Endangering one’s health to improve performance?

Background: Companies are increasingly applying both goal- and performance-oriented leadership practices. For employees, such indirect control practices make higher self-regulatory demands: They become responsible for their work outcomes and have to bear the consequences of failure just like the self-employed. The current study focuses on the concept of “self-endangering work behaviors” as representing a possible negative effect of indirect control and a possible mediator between work demands and negative outcomes. Method: An online survey was conducted with 607 employees, who reported to work in an indirect control setting. It assessed extension of working hours, intensification of working hours, sickness presenteeism, and faking as possible self-endangering work behaviors together with exhaustion as a subjective well-being measure. The lavaan package was used to test the mediation hypothesis with a structural equation model. Results: Results supported the assumption that self-endangering work behaviors might partly explain the association between work demands and exhaustion. A mediation effect was found for extension of working hours, intensification of working hours, and for faking. However, sickness presenteeism delivered no statistically significant mediation effect in the association between work demands and exhaustion. Discussion: As a mechanism for coping with high work demands, the new concept of self-endangering work behaviors offers one possible explanation for the negative association between high work demands and both subjective well-being and health. The concept needs to be addressed in occupational health prevention initiatives. Such interventions should balance the negative and positive effects of indirect control and take self-endangering work behavior into account.     

Open Access and Promotion and Tenure Evaluation Plans at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire

Department and program evaluation plans at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire were examined to see if these documents provide evidence that could be used to justify supporting the publication of peer-reviewed open access articles toward tenure and promotion. In an earlier study, the authors reveal that faculty members at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire are more unaware of open access publishing than their counterparts at larger universities. These findings dovetail with other studies that show that faculty members are reluctant to publish in open access journals because of concerns about the quality of those journals. The existing body of scholarship suggests that tenure-line faculty fear publishing in open access journals because it could adversely impact their chances of promotion and tenure. The authors of this current study sought to determine if department and program evaluation plans could influence negative perceptions faculty have of open access journals. The implications of this study for librarians, scholarly communication professionals, tenure-line faculty, departments, and programs are addressed.     

STRUCTURE,ENVIRONMENT, AND ORGANIZATIONAL GOVERNANCE IN MANUFACTURING*

The paper compares theories of organizational governance that explain delegation in decision making in terms of administrative rationality on the parts of top corporate officials with theories that emphasize lower-level actors mobilizing resources to gain control over organizational outcomes. These two alternative theories are developed and extended to apply to the relationship between manufacturing plants and parent companies. A general model is introduced to compare these theories which includes characteristics of parent companies and site environments, site resources, and delegation. The model is then tested on a sample of manufacturing plants.     

Institutionalized norms of conducting research and social realities: A research synthesis of empirical works from 1983 to 2002

Based on a systematic review of the last 20 years of empirical research grounded in institutional theory, we identify some of the main norms of conducting research in this literature. The level of institutions, the formal/informal institutional pillars and the direction of effects are the foundation of these norms addressed by researchers in the last two decades. This review indicates that empirical research is well behind changes in social realities. This may be related to both the institutionalization process that takes place in any academic research and to the suggested difficulty that scholars find in moving away from widely accepted research models and practices, given the context within which they evolve. It is also concluded that local/national regulative institutions are giving up their position to more global normative and cognitive organizational field institutions. As the business environment become more global, giving more importance to transnational and informal institutions will be more crucial in institutional analysis of organizations.     

The dynamics of specific and diffuse support for the U.S. Supreme Court: A panel study

Prior inconsistencies in studies regarding specific and diffuse support for the U.S. Supreme Court have largely resulted from confusing two related yet distinct concepts: the level of diffuse support at a given moment, and change in the level of diffuse support over time. The results of a panel study show that specific support is related to both concepts but in different ways. Overall approval of the Supreme Court positively influences the level of diffuse support at a given moment. However, an individual's reaction to a particular Court decision is mediated by pre-existing ideological tension between the individual and the Court, and can cause a sudden change in that individual's diffuse support level. Post-stimulus diffuse support regeneration within an individual is related to support for democratic norms, awareness of the Court, and satisfaction with other governmental institutions.     

Risk Perception and the Value of Safety

This paper examines the relationship between perceived risk and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for increased safety from technological hazards in both conceptual and empirical terms. A conceptual model is developed in which a given household's WTP for risk reductions is a function of traditional socioeconomic variables (i.e., income and base level of risk) and perceived characteristics of the hazards (i.e., dread, knowledge, and exposure). Data to estimate the model are obtained through a combined contingent valuation and risk perception survey that considers 10 technological hazards, five of which are well-defined (e.g., death rates are known and the risks are relatively common) and five are less well-defined. Econometric results, using TOBIT estimation procedures, support the importance of both types of variables in explaining WTP across all 10 hazards. When the risks are split into two groups, the results show that WTP for well-defined hazards is most influenced by perceived personal exposure, while WTP for less well-defined risks is most influenced by levels of dread and severity.     

The Impact of Law Reform on the Processing of Sexual Assault Cases*

Cet article présente les résultats d'une étude qui avait pour but de mesurer les repercussions de la loi C-127 sur la manière de procéder de l'appareil policier et judiciaire de Winnipeg dans les cas de violence sexuelle. La nouvelle loi ayant comme objectif de corriger certaines failles dans la procédure juridictionnelle, les auteurs ont opté pour l'analyse de régression logistique afin d'examiner les conséquences de plusieurs variables indépendantes sur le nombre des inculpations et des condamnations, et ce avant et après l'adoption de la loi. Cette méthode nous a permis de déterminer si la réforme de la loi sur le viol a conduit à des changements dans la manière dont ces variables indépendantes influent sur les inculpations et condamnations. La recherche tend à démontrer que la réforme n'a eu qu'un effet modéré sur l'examen des cas de violence sexuelle. This paper presents the results of an evaluation of the impact of Bill C-127 on the processing of sexual assault cases through the criminal justice system in Winnipeg. Because the law was intended to change the way in which sexual assault cases were treated by the courts, the authors employed logistic regression to examine the impact of several independent variables on charges and convictions before and after the new legislation. Logistic regression made it possible to determine whether the rape reform legislation led to changes in the way these independent variables affect charge and conviction. The research suggests the legislative reform has had only a modest impact on the treatment of sexual assault cases.     

Measuring gay and lesbian group affect

There is a large literature in psychology on how affect toward social groups affects person perception. This literature is applicable to political science, where increasingly, political candidates from non-traditional groups-women, African Americans and gays and lesbians- are running for public office and entering the political arena. In this paper we explore the components of group affect as it relates to these evaluations. Specifically, we examine gay and lesbian candidates, since they are increasingly visible in politics, and Americans typically have strong affect toward and strong stereotypes about gays and lesbians. Using factor analysis in LISREL, we estimate a confirmatory factor analysis to better understand homosexual affect. The results illustrate that it is necessary to consider gay and lesbian affect as a three-factor latent model to reduce measurement error. Hence, this work should guide future research dealing with gay and lesbian political candidates and candidates belonging to other non-traditional groups.