Mistaken Perceptions: Cases and Consequences

Mezias and Starbuck (2003) review previous work and report striking new evidence indicating that managers can be quite mistaken in their perceptions regarding some matters, even matters quite close to their jobs. This is reminiscent of much evidence on politicians and ordinary citizens that generally show a weak grip on basic facts. In assessing how much difference this weakness makes, it is useful to distinguish among four perspectives on managers as: (i) informants for academic research; (ii) performers of their normal work; (iii) problem-solvers in novel situations; (iv) strategic thinkers. Mezias and Starbuck's results suggest a negative assessment on (i) and (iii), but are less clearly relevant on (ii); some open questions regarding (iv) are put forward.     

Urbanization in Thailand, 1947–1967

Utilizing both census and population register data for the period 1947–1967, this analysis assesses changing levels and rates of urbanization in Thailand, compares regional variations in urbanization patterns, and relates such differences to selected indicators of economic and demographic development. Although the overall level of urbanization remains low, the rate of urbanization is high and the increase in the number of moderate sized urban places significant. Greater Bangkok, accounting for over half of Thailand’s urban population and almost two–thirds of all urban growth, has increased its primacy in Thailand’s urban structure. But urban development has also begun to permeate all regions of the country and to be an important factor in the complex process of national social and economic development.     

The Effect of Nonviolent Action on Social Attitudes*

Nonviolent action will produce attitude change to the exlent that it satisfies either or both of two prerequisites. It must either interfere with the functions served by the attitudes or it must produce some inconsistency between the attitudes and other orientations of the persons affected by the action. The three major functions served by attitudes are object orientation, ego-support, and ego-defense. For many social attitudes the ego-support provided by attitudes which help define a person's relation to a reference group is especially powerful, Functions may be blocked by a particular set of conditions, which may have little in common with one another. Inconsistencies may occur among different attitudes or among the components of a single attitude. One class of inconsistencies that is of particular importance occurs when people are persuaded or mildly pressured into action contrary to their attitudes. Each of the sources of attitude change pressure carries its own requirements for producing change and its own mechanisms for protecting attitudes against change pressures. Nonviolent action does not necessarily meet these requirements or overcome the defenses. However, with knowledge of the functional bases and conceptual contexts of the attitudes being challenged it may be possible to utilize the resources present in nonviolent action to increase the likelihood of a desirable impact.     

The hazards of nuclear power generation—The case for survival

A plan is presented to replace all nuclear electricity-generating plants by the induction heating of lignite and sub-bituminous coal in situ. The hazards of nuclear power are intolerable and these hazards are intensified in areas of seismic activity, drainage areas containing a number of reactors, and reactors draining onto a densely-populated coast. The technique of induction heating is scientifically sound, and requires only the development of full-scale process technology from state-of-the-art science. This process is low in cost, produces large quantities of natural gas and coal tar as additional products, and causes little or no human hazard, air, water, or radiation pollution or environmental damage. Known coal resources are adequate for a century or more.     

Measuring Attitudes About Intimate Partner Violence Against Women: The ATT-IPV Scale

In lower-income settings, women more often than men justify intimate partner violence (IPV). Yet, the role of measurement invariance across gender is unstudied. We developed the ATT-IPV scale to measure attitudes about physical violence against wives in 1,055 married men and women ages 18–50 in My Hao district, Vietnam. Across 10 items about transgressions of the wife, women more often than men agreed that a man had good reason to hit his wife (3 % to 92 %; 0 % to 67 %). In random split-half samples, one-factor exploratory factor analysis (EFA) (N ₁ = 527) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (N ₂ = 528) models for nine items with sufficient variability had significant loadings (0.575–0.883; 0.502–0.897) and good fit (RMSEA = 0.068, 0.048; CFI = 0.951, 0.978, TLI = 0.935, 0.970). Three items had significant uniform differential item functioning (DIF) by gender, and adjustment for DIF revealed that measurement noninvariance was partially masking men’s lower propensity than women to justify IPV. A CFA model for the six items without DIF had excellent fit (RMSEA = 0.019, CFI = 0.994, TLI = 0.991) and an attitudinal gender gap similar to the DIF-adjusted nine-item model, suggesting that the six-item scale reliably measures attitudes about IPV across gender. Researchers should validate the scale in urban Vietnam and elsewhere and decompose DIF-adjusted gender attitudinal gaps.