Toward an Ethical Model of Effective Crisis Communication

The goal of this study was to develop and demonstrate a new ethical model for crisis communication. This article examined the crisis communication practices as well as literature and found essential elements—what, how, and when—for ethical and effective crisis communication. Based on these three variables, a new three‐part model, the TTR Test, was proposed, utilizing three principles: Transparency (what), Two‐way symmetrical communication (how), and Right time (when). To investigate how the test can be applied to the real world, this article examined BP's crisis communication during the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.     

The structural context of family welfare in the regions of Italy

A factor analysis of household-level attributes of welfare reveals three dimensions across the 20 regions of Italy: affluence, nuclear family oriented style of life, and basic consumption. Because the data on which these empirical patterns is based is normatively oriented, these dimensions conform to the definition of social indicators. The three dimensions of regional social structure that resulted from a separate factor analysis of variables selected from the point of view of structural theory were not so interpreted. These three structural dimensions — industrial-urban differentiation, agrarian rigidity, and central government subsidies — predict affluence, family oriented style of life and basic consumption respectively. This unexpectedly symmetrical result can be interpreted in causal or definitional terms.     

Aging behind bars:health care for older female inmates

As the numbers of women in prison have increased, so have the number of older women behind bars. These older women present unique problems for institutions trying to meet their health care needs. We report findings from our national pilot study of federal and state prisons for women. Prisons report basic services for physical and mental health care, and most report having hospice services. However, those that house larger percentages or that expect to house larger percentages of older prisoners do not significantly differ in their approaches to assessing and providing health care from their counterparts. By failing to anticipate the increase in older women, prisons may be failing to provide for many of the health needs of this vulnerable population.     

A meta-analytic examination of the effects of the agentic and affiliative aspects of extraversion on leadership outcomes

Building on previous research that has shown that extraversion is the strongest Big Five personality predictor of effective leadership, the present study employed meta-analytic procedures to examine the independent effects of the two main aspects of extraversion—agency and affiliation—on leadership outcomes (transformational leadership and leadership effectiveness). Results showed that it is specifically the agentic aspect of extraversion that has a positive impact on leadership, whereas the affiliative aspect is unrelated to transformational leadership and negatively related to leadership effectiveness. Additionally, we demonstrate that assessing extraversion in terms of these two aspects leads to substantial improvements in predictive validity relative to broad measures of extraversion. Limitations associated with common method bias and modest effect sizes notwithstanding, our findings inform theory on specifically why it is that extraverts are perceived as better leaders than introverts. We also discuss practical implications for how to select and develop leaders in organisational settings and outline the types of organisations in which agency measures are likely to be most useful for selection purposes.     

Egg and seed removal at urban and suburban forest edges

Predation rates of natural and artificial bird nests in rural landscapes have been the subject of numerous studies, often in the context of proximity to edge. Similar studies in urban and suburban landscapes are lacking. We carried out a study of egg and seed removal at forest reserve edges in three urban and two suburban forests in and near New York City in 1994-1995. Few significant edge effects were found, but this may have been because of the extraordinarily high rates of egg and seed removal. Daily removal rates were higher in suburban sites (eggs, 86%; seeds, 95%) than in urban sites (eggs, 64%; seeds, 88%). Exposed seeds and eggs suffered higher rates of removal than seeds and eggs covered by leaf litter. Despite statistically significant differences among treatments, all of these rates would be prohibitively high if experienced by ground-nesting birds or large-seeded trees (if removal was associated with predation). A survey of the literature suggests that egg predation rates are prohibitively high in cities and peak in suburban sites (at least in this study), then drop rapidly in ex-urban and rural sites, perhaps because of a similar pattern in the abundance of corvid bird predators. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.