How to motivate yourself and others? Intended and unintended consequences

To achieve goals, individuals and organizations must understand how to effectively motivate themselves and others. We review three broad strategies that people employ to increase motivation: giving feedback, setting goal targets, and applying incentives. Although each of these strategies can effectively motivate action under certain circumstances and among certain people, they can also result in unintended consequences: not helping or even hurting motivation. For example, employers may give positive feedback that leads employees to relax their effort or negative feedback that undermines employees’ commitment, organizations may set goals that are overly ambitious and consequently reduce motivation, and certain incentives might appear attractive before pursuing an action but uncertain incentives better motivate action during goal pursuit. By identifying when and how these common motivational strategies work versus fail, we are able to prescribe a specific set of guidelines that will help people understand how to motivate themselves and others.     

Risk Communication,Public Engagement,and Climate Change: A Role for Emotions

This article discusses the potential role that emotions might play in enticing a lifestyle that diminishes climate change. Climate change is an important challenge for society. There is a growing consensus that climate change is due to our behavior, but few people are willing to significantly adapt their lifestyle. Empirical studies show that people lack a sense of urgency: they experience climate change as a problem that affects people in distant places and in a far future. Several scholars have claimed that emotions might be a necessary tool in communication about climate change. This article sketches a theoretical framework that supports this hypothesis, drawing on insights from the ethics of risk and the philosophy of emotions. It has been shown by various scholars that emotions are important determinants in risk perception. However, emotions are generally considered to be irrational states and are hence excluded from communication and political decision making about risky technologies and climate change, or they are used instrumentally to create support for a position. However, the literature on the ethics of risk shows that the dominant, technocratic approach to risk misses the normative‐ethical dimension that is inherent to decisions about acceptable risk. Emotion research shows that emotions are necessary for practical and moral decision making. These insights can be applied to communication about climate change. Emotions are necessary for understanding the moral impact of the risks of climate change, and they also paradigmatically provide for motivation. Emotions might be the missing link in effective communication about climate change.     

The ethical dilemmas of risky decisions

Even in a pandemic there seem to be inherent conflicts of interest between the individual and societal consequences of remedial actions and strategies. Actions taken in the sole interests of patients, as required by the Hippocratic oath, can have broadly inconvenient economic implications for the State. (“Average” benefits for a population can impose individual inconveniences for the vulnerable.). Understandably these decisions are not normally made explicitly and transparently by governments. This leads to seemingly illogical and inhumane strategies which are not understood and hence mistrusted and often ignored by the public. Vaccination sentiments on social media are often an unwanted symptom of this dilemma. This article outlines and discusses a number of examples of such situations with a focus on ethical aspects. It concludes that each case must be considered individually as to the issues that need to be weighed in these difficult decisions; and that there are no clear and universally acceptable ethical solutions. What can be learned from the COVID-19 crisis is that short term utilitarianism has consequences that in the eyes of the population are unacceptable. This lesson seems equally valid for cost benefit evaluations regarding other risks, such as from hazardous industries, flood defenses, and air transport. Decisionmakers and politicians can learn that persuasion only goes so far. In the end the people appear to prioritize in terms of deontology.     

Natural Hazards and Motivation for Mitigation Behavior: People Cannot Predict the Affect Evoked by a Severe Flood

Past research indicates that personal flood experience is an important factor in motivating mitigation behavior. It is not fully clear, however, why such experience is so important. This study tested the hypothesis that people without flooding experience underestimate the negative affect evoked by such an event. People who were affected by a severe recent flood disaster were compared with people who were not affected, but who also lived in flood-prone areas. Face-to-face interviews with open and closed questions were conducted ( n = 201). Results suggest that people without flood experience envisaged the consequences of a flood differently from people who had actually experienced severe losses due to a flood. People who were not affected strongly underestimated the negative affect associated with a flood. Based on the results, it can be concluded that risk communication must not focus solely on technical aspects; in order to trigger motivation for mitigation behavior, successful communication must also help people to envisage the negative emotional consequences of natural disasters.     

Designing Risk Communications: Completing and Correcting Mental Models of Hazardous Processes, Part I

Many risk communications are intended to help the lay public make complex decisions about risk. To guide risk communicators with this objective, a mental models approach to the design and characterization of risk communications is proposed. Building on text comprehension and mental models research, this approach offers an integrated set of methods to help the risk communication designer choose and analyze risk communication content, structure, and organization. An applied example shows that two radon brochures designed with this approach present roughly the same expert facts as a radon brochure widely distributed by the U.S. EPA but meet higher standards on other content, structure, and organization criteria.     

Efficacy Foundations for Risk Communication: How People Think About Reducing the Risks of Climate Change

Believing action to reduce the risks of climate change is both possible (self‐efficacy) and effective (response efficacy) is essential to motivate and sustain risk mitigation efforts, according to current risk communication theory. Although the public recognizes the dangers of climate change, and is deluged with lists of possible mitigative actions, little is known about public efficacy beliefs in the context of climate change. Prior efficacy studies rely on conflicting constructs and measures of efficacy, and links between efficacy and risk management actions are muddled. As a result, much remains to learn about how laypersons think about the ease and effectiveness of potential mitigative actions. To bring clarity and inform risk communication and management efforts, we investigate how people think about efficacy in the context of climate change risk management by analyzing unprompted and prompted beliefs from two national surveys (N = 405, N = 1,820). In general, respondents distinguish little between effective and ineffective climate strategies. While many respondents appreciate that reducing fossil fuel use is an effective risk mitigation strategy, overall assessments reflect persistent misconceptions about climate change causes, and uncertainties about the effectiveness of risk mitigation strategies. Our findings suggest targeting climate change risk communication and management strategies to (1) address gaps in people's existing mental models of climate action, (2) leverage existing public understanding of both potentially effective mitigation strategies and the collective action dilemma at the heart of climate change action, and (3) take into account ideologically driven reactions to behavior change and government action framed as climate action.     

Belief in Public Efficacy, Trust, and Attitudes Toward Modern Genetic Science

Government and policymakers want to engage the public in a dialogue about the conduct and consequences of science and increasingly seek to actively involve citizens in decision-making processes. Implicit in this thinking is that greater transparency and public inclusion will help dispel fears associated with new scientific advancements, foster greater public trust in those accountable, and ultimately increase the acceptability of new technologies. Less understood, however, are public perceptions about such high-level involvement in science and how these map onto public trust and attitudes within a diverse population. This article uses the concept of public efficacy -- the extent to which people believe that the public might be able to affect the course of decision making -- to explore differences in trust, attentiveness, and attitudes toward modern genetic science. Using nationally representative data from the 2003 British Social Attitudes Survey, we begin by examining the characteristics of those who have a positive belief about public involvement in this area of scientific inquiry. We then focus on how this belief maps on to indicators of public trust in key stakeholder groups, including the government and genetic scientists. Finally, we consider the relationship between public efficacy and trust and attitudes toward different applications of genetic technology. Our findings run contrary to assumptions that public involvement in science will foster greater trust and lead to a climate of greater acceptance for genetic technology. A belief in public efficacy does not uniformly equate with more trusting attitudes toward stakeholders but is associated with less trust in government rules. Whereas trust is positively correlated with more permissive attitudes about technologies such as cloning and gene therapy, people who believe in high-level public involvement are less likely to think that these technologies should be allowed than those who do not.     

“How Exposed Is Exposed Enough?” Lay Inferences About Chemical Exposure

The concept of exposure is central to chemical risk assessment and plays an important role in communicating to the public about the potential health risks of chemicals. Research on chemical risk perception has found some indication that the model lay people use to judge chemical exposure differs from that of toxicologists, thereby leading to different conclusions about chemical safety. This paper presents the results of a series of studies directed toward developing a model for understanding how lay people interpret the concept of chemical exposure. The results indicate that people's beliefs about chemical exposure (and its risks) are based on two broad categories of inferences. One category of inferences relates to the nature in which contact with a chemical has taken place, including the amount of a chemical involved and its potential health consequences. A second category of inferences about chemical exposure relates to the pragmatics of language interpretation, leading to beliefs about the motives and purposes behind chemical risk communication. Risk communicators are encouraged to consider how alternative models of exposure and language interpretation can lead to conflicting conclusions on the part of the public about chemical safety.     

Efficacy,Action, and Support for Reducing Climate Change Risks

A growing body of research demonstrates that believing action to reduce the risks of climate change is both possible (self‐efficacy) and effective (response efficacy) is essential to motivate and sustain risk mitigation efforts. Despite this potentially critical role of efficacy beliefs, measures and their use vary wildly in climate change risk perception and communication research, making it hard to compare and learn from efficacy studies. To address this problem and advance our understanding of efficacy beliefs, this article makes three contributions. First, we present a theoretically motivated approach to measuring climate change mitigation efficacy, in light of diverse proposed, perceived, and previously researched strategies. Second, we test this in two national survey samples (Amazon's Mechanical Turk N = 405, GfK Knowledge Panel N = 1,820), demonstrating largely coherent beliefs by level of action and discrimination between types of efficacy. Four additive efficacy scales emerge: personal self‐efficacy, personal response efficacy, government and collective self‐efficacy, and government and collective response efficacy. Third, we employ the resulting efficacy scales in mediation models to test how well efficacy beliefs predict climate change policy support, controlling for specific knowledge, risk perceptions, and ideology, and allowing for mediation by concern. Concern fully mediates the relatively strong effects of perceived risk on policy support, but only partly mediates efficacy beliefs. Stronger government and collective response efficacy beliefs and personal self‐efficacy beliefs are both directly and indirectly associated with greater support for reducing the risks of climate change, even after controlling for ideology and causal beliefs about climate change.     

Resourcing Social Enterprises: The Role of Socially Oriented Bootstrapping

Resource constraints are a challenge for social enterprises, prompting interest in innovative approaches to address these deficiencies. In this study, we contribute to the literature on resourcing practices in small, early stage, social enterprises by examining the role of socially oriented bootstrapping for resource access. We use data from eight UK social enterprises to reveal organizational practices – building credibility, leveraging persuasion and creating resource communities – that shape a diverse set of bootstrapping mechanisms to facilitate exchange relationships and to enable resource acquisition and mobilization. We argue that the unique position of social enterprises allows them to benefit from socially orientated bootstrapping and they display a complex approach that is shaped by a creative interplay of practices to support value creation through resource exchange.     

Conventional Wisdom on Risk Communication and Evidence from a Field Experiment

A recent comprehensive review of the literature identified a number of facts and principles governing risk communication. This paper evaluates several of these propositions using recent evidence from a field experiment in communicating the risks from radon in homes. At this point in the research, data relates primarily to the response of risk perceptions to different information treatments and different personal characteristics. The effect of various causal factors is sensitive to the particular test of risk perception applied. No information treatment was clearly superior for all tasks. An important implication of these findings is that risk communicators must determine what specific task or tasks the information program should enable people to do.     

Ethical Issues in Risk Communication: Continuing the Discussion

Proposed in this article is one possible framework for classifying multiple types of ethical issues in risk communication research and practice to help continue a discussion initiated in 1990 by Morgan and Lave. Some of the questions that each stage of the process for planning risk communication strategies appears to pose for ethics are discussed (e.g., selecting issues to be communicated, knowing the issue, dealing with constraints). Also discussed briefly are some issues raised by the possibility that risk communicators aspire to the status of a profession. The purpose is to foster discussion rather than issue a conclusive statement on the topic, because its very nature makes a definitive pronouncement indefensible.     

The Future is Now: Reducing Psychological Distance to Increase Public Engagement with Climate Change

Many people perceive climate change as psychologically distant—a set of uncertain events that might occur far in the future, impacting distant places and affecting people dissimilar to themselves. In this study, we employed construal level theory to investigate whether a climate change communication intervention could increase public engagement by reducing the psychological distance of climate change. Australian residents (N = 333) were randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions: one framed to increase psychological distance to climate change (distal frame), and the other framed to reduce psychological distance (proximal frame). Participants then completed measures of psychological distance of climate change impacts, climate change concern, and intentions to engage in mitigation behavior. Principal components analysis indicated that psychological distance to climate change was best conceptualized as a multidimensional construct consisting of four components: geographic, temporal, social, and uncertainty. Path analysis revealed the effect of the treatment frame on climate change concern and intentions was fully mediated by psychological distance dimensions related to uncertainty and social distance. Our results suggest that climate communications framed to reduce psychological distance represent a promising strategy for increasing public engagement with climate change.     

基于Agent的情感劝说的决策过程及模型研究

Agent具有情感后进行的劝说决策会更加理性,而现有研究还不够全面深入。针对此问题,首先结合形式逻辑理论,定义了基于Agent的情感劝说及其决策过程,并将基于Agent的情感劝说的决策过程划分为评价情感劝说行为、更新情感劝说状态、调整情感劝说目标、产生情感劝说行为四个阶段;其次针对这四个阶段,结合OCC情感模型和PAD心情模型,运用多属性效用理论,引入情感淡化因子和情感评价因子,定义了Agent情感触发函数,建立了八种Agent基本情感与劝说目标的映射关系,将Agent的情感劝说行为分为奖励型、申辩型、威胁型和反辩型四类,分别构建了相应的决策模型,从而构成了更加完整和合理的基于Agent的情感劝说的决策过程模型;最后通过算例证明了模型的合理性和有效性。     

Servant leadership

As corporations are eagerly pursuing reengineering and reorganization, leadership functions are changing to champion these efforts. Traditionally, organizations have had a "top-down" management approach, however, there is a gradual shift to other leadership models. Servant leadership is being successfully implemented in many settings. Servant leadership, first popularized by Robert Greenleaf in 1970, puts serving others as the number one priority. Ten characteristics of a servant leader include: Listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community. Both servant leadership and the chaos theory have in common the central tenet of relationships. Since America is now approximately 80 percent a "service-economy," servant leadership can greatly benefit the individual employees, as well as help to facilitate the organization's pursuit of its changing strategic plans.     

Is There Any Hope? How Climate Change News Imagery and Text Influence Audience Emotions and Support for Climate Mitigation Policies

Using a national sample, this study experimentally tests the effects of news visuals and texts that emphasize either the causes and impacts of climate change or actions that can be taken to address climate change. We test the effects of variations in text and imagery on discrete emotions (i.e., hope, fear, and anger) and, indirectly, on support for climate mitigation policies. Political ideology is examined as a moderator. The findings indicate that news images and texts that focus on climate‐oriented actions can increase hope and, in the case of texts, decrease fear and anger, and these effects generally hold across the ideological spectrum. In turn, the influence of emotions on policy support depends on ideology: Hope and fear increase support for climate policies for all ideological groups but particularly conservatives, whereas anger polarizes the opinions of liberals and conservatives. Implications for climate change communication that appeals to emotions are discussed.     

Informing the Public About Uncertain Risks

Many problems arise in connection with the communication of risk information. In this article the content of the information communicated is taken as a starting-point for analyzing the risk communication process. We studied the way in which authorities communicated health risks to local residents in Dutch soil pollution situations and found that communication problems were characterized more by misunderstanding and conflict between parties with different views and interests than by a lack of understanding. Therefore, it is important to look more closely at the way the communicators of information (in our cases, officials) select risk information from risk assessments, and to study the effects that the information selected has on the receivers (in our cases, residents). Both the process of selection by the officials and the process of interpretation by the residents will be shown to be influenced by the different institutional backgrounds. The article presents a new approach to risk communication. Both the risk information presented by the authorities and the public reactions to this risk information are considered to reflect the institutional background of authorities and residents, and can be analyzed in these terms. Such an approach has consequences for the study of risk communication and the manner in which it is practiced.     

Physician executives and communication.

This article presents the results of a pioneering survey of American College of Physician Executives members' perceptions of just how skilled they are as communicators and where they feel the need for further training. Listening skills were rated most important and most in need of enhancement, but physician executives agree that managerial communication skills across the board are vital to the success of a health care organization.     

Disentangling combinations and contingencies of generic strategies: A set-theoretic configurational approach

Porter's framework of generic strategies conceptualizes key elements of firms' strategic positions in their industry. Research on these generic strategies has been challenged by the complexity of capturing relations between generic strategies (i.e., cost leadership, differentiation, and focus) and their interdependencies with other strategic commitments for performance outcomes. We address these challenges by utilizing fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to explore the causal complexity underlying the links between generic strategies and firm performance. Specifically, we study combinations of firms' generic strategies and other strategy attributes as paths to high or low performance in the U.S. and Canadian airline industry. We find six equifinal configurations that are consistently linked to high performance and nine configurations that are consistently linked to the absence of high performance. Our findings shed light on the contingencies underlying performance consequences of generic strategies. Consequently they redirect theoretical debates on the links between generic strategies and firm performance as well as on the superiority of pure versus hybrid generic strategies towards relations of set-theoretic of necessity and sufficiency. Specifically, we show that having a generic strategy advantage is not sufficient for high performance but that it is a vital ingredient in recipes for success. Similarly, our findings suggest that a generic strategy disadvantage is not sufficient for low performance, but is a key ingredient in all paths to poor performance. We conclude with a discussion of our study's contributions to the literature, suggestions for future research, and implications for managerial practice.     

Parenthood and Worrying About Climate Change: The Limitations of Previous Approaches

The present study considers the correlation between parenthood and worry about the consequences of climate change. Two approaches to gauging people's perceptions of the risks of climate change are compared: the classic approach, which measures risk perception, and the emotion‐based approach, which measures feelings toward a risk object. The empirical material is based on a questionnaire‐based survey of 3,529 people in Sweden, of whom 1,376 answered, giving a response rate of 39%. The results show that the correlation of parenthood and climate risk is significant when the emotional aspect is raised, but not when respondents were asked to do cognitive estimates of risk. Parenthood proves significant in all three questions that measure feelings, demonstrating that it is a determinant that serves to increase worry about climate change.