SIMULATION-BASED ASSESSMENT OF MANAGERIAL COMPETENCE: RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

Prior work based on complexity theory has attempted, with some success, to predict general and managerial performance in complex, uncertain, and fluid task settings. The present paper evaluates a quasi-experimental simulation technique that was specifically designed to measure the impact of individual differences in a number of managerial styles (including a style reflecting cognitive complexity) on executive performance. Twenty simulation-based measures were tested for reliability and validity. On the basis of the data obtained from two separate samples, it was concluded that this quasi-experimental simulation technology may be useful for assessing a number of managerial styles that are not currently tapped by other measurement methods. Research results reported in this paper, as well as results obtained in other concurrent efforts, are summarized.     

Decision Workshops for the Improvement of Decision-Making Skills and Confidence

This article describes the development and evaluation of a workshop program to help people become more confident and effective as decision makers. The workshops, based on conflict theory, consisted of five 2-hour sessions, in which participants learned about the major decisional coping patterns and the critical steps of decision making. Participants also practiced decision-making skills and learned how to use decisional balance sheets, future diaries, and other aids to vigilant decision making. The 76 participants were classified as “problem clients” (N = 44, “learners” (N = 30), and “others” (N = 2). A follow-up questionnaire administered 3 months after the final session revealed that the workshops had promoted increased confidence in decision making and less reported use of maladaptive patterns of decision making.     

The Moral Significance of Birth

Does birth make a difference to the moral rights of the fetus /infant? Should it make a difference to its legal rights? Most contemporary philosophers believe that birth cannot make a difference to moral rights. If this is true, then it becomes difficult to justify either a moral or a legal distinction between late abortion and infanticide. I argue that the view that birth is irrelevant to moral rights rests upon two highly questionable assumptions about the theoretical foundations of moral rights. If we reject these assumptions, then we are free to take account of the contrasting biological and social relationships that make even relatively late abortion morally different from infanticide.     

Edith Stein's Philosophy of Woman and of Women's Education

Edith Stein, Husserl's brilliant student and assistant, devoted ten years of her life to teaching in a girls’ secondary school, during which time she gave a series of lectures on educational reform and the appropriate education to be provided to girls. She grounds her answer to these questions in a philosophical account of the nature of woman. She argues that men and women share some universally human character’ istics, but that they have separate and distinct natures. Her awareness of the rich variety of different personality types and specific differences among individuals allows her to hold an essentialist view of the nature of woman without either stereotyping individual women or assuming that woman's nature is in any way inferior to man's.     

Beyond the Circumplex Model: I. A Moratorium on Curvilinearity

The developmental history of Olson's Circumplex Model of Marital and Family Systems, and companion measure, the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES), are reviewed with respect to structure, definition, and theory. Cohesion and adaptability are analyzed as multivariate constructs consisting of linear variables that interact in a confounding, systemic fashion. The theory of curvilinearity — the idea that the model's two key dimensions of cohesion and adaptability form a curvilinear rather than linear relationship with effective family functioning — is rejected.     

Understanding Spirituality in Counseling Psychology: Considerations for Research,Training, and Practice

Selective understandings of spirituality among early, contemporary, and current theorists were reviewed. The purpose is to suggest the multiple implications these varied understandings of spirituality have for practicing clinicians in the field of counseling psychology. Sources of literature were primarily drawn from published literature and classical texts. The conclusions suggest that professionals within the field may need to increase objective and subjective interpretations of spirituality in the therapeutic realm. With this awareness, it is assumed that clinical sensitivity to multiculturalism, recovery movements, and dysfunctional religious systems may be achieved and, subsequently, therapeutic competence may be increased.     

THE MEASUREMENT OF WORK: HIERACHICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE MULTIMETHOD JOB DESIGN QUESTIONNAIRE

To study the changing nature of work, researchers need measures of work that are valid and comprehensive. One potentially useful measure of work is the Multimethod Job Design Questionnaire (MJDQ; Campion, 1988), which was developed to assess 4 general approaches to work design (i.e., motivational, mechanistic, biological, perceptual-motor). Although the MJDQ holds promise as a general measure of work, little information is available regarding its psychometric properties. This study examines the MJDQ, using alternative hierarchical factor structures to represent work at varying levels of abstraction. Little support was found for the 4-factor structure corresponding to the work design approaches underling the MJDQ or for various hierarchical factor structures that simultaneously depicted general and specific aspects of work. However, a 10-factor first-order model received good support and may provide a useful basis for scoring and interpreting the MJDQ in future research.