Cheap, Easy, or Connected: The Conditions for Creating Group Coordination

In both legal and political settings there has been a push toward adopting institutions that encourage consensus. The key feature of these institutions is that they bring interested parties together to communicate with each other. Existing research about the success or failure of particular institutions is ambiguous. Therefore, we turn our attention to understanding the general conditions when consensus is achievable, and we test experimentally three crucial factors that affect a group\u27s ability to achieve consensus: (1) the difficulty of the problem, (2) the costs of communication, and (3) the structure of communication. Using multiple experimental approaches, we find that difficult problems impede consensus, costs make consensus less likely (even relatively very small costs), and the structure of communication has significant effects and interacts with both problem difficulty and costs. In particular, the structure of communication can reduce the negative effect of costs and facilitate consensus. Together these results imply that consensus is only likely to occur if problems are easy, costs to communicate are low, or the communication structure helps overcome the other two problems. These findings can provide insight about the institutional designs that can be utilized to promote consensual outcomes

Strategies for the control of Rhipicephalus microplus ticks in a world of conventional acaricide and macrocyclic lactone resistance

Infestations with the cattle tick, Rhipicephalus microplus, constitute the most important ectoparasite problem for cattle production in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide, resulting in major economic losses. The control of R. microplus is mostly based on the use of conventional acaricides and macrocyclic lactones. However, the intensive use of such compounds has resulted in tick populations that exhibit resistance to all major acaricide chemical classes. Consequently, there is a need for the development of alternative approaches, possibly including the use of animal husbandry practices, synergized pesticides, rotation of acaricides, pesticide mixture formulations, manual removal of ticks, selection for host resistance, nutritional management, release of sterile male hybrids, environmental management, plant species that are unfavourable to ticks, pasture management, plant extracts, essential oils and vaccination. Integrated tick management consists of the systematic combination of at least two control technologies aiming to reduce selection pressure in favour of acaricide-resistant individuals, while maintaining adequate levels of animal production. The purpose of this paper is to present a current review on conventional acaricide and macrocyclic lactone resistance for better understanding and control of resistant ticks with particular emphasis on R. microplus on cattle

Cross-national validation of the resources depletion-recovery model: An empirical study of Spanish and British theme park employees

Surface acting (SA) refers to the strategy whereby front-line employees hide their own emotions and fake those required of them within their role within customer service transactions. Although researchers have associated SA with burnout, evidence now suggests that this could be an indirect relationship. Building on the Conservation of Resources theory, it was hypothesised that the combined effect of emotional effort and lack of rewarding interactions with customers triggered by SA would explain the strong association between SA and burnout (Studies 1 and 2). Furthermore, building on psychological recovery literature, it was hypothesised that the effort invested in SA would be a weaker predictor of front-line employees’ burnout in cases when they reported higher levels of recovery ability as opposed to lower levels (Study 2). A cross-national and cross-sectional design was used, and participants were theme park employees from UK (Study 1, NUK =204) and Spain (Study 2, NSpain=211). The explanatory role of emotional effort and rewarding interactions was supported, and the buffering effect of recovery ability was confirmed. Strategies aimed at minimising burnout risk for employees who deal with customers on a regular basis in these countries are discussed

Cross-cultural comparison of Spanish and British “service-with-a-smile” outcomes

PurposeEmployees working in the leisure service industry are required to show positive emotions when dealing with customers. However, empirical evidence confirms that faking emotions can lead to burnout. In contrast, employees that try to experience the emotions required by the role (i.e. deep acting (DA)) can lead to healthier outcomes. However, little is known about the process that underpins the link between DA and positive outcomes. Building on Côte’s social interaction model of emotion regulation and evidence linking customer satisfaction and DA, it was hypothesized that DA would be associated with employees’ self-actualization through customer interactions. This, in turn, was expected to explain the influence that DA has on relevant job attitudes (i.e. commitment, efficacy, turnover intentions). The model was tested in two countries with different emotional culture: Spain (i.e. impulsive) and the UK (i.e. institutional). Although UK was expected to report higher levels of effortful DA, the hypothesized process was expected to be the same. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachA cross-national design with theme park employees from Spain (n = 208) and UK (n = 204) was used. Hypotheses were tested with multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. FindingsThe relationship between job commitment and DA was mediated by self-actualization, and commitment partially explained the association between DA and professional efficacy in both countries. The impulsive-oriented country showed lower levels of DA and more positive job attitudes.Originality/valueIt is concluded that training employees to re-interpret costume

Making Talk Cheap (and Problems Easy): How Legal and Political Institutions Can Facilitate Consensus

In many legal, political, and social settings, people must reach a consensus before particular outcomes can be achieved and failing to reach a consensus may be costly. In this article, we present a theory and conduct experiments that take into account the costs associated with communicating, as well as the difficulty of the decisions that groups make. We find that when there is even a small cost (relative to the potential benefit) associated with sending information to others and/or listening, groups are much less likely to reach a consensus, primarily because they are less willing to communicate with one another. We also find that difficult problems significantly reduce group members’ willingness to communicate with one another and, therefore, hinder their ability to reach a consensus

Development and cross-national validation of the Emotional Effort Scale (EEF)

Background: Researchers define Emotional Labour (EL) as the effort associated with meeting the emotional requirements of the job, yet nobody has ever directly tested this effort. Building on classic stress and ego depletion theory, this study develops the Emotional Effort Scale (EEF). Methods: In Study 1, exploratory (N = 197) and confirmatory factor analysis (N = 182) were conducted with a British sample. In Study 2, the instrument was adapted to Spanish and measurement invariance was tested (N = 304). In Study 3, (N = 185), we tested convergent and divergent validity with the EL strategies (i.e., surface acting and deep acting) and the relationship between EEF and emotional exhaustion. Results: The final scale is a two-dimensional measure (explicit and implicit emotional effort) with good reliability levels in all samples (N = 818). Additionally, it shows adequate convergent, divergent and nomological validity. Conclusions: The Emotional Effort construct adds unique value to the literature. Thus, explicit effort seems to be the mechanism that explains the association between EL and exhaustion. Additionally, this study adapts and translates the measure to two of the most used languages in the world, enabling the emergence of cross-national studies in the field of emotions at work

MyBody Safety System

To any university, the safety of students, faculty, and staff when on campus is paramount. To enhance safety, many campuses have “safety stations” of some sort scattered throughout. However, campuses such as Embry-Riddle Prescott also have hiking trails nearby. Safety pillars on hiking trails would be prohibitively expensive to build and maintain, and would also be less useful due to a longer response time for security officers. The MyBody System seeks to resolve these issues by introducing a system which is affordable, self-enclosed, solar powered and easy to maintain. The system would achieve this via custom wireless speakers disguised as rocks. This system would be able to play a loud sound such as a police siren when activated via either an app on a phone or some sort of wearable device. While an attacker might not be completely deterred, any hesitation on their part would give would-be victims precious seconds to reach safety

How does trade affect regional inequalities?

As part of the ongoing globalisation of the world economy, the past twenty-five years have witnessed a steep rise in the amount of trade between nations, as well as changes in the composition of trade. This has been linked to economic growth, with most literature on the subject highlighting the benefits of greater openness. Concurrently, however, regional spatial inequalities within nations have also tended to increase steadily. In this paper we explore to what extent there is a link between the phenomena of increased trade flows and regional inequalities. We present a preliminary empirical evaluation based on eight major world economies, and ground these results in the theoretical literature. It emerges that the link between trade and regional inequalities is evidenced most strongly when sectoral shifts in the composition of trade are accounted for. Specifically, we find that as trade in primary sector goods loses importance in the composition of total trade, regional inequalities are likely to increase. Such an impact of changes in the composition of trade on regional inequalities is likely to have a greater negative impact on developing than on developed countries for two reasons. First, because the dimension of intra-national disparities tends to be greater in the developing than in the developed world. Second, because the share of agricultural trade in developing countries has traditionally been higher and has been declining at a much faster rate in recent decades