GETTING CREDIT FOR PROACTIVE BEHAVIOR:SUPERVISOR REACTIONS DEPEND ON WHAT YOU VALUE AND HOW YOU FEEL

Although proactive behavior is important in organizations, it is not always appreciated by supervisors. To explain when supervisors reward proactivity with higher overall performance evaluations, we draw on attribution theory. We propose that employees' values and affect send signals about their underlying intentions, which influence supervisors' attributions about whether employees deserve credit for proactive behaviors. More specifically, we hypothesize that if employees express strong prosocial values or low negative affect, the proactive behaviors of voice, issue-selling, taking charge, and anticipatory helping will have stronger relationships with supervisors' performance evaluations. We test these hypotheses with samples of 103 managers and their direct supervisors (Study 1) and 55 firefighters and their platoon supervisors (Study 2). The hypotheses were supported in both studies, suggesting that proactive behaviors are more likely to contribute to higher supervisor performance evaluations when employees express strong prosocial values or low negative affect.     

WHY SHOULD THEOLOGY BE UNNATURAL?

The recovery of theological integrity effected by Karl Barth has very much to do with his polemic against natural theology. Theology has regained credibility, however, at the price of being made unnatural, severed from the world in its own ecclesiastical sphere. This actually represents an indirect endorsement of natural theology inasmuch as the naturalistic understanding of the world is taken for granted as the way the world is. One result of this is the virtual abandonment of nature for theology, reflected in an alienation from science and a disinterest in ecology. The more specific object of Barth's critique of natural theology, Nazism, may also exert a reverse influence on Barth's theology, helping to account for its Christological exclusivism. The implication of this is that the critique of natural theology requires a renewed appreciation of the naturalness of theology.     

Artistic Value and Copies of Artworks

In a recent paper, Nicholas Stang argues that (i) artworks are not valuable for their own sake in virtue of their artistic value, (ii) artworks have artistic value in virtue of the final value of the experiences they afford, and (iii) the only appropriate objects of appreciation are worktypes. All of these arguments rest on claims about the artistic value of copies of artworks that provide a radical challenge to the views that many philosophers have about copies. Here I argue that Stang's arguments are unsuccessful. The argument for (i) is mistaken about what one is committed to if one thinks artworks are valuable for their own sake in virtue of their artistic value. The defense of (ii) fails to explain what it is supposed to explain. The argument for (iii) overgeneralizes from one kind of case. Finally, the basic claim Stang makes about the artistic value of copies is false. I defend an alternative view. I conclude by discussing the implications of my arguments for experientialism (thesis (ii)). Reflection on the cases Stang considers, far from leading us to embrace experientialism, in fact reveals problems that experientialists need to confront.