Situated Food Safety Risk and the Influence of Social Norms

Previous studies of risk behavior observed weak or inconsistent relationships between risk perception and risk-taking. One aspect that has often been neglected in such studies is the situational context in which risk behavior is embedded: Even though a person may perceive a behavior as risky, the social norms governing the situation may work as a counteracting force, overriding the influence of risk perception. Three food context studies are reported. In Study 1 (N = 200), we assess how norm strength varies across different social situations, relate the variation in norm strength to the social characteristics of the situation, and identify situations with consistently low and high levels of pressure to comply with the social norm. In Study 2 (N = 502), we investigate how willingness to accept 15 different foods that vary in terms of objective risk relates to perceived risk in situations with low and high pressure to comply with a social norm. In Study 3 (N = 1,200), we test how risk-taking is jointly influenced by the perceived risk associated with the products and the social norms governing the situations in which the products are served. The results indicate that the effects of risk perception and social norm are additive, influencing risk-taking simultaneously but as counteracting forces. Social norm had a slightly stronger absolute effect, leading to a net effect of increased risk-taking. The relationships were stable over different social situations and food safety risks and did not disappear when detailed risk information was presented.     

NORMS MAKE PREFERENCES SOCIAL

We explore the idea that prosocial behavior in experimental games is driven by social norms imported into the laboratory. Under this view, differences in behavior across subjects is driven by heterogeneity in sensitivity to social norms. We introduce an incentivized method of eliciting individual norm‐sensitivity, and we show how it relates to play in public goods, trust, dictator, and ultimatum games. We show how our observations can be rationalized in a stylized model of norm‐dependent preferences under reasonable assumptions about the nature of social norms. Then we directly elicit norms in these games to test the robustness of our interpretation.     

Paradigm lost: Reinvigorating the study of organizational culture

In spite of the importance of organizational culture, scholarly advances in our understanding of the construct appear to have stagnated. We review the state of culture research and argue that the ongoing academic debates about what culture is and how to study it have resulted in a lack of unity and precision in defining and measuring culture. This ambiguity has constrained progress in both developing a coherent theory of organizational culture and accreting replicable and valid findings. To make progress we argue that future research should focus on conceptualizing and assessing organizational culture as the norms that characterize a group or organization that if widely shared and strongly held, act as a social control system to shape members’ attitudes and behaviors. We further argue that to accomplish this, researchers need to recognize that norms can be parsed into three distinct dimensions: (1) the content or what is deemed important (e.g., teamwork, accountability, innovation), (2) the consensus or how widely shared norms are held across people, and (3) the intensity of feelings about the importance of the norm (e.g., are people willing to sanction others). From this perspective we suggest how future research might be able to clarify some of the current conflicts and confusion that characterize the current state of the field.     

Public Acceptance of Fully Automated Driving: Effects of Social Trust and Risk/Benefit Perceptions

Automated driving (AD) is one of the most significant technical advances in the transportation industry. Its safety, economic, and environmental benefits cannot be realized if it is not used. To explain, predict, and increase its acceptance, we need to understand how people perceive and why they accept or reject AD technology. Drawing upon the trust heuristic, we tested a psychological model to explain three acceptance measures of fully AD (FAD): general acceptance, willingness to pay (WTP), and behavioral intention (BI). This heuristic suggests that social trust can directly affect acceptance or indirectly affect acceptance through perceived benefits and risks. Using a survey (N = 441), we found that social trust retained a direct effect as well as an indirect effect on all FAD acceptance measures. The indirect effect of social trust was more prominent in forming general acceptance; the direct effect of social trust was more prominent in explaining WTP and BI. Compared to perceived risk, perceived benefit was a stronger predictor of all FAD acceptance measures and also a stronger mediator of the trust–acceptance relationship. Predictive ability of the proposed model for the three acceptance measures was confirmed. We discuss the implications of our results for theory and practice.     

Major Chemical Accidents in Industrializing Countries: The Socio-Political Amplification of Risk

Accidents in the chemical industry, such as those that took place in Seveso (1976) and Bhopal (1984), may kill or injure thousands of people, cause serious health hazards and irreversible environmental damage. The aim of this paper is to examine the ever-increasing risk of similar accidents becoming a frequent ocurrence in the so-called industrializing countries. Using figures from some of the worst chemical accidents in the last decades, data on the Bhopal disaster, and Brazil's social and institutional characteristics, we put forward the hypothesis that present social, political and economic structures in industrializing countries make these countries much more vulnerable to such accidents and create the type of setting where–if and when these accidents occur–they will have even more catastrophic consequences. The authors argue that only the transformation of local structures, and stronger technical cooperation between international organizations, industrialized and industrializing countries could reduce this vulnerability.     

The dynamics of silencing conflict

In many organizations, when people perceive a difference with one another they do not fully express themselves. Despite creating innumerable problems, silencing conflict is a persistent phenomenon. While the antecedents of acts of silence are well documented, little is known about how some organizations develop norms of silence. To explore the evolution of a norm of silence, we draw on an ethnographic study that spanned the entire life of a dot.com, starting with its founding and ending with its sale to a larger company. Distilling our data using causal loop diagrams, we map the processes through which acts of silence became self-reinforcing. Drawing on that analysis, we build a formal model of silencing that helps identify the conditions under which silence moves from an isolated incident into a self-reinforcing norm. Our analysis has implications for understanding both the development of a repeated pattern of silence and the broader process of norm formation.     

Claiming more than equality: Should leaders ask for forgiveness?

In organizations, leaders are often paid more than lower-level employees. Social dilemma research also shows that leaders feel entitled to earn more, and because of this, are more inclined to contribute less than an equal share to a public good, which may damage the collective. In two experiments, the social dilemma context is used to examine how group members react when either a leader or a follower violates the equality norm. Moreover, we demonstrate how asking for forgiveness sometimes mitigates people's reactions to equality norm violations. Results show that asking for forgiveness attenuates negative emotions, retribution, and non-cooperation—but more so if followers, relative to leaders, violated equality. In fact, leaders are less likely to be seen as even violating norms, suggesting that group members perceive leaders to be entitled.     

Diversity as a Basis for Shared Organizational Identity: The Norm Congruity Principle

Although the social identity approach is generally used to explain the negative consequences of diversity for the formation of a common identity within organizations, we propose that social identity processes can also lead employees to evaluate their differences in a positive way. We propose norm‐congruency as a central principle to understand these issues. We argue that when differences among team members in organizations are congruent with norms and expectations, diversity can become a basis for organizational identification.     

边界跨越对IT外包绩效影响的实证分析

 IT外包组织边界跨越活动的作用日益凸显,而与之相对的是相应研究却不多。在先前的研究中我们发现这一现象确实存在于中国IT外包企业中,因此,本研究通过特别的研究设计,对边界跨越做进一步实证分析。2010年在西安、北京、上海三地的20家IT外包企业进行问卷调查,对回收到的292份有效问卷运用SPSS17.0和AMOS17.0进行统计分析。本研究证实:边界跨越具有很大的灵活性,可以直接或间接影响IT外包绩效;知识共享具有很强的中介作用,边界跨越及与之相关的技术创新和关系规范都通过知识共享的中介作用影响IT外包绩效;边界跨越、关系规范和知识共享对IT外包绩效影响力较强,而技术创新的影响较弱。     

On the Ethical Justification for the Use of Risk Acceptance Criteria

To protect people from hazards, the common safety regulation regime in many industries is based on the use of minimum standards formulated as risk acceptance or tolerability limits. The limits are seen as absolute, and in principle these should be met regardless of costs. The justification is ethical - people should not be exposed to a risk level exceeding certain limits. In this article, we discuss this approach to safety regulation and its justification. We argue that the use of such limits is based on some critical assumptions; that low accident risk has a value in itself, that risk can be accurately measured and the authorities specify the limits. However, these assumptions are not in general valid, and hence the justification of the approach can be questioned. In the article, we look closer into these issues, and we conclude that there is a need for rethinking this regulation approach - its ethical justification is not stronger than for alternative approaches. Essential for the analysis is the distinction between ethics of the mind and ethics of the consequences, which has several implications that are discussed.     

Does HRD have a moral duty to respond to matters of social injustice?

The purpose of this article is to question whether or not social injustice should matter to human resource development (HRD). The goal is to invoke a sense of moral agency and responsiveness within the HRD community for having more candid and open conversations about social injustice and the lived experiences of marginalized individuals. In this article, a social justice paradigm will be suggested as a dedicated platform for studying social justice as a necessary outcome of social injustice. Organizational social justice will be introduced as a progressive workplace norm that envisions an equal balance of social justice outcomes for all members in organizations and places of work.     

The downside of transformational leadership when encouraging followers to network

Network scholars argue that one responsibility of leaders is to help their followers develop social capital. We suggest that one way leaders do this is by encouraging followers to engage in networking behavior. However, we argue that such encouragement is more effective when leaders are seen as less transformational, because followers are then less able to benefit from their leaders’ social capital. We support our arguments with a study of 142 followers and their leaders. Our findings show that followers engage in greater networking behaviors when encouraged by their leaders to do so, but this association is moderated by leaders’ transformational leadership style such that it is stronger as transformational leadership behaviors decrease. We thus introduce an unrecognized cost of leaders’ transformational leadership behaviors. Our findings contribute to research on networking behavior by investigating the role of transformational leadership style, and suggest avenues for research linking social capital and leadership.     

Complexity Theory and Strategic Change: an Empirically Informed Critique*

We present a four‐year ethnographic study of a public‐sector organization and use narrative to describe its development in terms of four complexity theory concepts: sensitivity to initial conditions, negative and positive feedback processes, disequilibrium and emergent order. Our study indicates that order emerges at the boundary between the organization's legitimate and shadow systems. We suggest that the underlying dynamic leading to the emergent order is the need to reduce anxiety. Our findings cause us to question the assertion that organizations are naturally complex adaptive systems producing novel forms of order. We propose an alternate view that in social systems, equilibrium‐seeking behaviour is the norm; such systems can self‐organize into hierarchy. We draw attention to some of the difficulties we found in applying complexity‐theory concepts to a social system and conclude by advocating the development of complexity theory through the incorporation of insights from psychology and social theory.     

Does the capital of social capital matter? Relational resources of the board and the performance of Brazilian companies

Based on theories of social capital, in this study, we seek to assess the impact of a board’s social capital on the market value of companies listed on the Brazilian stock exchange. As our indicator of social capital, we use the relational resources identified in the direct, indirect and heterogeneous ties of the board. Employing panel data from 508 observations, our results indicate that heterogeneous relational resources have a stronger and more significant influence than the resources available from board members’ direct relationships. Additionally, as the effects of board interlock are endogenously determined by several factors related to the firm level, we seek to mitigate the endogeneity problem using models of instrumental variables and simultaneous equations. Our hypotheses were consistent after controlling for endogeneity. We also check whether the board’s social capital could present a U-inverted effect on the market value. This relationship was only plausible in social capital by indirect ties. Finally, we isolate the effect of relational resources within and between industries on Tobin’s Q. There was no significant effect through interlocks within the same industry. However, ties with companies in several other industries were significant.     

Social Amplification of Wildfire Risk: The Role of Social Interactions and Information Sources

Wildfire is a persistent and growing threat across much of the western United States. Understanding how people living in fire‐prone areas perceive this threat is essential to the design of effective risk management policies. Drawing on the social amplification of risk framework, we develop a conceptual model of wildfire risk perceptions that incorporates the social processes that likely shape how individuals in fire‐prone areas come to understand this risk, highlighting the role of information sources and social interactions. We classify information sources as expert or nonexpert, and group social interactions according to two dimensions: formal versus informal, and generic versus fire‐specific. Using survey data from two Colorado counties, we empirically examine how information sources and social interactions relate to the perceived probability and perceived consequences of a wildfire. Our results suggest that social amplification processes play a role in shaping how individuals in this area perceive wildfire risk. A key finding is that both “vertical” (i.e., expert information sources and formal social interactions) and “horizontal” (i.e., nonexpert information and informal interactions) interactions are associated with perceived risk of experiencing a wildfire. We also find evidence of perceived “risk interdependency”—that is, homeowners’ perceptions of risk are higher when vegetation on neighboring properties is perceived to be dense. Incorporating social amplification processes into community‐based wildfire education programs and evaluating these programs’ effectiveness constitutes an area for future inquiry.     

DO LAB EXPERIMENTS MISREPRESENT SOCIAL PREFERENCES? THE CASE OF SELF‐SELECTED STUDENT SAMPLES

Social preference research has received considerable attention among economists in recent years. However, the empirical foundation of social preferences is largely based on laboratory experiments with self‐selected students as participants. This is potentially problematic as students participating in experiments may behave systematically different than nonparticipating students or nonstudents. In this paper we empirically investigate whether laboratory experiments with student samples misrepresent the importance of social preferences. Our first study shows that students who exhibit stronger prosocial inclinations in an unrelated field donation are not more likely to participate in experiments. This suggests that self‐selection of more prosocial students into experiments is not a major issue. Our second study compares the behavior of students and participants recruited from the general population in a trust experiment. In general, we find very similar behavioral patterns for the two groups, but nonstudents make significantly more generous repayments suggesting that results from student samples might be seen as a lower bound for the importance of prosocial behavior.     

Der Personalverantwortliche als strategischer Partner

Since Ulrich (Human resource champions: the next agenda for adding value and delivering results, Boston, Harvard Business School Press, 1997) shaped the strategic role of HR managers, his concept of an HR business partner has been controversially discussed by researchers and practitioners. Explanations about when and how HR managers act as strategic business partners have found limited attention in the literature. Based on the theory of reasoned action developed by Ajzen und Fishbein (Understanding attitudes and predicting social behavior, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1980; J Pers Soc Psychol 27(1):41?C57, 1973), we hypothesize a positive relation between personal attitudes as well as subjective norm and the behaviour of HR managers to act as a strategic business partner. Results of the German Cranet survey in 2009 show that expected positive consequences influence the personal attitude, whereas the acceptance of the human resources as well as the existence of an HR strategy within the organisation is positively related with subjective norm. Hence, both attitude and subjective norm positively influence the behaviour of HR managers to act as a strategic business partner.     

We Are the Corporation: Dispersive CSR

We contend that the current trend of emphasis on corporate social responsibility (CSR) serves to divert the public's attention from the real ethical issues facing business and society. We extend the scope of social responsibility beyond business corporations to include a range of institutions. We also propose that CSRs be reconceptualized in terms of the ways that managers enable stakeholders to hold themselves and each other responsible for the ways their actions affect each other as they conduct business through the firm. In this article, we propose a new view of corporations and responsibility that reconstrues behavior currently referred to as CSR. Starting with an overview of theories of the firm, we show that the way in which a firm is conceived yields different views on CSR. A shortcoming of the theory of the firm approach to CSR is that it leads us to focus excessively on business corporations at the expense of a broader analysis of other institutional players. These theories also tend to emphasize the obligations of corporations to people rather than of people to each other. We propose that social responsibility be viewed through a systems theory paradigm instead. We then argue that corporations should be construed in terms of the people who impact them. We advance a different conception of business responsibility that is more comprehensive, inclusive, and systemic.     

中国农村社会稳定状况及其特征:基于100村1765户的调查分析

本研究试图通过一个基于全国不同地区村庄的大规模抽样调查,对于当前我国农村地区的总体社会稳定状况及其特征进行分析和总结,重点关注在以往的研究中"缺失"的那部分群体,描绘那些可能存在的冲突隐患,结果发现:虽然从总体上看,我国农村社会还处在一种稳定状态,发生冲突的比重较低,且大多数规模较小、激烈程度不高。但一方面,我国农村地区巨大的人口基数决定,即使比例较低,爆发出冲突的绝对数量也不容乐观;另一方面,农村地区积累的大量不满情绪得不到纾解,给未来的社会稳定维护造成极大困难;此外,研究发现,当前基层政府在介入冲突或者纠纷解决机制过程中并未发挥其应有的作用,有时一些不当的"维稳"措施还可能造成矛盾的激化。因此,改善社会管理方式,关注大多数农村居民的实际需求,对维护我国农村社会稳定具有重要意义。     

Vote‐Buying and Reciprocity

While vote‐buying is common, little is known about how politicians determine who to target. We argue that vote‐buying can be sustained by an internalized norm of reciprocity. Receiving money engenders feelings of obligation. Combining survey data on vote‐buying with an experiment‐based measure of reciprocity, we show that politicians target reciprocal individuals. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of social preferences in determining political behavior.