How Believing in Ourselves Increases Risk Taking: Perceived Self-Efficacy and Opportunity Recognition

What effect does positive and negative feedback about past risk taking have on the future risk taking of decision makers? The results of an experimental study show that subjects who are led to believe they are very competent at decision making see more opportunities in a risky choice and take more risks. Those who are led to believe they are not very competent see more threats and take fewer risks. The feelings of self-competence and self-confidence on one task did not generalize to a similar task. Perception of opportunities was unexpectedly not related to the perception of threats. As executives bring their personal perceptual biases to firm decision making, our results identify a serious built-in bias in SWOT analysis (the analysis of firms' strengths and weaknesses as related to potential opportunities and threats). Executives who believe that they and their firm are very competent will take more risks and vice versa. Our results also provide evidence that the perceived likelihood of an event depends on whether the event is a loss or a gain. Human decision making is subject to the general bias that outcome expectations are not independent of outcome valuations.     

Seeing Is Believing: The Transitory Influence of Reputation Information on E‐Commerce Trust and Decision Making

This research examines the transitory influence of reputation information on consumer decision making regarding an e‐vendor. Using social judgment theory to explain how reputation information's effect on perceptions may be fleeting, we specifically examined how user trusting beliefs related to an e‐vendor change after a simple exposure to the Web site. A total of 369 college students participated in an experiment that found that reputation information was initially strongly related to trusting beliefs regarding the e‐vendor, but a brief nonpurchase‐related exposure to the e‐vendor's Web site—that is, direct experience—reduced reputation's effects significantly. This research provides insights into why reputation information may be more important in certain circumstances than in others and enhances our understanding of how consumer decision making is affected by different purchasing contexts. This research also has implications on the design and use of trust‐building technologies.     

周少雄：慢即是快——减速能帮助企业发现更健康的生长逻辑

今年春天,七匹狼董事长周少雄频频出现在T台,以及各种影视圈名流们出入的活动和秀场,像一个真正的娱乐明星。他管华谊兄弟董事长王中军叫“中军”,语气中透着亲切。在接受采访的间隙,又忙不迭打电话过问给导演协会提供服装的事。     

Health care economics is changing--the law is sure to follow

Law is intimately related to economics. As the economic relationships in a market change, the legal landscape evolves accordingly. Even if no health care reform is enacted at the federal level, ever-increasing portions of today's managed indemnity sector will convert to plans constraining enrollee choice and seeking to deliver cost-effective care through risk-sharing relationships (both corporate and contractual) with providers. This is inevitable, given employer and federal government pricing demands, and it is changing the face of health care law. If federal reform is enacted and/or the systems adopted in Minnesota, Maryland, Washington, and Florida (to name a few) are replicated elsewhere, the legal concerns of physicians and other providers will shift even more dramatically. In this article, some of the legal fall-out from these economic developments is discussed.     

Health care is sales

Health care is all about sales--everyone today in the competitive arena of health care is a salesperson. Your selling days began when you applied to medical school. Your product was yourself, and you worked hard to sell it. That was only the beginning. In your daily work as physician executives, you are selling yourself and your ideas-your ideas about relationships, management structures, partnership issues, merger questions, etc. It's a complicated world, and the concepts are often abstract and difficult. But it is your job to communicate with others to get things done. It is the most important part of your job. It is selling, in fact, at a sophisticated level. How do you communicate and sell yourself and your ideas effectively? Here, some ideas on how to listen and communicate.     

The water is wide

Before you build your bridge to the future, stop and take time to lay a good foundation. Discover your own core beliefs and, perhaps more importantly, discover those of your employees.     

Artificial intelligence is coming

Information technology (IT) is evolving so rapidly it is difficult to distinguish the new from the traditional. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a good example of the rapidity of development and is particularly interesting for the way it knits so closely with management decision-making. Expert systems are, in fact, the very latest product which customise decision support systems, embodying the knowledge of experts.The European manager has a rich source of techniques and tools for IT, arising through collaboration, in the European Community's ESPRIT Programme in the years to come. But for the manager to make better use of his own information and knowledge needs and requirements and to really increase business performance, he will need more than just technology - he will need a single European Market.     

So what is strategy?

This paper contrasts the notion of strategy that has developed in the field of business policy over the past decade or so with the conceptions of strategy that prevail in other loosely related fields--most notably the fields of military practice and of futures research.     

The water is wide.

Trying to predict what cardiology will look like in 10, 25, or 50 years is an almost absurd act of imagination. Perhaps even more than most branches of medicine, it has been changing so fast that it is hard to recognize from year to year. When we contemplate the changes that cardiology and the rest of health care are facing, we know that none of these changes will ever be "just technical." They will all be deeply human, and each one will be very difficult for some people. As people and organizations, we all come to that point where we have to change. Where we are is not working, we can't go on like this, we have to do something different. After boldly setting off to go someplace new, after some basic work is done to escape the original presenting problem--we reach the Great River. This is a point at which small, incremental changes won't do and we truly need to see ourselves differently. There is no bridge, no easy way across. This is where we must gather our resources and courage, remind ourselves of why we came this far. Yet many of us don't, and settle for something comfortable rather than cross that wide, turbulent river.     

电子商务:泡沫破碎逼近!

热钱多,圈钱快,门槛低,价格战,乱象丛生,电子商务泡沫破碎悄然逼近,但格局未定,机会尚在。     

Managed care is data management

As managed care evolves, it has become apparent that greater control of both the patient and the provider side of the process is necessary. Specifically, improvements are necessary in monitoring the appropriateness of service, accessibility, authorship and authorization of referrals and claims, patient advocacy, and assimilation of data.