Managing a new collaborative entity in business organizations: understanding organizational communities of practice effectiveness

Companies worldwide are turning to organizational communities of practice (OCoPs) as vehicles to generate learning and enhance organizational performance. OCoPs are defined as groups of employees who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic and who strengthen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on a consistent basis. To date, OCoP research has drawn almost exclusively from the community of practice (CoP) literature, even though the organizational form of CoPs shares attributes of traditional CoPs and of organizational teams. Drawing on Lave and Wenger's (1991) original theory of legitimate peripheral participation, we integrate theory and research from CoPs and organizational teams to develop and empirically examine a model of OCoP effectiveness that includes constructs such as leadership, empowerment, the structure of tasks, and OCoP relevance to organizational effectiveness. Using data from 32 OCoPs in a U.S.-based multinational mining and minerals processing firm, we found that external community leaders play an important role in enhancing OCoP empowerment, particularly to the extent that task interdependence is high. Empowerment, in turn, was positively related to OCoP effectiveness. We also found that OCoPs designated as "core" by the organization (e.g., working on critical issues) were more effective than those that were noncore. Task interdependence also was positively related to OCoP effectiveness. We provide scholars and practitioners with insights on how to effectively manage OCoPs in today's organizations.     

The use of visual and automatized behavioral markers to assess methodologies: a study case on PIT-tagging in the Alpine newt

In various research fields, biomarkers are now widely used as tools for assessing individual integrity. The recent advances in quantification methods for behavioral patterns, such as computerized video-tracking procedures, make them valuable biomarkers. However, the corollary of these novelties is that they remain relatively unknown and unused. In this study, we show that such tools can assess the validity of research methods, such as individual recognition. To demonstrate this, we employed, as a model, a marking method (passive integrated transponder [PIT] tagging) widely used in amphibians. Detailed visual observations and video-tracking methods were complementary in highlighting components at different behavioral scales: locomotion, feeding, and breeding. We illustrate the scientific and ethical adequacy of the targeted marking method but also suggest that more studies should integrate behavioral analyses. Such biomarkers are a powerful tool for assessing conservation concerns when other techniques cannot detect detrimental effects.     

Positive emotional context eliminates the framing effect in decision-making

Dual-process theories have suggested that emotion plays a key role in the framing effect in decision-making. However, little is known about the potential impact of a specific positive or negative emotional context on this bias. We investigated this question with adult participants using an emotional priming paradigm. First, participants were presented with positive or negative affective pictures (i.e., pleasant vs. unpleasant photographs). Afterward, participants had to perform a financial decision-making task that was unrelated to the pictures previously presented. The results revealed that the presentation framed in terms of gain or loss no longer affected subjects' decision-making following specific exposure to emotionally pleasant pictures. Interestingly, a positive emotional context did not globally influence risk-taking behavior but specifically decreased the risk propensity in the loss frame. This finding confirmed that a positive emotional context can reduce loss aversion, and it strongly reinforced the dual-process view that the framing effect stems from an affective heuristic belonging to intuitive System 1. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

An Examination of the Relative Impact of Normative Information and Self-Efficacy on Personal Goals and Performance Over Time1

A model of goal-setting processes was developed that depicted the influence of previous performance, normative information, and self-efficacy on personal goals and performance. Three levels of normative information were manipulated in a counter-balanced fashion across two trials. Norms were hypothesized to have a greater influence than self-efficacy on personal goals for the first trial, whereas efficacy was hypothesized to have a stronger influence than norms on Trial 2 goals. A sample of 135 undergraduates completed a practice and two performance trials of a word game, and the results were analyzed using LISREL structural modeling techniques. Although the general hypothesized model fit fairly well, the specific results concerning the relative impact of norms and self-efficacy were opposite of the expected direction. Potential explanations for these results, and recommendations for future research are offered.     

The effect of expectation on the identification of known and unknown persons

In this experiment we investigated the influence of expectation, exposure time and jacket hood positioning on person identification. Thirty subjects, all employees of the TNO Institute for Perception, participated in the experiment. They were presented with slides showing known and unknown persons who were photographed under bad lighting conditions. Limited viewing conditions considerably deteriorated subjects' performance and under these circumstances all experimental manipulations significantly affected identification accuracy. Contrary to what was expected longer exposure times impaired performance. The results are discussed in light of recent research on face recognition (Bruce and Young, 1986; Read, Vokey, and Hammersley, 1990).     

Plagiarism: Words and Ideas

Plagiarism is a crime against academy. It deceives readers, hurts plagiarized authors, and gets the plagiarist undeserved benefits. However, even though these arguments do show that copying other people's intellectual contribution is wrong, they do not apply to the copying of words. Copying a few sentences that contain no original idea (e.g. in the introduction) is of marginal importance compared to stealing the ideas of others. The two must be clearly distinguished, and the 'plagiarism' label should not be used for deeds which are very different in nature and importance.     

On Enrolling More Female Students in Science and Engineering

Many people hold this truth to be self-evident that universities should enroll more female students in science and engineering; the main question then being how. Typical arguments include possible benefits to women, possible benefits to the economy, and the unfairness of the current female under-representation. However, when clearly stated and scrutinized these arguments in fact lead to the conclusion that there should be more women in scientific disciplines in higher education in the sense that we should expect more women (which various kinds of discrimination may prevent), not that we should actively enroll more women. Outreach programs towards high school students may therefore be logically incompatible with the arguments supposed to justify them. They should purport to allow women to graduate in a field congruent with her abilities and desires, rather than try to draw as many of them to scientific disciplines as possible: one cannot try to 'recruit' as many female students as possible while claiming to help them choose more freely.