The small helm project: An academic activity addressing international corruption for undergraduate civil engineering and construction management students

This paper presents an academic project that addresses the issue of international corruption in the engineering and construction industry, in a manner that effectively incorporates several learning experiences. The major objectives of the project are to provide the students a learning activity that will 1) make a meaningful contribution within the disciplines being studied; 2) teach by experience a significant principle that can be valuable in numerous situations during an individual’s career, and 3) engage the minds, experiences, and enthusiasm of the participants in a real ethical challenge that is prevalent in all of their chosen professional fields. The paper describes the full details of the project, the actual implementation of it during Winter Semester 2005, the experiences gained during the initial trial, and the modifications and improvements incorporated for future implementation. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2005 conference, Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology, Linking Workplace Ethics and Education, co-hosted by Gonzaga University and Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 9–10 June 2005.     

人类基因组计划在西方引发的人性观思考

人类基因组计划在西方世界引起了相当广泛深入的关于人性观的思考。分子生物学的研究成果正在重新塑造人们对人类进化史和人类本身的认识。基因工程、干细胞研究等前沿领域产生的问题促使人们转向西方的传统哲学去寻找思想资源。尽管遗传决定论的陈旧观点在大众文化中仍时有所见。新的基因组学研究已开始采纳一种更全面的、兼顾历史与社会文化因素的角度。     

Behavioral Consequences of Fluctuating Group Success: An Internet Study of Soccer-Team Fans

Abstract

The authors tested the hypothesis that fans of a sports team avoid private contact with their team when it is unsuccessful (cutting off reflected failure, or CORF), whereas fans actively seek private contact with their team when it is successful (basking in reflected glory, or BIRG). During the 2nd half of the 1999–2000 soccer season, the authors registered the number of visitors who had surfed the Web sites of 16 Belgian and 18 Dutch 1st-division teams on the 1st working day following a championship game. The authors obtained 586 valid measurements, which were transformed into z scores for each team separately. In line with the hypothesis, there were significantly more visitors after the teams won (BIRG) than after they lost (CORF). The effects of game outcome were not mediated by pregame expectations or by the size of the wins or losses.     

Inspire but don't interfere: Managerial influence as a double-edged sword for innovation

Managers play a pivotal role in the innovation process; yet, the mechanisms through which managers enhance or undermine innovation are not well understood. Drawing upon self-concordance theory, we argue that managers can augment employees' self-concordance—defined as the congruence of goals and actions with inner values and preferences—through transformational behavior and thereby contribute to innovation. However, transformational behavior is closely coupled to another form of influence, namely, process management, the attempt to directly manage innovation-related activities. This form of managerial influence reduces employees' self-concordance and thereby undermines innovation. We test our conceptual model in a sample of 188 innovation projects using a contextualized method that asked employees to assess their self-concordance and their managers' behavior during each project. Managers evaluated for each project the innovativeness of the outcome. Multilevel path-analysis provided support for our hypotheses. We discuss future research implications to disentangle innovation-facilitating and innovation-undermining facets of managerial influence.     

“We've Got Creative Differences”: The Effects of Task Conflict and Participative Safety on Team Creative Performance

Although both participative safety and team task conflict are widely thought to be related to team creative performance, the nature of this relationship is still not well understood, and prior studies have frequently yielded conflicting results. This study examines the ambiguity in the extant literature and proposes that both constructs must exist in tandem. Through a study of 55 design teams, we have identified a significant interaction between task conflict and participative safety. Results suggest that both participative safety and task conflict must exist in tandem to spur team creativity, and that team creative performance must be examined at the facet level, instead of simply as a single construct. In addition, supplemental analyses suggest that teams low on participative safety and task conflict are likely able to generate more original solutions for creative tasks due to the presence of an independent, disagreeable creative member. Implications for future research and practice are further discussed.     

The psychological costs of knowledge specialization in groups: Unique expertise leaves you out of the loop

Knowledge specialization, such as that present in cross-functional teams, produces both positive and negative outcomes. Our research investigated how unique expertise can lead to feelings of ostracism in the form of being out of the loop. Compared to group members with shared expertise, members with unique expertise felt out of the loop and experienced decreased fulfillment of fundamental needs, particularly when their expertise was to be given less weight in the group’s decision. Possessing unique expertise did not inhibit leadership emergence, even when that expertise should not have been used in the decision-making process. So, although knowledge specialization can have positive consequences for teams and task performance, it also has some negative psychological consequences that need to be understood.     

The ‘Matchbox School’ (1927–1932): Anna Freud and the idea of a ‘psychoanalytically informed education’∗

Of all the applications of psychoanalysis to various fields, perhaps none has been as important – or as fraught – as the application of psychoanalytic insights to education. This paper re-constructs some of the early debates around psychoanalysis and pedagogy that Anna Freud engaged with during the 1920s in Vienna, when the whole question of what education should be became a central issue for politicians, pedagogues and psychoanalysts alike. The paper focuses on the period leading up to the creation of the so-called ‘Matchbox School’, operating under Anna Freud's guidance between 1927 and 1932, and describes the influence of pioneers such as Seigfried Bernfeld and August Aichhorn. Compared to her more well-known work at the Hampstead War Nurseries during the Second World War, Anna Freud's involvement with this earlier educational experiment is relatively neglected. Yet one can argue that this short-lived project not only laid the foundation for much of Anna Freud's later work; it also had some far-reaching consequences, both for psychoanalysis and for the practice of progressive education.     

Managing information overload in virtual teams: Effects of a structured online team adaptation on cognition and performance

Information overload (IO) indicates the exchange of too much low-quality information in virtual teams. When being overloaded with information, teams need to adapt and to change communication behaviour. This study introduces and tests a structured online team adaptation (STROTA) procedure that enables virtual teams to reduce IO by improving their team mental model quality. STROTA, built from team adaptation models, is a moderated intervention consisting of three stages: (1) individual situation awareness, (2) team situation awareness, and (3) plan formulation. STROTA was tested in the context of an experimental problem-solving task. Participants (N = 363) worked in virtual teams of three and were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions: no STROTA, incomplete STROTA (step 1, steps 1–2), and complete STROTA (steps 1–2–3). We found teams that followed a complete STROTA procedure experienced lessened IO over time. Teams with complete STROTA showed the largest development of TMM immediately after STROTA. Finally, multilevel mediation analyses showed that TMM are mediators that explain the influence of STROTA on IO.     

Crossover of job demands and emotional exhaustion within teams: a longitudinal multilevel study

This study investigated the crossover of job demands and emotional exhaustion among team members and the moderating effect of cohesiveness and social support on this process. Participants were 310 employees of an employment agency in the Netherlands, working in one of 100 teams. Multilevel analysis using a longitudinal design did not reveal a main effect of crossover. However, consistent with the study's hypotheses, the results showed a moderating effect of team cohesiveness and social support. We detected crossover of job demands and emotional exhaustion across time from the group to individual team members only in teams characterized by high levels of cohesiveness and social support. Teams characterized by low levels of cohesiveness and social support showed no crossover of job demands and exhaustion. The findings demonstrate that team-level moderators play an important role in crossover processes. Moreover, social support and cohesiveness may not always be positive.     

共享心智模型影响团队绩效的权变模型

共享心智模型指团队成员关于团队关键要素的共同的知识结构, 诸多研究表明其能有效提高团队运作效能。本研究从权变的角度入手, 以负责通讯网络监控与维护的106个高技术团队为分析对象, 探讨团队的共享心智模型与团队绩效的关系, 并揭示团队互依性作为权变因素对共享心智模型与团队绩效关系的调节效应。层次回归分析结果表明, 共享心智模型能显著预测团队绩效, 而团队互依性则负向调节两者之间的关系, 即在互依性程度较低的团队里, 共享心智模型才显著提高团队绩效。作者从共享心智模型的测量和权变因素的作用两个角度展开讨论, 并基于此提出了后续的研究方向。