THE ROLE OF UPWARD INFLUENCE TACTICS IN HUMAN RESOURCE DECISIONS

A model was examined which proposes that employee influence tactics impact human resource decisions by affecting managers' perceptions of the subordinate's interpersonal skills, manager liking of subordinates, and managers' perceptions of similarity to subordinates. The human resource decisions investigated were performance ratings, promotability assessments, and salary. Data were collected from 247 subordinates and their managers and from company records. Structural equation modeling results indicated that influence tactics were related to managers' perceptions of subordinates' interpersonal skills, liking, and perceptions of similarity to subordinates. Specifically, subordinates' use of reasoning, assertiveness, and favor rendering were positively related to managers' perceptions whereas bargaining and self-promotion were negatively related to these perceptions. Finally, there was no support for direct relationships between influence tactics and HR decisions.     

An Effect Of Change In Patient Status On Marital Interaction

In the treatment of couples and families, even more so than of individuals, therapists invariably are forced to face the problem of assessment of change in the marital or family "system." The purpose of the present study was to investigate changes in marital interaction for a special population, that is, in which one member of each married pair had been, but was no longer, a hospitalized psychiatric patient. The primary question we addressed was whether changes in marital interaction could be amply detected and whether these changes could be attributed to the particular role shift that had occurred in one spouse--from "patient" to "nonpatient." Utilizing a technique called Interaction Testing, which the senior authors devised in 1960, we found that such alterations in marital interaction do indeed arise when one member of the couple moves out of a patient role and that our instrument is useful in elucidating the nature of such effects. In addition, it can be expected that a study of this kind will be of theoretical and methodological value in dealing with the general issues of problem-solving interaction in couples and families. The clinical aspect of the study may also be expected to stimulate useful thinking regarding family theapy in hospital settings, patient management, and aftercare.     

Family Therapy Training in Clinical Psychology Programs

In a national questionnaire survey of graduate programs offering the Ph.D. or Psy.D. in clinical psychology, the status of family therapy training was examined. With a 79 per cent response rate (102 programs), the study found that 10 per cent of the nationwide faculty identified themselves as primarily family therapy oriented, 32 per cent of the programs had no family-oriented faculty members, 18 per cent of all psychotherapy courses were family therapy courses, and 21 per cent of the schools had no family therapy course. The ratings of the importance of providing students with family therapy training were found to be unrelated to the number of family therapy courses available but positively correlated with the percentage of family therapy courses within the total curriculum.     

Ranking water resource projects and evaluating criteria by multicriterion Q-analysis: an Austrian case study

A multicriterion decision-making (MCDM) concept is applied not only to provide possible solutions for a hydroecological problem but also to shed light on the discriminating capabilities of criteria. The aim is to identify a subset of a given set of criteria used to seek a satisfactory solution among several possible water resource projects being designed for the Austrian part of the Danube between Vienna and the Slovakian border. In this section the Danube is still a free-flowing river and possesses a high ecological value. There are three conflicting interests relative to this particular area, namely economic, ecological and sociological interests. The so-called multicriterion Q-analysis (MCQA) technique is applied to generate more effective discussions between conflicting groups than there have been in the past. The most preferred alternatives from among 12 possible projects, including several different hydroelectric power stations and National Park plans, are to be identified. The MCQA procedure is implemented to analyse the water resource projects with emphasis on criterion evaluation. In order to facilitate ranking alternatives, criteria with discriminating power have to be defined. For this purpose a new concept, MCQA-III, is developed and shown to be a useful tool to distinguish between important and less important criteria. MCQA techniques are based on Q-analysis, which describes the geometrical structure of the relationship between two finite sets, here the set of projects and the set of criteria. By using MCQA-I, MCQA-II and MCQA-III, a ranking of both alternatives and criteria is obtained. The MCQA-III procedure is applied to find an order among criteria which should give us more information on their importance for ranking alternatives, leading to a possible reduction of the number of criteria. This aspect plays a central role for an institution which must base its decision on a small but highly informative set of criteria. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.