and resolution requirements for the wet tropospheric correction, the orbit and other geodetic requirements, the Mean Sea Surface, Geoid and Mean Dynamic Topography, Calibration and Validation, data accuracy, data access and handling (including the DUACS system). Section 7 brings a transversal view on scales, integration, artificial intelligence, and capacity building (education and training). Section 8 reviews the programmatic issues followed by a conclusion