Charisma as signal: An evolutionary perspective on charismatic leadership

We present an evolutionary perspective on charismatic leadership, arguing that charisma has evolved as a credible signal of a person's ability to solve a coordination challenge requiring urgent collective action from group members. We suggest that a better understanding of charisma's evolutionary and biological origins and functions can provide a broader perspective in which to situate current debates surrounding the utility and validity of charismatic leadership as a construct in the social sciences. We outline several key challenges which have shaped our followership psychology, and argue that the benefits of successful coordination in ancestral environments has led to the evolution of context-dependent psychological mechanisms which are especially attuned to cues and signals of outstanding personal leadership qualities. We elaborate on several implications of this signaling hypothesis of charismatic leadership, including opportunities for deception (dishonest signaling) and for large-scale coordination.     

Risk Assessment for Invasive Species

Although estimates vary, there is a broad agreement that invasive species impose major costs on the U.S. economy, as well as posing risks to nonmarket environmental goods and services and to public health. The domestic effort to manage risks associated with invasive species is coordinated by the National Invasive Species Council (NISC), which is charged with developing a science-based process to evaluate risks associated with the introduction and spread of invasive species. Various international agreements have also elevated invasive species issues onto the international policy agenda. The World Trade Organization (WTO) Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement establishes rights and obligations to adhere to the discipline of scientific risk assessment to ensure that SPS measures are applied only to the extent required to protect human, animal, and plant health, and do not constitute arbitrary or unjustifiable technical barriers to trade. Currently, however, the field of risk assessment for invasive species is in its infancy. Therefore, there is a pressing need to formulate scientifically sound methods and approaches in this emerging field, while acknowledging that the demand for situation-specific empirical evidence is likely to persistently outstrip supply. To begin addressing this need, the Society for Risk Analysis Ecological Risk Assessment Specialty Group and the Ecological Society of America Theoretical Ecology Section convened a joint workshop to provide independent scientific input into the formulation of methods and processes for risk assessment of invasive species to ensure that the analytic processes used domestically and internationally will be firmly rooted in sound scientific principles.     

The impact of institutional changes on corporate governance mechanisms in transition economies

We examine how institutional changes affect corporate governance in transition economies. We develop a transition model that specifies three stages of the transition process including the early, intermediate, and late. We develop a framework for assessing the effectiveness of widely recognized corporate governance mechanisms (CGMs) in and across these stages. Our general proposition is that as transition economies move from early, to intermediate, to late stages, effective CGMs tend to be those that are based on state administrative control power, social networks and private orders, and market forces and formal institutions, respectively. Our study has contributions and implications regarding the transition economies and the impacts of institutions on corporate governance.     

The Effect of Competition on Recovery Strategies

Manufacturers often face a choice of whether to recover the value in their end‐of‐life products through remanufacturing. In many cases, firms choose not to remanufacture, as they are (rightly) concerned that the remanufactured product will cannibalize sales of the higher‐margin new product. However, such a strategy may backfire for manufacturers operating in industries where their end‐of‐life products (cell phones, tires, computers, automotive parts, etc.) are attractive to third‐party remanufacturers, who may seriously cannibalize sales of the original manufacturer. In this paper, we develop models to support a manufacturer's recovery strategy in the face of a competitive threat on the remanufactured product market. We first analyze the competition between new and remanufactured products produced by a monopolist manufacturer and identify conditions under which the firm would choose not to remanufacture its products. We then characterize the potential profit loss due to external remanufacturing competition and analyze two entry‐deterrent strategies: remanufacturing and preemptive collection. We find that a firm may choose to remanufacture or preemptively collect its used products to deter entry, even when the firm would not have chosen to do so under a pure monopoly environment. Finally, we discuss conditions under which each strategy is more beneficial.     

The Management of Violence in a Conflict Organization: The Case of the Abu Sayyaf

The Abu Sayyaf is an organization which has left a trail of mayhem and murder in the southern Philippines for more than a decade. It has gained international notoriety through several high profile mass kidnappings. This article looks at how the Abu Sayyaf has managed to survive and at times prosper despite the state's efforts to eradicate it. By using organizational analysis the paper demonstrates how the Abu Sayyaf has developed structures and processes which make it such a deadly force. The organization has succeeded in gaining considerable fit with the environment in which it operates.     

Dramatically reducing cycle times through flash development

The reduction of cycle time has emerged as a fundamental element of new product development strategy. Many companies look solely at speed enhancement and increase the human, capital and technical resources allocated to development projects. However, additional resources do not guarantee significant reductions in cycle time. As well as speed enhancement activities, there exist two other sets of activities that are key to shortening the development cycle: those that act to prevent delays (friction) in the development process and those that define the scope of the final outcome (direction). This paper describes flash development as an alternative approach to reducing product development cycle times. Flash development works by creating a process that focuses on speed, friction and direction. The process is illustrated through an analysis of the Galileo Project at Nortel Networks.     

Personality and organizational health: the role of conscientiousness

Organizational health research identifies processes through which the work environment and individual differences combine to influence both individual and organizational outcomes. This study investigated the contribution of conscientiousness to organizational health. Research in the areas of occupational stress, work performance, and organizational climate was used to develop a framework for integrating different elements of organizational health. Within this framework, the work environment was assessed by perceptions of workload and role clarity ; individual well-being was assessed by psychological distress and job satisfaction ; and behaviour important for organizational success was assessed by contextual performance. Conscientiousness was investigated within the framework using self-reports from a sample of 104 Australian employees. Conscientiousness directly influenced contextual performance but did not influence well-being or perceptions of the work environment. Conscientiousness also reduced the impact of role clarity on both psychological distress and job satisfaction. The role of conscientiousness in a comprehensive model of organizational health is discussed.     

Bayesian modelling of catch in a north-west Atlantic fishery

Summary. We model daily catches of fishing boats in the Grand Bank fishing grounds. We use data on catches per species for a number of vessels collected by the European Union in the context of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization. Many variables can be thought to influence the amount caught: a number of ship characteristics (such as the size of the ship, the fishing technique used and the mesh size of the nets) are obvious candidates, but one can also consider the season or the actual location of the catch. Our database leads to 28 possible regressors (arising from six continuous variables and four categorical variables, whose 22 levels are treated separately), resulting in a set of 177 million possible linear regression models for the log-catch. Zero observations are modelled separately through a probit model. Inference is based on Bayesian model averaging, using a Markov chain Monte Carlo approach. Particular attention is paid to the prediction of catches for single and aggregated ships.     

Optimization Model and Algorithm for Crew Management During Airline Irregular Operations

Airline irregular operations have long been a realm where human experience and judgement are the most important tools to utilize. Crew management during irregular operations is usually the bottleneck of the whole system-recovering process due to complicated crew schedules and restrictive crew legalities as well as the size and scope of the hub-and-spoke networks adopted by major carriers. A system-wide multi-commodity integer network flow model and a heuristic search algorithm for the above purpose are presented and discussed in this paper. The computational experiences show that the algorithm is efficient enough to solve problems of realistic size and also has the flexibility to accommodate practical business requirements.