Cultural values as determinants of executive attitudes on decision making: An empirical evaluation

This article presents an empirical, cross-cultural investigation of executive attitudes on decision making, risk taking, and executive courage. Twenty-nine Arab and 40 American executives participated in this study. Six hypotheses were tested, with the results showing significant differences between managers from the two business cultures. Recommendations and directions for future research are provided.     

Ethical dilemmas faced by family therapists

This study explores the reactions of 202 randomly selected clinical members of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) to a variety of ethical dilemma situations which examine what family therapists are doing in their work when confronted with these difficult situations. Eight of the issues studied have been discussed in the literature and eight are included in the AAMFT's Ethical Principles for Family Therapists (1984). In addition to showing how clinical members responded to dilemmic vignettes that reflect these dilemmas, results indicated that family therapists are facing these dilemmas, have a high rate of consensus of what they would and would not do in each situation and almost all the situations were seen as being ethically significant by the majority of respondents.     

Developing alliances between U.S. and Portuguese executives: The impact of executive courage

This study represents an effort to gain insights into the differences between U.S. and Portuguese executives with regard to their attitudes toward the role of executive courage in the business organization. Eighty Portuguese and 40 American executives participated in the study. Four research questions were formulated and investigated. Results show that the two groups of executives tended to be more similar than different. However, some statistically significant differences between the two samples were detected. Portuguese organizations exhibited significantly more control over the actions of their executives and rewarded efficiency rather than effectiveness, when compared to American business organizations. Implications for strategic alliances between Portuguese and American executives are discussed and recommendations for future research are provided.     

Asymptotic bootstrap validity for finite markov chains

Two methods of bootstrap, viz., standard, and conditional, are presented for estimating the transition probabilities of a finite state Markov chain. Asymptotic validity of the bootstrap estimates are established for both methods. An applica- tion to a bootstrapped statistic for testing independence is briefly discussed together with some simulation results.     

‘But I can do the job’: examining disability employment practice through human rights complaint cases

Natural data on the Australian Human Rights Commission’s website outlining the complaint cases generated from Disability Discrimination Act, 1992 (DDA) were used to examine the social construction of disability employment discrimination. Using a social model and human rights citizenship lens, some 987 complaint cases were analysed to assess the prevalence of disability discrimination in employment, and its relationship to the types of disability, gender, entity undertaking the actions and organisational context. Of all complaint cases across the Australian Human Rights Commission’s operations, by far the largest proportion involves disability discrimination. Within the disability discrimination complaint cases, employment makes up the greatest proportion of these cases. In examining the patterns of discrimination seven major themes emerged involving: distinctive patterns across disability type; access to premises; human resource mismanagement; selection of new employees; integration of assistive technology; perception of cost of disability inclusions; and inflexible organisational workplace practices. The discussion examines the underlying reasons for the emergent themes where employers misunderstood key legal concepts that underpin the DDA including: unjustifiable hardship; inherent requirements; reasonable adjustment; direct; and indirect discrimination. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the findings as a way of understanding the social construction of disability discrimination in employment to signal ways to better develop inclusive organisational practice.     

The Economic Impact of Space Weather: Where Do We Stand?

Space weather describes the way in which the Sun, and conditions in space more generally, impact human activity and technology both in space and on the ground. It is now well understood that space weather represents a significant threat to infrastructure resilience, and is a source of risk that is wide‐ranging in its impact and the pathways by which this impact may occur. Although space weather is growing rapidly as a field, work rigorously assessing the overall economic cost of space weather appears to be in its infancy. Here, we provide an initial literature review to gather and assess the quality of any published assessments of space weather impacts and socioeconomic studies. Generally speaking, there is a good volume of scientific peer‐reviewed literature detailing the likelihood and statistics of different types of space weather phenomena. These phenomena all typically exhibit “power‐law” behavior in their severity. The literature on documented impacts is not as extensive, with many case studies, but few statistical studies. The literature on the economic impacts of space weather is rather sparse and not as well developed when compared to the other sections, most probably due to the somewhat limited data that are available from end‐users. The major risk is attached to power distribution systems and there is disagreement as to the severity of the technological footprint. This strongly controls the economic impact. Consequently, urgent work is required to better quantify the risk of future space weather events.