Theology and Interpretation: The Case of Aquinas and Calvin on Romans

This article explores how Aquinas's and Calvin's theology of justification, the law and the nature of human works integrate with their interpretations of Romans by analyzing their commentaries on 1:16b–17, focusing on the iustitia Dei, and 2:13, which addresses the relationship between works and justification. Aquinas's interpretation unfolds by emphasizing the work of Christ in and through sinners, while Calvin's interpretation emphasizes the work of Christ for and to sinners. I also demonstrate how the theological judgements embedded in these sections inform their reading of Romans as a whole.     

Scaling and Measurement: Comparing Alternative Measures of the French and Raven Power Bases

Twenty-five multi-item scales used to measure power sources and/or exercised power in a sales or channel setting are reviewed. The procedures for assessing the reliability and validity (convergent, discriminant, and nomological) of each scale are discussed and reviewed. Findings indicate adequate reliability for all of the scales. Problems in the establishment of validity for some of the coercive and legitimate power measures are noted. Recommendations are made regarding the use and improvement of power scales in future research.     

Attributes and Behaviors of Salespeople Preferred by Buyers: High Socializing vs. Low Socializing Industrial Buyers

A random sample of purchasing agents was surveyed and split into two groups based on their socializing behavior. These two groups differ as to the importance of various salesperson attributes and behaviors. It was also found that “high” socializers tend to engage in after-hour meetings and discuss non-business related topics more so than “low” socializers. In addition, “high” socializers tend to be younger, provide more time for sales meetings, have less tenure, and are more likely to be found in smaller purchasing departments compared to “low” socializers. Other findings and implications are discussed and areas for further research are suggested.     

Book Review

This research reviews and analyzes case law related to private-school employment contracts. The cases deal with the validity of contracts and termination of employment in which the courts have been called upon to settle a variety of disputes between nonpublic schools and their employees. School administrators must be knowledgeable of the basic principals of contract law.     

Creative Climate: A Leadership Lever for Innovation

The working atmosphere within an organization has an important influence on its level of innovative productivity. Organizational leaders influence innovative productivity as well as the climate for creativity and innovation. This exploratory study included 140 respondents from 103 different organizations, 31 industries, and 10 countries, all of whom completed an online survey focused on examining the intervening nature of the climate for creativity and innovation. First, those who perceived more leadership support for innovation had significantly better creative climate scores. Second, those who perceived higher levels of innovative productivity also had better climate scores. Finally, organizational climate as an intervening variable between leadership behavior and innovation was confirmed through partial correlation and mediation analysis. The findings of this study support the pivotal role that creative climate plays between leadership behavior and innovative productivity.     

Religion as Cultural Models: Developing an Emic Measure of Religiosity

Despite a century's worth of work, lacunae remain in our understanding of the religion‐health relationship. Scholars in this field have called for increasingly sophisticated conceptualizations of religiosity that refine its connection to well‐being, accounting for both positive and negative associations, while being sensitive to the cultural variations in the experience of religion. This article argues that cognitive anthropological methods provide a novel approach to these issues by conceptualizing aspects of religion as culturally shared “styles of life.” Specifically, the combined approaches of cultural consensus and cultural consonance provide an emically valid measure of religiosity that is then linked to health through the psychosocial stress paradigm. Utilizing research among Brazilian Pentecostals within the state of São Paulo, this intrareligious study evaluates the predictive power of religious cultural consonance relative to widely used and established religiosity scales. Religious consonance is found to have a stronger correlation with psychological well‐being than comparable measures, suggesting that existing standardized measures miss important dimensions of the religion‐health relationship. As such, this article outlines an important area of collaboration between anthropologists and other religion‐health researchers.     

Can designing and selling low-quality products be ethical?

Whereas previous studies have criticized low-quality products for inadequate safety, this paper considers only safe products, and it examines the ethics of designing and selling low-quality products. Product quality is defined as suitability to a general purpose. The duty that companies owe to consumers is summarized in the Consumer-Oriented Process principle: “to place an increase in the consumer’s quality of life as the primary goal for producing products.” This principle is applied in analyzing the primary ethical justifications for low-quality products: availability and applicability. Finally, a low-quality product should be designed afresh, not by altering an existing high-quality product. Supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant CCR-9315696. The views, opinions, and conclusions of this paper are not necessarily those of the University of Illinois or the National Science Foundation. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, St. Louis, Mo., February 29 to March 2, 1996. Willem Bakker is an undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is majoring in computer engineering and philosophy. Michael Loui is professor of electrical and computer engineering and associate dean of the Graduate College at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From 1990 to 1991, he served at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. His scholarly interests include computational complexity theory, theory of parallel and distributed computation, faulttolerant software, and professional ethics.     

Reliability of the Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS) and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ)

The stability and internal consistency of Spence and Helmreich's Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS) and Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) are reported. An entire first-year class of 1,007 male and 78 female cadets at the U.S. Military Academy were given a battery of psychological tests before and after cadet basic training, a 2 1/2-month period. The AWS and PAQ proved to be highly reliable, comparable to other frequently used psychological tests. This psychometric information encourages researchers to make further use of these gender-related instruments.This research was conducted under research grants from the Army Research Institute (Alan G. Vitters and Jerome Adams, Principal Investigators). The views expressed herein are opinions of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policy of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Military Academy, or the Army Research Institute. The authors appreciate the editorial comments of Dr. Brenda Major.