Selling and Sales Management in Action: The Sales Force's Role in International Marketing Research and Marketing Information Systems

Many companies resist global markets because of seemingly insurmountable problems with these markets. Salespeople are often used successfully to gather market information. There is a wealth of market data that can be collected by a company's international sales force and distributors' sales force which can prove to be valuable in surmounting cultural and marketing barriers associated with global markets. The current paper discusses how and with what success U.S. multinational companies are using their international sales forces in gathering international marketing research data.     

Why women of lower educational attainment struggle to make healthier food choices: The importance of psychological and social factors

Women of lower educational attainment are more likely to eat unhealthy diets than women of higher educational attainment. To identify influences on the food choices of women with lower educational attainment, 11 focus groups (eight with women of lower, and three with women of higher educational attainment) were held. Using a semi-structured discussion guide, environmental, social, historical and psychological factors known to be associated with food choice were explored. Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed. Compared to women of higher educational attainment, women of lower educational attainment had less control over their families’ food choices, less support for attempts to eat healthily, fewer opportunities to observe and learn good food-related practices, more negative affect, more perceived environmental constraints and more ambiguous beliefs about the consequences of eating a nutritious diet. These findings provide a starting point for taking forward the design of an intervention to improve the diets of young women.     

‘It's like there are two people in my head’: A phenomenological exploration of anorexia nervosa and its relationship to the self

This study explores the lived experience of anorexia nervosa from the perspective of those who use pro-recovery websites for eating disorders. Fourteen people participated in an online focus group or an e-interview. Data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Participants described their disorder as a functional tool for avoiding and coping with negative emotions, changing their identity and obtaining control. A central theme was the experience of an ‘anorexic voice’ with both demonic and friendly qualities. This voice felt like an external entity that criticised individuals and sometimes dominated their sense of self, particularly as anorexia nervosa got worse. Applying dialogical theory suggests a new model of anorexia nervosa, where the anorexic voice is a self-critical position, which disagrees with and attempts to dominate the more rational self. It is suggested that to move on from anorexia nervosa, the individual needs to address his/her anorexic voice and develop a new dominant position that accepts and values his/her sense of self.     

A kinematic comparison of successful and unsuccessful tennis serves across the elite development pathway

While velocity generation is an obvious prerequisite to proficient tennis serve performance, it is also the only stroke where players are obliged to negotiate a unique target constraint. Therefore, the dearth of research attending to the accuracy component of the serve is surprising. This study compared the body, racquet and ball kinematics characterising successful serves and service faults, missed into the net, in two groups of elite junior female players and one professional female tennis player. Three-dimensional body, racquet and ball kinematics were recorded using a 22-camera VICON motion analysis system. There were no differences in body kinematics between successful serves and service faults, suggesting that service faults cannot be attributed to a single source of biomechanical error. However, service faults missing into the net are characterized by projection angles significantly further below the horizontal, implying that consistency in this end-point parameter is critical to successful performance. Regulation of this parameter appears dependent on compensatory adjustments in the distal elbow and wrist joints immediately prior to impact and also perceptual feedback. Accordingly, coordination of the distal degrees of freedom and a refined perception-action coupling appear more important to success than any isolated mechanical component of the service action.     

Influencing and adjusting in daily emotional situations: A comparison of European and Asian American action styles

Emotions are for action, but action styles in emotional episodes may vary across cultural contexts. Based on culturally different models of agency, we expected that those who engage in European-American contexts will use more influence in emotional situations, while those who engage in East-Asian contexts will use more adjustment. European-American (N=60) and Asian-American (N=44) college students reported their action style during emotional episodes four times a day during a week. Asian Americans adjusted more than European Americans, whereas both used influence to a similar extent. These cultural differences in action style varied across types of emotion experienced. Moreover, influencing was associated with life satisfaction for European Americans, but not for Asian Americans.     

Can the LTSI Predict Transfer Performance? Testing intent to transfer as a proximal transfer of training outcome

Law enforcement personnel (n = 235) were administered the Learning Transfer Systems Inventory (LTSI) and a transfer measure after completing leadership development training. Although most studies using the LTSI have focused on validation efforts in different linguistic settings, this study is one of the few to examine the relationship between the LTSI factors and a proximal transfer outcome score (as measured by intent to transfer). Motivation to transfer, transfer design, and transfer performance expectations had the strongest relationship with intent to transfer, and the motivation subscales (motivation to transfer, performance expectations, and outcome expectations) accounted for the largest amount of unique variance in intent to transfer.     

Dreaming to Different Beats: Reply to Commentaries

Psychoanalysis is in the throes of transition and suffers in diverse quarters from a case of postmodern jitters. We are casting aside old paradigms and approach the new with trepidation. We fail to see that deconstruction is a practice rather than an end in itself. The bridge from the old to the new is yet to be completed. This response to reviews of Sexual Subjects: Lesbians, Gender and Psychoanalysis argues that psychoanalysis is not value free in theory or practice, nor can it be. Attempts to deconstruct psychoanalytic concepts of gender and sexuality aim, rather, at delineating values and demonstrating just how they are reflective of a particular siruation in place and time. The deconstruction of gender does not preclude the study of development—a development that is grounded in the analytic decoding and attribution of meaning to experience rather than morphology or critical stages. A hermeneutic-constructivist psychoanalysis is not necessarily at odds with a developmental approach to narrative. Moreover, a theory that acknowledges the performative aspects of gender can simultaneously account for “internal representations” that result from our specific historicities, our intersubjective, fantasized relationships. The deconstruction of gender binaries—the historical imposition of gendering on aspects of experience, desire, and identity that are culturally but not essentially related to constitutionally based sexual differences—does not necessitate the dismantling of a frame of self-systems, or the language that may be best suited for describing an individual's experience.     

Intentionality and Compound Accounts of the Emotions

Most philosophers of emotion endorse a compound account of the emotions: emotions are wholes made of parts; or, as I prefer to put it, emotions are mental states that supervene on other (mental) states. The goal of this paper is to ascertain how the intentionality of these subvening members relates to the intentionality of the emotions. Towards this end, I proceed as follows. First, I discuss the problems with the account Justin D'Arms and Daniel Jacobson offer of the intentionality of the emotions; I argue their account is fundamentally misguided by virtue of being motivated by a misunderstanding of the nature of propositional attitudes. Second, I argue against Peter Goldie's claim that an affective component of an emotion contributes to its intentionality. Third, I offer my own compound account of emotions. I argue (1) emotions are mental states that supervene on other mental states, (2) the mental states that constitute the subvenience base of emotion can have nonconceptual and/or conceptual representational content, and (3) an emotion's intentionality supervenes on (but is often not identical to) the intentionality of only one of its subvening members, specifically, the evaluative representation.