基于认知视角探讨环境不确定性对领导有效性的影响机制

基于管理认知视角,系统深入地探讨了环境不确定性情境对领导有效性的影响机制。具体地,通过质性和量化方法相结合,首先基于意义建构理论(Sense-Making Theory)探寻领导者对于环境不确定情境的感知和解读过程;其次从管理认知视角探讨环境不确定性如何通过高层领导者的管理认知影响战略选择进而作用于领导有效性的过程和路径;最后基于权变思想探讨环境不确定性、组织文化、组织类型情境如何共同作用于领导有效性。研究结果在理论上将克服过去领导情境理论研究不足,打通微观和宏观的视角昭示环境不确定性情境对领导有效性的影响过程和作用路径,揭示其背后深层作用机理。实践方面将为领导者如何有效应对不确定性以及具体领导实践提供重要依据。     

Self–Other Relations in Biodiversity Conservation in the Community: Representational Processes and Adjustment to New Actions

This research explores the simultaneous role of two Self–Other relations in the elaboration of representations at the micro‐ and ontogenetic levels, assuming that it can result in acceptance and/or resistance to new laws. Drawing on the Theory of Social Representations, it concretely looks at how individuals elaborate new representations relevant for biodiversity conservation in the context of their relations with their local community (an interactional Other) and with the legal/reified sphere (an institutional Other). This is explored in two studies in Portuguese Natura 2000 sites where a conservation project calls residents to protect an at‐risk species. Study 1 shows that (i) agreement with the institutional Other (the laws) and meta‐representations of the interactional Other (the community) as approving of conservation independently help explain (at the ontogenetic level) internalisation of conservation goals and willingness to act; (ii) the same meta‐representations operating at the micro‐genetic level attenuate the negative relation between ambivalence and willingness to act. Study 2 shows that a meta‐representation of the interactional Other as showing no clear position regarding conservation increases ambivalence. Findings demonstrate the necessarily social nature of representational processes and the importance of considering them at more than one level for understanding responses to new policy/legal proposals. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Behavioral variability in SHR and WKY rats as a function of rearing environment and reinforcement contingency.

The spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) may model aspects of human attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). For example, just as responses by children with ADHD tend to be variable, so too SHRs often respond more variably than do Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) control rats. The present study asked whether behavioral variability in the SHR strain is influenced by rearing environment, a question related to hypotheses concerning the etiology of human ADHD. Some rats from each strain were reared in an enriched environment (housed socially), and others were reared in an impoverished environment (housed in isolation). Four groups--enriched SHR, impoverished SHR, enriched WKY, and impoverished WKY--were studied under two reinforcement contingencies, one in which reinforcement was independent of response variability and the other in which reinforcement depended upon high variability. The main finding was that rearing environment did not influence response variability (enriched and impoverished subjects responded similarly throughout). However, rearing environment affected body weight (enriched subjects weighted more than impoverished subjects) and response rate (impoverished subjects generally responded faster than enriched subjects). In addition, SHRs tended to respond variably throughout the experiment, whereas WKYs were more sensitive to the variability contingencies. Thus, behavioral variability was affected by genetic strain and by reinforcement contingency but not by the environment in which the subjects were reared.     

Pedestrian jaywalking under facilitating and nonfacilitating conditions

Each year, thousands of pedestrians are killed or injured while crossing streets in the United States. Pedestrians who jaywalk across busy intersections increase their risk of being injured by an automobile. The present series of studies investigated pedestrian jaywalking behaviors under temporal conditions which appeared to control noncompliance and compliance with pedestrian walk signs. An intersection involving three major streets was the target site of the studies. The timing of walk and no-walk light sequences was different in the clockwise and counterclockwise direction and produced differential delays. In three separate studies, significantly more pedestrians jaywalked when walking in the long-delay as opposed to short-delay direction. Traffic planners might use these findings to establish safer pedestrian signal systems.     

REDUCTION OF CIGARETTE SMOKING IN A UNIVERSITY CAFETERIA

Passive smoking has been shown to be hazardous to the health of nonsmokers. Given this documented link between exposure to smoke-filled environments and deleterious health consequences, there is a need to develop effective procedures that establish and maintain no-smoking areas in various public settings. The present study focused on decreasing cigarette smoking in a section of a university cafeteria. Posting of no-smoking signs was found to decrease levels of smoking only minimally. However, when smokers were verbally prompted not to smoke, in the presence of the signs, marked decreases in smoking occurred in the target area.     

Reduction of residential consumption of electricity through simple monthly feedback

Feedback has been widely used in efforts to control the consumption of electricity. Previous efforts, however, have used forms of feedback that seem economically impractical. The present study examined the effects of a feasible program of monthly feedback. Forty matched nonvolunteer participants were randomly divided into two groups: a no-contact control group and a monthly feedback group. In an A-B-A design, the data showed a clear decrease in electricity consumption for the feedback group during the feedback phase. The effect was maintained during a 4-mo intervention period. Withdrawal of the feedback was associated with a return to higher levels of electricity consumption.     

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF SCIENCE IN THE DIALOGUE PROPOSED BY WILLIAM KLINK?

Abstract. Klink rejects the use of ecological models in environmental decision making because their predictions cannot be tested by rigorous scientific methods. I argue that models that cannot be tested according to the rigorous standards of the physical sciences can still be considered “scientific”; they are useful (and, in practice, used) for assessing the impacts of human actions on the environment and choosing between alternative courses of action. It is, however, important to be aware of the uncertainties and to make corrections as new data and insights become available. The interplay between (1) model-based decisions and action and (2) their consequences and subsequent corrections can be regarded as a dialogue between humans and nature (or God) in the sense proposed by Klink. Klink also claims that future actions should be informed by the larger vision of theology and should not be based on science. I suggest that science has an indispensible role. The larger vision is needed to respond to the fundamental religious question: How should I live—and why? But this question cannot be answered without first addressing the fundamental scientific question: How does the world work? I suggest that responses to the first question can be formulated as visions of a future state of existence that we feel compelled to strive to realize, and that science is necessary to provide “maps of reality” needed to realize visions. I also suggest that Christian traditions can probably provide adequate visions; the crucial need is for improving our “maps of reality.”     

Environmental risks: Scientific concepts and social perception

Using the example of air pollution, I criticize a restricted utilitarian view of environmental risks. It is likely that damage to health due to environmental pollution in Western countries is relatively modest in quantitative terms (especially when considering cancer and comparing such damage to the effects of some life-style exposures). However, a strictly quantitative approach, which ranks priorities according to the burden of disease attributable to single causes, is questionable because it does not consider such aspects as inequalities in the distribution of risks. Secondly, the ability of epidemiological research to identify some health effects is limited. Third, the environment has symbolic and aesthetic components that overcome a strict evaluation of damage based on the impairment of human health. It is not acceptable that priorities be set just balancing the burden of disease caused by pollution in the environment against economic constraints. As an example of a computation that inherently includes economic analysis, I refer to the proposal of an estimator of mortality in coal mining, i.e., a rate which puts deaths in the numerator and tons of coal extracted in the denominator. According to this estimator, mortality due to accidents decreased from 1.15 to 0.42 in the period 1950–1970 in the United States, for each million tons of coal extracted. However, considering the steep decline in the workforce in the same period, the traditional mortality rate (deaths over persons-time) actually increased. The proposal of a measure of mortality based on the amount of coal extracted is just one example of the attempts to influence decisions by including an economic element (productivity) in risk assessment. This paper has three purposes: One, to describe empirical research concerning the health effects of environmental pollutants; two, to discuss the scientific principles and methods used in the identification of environmental hazards; and three, to critically discuss some of the ethical principles which are applied in medicine and in the assessment and management of risk.     

PANTHEISM RECONSTRUCTED: ECOTHEOLOGY AS A SUCCESSOR TO THE JUDEO‐CHRISTIAN,ENLIGHTENMENT, AND POSTMODERNIST PARADIGMS

The Judeo‐Christian, Enlightenment, and postmodernist paradigms have become intellectually and ethically exhausted. They are obviously failing to provide a conceptual framework conducive to eliminating some of humanity's worst scourges, including war and environmental destruction. This raises the issue of a successor, which necessitates a reexamination of first principles, starting with our concept of God. Pantheism, which is differentiated from panentheism, denies the existence of a transcendent, supernatural creator and instead asserts that God and the universe are one and the same. Understood via intuition, modern cosmology, and other natural sciences, it offers an alternative worldview that posits the divine and sacred nature of the universe/creation. By asserting the fallacy of the creator/creation dichotomy and any attempts to anthropomorphize or personalize God, pantheism precludes hubris stemming from erroneous notions of divine favoritism. The links between Judeo‐Christianity and the Enlightenment are traced and a case made that the latter has resulted in the equally erroneous and hubristic notion of human ascendancy to a Godlike status, with the concept of progress providing a secular version of the Christian belief in salvation. By reestablishing the natural sciences’metanarrative, even as it asserts the divinity of the material universe, pantheism simultaneously demotes postmodernism and reconciles science with religion. Pantheism provides a theological foundation for deep ecology and also stakes out a viable third position in relation to the ongoing dispute between advocates of intelligent design and the scientific establishment.     

PRIVATE PROPERTY AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS:

Abstract: This article argues that teachers of environmental ethics must more aggressively entertain questions of private property in their work and in their teaching. To make this case, it first introduces the three primary positions on property: occupation arguments, labor theory of value arguments, and efficiency arguments. It then contextualizes these arguments in light of the contemporary U.S. wise‐use movement, in an attempt to make sense of the concerns that motivate wise‐use activists, and also to demonstrate how intrinsic value arguments miss the mark. Finally, it offers some suggestions about further directions for environmental ethics, reasoning that there is a good deal of headway to be gained for environmental ethics by accepting that nature can be owned as property, but nevertheless engaging the idea of private property critically.