冲突处理模式的维度划分与测量

作为在组织日常生活中无法避免的现象之一,冲突之于团队及其成员的影响作用存在极大的不确定性,这不仅取决于冲突的内容和强度,更重要的是如何应对.冲突处理模式的选择不仅直接影响到个人与其他团队成员的关系,也在一定程度上决定了个人与团队的绩效和产出.冲突处理模式是一个多维度的概念,主流的二维模型将常见的冲突应对方式分为竞争、协作、妥协、回避和顺从五类,并在此基础上开发了五大经典测量量表--CMS、MODE、OCCI、CMMS和ROCI-Ⅱ.这些测量工具在后续经验研究过程中得到了不同程度的验证和支持,在对其各自的条款内容、心理测量属性和优缺点进行一番比较之后,可以发现其中普遍存在的问题,如信度偏低、效度检验方法单一、社会称许性偏差影响显著等.基础理论模型的完善与测量工具的修正将成为日后研究的重点之一.     

Social class and workers’ rent, 1983–2001

Sociologists and economists continue to seek explanations for the growth of earnings inequality since the late 1970s. In this article, we draw upon the structural tradition of labor market analysis in sociology in order evaluate the conjecture that selective rent destruction is a source of the recent increase in earnings inequality. In empirical analysis of the Outgoing Rotation Groups of the Current Population Surveys from 1983 to 2001, we demonstrate that (1) the earnings of workers at the bottom of the class distribution have declined relative to the earnings of those at the top and (2) the variance of wage premia associated with employment in alternative industries has declined relatively more for those at the bottom of the class distribution. Adopting the position from both the sociology and labor economics literatures that these industry wage premia are reasonable measures of industry rents, we conclude that the results support the rent destruction conjecture and, by implication, that structural models of labor markets can explain some of the increase in earnings inequality.     

Uncertainty and the Value of Information with Stochastic Losses from Global Warming

We present an uncertainty analysis conducted using CETA-R, a model in which the costs of climate change are specified as Risks of large losses. In this analysis, we assume that three key parameters may each take on "high" or "low" values, leading to eight possible states of the world. We then explore optimal policies when the state of the world is known, and under uncertainty. Also, we estimate the benefits of resolving uncertainty earlier. We find that the optimal policy under uncertainty is similar to the policy that is optimal when each of the key parameters is at its low value. We also find that the value of immediate uncertainty resolution rises sharply as the alternative to immediate resolution is increasingly delayed resolution.     

Probability Distributions for Showering and Bathing Water-Use Behavior for Various U.S. Subpopulations

It has been shown that bathroom-type water uses dominate personal exposure to water-borne contaminants in the home. Therefore, in assessing exposure of specific population groups to the contaminants in the water, understanding population water-use behavior for bathroom activities as a function of demographic characteristics is vital to realistic exposure estimates. In this article, shower and bath frequencies and durations are analyzed, presented, and compared for various demographic groups derived from analyses of the National Human Activities Pattern Survey (NHAPS) database and the Residential End Uses of Water Study (REUWS) database as well as from a review of current literature. Analysis showed that age and level of education significantly influenced shower and bath frequency and duration. The frequency of showering and bathing reported in NHAPS agreed reasonably well with previous studies; however, durations of these events were found to be significantly longer. Showering frequency reported in REUWS was slightly less than that reported for NHAPS; however, durations of showers reported in REUWS are consistent with other studies. After considering the strengths and weaknesses of each data set and comparing their results to previous studies, it is concluded that NHAPS provides more reliable frequency data, while REUWS provides more reliable duration data. The shower- and bath-use behavior parameters recommended in this article can aid modelers in appropriately specifying water-use behavior as a function of demographic group in order to conduct reasonable assessments of exposure to contaminants that enter the home via the water supply.     

Safety first?

The Royal Statistical Society working party on medical studies on human volunteers made its report on March 13th this year, a year to the day after the disastrous TGN1412 trial left six volunteers gravely ill. Stephen Senn , who chaired the working party, reflects.     

Human resource management and performance

The study of human resource management (HRM) has been invigorated by the promise that there is a best-practice, high-involvement management (HIM) that can guarantee superior organizational performance. None the less, there remain concerns that contingency theory still rules, that is, that the fit between the human resource systems and their context, and particularly the organization's business strategy, is all important and, thus, that HIM will only outperform other systems in certain circumstances. In the 1990s, there has been a spate of research that has sought to test whether HIM is indeed universally relevant. This paper reviews these studies. The paper first introduces the conceptual dimensions of the debate concerning HRM and performance. This shows that the issues go beyond a simple competition between universalism and contingency theory. There are more complicated hypotheses linking human resource practices beneath the surface of the recent literature. The second part of the paper overviews the studies in the light of these hypotheses, revealing that they present an uneven picture. Firstly, there are conceptual differences underlying the studies and, secondly, the results vary between them, and the effects of HIM vary between performance measures even in particular studies. Though a fair number of the studies claim to support universalism, their claims are not always unequivocally supported by their research evidence, and it is premature to conclude in its favour. If anything, there is more support for the 'lean production' argument that stresses the interaction effect between HIM and total quality management on performance.     

Social choice,optimal inference and figure skating

We approach the social choice problem as one of optimal statistical inference. If individual voters or judges observe the true order on a set of alternatives with error, then it is possible to use the set of individual rankings to make probability statements about the correct social order. Given the posterior distribution for orders and a suitably chosen loss function, an optimal order is one that minimises expected posterior loss. The paper develops a statistical model describing the behaviour of judges, and discusses Markov chain Monte Carlo estimation. We also discuss criteria for choosing the appropriate loss functions. We apply our methods to a well-known problem: determining the correct ranking for figure skaters competing at the Olympic Games.     

A century of t-tests

One hundred years ago, an author under the pseudonym of "Student" published a paper which was to become famous. It was entitled "The probable error of a mean". But what we now know as Student's t -test attracted little attention. It took another statistician of genius, R. A. Fisher, to amend, publicise and make it ubiquitous. But both Student's and Fisher's published versions were based upon faulty data. Stephen Senn reminds us of the third dedicated researcher and the quarter of a century delay before the story behind Student's t -test emerged.