All of The Myriad Worlds: Life in the Akashic Plenum

This article explores some experiential implications of Laszlo's Akashic Field hypothesis as well as similar information-rich field models such as those suggested by Bohm and Sheldrake. It examines the implications of such models for both ordinary and anomalous human experience, and proposes the idea that these models allow for the possibility of alternative experiential worlds as real as ordinary “material” reality. Such alternative realities are posited by many, if not all, major mythic and religious systems, and are said to be directly experienced in certain contemplative and shamanic traditions as well as during postmortem and near-death experiences. We note that information-rich holographic fields may be able to store concentrated non-overlapping quantities of information that can be selectively activated by distinct eliciting stimuli. Individual human consciousness itself might constitute just such a stimulus, thus accounting for the individual and cultural variations on commonly shared motifs in shamanic, near death, and other experiences of alternative realities.     

LARGE-SCALE PREDICTOR VALIDATION IN PROJECT A: DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES AND DATA BASE PREPARATION

The data base for the Army Selection and Classification Project (Project A) contains two major samples referred to as the concurrent validation sample and the longitudinal validation sample. The former was drawn from a cohort that joined the Army in 1983/84, and the latter from a cohort that entered in 1986/87. This paper describes the data base resulting from the concurrent sample. The sampling procedure, the distribution of sample sizes over jobs, the total array of variables, and the data collection procedures are described. Also discussed are the extensive data editing procedures that were used to deal with missing data.     

The Impact of Balanced Risk–Benefit Information and Initial Attitudes on Post‐Information Attitudes1

In a realistic social context, people are confronted with both positive and negative information, yet research on this topic is relatively scarce. We present 2 studies examining the role of initial attitudes on the impact of one‐sided vs. balanced positive and negative information on attitudes toward food production methods. The first experiment demonstrated that one‐sided information influenced post‐information attitudes congruent to the direction of the message content. The second experiment showed that the effect of balanced information on post‐information attitudes may depend on initial attitudes. These results demonstrate that negativity effects are dominant for people with initial positive attitudes, but change into positivity effects for people with initial negative attitudes. Implications for communicating both positive and negative information are discussed.     

Intrinsicality without Naturalness

Rae Langton and David Lewis have proposed an account of "intrinsic property"that makes use of two notions: being independent of accompaniment and being natural. We find the appeal to the first of these promising; the second notion, however, we find mystifying. In this paper we argue that the appeal to naturalness is not acceptable and offer an alternative definition of intrinsicality. The alternative definition makes crucial use of a notion commonly used by philosophers, namely, the notion of one property being had in virtue of another property. We defend our account against three arguments for thinking that this "in virtue of"notion is unacceptable in this context. We also take a look at a variety of cases in which the definition might be applied and defend it against potential counterexamples. The upshot, we think, is a modest but adequate account of what we understand by "intrinsic property."     

HOW MUCH DO HIGH‐PERFORMANCE WORK PRACTICES MATTER? A META‐ANALYSIS OF THEIR EFFECTS ON ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE

Although there is growing evidence that high performance work practices (HPWPs) affect organizational performance, varying sample characteristics, research designs, practices examined, and organizational performance measures used has led extant findings to vary dramatically, making the size of the overall effect difficult to estimate. We use meta-analysis to estimate the effect size and test whether effects are larger for (a) HPWP systems versus individual practices, (b) operational versus financial performance measures, and (c) manufacturing versus service organizations. Statistical aggregation of 92 studies reveals an overall correlation that we estimate at .20. Also, the relationship is stronger when researchers examine systems of HPWPs and among manufacturers, but it appears invariant across performance measures. We use our findings as a basis to offer 4 suggestions intended to shape research practices such that future meta-analyses might answer today's emerging questions.     

Narrative Ideas for Consulting with Communities and Organizations: Ripples from the Gatherings

This paper reviews Michael White's early work with communities and extends ideas and practices from that work into the realm of consulting with organizations. We draw on Michael's writing and the records of two specific projects, as well as the recollections of team members in those projects, to describe how ideas and practices that were originally developed in working with individuals and families came to be applied in community settings. Specifically, we show how the central intention of the work is to use narrative ideas and practices in ways that allow communities to articulate, appreciate, document, utilize, and share their own knowledges of life and skills of living. We discuss the basic narrative ideas of stories, double listening, telling and retelling, making documents, and linking lives through shared purposes. For these projects, the teams developed structures that made it possible to use the basic idea with whole communities. We show how this work with communities has offered inspiration and ideas for our work in consulting to organizations. Finally, we describe and illustrate a particular way of working with organizations that carries the spirit of Michael's community work into situations requiring shorter blocks of time and more limited commitments than the original community contexts.     

Daddy,Why are People so Complex?

The implications of Warren McCulloch's 1945 concept of heterarchy are analyzed in terms of human value and motivational systems. The results demonstrate the near-impossibility of predicting behavior on the basis of any hierarchical scheme, or even which among a set of hierarchical schemes will be selected as the basis of a behavioral choice. Thus, for example, people regularly say one thing and do another.