Combining Value‐focused Thinking and Balanced Scorecard to Improve Decision‐making in Strategic Management

Goal orientation is key to strategic management. In this field, the Balanced Scorecard is one of the most widely used management tools. It structures a company's main objectives from different perspectives based on the strategy of the firm and uses performance indicators to measure the achievement of objectives and strategy. However, its method of creation is not theoretically sound. Value‐focused thinking is a decision‐making philosophy that fits perfectly with Balanced Scorecard creation. It provides methods and techniques for the identification and structuring of objectives that are suitable to systematically derive a scorecard from a means‐ends network. However, such a means‐ends network is often too complex for enduring use in strategic management. By adapting the network's structure to the Balanced Scorecard's layout, the profound and clear set of derived objectives and their measures serve as a reasonable basis for applying methods of multi‐criteria decision‐making in an organization. This paper aimed to outline a procedure that merges the Balanced Scorecard and value‐focused thinking by preserving each concept's strengths while eliminating their weaknesses. A six‐step process was developed theoretically and employed empirically in a case study. This process included (1) identifying objectives; (2) structuring objectives; (3) characterizing clusters of objectives; (4) formulating mission, vision, and strategy; (5) designing the scorecard; and (6) monitoring and adapting to change. On the basis of this approach, a Management Scorecard was produced that enabled strategy development and execution, put forth a clear and comprehensive means‐ends network, and visualized a company's most important objectives and their relationships structured through perspectives roughly following the Balanced Scorecard. It acts as a foundation for research to generalize and compare findings regarding goals of organizations. Our procedure demonstrates how scientific methods, such as value‐focused thinking, can yield benefits to practitioners' instruments, like the Balanced Scorecard, and how management tools can likewise improve scientific methods. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Knowing Versus Caring: The Role of Affect and Cognition in Political Perceptions

This paper examines the importance of political knowledge in shaping accurate perceptions of the political world—specifically, how levels of general political knowledge influence the accuracy of specific political judgments, how those judgments might also be shaped by "wishful thinking," and how political knowledge attenuates the impact of wishful thinking on political judgments. Predictions of who would win the U.S. presidential election in 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996, as surveyed in the National Election Studies conducted in those years, were used as a measure of the accuracy of political perceptions. Analysis of these data reveals that both political knowledge and wishful thinking are important determinants of the accuracy of people's perceptions; in addition, the impact of wishful thinking on perceptions is attenuated by political knowledge.     

Science and Theology in the Twenty-First Century

The current interaction of science and theology is surveyed. Modern physics describes a world of intrinsic unpredictability and deep relationality. Theology provides answers to the metaquestions of why that world is rationally transparent and rationally beautiful and why it is so finely tuned for carbon-based life. Biology's fundamental insight of evolutionary process is to be understood theologically as creation "making itself." In the twenty-first century, biology may be expected to move beyond the merely mechanical. Neuroscience will not have much useful interaction with theology until it attains theories of wide explanatory scope. Computer models of the brain do not meet this requirement. A theological style of bottom-up thinking comes closest to scientific habits of thought. Complexity theory suggests that information will prove to be an increasingly important scientific concept, encouraging theology to revive the Thomistic notion of the soul as the form of the body. Another gift of science to theology will lie in providing a meeting point for the encounter of the world faith traditions.     

Hemispheric connectivity and the visual–spatial divergent-thinking component of creativity

Background/hypothesis

Divergent thinking is an important measurable component of creativity. This study tested the postulate that divergent thinking depends on large distributed inter- and intra-hemispheric networks. Although preliminary evidence supports increased brain connectivity during divergent thinking, the neural correlates of this characteristic have not been entirely specified. It was predicted that visuospatial divergent thinking would correlate with right hemisphere white matter volume (WMV) and with the size of the corpus callosum (CC).

Methods

Volumetric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) analyses and the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) were completed among 21 normal right-handed adult males.

Results

TTCT scores correlated negatively with the size of the CC and were not correlated with right or, incidentally, left WMV.

Conclusions

Although these results were not predicted, perhaps, as suggested by Bogen and Bogen (1988), decreased callosal connectivity enhances hemispheric specialization, which benefits the incubation of ideas that are critical for the divergent-thinking component of creativity, and it is the momentary inhibition of this hemispheric independence that accounts for the illumination that is part of the innovative stage of creativity. Alternatively, decreased CC size may reflect more selective developmental pruning, thereby facilitating efficient functional connectivity.     

Enhanced divergent thinking and creativity in musicians: a behavioral and near-infrared spectroscopy study

Empirical studies of creativity have focused on the importance of divergent thinking, which supports generating novel solutions to loosely defined problems. The present study examined creativity and frontal cortical activity in an externally-validated group of creative individuals (trained musicians) and demographically matched control participants, using behavioral tasks and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Experiment 1 examined convergent and divergent thinking with respect to intelligence and personality. Experiment 2 investigated frontal oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin concentration changes during divergent thinking with NIRS. Results of Experiment 1 indicated enhanced creativity in musicians who also showed increased verbal ability and schizotypal personality but their enhanced divergent thinking remained robust after co-varying out these two factors. In Experiment 2, NIRS showed greater bilateral frontal activity in musicians during divergent thinking compared with nonmusicians. Overall, these results suggest that creative individuals are characterized by enhanced divergent thinking, which is supported by increased frontal cortical activity.     

Heart rate variability predicts self‐control in goal pursuit

The aim of our study was to investigate the effects of a failure experience on the exercise of self‐control in goal pursuit. We hypothesized that tonic heart rate variability (tonic HRV), a possible physiological marker of inhibitory capacity, increases the exercise of self‐control in the pre‐ and post‐actional phase in goal pursuit after failure. Participants received feedback for an alleged intelligence test and subsequently worked on the same test again. As indicators of exercised self‐control, we assessed self‐confidence in the pre‐actional phase and rumination in the post‐actional phase. As hypothesized, tonic HRV was positively associated with pre‐ and post‐actional self‐control, even after controlling for the effect of neuroticism. We discuss the implications of our results for the self‐regulatory strength model. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

脊柱疾患临床诊断的辩证思维

脊柱外科是骨科学的一个亚专科,也是外科学领域中发展最为迅速的一个分支学科。脊柱外科疾患的正确诊断有赖于诊断过程中的正确辩证思维。在临床诊断思维中,从疾病学角度和症状学角度,需要正确处理几个辨证关系,同时要避免临床思维常见误区,才能提高诊断正确性。     

预防术中知晓的辩证思考

哲学的辩证思维在临床麻醉中具有重要意义。术中知晓是全球麻醉学界面,临和尚未解决的问题之一。麻醉药物和麻醉技术的安全性及可控性大大提高,但术中知晓仍时有发生。本文就如何避免术中知晓的发生具体分析了几种常用的辩证思维方法,论述了运用这些方法的必要性及可行性。     

高血压病临床决策的思考

高血压病防控形势不理想的现状要求临床决策要有新的科学思维。病因正本清源是基础,应该从生物、社会心理、环境生态等宏观与微观着手,真正把握高血压病这一心身性疾病的本质。临床药物干预是手段,用药诸环节要因人而异,既尊重人体自调适规律又成为有益的修正。随着对高血压病认识的深化,临床决策将永久处于相对不确定之中。思维上临床决策应从非线性思维出发,深刻理解诊疗指南的复杂表述;整体医学观上应有“天人合一”整体观念,统筹分析;同时卫生经济学上应坚持简、便、效、廉的基本目标。