Accountability Systems and Group Norms: Balancing the Risks of Mindless Conformity and Reckless Deviation

In dynamic task environments, decision makers are vulnerable to two types of errors: sticking too closely to the rules (excessive conformity) or straying too far from them (excessive deviation). We explore the effects of process and outcome accountability on the susceptibility to these errors. Using a multiple‐cue probability‐learning task, we show that process accountability encourages conformity errors and outcome accountability promotes deviation errors. Two additional studies explore the moderating effects of self‐focused and other‐focused group norms. Self‐focused norms reduce the effect of process accountability on excessive conformity. Other‐focused norms reduce the effect of outcome accountability on excessive deviation. Our results qualify prevailing claims about the benefits of process over outcome accountability and show that those benefits hinge on prevailing group norms, on the effectiveness of prescribed decision rules, and on the amount of irreducible uncertainty in the prediction task. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do corporations have minds of their own?

Corporations have often been taken to be the paradigm of an organization whose agency is autonomous from that of the successive waves of people who occupy the pattern of roles that define its structure, which licenses saying that the corporation has attitudes, interests, goals, and beliefs which are not those of the role occupants. In this essay, I sketch a deflationary account of agency-discourse about corporations. I identify institutional roles with a special type of status function, a status role, in which the collectively accepted function is expressed in part through its occupier’s intentional expression of her agency in that role (where the occupier is part of the group whose collective acceptance underwrites her having the relevant function in social transactions). I identify institutions as systems of status roles and show how this is compatible with seeing the agency of institutions generally, even over time periods in which there is complete change in role occupiers, as a matter of the contributions only of individual agents. I explain how the reduction of the institution to its members is compatible with its potentially having had a completely different membership. I show in the case of the corporation in particular that, once we see its origins and function, the surface features of legal discourse about corporate agency are misleading and are compatible with a deflationary account of corporate agency. I show in connection with this that the corporation is to be identified with its shareholders, and that where a corporation separates ownership and control, its managers and employees are proxy agents of the shareholders doing business under the corporate form. Finally, I canvass the legitimate ways of construing ordinary talk about corporate intention, belief, and so on, in light of this, none of which support the attribution of genuine agency or intentionality to any group per se associated with the corporation.     

领导执行公正准则的理论基础及影响因素

领导执行公正准则指领导展现与组织公正各维度的准则相一致的管理行为。解释该行为的主要理论为社会交换理论和公正道义模型。领导的道德特质、公正经历、地位以及领导与员工互动中知觉到的员工的交流风格、可信性、归属需要是影响领导执行公正准则的主要因素。未来研究应进一步探讨组织因素对领导执行公正准则的影响, 从模型互补的角度完善理论解释, 明确间接交换对领导执行公正准则的影响, 并开展领导执行公正准则的本土化研究。     

Logic,Rules and Intention: The Principal Aim Argument

Stephen Mumford develops his view of sport spectatorship partly through a rejection of an argument he attributes to Best, which distinguishes between two categories of sports, the ‘purposive’ and the ‘aesthetic’, on the basis of the claim that they have different principal aims. This paper considers the principal aim argument and one feature of Mumford’s rejection of that argument, namely, Best’s observation that the distinctions to which he draws attention are based on logical differences. The paper argues that Mumford misconstrues Best’s argument by taking it to be about the intentions of players and athletes, while it is actually about a specific feature of the rules of each sport.     

Analysis of proposed three-class classification decision rules in terms of the ideal observer decision rule

We analyze recently proposed decision rules for three-class classification from the point of view of ideal observer decision theory. We consider three-class decision rules proposed by Scurfield, by Chan et al., and by Mossman. Scurfield's decision rule is shown to be a special case of the three-class ideal observer decision rule in three different situations. Chan et al. start with an ideal observer model and specify its decision-consequence utility structure in a way that causes two of the decision lines used by the ideal observer to overlap and the third line to become undefined. Finally, we show that, for a particular and obvious choice of ideal-observer-related decision variables, the Mossman decision rule cannot be a special case of the ideal observer decision rule. Despite the considerable difficulties presented by the three-class classification task, the three-class ideal observer provides a useful framework for analyzing a variety of three-class decision strategies.     

Cut Elimination inside a Deep Inference System for Classical Predicate Logic

Deep inference is a natural generalisation of the one-sided sequent calculus where rules are allowed to apply deeply inside formulas, much like rewrite rules in term rewriting. This freedom in applying inference rules allows to express logical systems that are difficult or impossible to express in the cut-free sequent calculus and it also allows for a more fine-grained analysis of derivations than the sequent calculus. However, the same freedom also makes it harder to carry out this analysis, in particular it is harder to design cut elimination procedures. In this paper we see a cut elimination procedure for a deep inference system for classical predicate logic. As a consequence we derive Herbrand's Theorem, which we express as a factorisation of derivations.     

儿童对情绪表达规则的理解与策略的使用

从一所普通小学一三五年级学生中选取90名被试,结构访谈法考察儿童对情绪表达规则的理解与表达策略的使用。结果表明,儿童对情绪表达规则的理解在一到三年级阶段获得快速发展,三到五年级变化很小,而且在积极和消极情境下发展趋势比较一致,但性别和情境交互作用显著。不同年级儿童对策略的使用表现出类似对情绪表达规则理解的变化趋势,全部被试中,平静化策略使用最多,掩饰策略次之,在掩饰策略的使用上,性别和情境交互作用显著。     

青少年自主性发展的特点

从北京地区选取两所中学初一至高二年级1155名学生为被试,采用问卷法来探讨青少年自主性发展的特点。研究共涉及道德、传统、交友、个人、安全5个领域以及家庭规则、父母权威认同和自主行为水平3个层面的内容。结果显示:自主性在整个青少年期呈逐渐增长的趋势。在不同领域中和不同的层面上,各年级不同性别的青少年自主性发展有显著差异。     

审美概念学习效应与迁移的逻辑线路探究

以49名小学四年级学生和30名大学教师及研究生为实验对象,采用SMSD模式进行审美概念学习,结果发现这两组被试的审美理解和感受水平都有显著提高。对大学教师研究生组再作前审美概念(已学概念)之于后审美概念(未学概念)各因素影响情况的回归分析,得到四个回归方程,据此绘制出SMSD模式审美概念学习迁移模型图,归纳出平行迁移、纵向迁移、交叉迁移、小巡回迁移、大巡回迁移等若干逻辑线路。     

The balance beam in the balance: reflections on rules, relational complexity, and developmental processes

The lead articles by Jansen and van der Maas (2002, this issue) and Halford, Andrews, Dalton, Boag, and Zielinski (2002, this issue) raise numerous questions concerning the development of rule use and how best to assess it. In this Reflection, we focus on the following: (a) When can one infer the use of a rule? (b) What are the mechanisms underlying the development of rule use? and (c) What is the relation between understanding and execution? In addressing these questions, we contrast relational complexity theory with cognitive complexity and control (CCC) theory.