The effects of organizational frames and problem ambiguity on decision making

This paper investigates how organizational climate and information quantity influences choice of decision making strategies. A simulated company with an organizational climate was manipulated to be either supportive or non-supportive of participative decision making methods. Subjects then solved problems in which information available to make a decision was manipulated. Results indicated that climate has an effect on choice of decision making strategies independent of information quantity. A second study was then conducted to assess how the climate manipulation affected subjects' decision-making. Organizational climate information appears to affect decisions in a manner analogous to Tversky and Kahneman's (1981) decision framing model.The contribution of each author is equal for this paper. The order of authorship was determined by a coin flip. This research was supported by Ohio Board of Regents and University of Akron Faculty Research grants to the second author. Portions of this paper were presented at the 1989 Society of Industrial Organizational Psychology Meetings and the 1991 Association of Management Meetings.     

Do the bishops have it right on health care reform?

The National Conference of Catholic Bishops has argued for significant government involvement in health care in order to assure respect for what they regard as the right to health care. Critics charge that the bishops are wrong because health care is not a right. In this article, it is argued that these critics are correct in their claim that health care is not a right. However, it is also argued that the premise that health care is not a right does not imply that the market is the most equitable and just system for providing health care. Natural law arguments in the tradition of Roman Catholic social teaching lead to the conclusion that a just and prosperous society has a moral obligation to provide health care even if there is no such right. Further, there are strong moral grounds for concluding that the bishops are correct in their claim that health care ought not to be considered a market commodity. It is argued that if health care ought not to be considered a commodity, then national health insurance is the best available alternative for fulfilling the social obligation to distribute health care resources justly and fairly at this time in American history. The bishops' case for government involvement can be made on the strength of the Catholic tradition in theological argumentation, independent of the claim that health care is a right.     

Competing interests: The need to control conflict of interests in biomedical research

Individual and institutional conflict of interests in biomedical research have becomes matters of increasing concern in recent years. In the United States, the growth in relationships — sponsored research agreements, consultancies, memberships on boards, licensing agreements, and equity ownership — between for-profit corporations and research universities and their scientists has made the problem of conflicts, particularly financial conflicts, more acute. Conflicts can interfere with or compromise important principles and obligations of researchers and their institutions, e.g., adherence to accepted research norms, duty of care to patients, and open exchange of information. Disclosure is a key component of a successful conflict policy. Commitments which conflict with a faculty member's primary obligations to teaching, research, administrative responsibilities, or patient care also need attention. Institutional conflict of interests present different problems, some of which are discussed in an analysis of an actual problem posed by two proposed clinical trials. This paper is adapted from a lecture presented to a Symposium on Scientific Integrity, Warsaw, Poland, 23 November 1995. Daniel Steiner was Vice-President and General Counsel of Harvard University (1972–92) and in that capacity became familiar with conflict of interest issues. He is currently Counsel to the Boston law firm. Ropes and Gray, and is Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Harvard University.     

Requiem for “schizophrenia”

In this article a brief overview of the treatment of chronic psychosis for the last two centuries is covered, with particular emphasis on many scientifically demonstrated causes of chronic organic psychosis and their medically successful treatment, including recent neurotransmitter manipulations. With respect for the important contributions of Bleuler, the term “schizophrenic” is considered as an unscientific and unprovable nosological construct, which has hampered the successful resolution of chronic psychosis and has outlived its usefulness in the lexicon of modern psychiatry.     

Are attentional dwell times inconsistent with serial visual search?

Duncan, Ward, and Shapiro (1994) estimated that attention must remain focused on an object for several hundred milliseconds before being shifted to another object, and they referred to this period as theattentional dwell time. An important implication of these long estimates of the dwell time for models of visual search is that the search process must not involve an item-by-item serial scanning mechanism. If it did, then searching through an array of items would require enormous amounts of time, which—based on data from visual search experiments—it does not. The present report, however, provides evidence that the long estimates of attentional dwell time were caused, at least in part, by the use of masked targets. Implications of these variable estimates of the attentional dwell time for models of visual search are discussed.     

Role of optical flow field asymmetry in the perception of heading during linear motion

During linear translation through a stationary environment, the pattern of optical flow generated on each retina is symmetrical when the head is aligned with the heading, but during lateral gaze the optical flow is asymmetric. We assessed whether human subjects could use the magnitude of this asymmetry to determine the direction of heading during passive translation through a 3-D environment. When allowed to move their heads in order to look in the direction of self-motion, subjects indicated their heading precisely and accurately. When the head was locked in alignment with the misaligned body, and gaze adjustments were not allowed, responses were quite precise, but showed a large bias which increased with increasing heading angle.     

The “good manager”: Sex-typed,androgynous, or likable?

Recent studies have indicated that people describe a “good manager” in masculine terms. It was hypothesized that this could simply reflect cultural stereotypes, rather than people's perceptions of what combination of traits is desirable in a leader. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects were presented managerial profiles ascribing all masculine, all feminine, or a combination of masculine and feminine traits (i.e., “androgynous” profiles) to hypothetical managers. Feminine-trait combinations were rated as significantly less desirable than either masculine or androgynous combinations, which were rated as equally desirable. Thus, while femininity per se was not seen as desirable in a leader, it was not viewed as a liability when combined with masculinity, a corroboration of much behavioral research on androgyny. Experiment 3 varied trait likableness and sex-role orientation. Experiments 1 and 2 were replicated for unlikable traits. Surprisingly, the opposite pattern was obtained for likable traits: the feminine combinations were rated as the most desirable, and the masculine combinations were rated as the least desirable. The results are discussed in the context of early research on impression formation and recent work on social cognition.     

A cognitive mediation theory of task goals and human performance

A theory is proposed to explain the linkages between individual task goals and performance. Two cognitive constructs are postulated to mediate between task goals and performance:performance expectancy and performance valence. It is asserted that an individual's task goal has a positive influence on performance expectancy and a negative influence on performance valence. Performance expectancy is proposed to have a positive influence on performance while performance valence is proposed to have a negative influence on performance. Task ability is hypothesized to influence performance both directly and indirectly through its influence on performance expectancy. A laboratory experiment was designed to test the causal model proposed by the theory. A path analysis on the data from this experiment provides strong support for the model, with performance expectancy, performance valence, and task ability predicting 63% of the variance in performance on the laboratory task.