Engaging Expert Peers in the Development of Risk Assessments

The participation of external technical experts in the development of risk assessment documents and methodologies has expanded and evolved in recent years. Many government agencies and authoritative organizations have experts peer review important works to evaluate the scientific and technical defensibility and judge the strength of the assumptions and conclusions (OMB, 2004; IPCS, 2005; IARC, 2006; Health Canada, 2007; U.S. EPA, 2006). Expert advice has been solicited in other forms of peer involvement, including peer consultation in, for example, the U.S. EPA's Voluntary Children's Chemical Evaluation Program (VCCEP). This article discusses how the principles and practices of peer review can be extended to other types of peer involvement activities (i.e., peer input and peer consultation) to develop high-quality risk assessment work products. A comprehensive process for incorporating peer input, peer consultation, and peer review into risk assessment science is outlined. Four key principles for peer involvement-independence, inclusion of appropriate experts, transparency, and a robust scientific process-are discussed. Recent examples of peer involvement in the development of Health Canada's Priority Substances and Domestic Substance List (DSL) programs under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) serve to highlight the concepts.     

企业投资决策同伴效应及其特征的实证检验——基于中国上市公司的面板数据

企业投资的同伴效应是指企业的投资行为受到其参照组内同伴投资的影响。为解决识别同伴效应时面临的参照组有效性问题以及企业决策互相影响的联立性问题，本文选择跨区域的同行业企业作为同伴企业，首次构建了同伴企业的同区域跨行业企业的投资均值作为工具变量，基于2008-2015年中国上市公司的面板数据，实证检验了上市企业投资决策的同伴效应。结果表明，中国上市企业投资决策受到跨区域同行业的同伴企业投资显著正向影响，且这种同伴效应在增减变动方向上具有不对称性和乘数效应的基本特征。本文拓展和深化了企业财务决策同伴效应的现有研究，并有助于投资者与监管部门理解同伴效应的放大作用。     

Behavioral Safety in the Food Services Industry: Challenges and Outcomes

During the course of a 6-year behavioral safety consult at a food and drink industry site, data were collected on the number of Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA) recordable incidents, number of lost and restricted days, and number of peer safety observations. Employees were trained to identify safe and unsafe behavior, conduct peer observations, and provide peer feedback. Data collected from observations were utilized to deliver graphic feedback. Managers were encouraged to review graphic feedback with employees weekly, provide prompts for observation, and praise employees for conducting observations. A committee composed of employees and managers met monthly to address safety concerns. Reductions in incidents were observed over the course of the behavioral safety intervention, but a reversal to baseline could not be implemented. A negative correlation was observed between number of peer observations and number of recordable incidents. Results suggest that when employees conduct peer observations more frequently, the number of recordable incidents decreases.     

同群效应对创业活动影响的模型构建与实证

本文从社会个体与群体行为互动的视角研究个体的创业活动决策机理，分析认为，个体因受到周围创业者冒险拼搏精神的影响而进行创业，或者通过与周围创业者交往的社会学习得到与创业相关的技术或者经验从而自身也投入创业，二者均使得创业活动具有同群效应。进一步基于中国家庭追踪调查（CFPS）截面数据进行检验的结果显示：（1）个体的创业活动存在显著同群效应，即邻里的创业活动对个体产生了明显的示范作用，带动其投入到创业活动中；（2）信息时代因电视、互联网等媒体传播应用对于传统物理意义上的同群效应存在一定程度的替代。文章采用了工具变量法解决了关联效应和反射性问题对同群效应的估计带来的影响，以确保同群效应的有效识别。上述发现说明，尽管创业活动是市场参与个体的自由选择行为，但各种途径的宣传，包括社区宣传和各种媒体宣传对于推动大众创业有不可或缺的作用。     

The Quality of Stakeholder-Based Decisions

The increased use of stakeholder processes in environmental decision making has raised concerns about the quality of decisions these processes produce. Some claim that stakeholders make inadequate use of scientific information and analysis and are all too ready to sacrifice technical quality for political expediency. This article looks to the case study record to examine the quality of the decisions from stakeholder-based processes. The data for the analysis come from a "case survey," in which researchers coded information from 239 published case studies of stakeholder involvement in environmental decision making. These cases reflect a diversity of planning, management, and implementation activities carried out by environmental and natural resource agencies at many levels of government. Overall, the case-study record suggests that there should be little concern that stakeholder processes are resulting in low-quality decisions. The majority of cases contain evidence of stakeholders improving decisions over the status quo; adding new information, ideas, and analysis; and having adequate access to technical and scientific resources. Indeed, data suggest that it is the more intensive stakeholder processes--precisely those that have aroused recent concern--that are more likely to result in higher-quality decisions.     

Improving "medical necessity" acceptance by health care providers and consumers

A major problem for patients and providers has existed since establishment of peer review and authorization agency medical necessity guide lines, because physicians and patients who receive denial of proposed procedures and tests on the basis of so called "medical necessity" presume that the authorization agency considers the proposed procedure or test to be medically unnecessary, meaning of no health value to the patient. This may well not be the case. Both providers and consumers can be expected to be more accepting of negative authorization decisions if the principles of continuous quality improvement are brought to bear on the authorization process.     

同侪激励机制下政府补贴对制造商绿色研发影响的演化博弈分析

针对地方财政支付压力过大的问题,制定合理的补贴机制激励制造商绿色研发,是实现政企合作双赢的关键。在同侪激励视角下建立政府补贴和企业研发的演化博弈模型,结合静态激励和动态激励两种方案,分析双方博弈中的局部稳定性,探讨同侪激励基金、补贴系数等因素对群体演化路径的影响,从合作机制层面验证了同侪激励的可行性:较低的政府补贴支出仍能激励制造商绿色研发,较高的政府补贴支出可能导致补贴困局,动态调节的同侪激励机制可以协调政企双方不稳定的合作关系。     

卖家反馈能否引发高质量的在线评论信息？——基于淘宝网的实证分析

高质量的评论为店铺带来良好的网络口碑。网络卖家如何通过回复评论来提高消费者发布评论的积极性,并提高评论内容的质量水平？本文利用评论长度和评论图片数量来衡量在线评论质量,构建卖家在线回复、店铺特征以及在线评论质量对消费者购买决策影响的理论模型。通过收集淘宝网交易数据,对假设进行了验证。发现卖家回复正向影响评论长度与图片评论数,店铺星级水平和店铺服务能力在其中具有调节作用。高质量的在线评论会促进消费者的购买决策。本文结论将为电子商务平台和卖家提升经营绩效提供建议。     

国家重点实验室评估方法的若干问题研究

提出了国家重点实验室评估方法中现场评估分组、专家调整和现场评估与复评之间的关系等方面存在的一些深层次的问题,系统地分析了这些问题的成因及其对国家重点实验室评估结果的影响,研究并提出了解决这些问题的方法。     

同事压力与团队激励关系的模型分析

从团队规范的视角分析了同事压力与团队激励的关系.依据规范对团队成员努力方向的不同影响定义了两种同事压力函数:进取型同事压力平衡同事压力.利用委托-代理理论模型化了不同的压力类型对团队成员均衡的努力选择及管理者最优激励系数设置的影响,并将其进行对比分析得出一些结论与启示.     

Quality of Service Based Pricing Schemes for Content Sharing in Peer‐to‐Peer Networks

In this paper, we study quality‐of‐service (QoS) based pricing schemes that serve as incentive mechanisms to induce sharing behaviors in Peer‐to‐Peer (P2P) networks. We incorporate operational QoS metrics into users’ utility functions and demonstrate how they affect individual users’ content sharing decisions. Using a game‐theoretic model, our study reveals how organizations respond to the changes of operational QoS metrics in their design of pricing schemes for various business objectives at different stages of network evolution. Our results show that a higher upload capacity can foster rational sharing to start when the network is small; however, it also discourages sharing behaviors when the network becomes large. In order to induce a socially optimal behavior, a pricing scheme will not charge users for requesting content while compensating them for sharing content. Such compensation is found to increase faster with the network size when the network is large. In order to maximize the profit of a monopolistic provider, however, a pricing scheme will charge content requests with a positive price while providing less compensation to sharing users compared to the socially optimal scheme. When the network size is small, such compensation can be even negative, which implies that a monopolistic provider discourages content sharing when the network is small, but encourages it when the network becomes larger. In addition, we find that more information about peer upload capacity discourages peers to share.     

Peer effects and intentional entrepreneurial behaviour: A systematic literature review and research agenda

What role peers play in individuals’ decisions to become entrepreneurs and to what extent peer effects play a role in influencing behaviours at the various stages of business venturing are important questions for scholars and policymakers. This systematic review takes stock of the recent additions to the literature around the phenomenon of peer influence in entrepreneurship. The review identified 2894 documents which were then narrowed down through three consecutive filtering stages. We thematically analysed the final sample of 27 empirical studies that shed light on how individual peers influence the process and outcomes of these individuals’ entrepreneurial intentions and behaviour, allowing for critical analysis. We propose a conceptual schema of social influence that occurs in interactions among entrepreneurial individuals within business venturing and across the three stages of pre-formation, formation and growth. Our framework reconciles the conceptual classification around discovering, evaluating and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities with the mechanisms of social influence affecting entrepreneurial behaviours. Grounded in the findings of the literature review, this framework synthesizes peer influence in entrepreneurship with the tripartite distinction of the behavioural motives recognized in contemporary theories of social influence. We suggest promising directions for further research on how interactions with peers might affect individuals’ entrepreneurial behaviours.     

Enhancing Self‐Protective Behavior: Efficacy Beliefs and Peer Feedback in Risk Communication

In times of a high‐impact safety incident citizens may have a variety of sources available to help them cope with the situation. This research focuses on the interplay of efficacy information in risk communication messages and peer feedback, such as responses on social network sites (SNSs) in the context of a high‐impact risk on the intention to engage in self‐protective behavior. The study pitted high and low efficacy information messages against supporting and opposing peer feedback (N = 242). Results show a significant interaction effect between efficacy information in a news article and peer feedback from SNS messages on both the intention to engage in self‐protective behavior and levels of involvement. Participants who received the article with more efficacy information and also received supportive peer feedback via SNS messages were more likely to express higher levels of involvement and greater intentions to engage in protective behavior. When confronted with a low efficacious news article, the effect of peer feedback on these two variables was significantly stronger. Finally, implications for theory and government risk communication are discussed.     

The National Practitioner Data Bank: the first 18 months

In response to a need for information on the quality of professional practice and a perceived threat to the preservation of the peer review process, as well as to concern about the cost to society of incompetent physicians, Congress passed the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986. The Act established a legal basis for protecting peer review and quality assurance activities. It also established a national reporting system, the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), which is intended to ensure that appropriate information is available to be used in the peer review process.     

On the versatility of Little’s Law in operations management: a review and classification using vignettes

Abstract

Despite Little’s Law being considered as one of the ‘laws’ of operations management, evidence of its application in an empirical context is diverse and diffuse. Hence, this paper aims to identify, classify and consolidate published empirical applications of Little’s Law in a systematic manner to better understand its versatility. This paper undertakes a systematic literature review of the databases of the five main publishers of operations management journals and snowball sampling for additional papers. A final sample of 128 empirical journal articles is identified and categorized. Tactical, medium-term decisions relating to capacity dynamics and operations re-engineering are the most popular categories. To give further insights into versatility, vignettes for each category are developed. The review and vignettes confirm Little’s Law as a highly relevant paradigm to operations management decisions due to its empirical versatility across levels, sectors and time domains. The paper suggests four factors to underline the empirical versatility of Little’s Law in operations management: applicability, utility, simplicity and visibility.     

Peer Effects in Risk Aversion

We estimate peer effects in risk attitudes in a sample of high school students. Relative risk aversion is elicited from surveys administered at school. Identification of peer effects is based on parents not being able to choose the class within the school of their choice, and on the use of instrumental variables conditional on school‐grade fixed effects. We find a significant and quantitatively large impact of peers’ risk attitudes on a male individual's coefficient of risk aversion. Specifically, a one standard deviation increase in the group's coefficient of risk aversion increases an individual's risk aversion by 43%. Our findings shed light on the origin and stability of risk attitudes and, more generally, on the determinants of economic preferences.     

评分不一致性对在线评论有用性的影响——归因理论的视角

哪些因素会影响在线评论的有用性一直是理论界和实践界都十分关心的问题,但现有研究对在线评论的星级评分是如何影响评论有用性这一问题仍未形成统一的结论。基于此,本文以归因理论为分析框架,构建了在线评论的星级评分与产品的平均星级间的不一致性对评论有用性的影响的研究模型,并重点探讨产品的评论总量以及评论的星级评分和平均星级间差异的方向对这一影响的调节作用。本文以携程网上832233条酒店评论为样本,采用零膨胀负二项回归方法对理论模型进行了实证检验,研究结果表明,评分不一致性对评论的有用性有显著的负向影响,而某种产品的评论总量以及星级评分和平均星级间差异的方向对评分不一致性和评论有用性间的关系起到调节作用。当产品的评论总量越高或评论的星级评分与产品的平均星级间的差异为正向差异时,评分不一致性对评论有用性的负向影响越强。本文的研究成果既为理解在线评论有用性提供了理论贡献,也有助于电子商务或第三方评论网站管理和应用在线评论。     

The Rise and Fall of a Risk-Based Priority System: Lessons from DOE's Environmental Restoration Priority System

This paper presents the history of the Environmental Restoration Priority System (ERPS), a decision aid developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to help determine how to allocate funds for cleaning up hazardous waste sites. Although praised in technical peer review, the system was strongly criticized by stakeholders external to the DOE. Ultimately, and in the midst of a National Academy of Sciences review, DOE shelved the system. The rise and fall of ERPS provides useful lessons for analysts hoping to improve risk management in the public sector.     

科技类评审中项目选择的两阶段综合集成方法

科技类评审中,如何合理地选择出若干优秀项目加以资助或激励至关重要。本文研究了科技类评审中的项目选择问题,指出在目前通行的两阶段评议法中存在通讯评议阶段的决策信息不能有效传递到会议评议阶段的情况,应采用适当的方法将两个阶段专家给出的评价信息进行综合处理,以得到更为合理的项目评审结果,进而给出了两阶段综合集成的框架与具体方法。算例表明,可以更充分的利用两阶段的专家评价信息,得到满意的选择结果。