Organisational Form and People Development: The Team as a Vehicle for Developing the Individual-in-Community

It is argued that all social action serves specific power interests and that the organisational form of social agencies is strongly influenced by the theoretical assumptions and practical aims of those who establish them. The paper presents the case of radical humanism, as an appropriate theory of social action within social democracies in the late-twentieth century, and argues that the team is a highly effective form of social organisation which leads to the establishment of an organisational culture compatible with radical humanist principles.     

Participant differentiation of nonclinical fear and anxiety

Participants in four studies rated remembered experiences of fear and anxiety on scales reflecting characteristics postulated to distinguish anxiety from fear. Similarities and differences were found in ratings of the two emotion situations. Some obtained rating contrasts might indicate only quantitative differences, but many were consistent with qualitative distinctions in clinical and theoretical literatures and were interpreted as providing consensual validation for them. While both emotions involved pain, threat, uncertainty, and arousal, anxiety entailed greater future orientation, duration, frequency of occurrence, temporal uncertainty, inhibition, and sensitivity of self-concept to evaluation by self and others. A few rating contrasts appeared to contradict theoretical claims: e.g., noxiousness, helplessness, and response unavailability were greater with fear. It was suggested that some qualitative criteria for differentiating the two emotions are context-sensitive and may interact with a quantitative criterion.     

The attentional requirements of consciousness

It has been widely claimed that attention and awareness are doubly dissociable and that there is no causal relation between them. In support of this view are numerous claims of attention without awareness, and awareness without attention. Although there is evidence that attention can operate on or be drawn to unconscious stimuli, various recent findings demonstrate that there is no empirical support for awareness without attention. To properly test for awareness without attention, we propose that a stimulus be studied using a battery of tests based on diverse, mainstream paradigms from the current attention literature. When this type of analysis is performed, the evidence is fully consistent with a model in which attention is necessary, but not sufficient, for awareness.     

观察者对亲组织不道德行为的反应及其反馈效应

亲组织不道德行为(unethical pro-organizational behavior, UPB)是近10年来组织行为研究领域的热点主题。相较于已得到广泛探讨的UPB形成机理研究, 当前关于UPB的影响效应研究还相对有限, 且主要聚焦于领导UPB对员工的影响, 以及自我反馈下UPB对行为者的影响。借鉴并受到对应推论理论(correspondent inference theory)和社会认知理论(social cognitive theory)中有关观点的启发, 构建了一个同事间围绕UPB的社会互动模型。模型指出, 观察者在看到同为员工身份的行为者实施UPB后会对此进行结果预期和动机归因, 继而在观察者正直性的调节下引发相应的心理与行为反应; 进一步地, 行为者在接收到观察者对其UPB的行为反应后会对这些反馈背后的意图进行解读, 进而影响其后续行为变化。最后, 从观察者对UPB的道德判断、与UPB“不道德”属性有关的认知评价、UPB行为者行为变化的过程机理等方面提出理论模型的拓展方向。     

A defense of indeterminate distinctness

On the one hand, philosophers have presented numerous apparent examples of indeterminate individuation, i.e., examples in which two things are neither determinately identical nor determinately distinct. On the other hand, some have argued against even the coherence of the very idea of indeterminate individuation. This paper defends the possibility of indeterminate individuation against Evans’s argument and some other arguments. The Determinacy of Identity—the thesis that identical things are determinately identical—is distinguished from the Determinacy of Distinctness—the thesis that distinct things are determinately distinct. It is argued that while the first thesis holds universally and there is no case of indeterminate identity, there are reasons to think that the second thesis does not hold universally, and that there are cases of indeterminate distinctness.