Ch-Ch-Ch-changes: How Action Phase Functional Leadership,Team Human Capital,and Interim vs. Permanent Leader Status Impact Post-transition Team Performance

This study addresses the following: (1) does a team leader change along with the quality of the team’s human capital affect post-change team performance?; (2) is functional leadership of the team’s human capital a driver of post-change team performance?; and (3) should interim vs. permanent leaders manage the team’s human capital differently? We analyzed archival data from Major League Baseball teams who had undergone an in-season manager change (N = 129). Team performance improved after a leader change, and the quality of the team’s strategic and non-strategic core human capital were positively related to post-change performance. New leaders who engaged in more active functional leadership of the strategic core human capital enhanced the positive effects of human capital quality. Additionally, active functional leadership enhanced the positive effects of strategic core human capital for interim replacement leaders, but not for permanent replacement leaders. This study extends theory and practice on the importance of functional team leadership and human capital following a leader transition. As such, our results provide actionable knowledge for organizations and managers who are part of leadership transitions. This empirical study leverages a unique sample to provide insights into the implications of team leader transitions. The results of this study shed light on the impact that leader transitions which involve “interim” and “permanent” replacements may have on post-transition team performance and how these different types of leaders should leverage the inherent human capital that exists within the team.     

Why I’m still a proportionalist

Mark Schroeder has, rather famously, defended a powerful Humean Theory of Reasons. In doing so, he abandons what many take to be the default Humean view of weighting reasons—namely, proportionalism . On Schroeder’s view, the pressure that Humeans feel to adopt proportionalism is illusory, and proportionalism is unable to make sense of the fact that the weight of reasons is a normative matter. He thus offers his own ‘Recursive View’, which directly explains how it is that the weight of reasons is a normative matter. In this paper, I argue against Schroeder that a Humean ought to be a proportionalist. On my view, proportionalism is clearly an intuitive theory of weighting for a Humean, so we should resist it only if Schroeder can demonstrate either that there is a serious problem with the view, or that there is a better alternative. I then further argue that Schroeder fails to deliver on either condition. As a result, I conclude that there are good intuitive reasons for a Humean to be a proportionalist, and no good reason not to be.     

Definitive,Defective or Deft? Reassessing Barth's Doctrine of Baptism in Church Dogmatics IV/4

Karl Barth's doctrine of baptism articulated in Church Dogmatics IV/4 is due for reassessment. Interpretation of this part of Barth's intellectual legacy has been conceptually determined by unresolved tensions within the Reformed tradition's sacramentology and by a widespread notion that Barth shifted from one side of this tension to the other over the course of his career. This article contests that notion and argues that Barth's doctrine of baptism is more sophisticated than often thought. By developing the concept of ‘paradoxical identity’ as a way to describe how Barth thinks about the relation between divine and human action, this article sheds new light on the value of Barth's work in Church Dogmatics IV/4.     

Effects of working memory capacity on mental set due to domain knowledge

The present set of studies examines how working memory capacity (WMC) relates to performance on a Remote Associates Task (RAT), originally designed by Mednick as a quantifiable creative problem solving assessment. The source of fixation was manipulated across two sets of RAT items. One set was neutral with no specific fixation embedded in them, while the second set was baseball-misleading, designed so that prior knowledge of baseball would lead to an incorrect solution attempt. WMC scores were positively related to performance on RAT items in all conditions, except one. High baseball knowledge participants' WMC scores did not relate to performance on the baseball-misleading RAT. While in general WMC may lead to better RAT performance, these results suggest that when there is a candidate solution strongly activated by prior knowledge, WMC may actually lead to too much focus on the incorrect solution and exacerbate mental sets.     

Aggression-consistent, -inconsistent,and -irrelevant priming effects on selective exposure to media violence

Priming with aggressive concepts increases males' attraction to media violence. It was hypothesized that priming with schema-irrelevant concepts would decrease interest relative to the effects of schema-relevant concepts, whether or not the schema-relevant concepts were also schema-consistent. Thirty male undergraduates used lists including aggressive (schema-consistent and schema-relevant), positive or prosocial (schema-inconsistent yet relevant), or entirely neutral (schema-irrelevant) words to write short stories (priming task), then received an opportunity to select videotaped film clips for viewing. Subjects primed by aggressive word lists included more aggression, anger, fear, and violence in their stories than did those in the aggression-inconsistent and aggression-irrelevant conditions, whereas aggression-inconsistent priming yielded more fun, helping, and joy than did other conditions. Aggressively primed subjects expressed more interest in films containing violence and hostility than did neutrally primed subjects, whereas aggression-inconsistent priming did not differ significantly from either aggressive (schema-consistent) or neutral (schema-irrelevant) priming. Findings indicate that the aggressive priming activates aggressive concepts that make violence and hostility more salient to individuals. Because male undergraduates typically express interest in violence, enhanced salience leads to increased interest. © 1992 Wiley-Liss, Inc.