The Performance Effects of an Ability-Based Approach to Goal Assignment

Some organizations have begun to target their goal-setting method more closely to the ability levels of their employees. In this article, we report the results of a laboratory study of 138 undergraduate students, which shows that these “ability-based” goals are more effective at improving performance than a “one goal for all” approach, where everyone is assigned the same performance target. Results from repeated measure tests and other analysis of variance tests show that lower-ability individuals in the ability-based goal condition outperform those in the one goal for all condition. Lower- and moderate-ability participants in the one goal for all condition also experienced larger decreases in performance in later rounds.     

Queering the Word: Patricia Nell Warren's Adaptation of Christian Sacraments in The Fancy Dancer

The essay explores the ways in which Patricia Nell Warren's The Fancy Dancer (1976) employs Roman Catholic sacraments to depict the developing sexuality of a young gay priest. The essay explores the parallels between sacramental spiritual development and the individual and communal markers of a burgeoning gay or lesbian identity. Additionally, the novel's connections between conversion narratives and coming-out narratives are examined. The essay argues that Warren, in using the rhetoric, symbols, and models of the Church differently, disrupts the narrow epistemology underlying Christianity. Finally, novels such as Warren's suggest that gay and lesbian authors can adapt elements of Christianity while undermining its oppressive presumptions, and establishing a liberatory rhetoric that maintains the intelligibility and recognizability of familiar Christian models.     

Reproducing Inequalities through Development: The MDGs and the Politics of Method

Abstract

This article is a critical inquiry into particular methodological means underlying analyses of development, inequalities, and poverty in the context of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) discourse. A populist approach to poverty reduction, the MDG initiative has gained much exposure at the expense of a closer scrutiny of the specific methodological premises (and their implications) underlining the development frameworks through which the goals were to be realized. A critical examination of premises of this kind demonstrates the way in which the application of specific methods in analyses of development and poverty is carefully crafted to serve discernible ideological ends. In order to explicate this by way of an example, I draw on MDG1 (and target 2 with reference to hunger), which I discuss in relation to its integration with the overarching development objective of realizing economic growth. My aim is to demonstrate how dominant explanations and understandings of poverty and hunger, social struggles for fundamental entitlements, and ultimately ‘development’, are construed in ways that are premised on abstractions from actual social and political relations; they are framed as ‘independent variables’ external to the very policies and strategies of international development. The critical engagement offered in my analysis is timely, given the extent to which the MDG initiative and the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals agenda have been presented without any attempt to answer to decades (and more) of critical arguments that offer more rigorous and sustained understandings of inequalities, including deprivations of basic life sustaining needs and fundamental entitlements.     

Impulse Balance and Multiple‐Period Feedback in the Newsvendor Game

Human subjects in the newsvendor game place suboptimal orders: orders are typically between the expected profit‐maximizing quantity and mean demand (“pull‐to‐center bias”). In previous work, we have shown that impulse balance equilibrium (IBE), which is based on a simple ex post rationality principle along with an equilibrium condition, can predict ordering decisions in the laboratory. In this study, we extend IBE to standing orders and multiple‐period feedback and show that it predicts—in line with previous findings—that constraining newsvendors to make a standing order for a sequence of periods moves the average of submitted orders toward the optimum.     

Aller Anfang ist schwer — Problem-und Zieldefinition in der Organisationsberatung

The article examines the initial phase of (management) consulting projects from a sociological perspective. The main focus lies on the processes of defining the initial problems that lead to the consulting project and the goals of the project. The article describes the clarification process carried out jointly by consultants and clients in the first phase of a project. After stressing the importance of these activities for project success, the factors that might disturb these processes are then analyzed and discussed, primarily following system-theoretical and micro-political considerations.     

How Do People Take into Account Weight,Strength and Quality of Segregated vs. Aggregated Data? Experimental Evidence

In this experimental study we investigated how people aggregate two sets of signals about the state of the world to reach a single probability judgment. The signal sets may differ in the way signals are presented, in their number as well as their quality. By varying the presentation mode of the signals we investigated how people deal with segregated and aggregated evidence. We investigated whether subjects sufficiently take into account weight (number of signals), strength (composition) and quality of the information provided. The results indicate that consideration of the weight and strength of signals strongly depends on the type of their presentation. Particular patterns can be identified which determine if weight and/or strength are either under- or overweighted.     

Willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-accept for risky and ambiguous lotteries

Former studies have shown that people tend to give buying prices that are lower than selling prices. In our study, we investigate if this willingness-to-accept and willingness-to-pay disparity is affected by ambiguity. Using a Becker, DeGroot, and Marschak procedure, we elicit buying, selling, short-selling, and short-buying prices. The results indicate that subjects clearly distinguish between risky and ambiguous lotteries and the different ways in which lotteries are framed. However, the average WTA/WTP ratios are remarkably close for all lotteries considered, as well as for negative and positive framing.