A longitudinal study of domestic water conservation behavior

A 1988 study of a school-linked sample in a metropolitan and a regional urban area established baseline data for knowledge, attitudes, intentions, and behavior with regard to water management and conservation (Murphy, Watson, & Moore, 1991). This paper reports on a 1991 follow-up, utilising both longitudinal and cross-sectional samples of students, teachers and parents, which aimed at identifying changes within the community since the initial study. In addition, the study sought to identify factors influential in change and the extent to which the pattern of relationships between knowledge, attitudes, intentions and behaviors had remained stable over time. The results indicated that there was a move towards greater conservation as measured by the variables studied over the three year period, that media interventions and water costs were perceived as influential in this change, and that reported conserving behavior continued to be better predicted by stated intentions than by knowledge. Little difference in the pattern of intervariable relationships was observed across the time span studied.     

Coordination in Games with Strategic Complementarities: An Experiment on Fixed vs. Random Matching

In this article, we study behavior in a series of two‐player supply chain game experiments. Each player simultaneously chooses a capacity before demand is realized, and sales are given by the minimum of realized demand and chosen capacities. We focus on the differences in behavior under fixed pairs and random rematching. Intuition suggests that long‐run relations should lead to more profitable outcomes. However, our results go against this intuition. While subjects' capacity choices are better aligned (i.e., closer together) under fixed pairs, average profits are more variable. Moreover, learning is slower under fixed pairs—so much so that over the last five periods, average profits are actually higher under random rematching. The underlying cause for this finding appears to be a “first‐impressions” bias, present only under fixed matching, in which the greater the misalignment in initial choices, the lower are average profits.     

Parent-adolescent concordance on perceived need for mental health services and its impact on service use

Mental health service underutilization among African American adolescents is well documented, yet not fully understood. Discordance between adolescents and their parents on perceived need for seeing a counselor for an emotional need or psychiatrist for psychiatric or medical services may help explain low service use among this population. This exploratory, prospective study examined the relationship between parent-adolescent concordance on perceived need for emotional counseling or psychiatric services and mental health service use. The relationships between gender and perceived service need and concordance and adolescent severity of depressive symptoms were also explored. Parent-adolescent dyads (n = 108) receiving community-based adolescent outpatient mental health services responded to interview questions concerning their perception of whether an emotional counselor and a psychiatrist were needed in the past six months. Findings revealed low parent-adolescent concordance on perceived need for an emotional counselor and a psychiatrist. A greater proportion of adolescents reported a need than parents. There was no association between gender and perceived need for an emotional counselor and a psychiatrist. Lower rates of parent-adolescent concordance were found among youth reporting elevated depressive symptoms compared to youth reporting normal range symptoms. Concordant dyads kept a higher number of appointments than discordant dyads. Implications for clinical social work practice and future research are discussed.     

Friendship and Gender Differences in Task and Social Interpretations of Peer Collaborative Problem Solving

Investigations of peer collaboration often vary task or social aspects of collaborative contexts and assume that these aspects of the context are experienced similarly by individuals. The present study examined how social aspects (group friendship and gender) of a peer collaborative context related to differences in adolescents' interpretations of task and social problems that occurred while collaborating with peers in a naturalistic classroom setting. Eighth-grade adolescents ( N = 82, 44 females) worked with peers on a six-week Spanish project at school. Adolescents chose to work primarily with same-gender peers and friends. Task and social interpretations of problems were assessed twice. The salience of task problems decreased over time; social problems became somewhat more salient. Social problems were less salient to females than to males. Greater group friendship was associated with the lesser salience of task problems early in the project. The salience of social problems, gender, and friendship were important for understanding performance on the project. The value of considering the context of peer collaborative problem solving from individuals' perspectives is discussed.     

Public relations practice in Japan: an exploratory study

Ninety-four (62%) survey responses in the Japanese language from 151 corporate public relations professionals in Japan were analyzed to investigate how Japanese management styles have changed since the recent economic recession, and how present management styles have impacted public relations practice in Japan. Findings suggest today’s Japanese management styles are not a static system unaffected by the economic pressures, and that current public relations practices in Japan align more closely with mixed models of public relations practiced in Western societies.     

Conceptualizing reflection in experience-based workplace learning

This paper seeks to understand key dimensions of reflection in experience-based workplace learning for research being collaboratively undertaken by scholars in Dutch and US research institutions. We systematically explore and compare Tara Fenwick’s analysis of five perspectives on cognition to distinguish among constructivist, psychoanalytic, situative, critical-cultural, and enactivist perspectives on reflection. Our aim is to examine how to conceptualize reflection so that one or more perspectives can complement our understanding of learning through experience at work. We position reflection not only from a practical but also from a theoretical perspective that moves beyond the individual focus of the constructivist perspective. Fenwick’s five perspectives are described in terms of whether and how reflection is utilized, key activities in the process of reflection, relative focus on the individual and/or the context, triggers for reflection, role of power and positionality, role of emotions, and reflection outcomes. We conclude that adding other lenses to the dominant constructivist perspective helps expand our understanding of reflection as well as identify and attend to other tools, people, and factors in the work situation that influence reflection processes and learning outcomes. The paper closes with a discussion of promising new approaches that have emerged since Fenwick’s analysis.     

The Alliance Experience Transfer Effect: The Case of Industry Convergence in the Telecommunications Equipment Industry

A central premise of the industry change literature is that firms change their strategic actions when an industry changes. Industry convergence (IC), the blending of boundaries between industries creating competition among firms that previously did not compete, is increasingly impacting many industries and is a salient case of industry change. Acquisitions are an important action shaping the course of IC because they trigger imitation and bandwagon effects further accelerating IC. This paper focuses on why and when learning from alliances reduces uncertainty resulting in acquisitions during IC: an ‘alliance experience transfer effect’. We demonstrate the utility of this mechanism for the substitution‐based form of IC that occurred between the telecommunications equipment and computer networking industries. Our key insight is that when the extent of IC is low there are significant transfer effects but, as the extent of IC increases, firms have access to an expanding volume and diversity of information sources that reduce uncertainty, thus weakening the transfer effect mechanism. We contribute to the alliance–acquisition relationship and learning literatures by demonstrating that the alliance experience transfer effect mechanism explains changes in firm strategic action (alliancing and acquiring) as the extent of IC changes. We also introduce a semi‐convergence perspective by directly measuring the extent of IC.     

Can a team have too much cohesion? The dark side to network density

The goal of most work teams is high performance. Prior studies suggest that performance within work groups is influenced by that group’s social network topology. Research has generally revealed to date that group cohesion (i.e., network density) is positively related to team performance under certain conditions. However, more recent research has indicated that this is not the full story. Recent research suggests that an inverse curvilinear relationship exists between social network measures (of which group cohesion is one) and team performance. In response to the need for understanding this relationship more fully, and leveraging the promising new insights that can be garnered with the use of social network analysis (SNA), this study employs SNA as a tool to explore the structural cohesiveness of teams of travel agents. This research extends our understanding of the relationship between intragroup social network relations and team performance by confirming an inverse curvilinear relationship exists between group cohesion and team performance. This paper leverages email communication to determine the social networks of each team, and then examines such in light of team performance. In total, an analysis of more than 7 million emails was undertaken. This study was conducted with work teams within a service organization. Each team in the study carries out the same tasks, i.e., identical task contingency, yet represents a distinct unit of analysis. The study confirms that social network topology is a valuable predictor of team performance and confirms that, like so many other social network measures, group cohesion and team performance share an inverse ‘U’ shaped relationship, not strictly a positive one as previously posited.     

Bottleneck identification and ranking model for mine operations

Abstract

Mining has a long history of production and operations management. Considering the increasing complexity of reserves, declining metal grades, and worldwide price volatilities, mines have to operate more efficiently than ever. In recent years, companies have been adopting innovative solutions and technologies to reduce costs and remain competitive in the global market. Specifically, management of bottlenecks has been in the focus of the manufacturing industry for decades now. The mining industry has made significant advancements in process improvement tools using equipment, human, and asset tracking capabilities. However, to date, there is no holistic approach or system to identify and manage the bottleneck in the entire value chain of mining. This research proposes a new method to identify and rank the bottlenecks in a mine value chain. The method is applied in a coal mine and the results are presented in the case study.     

The Social Context of Perceived Drought Vulnerability1

Abstract This paper examines perceptions of drought vulnerability among residents of the southern San Joaquin Valley portion of Kern County, California. The area is unique in the western United States because of its complex water delivery infrastructure and its intensive level of agricultural production supported by agricultural labor. The area is interesting to rural sociologists because it was part of Goldschmidt's research on the social implications of agribusiness. We argue that the relationship between resource production and social stratification suggested by Goldschmidt's research presents some important implications for understanding perceptions of resource scarcity in the present day. We explore perceptions of drought vulnerability by several dimensions of stratification—primary occupation, location of residence, length of residence, household income, and racial/ethnic background. While our findings illustrate that agricultural owners/operators perceive the greatest levels of concern about severe drought, the unique character of agricultural production in the area is related to perceptions of vulnerability among broader segments of the local population. The findings suggest that dependence upon existing water utilization patterns may present substantial obstacles to effective drought policy and planning.