Fear and Hope: Author's Response

This response seeks to pick up on the key questions and concerns raised by Nancy C. M. Hartsock and Karen Houle in their critiques of The Spectacle of Violence. I mold my response around two emotions that are never far from the question of violence: fear and hope. Is it fear of ambiguity that stops us from delicately blending the experiential with the discursive, the nodal with the circular, the corporeal with the epistemic, or the oppressive with the constitutive? If so, we can only hope that the power of such ambivalence lies in its ability to unsettle these treasured lines of force.     

ANCHORS AWAY–THE STABILITY OF MEANING OF ANCHORS WHEN THEIR LOCATION IS CHANGED

This study addresses three questions. (1) Does the meaning of the neutral anchor shift when its position is moved away from the middle of the series? The location of (psychological) zero in rating scales is crucial if they are to be used as multipliers (e.g., as weights or in functional equations). (2) Does moving the neutral anchor from a central position increase sensitivity (variance) of ratings? Such displacement has been used frequently without investigation of its effects. (3) Are any of the above effects general across types of anchors? Displacement had significant effects (N= 210) on meaning of the neutral anchor and on sensitivity. Stability of meaning of anchors, however, was greater when anchors were words rather than faces. Therefore verbal anchors should be used, with the neutral anchor located centrally, to establish zero; but displaced to increase sensitivity at one end of the scale.     

FACE SUPPORT IN CONTROLLING POOR PERFORMANCE

The purpose of this study was to describe the use of face support in managerial communication on controlling poor performance. Face support was defined according to the degree of approval (positive face) and the degree of freedom given to poor performers to define a course of action (autonomy). Seventy bank branch managers were interviewed about a recent performance problem they had at tempted to control. Managers' use of positive face and autonomy strategies suggested punitive and problem solving styles of control. Further, an overall performance rating of the employee was positively correlated with use of positive face support and use of autonomy was positively correlated with the length of time between problem recurrence.