Neutralizing marginally deviant behavior: Bingo players and superstition

Bingo is one of the most popular and most accepted forms of gambling in the United States today. Yet, despite its popularity, many bingo players are not completely comfortable with the moral rightness of their actions. This participant observation and interview study spanning a 5 year period shows how bingo players use superstitious strategies, such as feelings, hunches and psi, attitudes, and luck to neutralize their marginally deviant behaviors.     

Planning and management by objectives

The purpose of this article is to shed some light on the relationship between management by objectives and planning. Specifically, 294 managers in banking and manufacturing were studied. The results of that study are presented in this article.     

The Applicability of Porter’s Generic Strategies in the Digital Age: Assumptions, Conjectures, and Suggestions

Because current management theories evolved in the context of brick-and-mortar firms, this paper examines three key questions raised by the advent of e-business: (1) Will the strategy types found among e-business firms resemble Porter’s (1980) generic strategies? (2) Will we find performance differences among e-business firms pursuing different types of strategies? (3) Will we find differences in the strategy-performance relationships of pure online firms (pure plays) and firms with both online and offline operations (clicks-and-bricks)? We conclude that integrated strategies that combine elements of cost leadership and differentiation will outperform cost leadership or differentiation strategies. We also argue that, regardless of business strategy type, clicks-and-bricks firms that closely integrate their on- and offline operations will enjoy performance advantages over their pure play counterparts.     

Tolerance of Uncertainty: Links to Happenstance,Career Decision Self‐Efficacy,and Career Satisfaction

This study investigated the extent to which tolerance of uncertainty affects the relationship between happenstance skills and career satisfaction via career decision self‐efficacy. Moderated mediation analysis was conducted on data collected from 321 graduates (175 men, 146 women) of Korean universities making the school‐to‐work transition. Results showed that career decision self‐efficacy fully mediated the relationship between happenstance skills and career satisfaction. Furthermore, the moderation effect of tolerance of uncertainty had a significant impact on the relationship between happenstance skills and career decision self‐efficacy. Tolerance of uncertainty should be considered an important variable in happenstance career theory and intervention. Unplanned influences should also be considered important factors in the career decision‐making process.     

Emotion Management: Unexpected Research Opportunities

During the process of emotion management , individuals perceive that they are feeling emotions that differ from what is expected within the situation. Consequently, they use cognitive, physical, and/or other means either to display more appropriate emotions or to change their emotions on a deeper level to be consistent with what is customarily expressed. Beginning with the first examinations of emotion management in 1979 by the pioneer Arlie Hochschild , emotion scholars have produced over 6,000 studies of this phenomenon. We join this vibrant research program by proposing new avenues of research using an interdisciplinary strategy. First, we explore possibilities for emotion management research within its “home base” of sociology; then, we branch out to the areas of morality and political science. In so doing, we craft new and unexpected pathways for advancements in theory, theory adjudication, and methodology, for the future of emotion management research .     

Testing an Economic Model of Nonprofit Growth: Analyzing the Behaviors and Decisions of Nonprofit Organizations,Private Donors,and Governments

This study draws an economic model of the growth of nonprofit organizations by analyzing the behaviors of three major actors—nonprofit organizations, private donors, and governments—in making decisions on the allocation of limited resources for nonprofit services. Since decisions made by each actor affect resource allocation, it is important to understand what drives these decisions. The model was tested using an unbalanced, 463 panel dataset collected from 28 OECD countries over a 23-year period. The results indicated that macro- and micro-economic trends and government policies framed the decision premises of the three major actors, which led them to leverage the supply and demand for goods and services and, in turn, determined how they allocated limited resources for nonprofit services. This result implies that understanding the interdependencies of all sectors of the economy is critical to comprehending the size and development of the nonprofit sector. Effective management of micro-economic policies and macro-economic stability is necessary. More important, however, is understanding how a decision in one part of the economy will have intended and unintended effects on the nonprofit sector.     

Dyadic Analyses of Preschool‐aged Children's Friendships: Convergence and Differences between Friendship Classifications from Peer Sociometric Data and Teacher's Reports

Peer sociometrics and teachers' friendship reports were compared in 2179 preschool dyads. One hundred twenty of 306 reciprocated friend dyads from peer sociometric data were also identified as good friends by their classroom teachers, and 301 of 600 of non‐reciprocated dyads in peer data were named as friends by one or both classroom teachers (overall kappa = .16). Friendship classifications from both peer and teacher data had significant relations with variables relevant to peer interactions, social skills, peer acceptance, and teacher‐rated scales (six of seven tests significant for peer data; five of eight significant for teacher data). Multilevel analyses indicated that friendship status effects were not qualified by classroom‐level differences. Findings suggest that sociometric tasks can identify preschoolers' peer friendships and that the range of correlates may be broader in peer‐choice data than in teachers' friendship evaluations.