Negotiating Tensions between Methodology and Procedural Ethics

In this commentary, I consider what can go wrong in research when tensions arise between methodology and procedural ethics. I recount difficulties negotiating and implementing a participant recruitment strategy during my doctoral research project, which aimed to explore the experiences of people affected by dementia in the United Kingdom who were disengaged from services. To access this hard-to-reach population, I intended to adopt an informal recruitment strategy, snowball sampling from personal contacts and striking up conversations in public places. The procedural ethics committee were unhappy with this approach, deeming it potentially coercive. They suggested a more formal recruitment strategy enacted via emailing community organisations and churches. This approach entailed practical consequences that ultimately weakened the study sample, data and findings. This case raises questions about the negotiation of tensions between methodology and procedural ethics in gerontological research.     

Analysis of Cultural Indicators: A Comparison of Their Conceptual Basis and Dimensions

Multiple organizations and institutions have been resorting to indicators on diverse aspects of culture (e.g., creativity, social cohesion, cultural vitality, economic participation), according to their particular purposes and views of what is to be measured. This paper presents results from a research report of a qualitative study that analyzed 35 papers on cultural indicators found via Internet, based on four categories: purpose, assumptions about culture, concept of culture they sustain, and dimensions of indicators considered. Results show that even when the importance of culture is widely recognized in the papers, most of them propose indicators without having solid theoretical foundations, and with an emphasis on the relation between culture and economy. Also, most of the documents do not have a definition of culture or present an instrumental conceptualization of it, where culture is valued not as an end in itself but as a resource than can serve to development.     

What innovation managers really do: a multiple-case investigation into the informal role profiles of innovation managers

Over the last fifteen years companies tended to formalise their innovation management activities and to establish formal jobs like the innovation officer, the network manager or the innovation manager. Knowledge of the informal role profiles of these formal roles is still rare. HR and R&D Managers do not know which informal role profile might suit them best, thus having difficulties to assign the best candidates for jobs in innovation management. Researchers cannot help to resolve the problem. Our research answers the question what innovation managers really do, by analysing their tasks, skills and traits, theoretically based on informal role theories. Furthermore, we will analyse how these characteristics change with company size. To provide answers to our research questions we choose a multiple-case study approach. We found, among others, that innovation managers fulfil the role of the relationship and process promotor or a combination of both with the champion, but we also found, that the innovation manager’s roles profile becomes fuzzier with shrinking company size. Our results have practical implications for top management and also HR and R&D managers, enabling them to better select and steer employees in innovation management. Researchers will be able to build on our results because we offer a comprehensive understanding of the informal role profiles of innovation managers based on informal role theories.     

Do flexible work schedules reduce turnover in U.S. federal agencies?

Agency theory suggests that when agencies adopt flexible work schedules, employees will be more likely to remain with the organization, because these programs demonstrate that the organization cares about their well-being in that flexible work schedules give them more flexibility regarding when, where, and how they perform their work. To test this proposition, cross-sectional panel data at the agency level were obtained from two federal government sources: Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and FedScope. Furthermore, transfers and quits were the two forms of turnover examined. After lagging the independent variables behind turnover over several years so as to provide a robust test of causality, the results show only limited support for agency theory. Specifically, teleworking was found to lower quits. However, teleworking was not found to reduce transfers or turnover, in general. Furthermore, alternative work schedules were not found to have an impact on quits, transfers, or turnover generally.     

Social Monitoring and Reporting: A Success Story in Applied Research on Social Indicators and Quality of Life

From its beginnings research on social indicators was not primarily considered as pure, but rather applied research in terms of the regular monitoring of and reporting on quality of life. Thus, the successes—but eventually also failures—of social indicators research may first of all be visible in its most important field of application. Social monitoring and reporting activities, which can be traced back to the early 1970s provide quantitative information and empirically based analytical knowledge on well-being and progress in a single society or groups of societies to be used for different purposes, including policy making. Providing an overview over the variety of social monitoring and reporting projects emerging from social indicators research is supposed to be important with a view to form a more solid fundament for present and future discourses and initiatives in the field of measuring and monitoring well-being and progress. The article looks back to this field of applied social indicators research and—with a focus on Europe—identifies patterns and recent trends in this sort of activities. By looking forward, it finally discusses selected issues that are considered to be crucial for further improvements in this field.     

Making Professional Decisions in Research: Measurement and Key Predictors

The professional decision-making in research (PDR) measure was administered to 400 National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded and industry-funded investigators, along with measures of cynicism, moral disengagement, compliance disengagement, impulsivity, work stressors, knowledge of responsible conduct of research (RCR), and socially desirable response tendencies. Negative associations were found for the PDR and measures of cynicism, moral disengagement, and compliance disengagement, while positive associations were found for the PDR and RCR knowledge and positive urgency, an impulsivity subscale. PDR scores were not related to socially desirable responding, or to measures of work stressors and the remaining impulsivity subscales. In a multivariate logistic regression analysis, lower moral disengagement scores, higher RCR knowledge, and identifying the United States as one’s nation of origin emerged as key predictors of stronger performance on the PDR. The implications of these findings for understanding the measurement of decision-making in research and future directions for research and RCR education are discussed.     

Digital Finance and FinTech: current research and future research directions

Since decades, the financial industry has experienced a continuous evolution in service delivery due to digitalization. This evolution is characterized by expanded connectivity and enhanced speed of information processing both at the customer interface and in back-office processes. Recently, there has been a shift in the focus of digitalization from improving the delivery of traditional tasks to introducing fundamentally new business opportunities and models for financial service companies. Digital Finance encompasses a magnitude of new financial products, financial businesses, finance-related software, and novel forms of customer communication and interaction—delivered by FinTech companies and innovative financial service providers. Against this backdrop, the research on finance and information systems has started to analyze these changes and the impact of digital progress on the financial sector. Therefore, this article reviews the current state of research in Digital Finance that deals with these novel and innovative business functions. Moreover, it gives an outlook on potential future research directions. As a conceptual basis for reviewing this field, the Digital Finance Cube, which embraces three key dimensions of Digital Finance and FinTech, i.e., the respective business functions, the technologies and technological concepts applied as well as the institutions concerned, is introduced. This conceptualization supports researchers and practitioners when orientating in the field of Digital Finance, allows for the arrangement of academic research relatively to each other, and enables for the revelation of the gaps in research.     

An Examination of the Communication Styles Associated with Psychopathy and Their Influence on Observer Impressions

Psychopathic individuals are characterized as “intra-species predators”—callous, impulsive, aggressive, and proficient at interpersonal manipulation. For example, despite their high risk for re-offending, psychopathic offenders often receive early release on parole. While reputed to be social chameleons, research suggests that even naive observers can accurately infer high levels of psychopathic traits in others with very brief exposures to behavior, but accuracy degrades with extended observation. We utilized a lens model approach to examine the communication styles (emotional facial expressions, body language, and verbal content) of offenders varying in levels of psychopathic traits using “thin slice” video clips of psychological assessment interviews and to reveal which cues observers use to inform their evaluations of psychopathy. Psychopathic traits were associated with more (a) Duchenne smiles, (b) negative (angry) emotional language, and (c) hand gestures (illustrators). Further, psychopathy was associated with a marked behavioral incongruence; when individuals scoring high in psychopathic traits engaged in Duchenne smiles they were also more likely to use angry language. Naïve observers relied on each of these valid behavioral signals to quickly and accurately detect psychopathic traits. These findings provide insight into psychopathic communication styles, opportunities for improving the detection of psychopathic personality traits, and may provide an avenue for understanding successful psychopathic manipulation.