Can a leader be seen as too ethical? The curvilinear effects of ethical leadership

Ethical leadership predicts important organizational outcomes such as decreased deviant and increased organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). We argued that due to the distinct nature of these two types of employee behaviors, ethical leadership decreases deviance in a linear manner (i.e., more ethical leadership leading to less deviance), but we expected ethical leadership to reveal a curvilinear relationship with respect to OCB. Specifically, we expected that, at lower levels, ethical leadership promotes OCB. However, at high levels, ethical leadership should lead to a decrease in these behaviors. We also examined a mechanism that explains this curvilinear pattern, that is, followers' perceptions of moral reproach. Our predictions were supported in three organizational field studies and an experiment. These findings offer a better understanding of the processes that underlie the workings of ethical leadership. They also imply a dilemma for organizations in which they face the choice between limiting deviant employee behavior and promoting OCB.     

ROBUST METHODS APPLIED TO ENERGY-CONSUMPTION DATA

In many instances a model is based on nonexperimental data and is used for prediction. In this situation, using both the least-squares and the robust methods simultaneously can result in models with improved predictive performance.     

Lower bone mineral density in older female endurance skiers – a cross-sectional,observational study

Background

Physical activity (PA) is generally beneficial for bone health, but the effect of high levels of PA over many years, in older women, is unknown.

Methods

T-score from Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), and self-reported baseline characteristics were recorded for 24 female, cross-country-skiing-competitors, aged 68–76?years, from the Birkebeiner Ageing Study. Data from 647 women in the same age range from the Tromso-6 population study, with recorded DXA findings, were used for comparison.

Results

The athletes reported a median(range) of 9(1–34) participations in the 54?km, yearly ski-race, indicating long-term PA. They also reported more moderate and high levels of PA than women in the general population (52% vs. 12 and 30% vs. 0%, respectively). The athletes had lower body mass index (BMI) than the controls (mean BMI 21.7 vs 26.9?kg/m², p?<?0.001). As many as 22/24(92%) of the athletes and 477/647(74%) of the controls had a low bone mineral density (BMD) (T-score?<???1), p 0.048, Pearson chi square test. Odds ratio (OR) of low BMD was 3.9 in athletes vs. controls (p 0.048, logistic regression), but adjusting for BMI largely diminished the effect estimate, which was no longer statistically significant (aOR 1.81, p 0.432). The proportion of self-reported fractures was the same in the two groups.

Conclusions

This pilot study suggests that long-term, high levels of PA are associated with low bone mineral density in older women, and the finding might be due to differences in BMI. Despite the lower bone mineral density the athletes did not report more fractures.

     

On structure,family and parameter estimation of hierarchical Archimedean copulas

Research on structure determination and parameter estimation of hierarchical Archimedean copulas (HACs) has so far mostly focused on the case in which all appearing Archimedean copulas belong to the same Archimedean family. The present work addresses this issue and proposes a new approach for estimating HACs that involve different Archimedean families. It is based on employing goodness-of-fit test statistics directly into HAC estimation. The approach is summarized in a simple algorithm, its theoretical justification is given and its applicability is illustrated by several experiments, which include estimation of HACs involving up to five different Archimedean families.     

When do severe sanctions enhance compliance? The role of procedural fairness

Building on theoretical notions that severe sanctions (more than mild ones) can communicate that sanctioned behavior is morally unacceptable, we argued that particularly authorities who enact the sanction procedures in a fair manner stimulate compliance with their decisions. This is because such authorities should be considered legitimate to communicate what is morally acceptable and unacceptable. This interactive effect of sanction size and procedural fairness on compliance should thus be mediated by moral evaluations of the authority. A field survey and an experiment revealed support for these predictions. These results thus support a non-instrumental perspective on the effectiveness of sanction severity in increasing compliance with authorities.     

Reporting probabilistic expectations with dynamic uncertainty about possible distributions

We study how experimental subjects report subjective probability distributions in the presence of ambiguity characterized by uncertainty over a fixed set of possible probability distributions generating future outcomes. Subjects observe draws from the true but unknown probability distribution generating outcomes at the beginning of each period of the experiment and state at selected periods a) the likelihoods that each probability distribution in the set is the true distribution, and b) the likelihoods of future outcomes. We estimate heterogeneity of rules used to update uncertainty about the true distribution and rules used to report distributions of future outcomes. We find that approximately 65% of subjects report distributions by properly weighing the possible distributions using their expressed uncertainty over them, while 22% of subjects report distributions close to the distribution they perceive as most likely. We find significant heterogeneity in how subjects update their expressed uncertainty. On average, subjects tend to overweigh the importance of their prior uncertainty relative to new information, leading to ambiguity that is substantially more persistent than would be predicted using Bayes’ rule. Counterfactual simulations suggest that this persistence will likely hold in settings not covered by our experiment.     

A self-interest analysis of justice and tax compliance: How distributive justice moderates the effect of outcome favorability

Compliance with tax authorities has been studied mainly in the fields of economics and psychology. The focus has respectively been on self-interest motives and justice concerns in tax compliance. We argue that both concerns are less divergent than is often thought. Specifically, we studied the moderating role of distributive justice on the relationship between outcome favorability and tax compliance in two cross-sectional surveys. It is generally believed that favorable outcomes increase compliance because they decrease what can be gained from non-compliance. The present research addresses the role of distributive justice in this process. Since people believe that distributive fairness guarantees their long-term outcomes, favorable present outcomes now imply favorable future outcomes and unfavorable present outcomes now imply unfavorable future outcomes. Thus, we expected fair outcomes to result in a strong relationship between outcome favorability and compliance. On the basis that unfair outcomes are believed to result from chance, outcome favorability should have a weaker relationship with compliance when outcomes are unfair. Even when controlling for other variables, this prediction was supported by both studies.     

Comment on “ estimating systems of trending variables”: estimating pushing trends and pulling equilibria

This paper is a comment on Soren Johansen's (1994) paper on estimating systems of trending variables. The pedagogical and diagnostic value of using univariate time series methods is emphasized together with the use of small scale experiments that give insight into the sensitivity of unit root test procedures to misspecification of the deterministic components. The test statistics used in the likelihood approach advocated by Johansen are compared with several other test statistics, in particular, those of Box and Tiao (1977) and Stock and Vatson (1988). We also compare the corresponding methods to estimate pulling equilibria. We present the outcomes of two Zlonte Carlo experiments to illustrate some points.     

Determinants of outcome in the pathways through care for children hearing voices

Auditory hallucination, or hearing voices, is generally associated with psychopathology. In psychiatry it is inter-preted as a symptom of an illness, with no connection to the individual's life history. Voice hallucinations in childhood occur in a variety of contexts and have variable long-term outcomes. Little is known about the course of the experience. In this study, 80 children and youngsters hearing voices were interviewed on four occasions over a period of three years about the content of the voices and their overall experience of voices, focusing on the determinants for a promising outcome in the pathways through care. The results indicate that the need for care in the context of the experience of voices is associated not only with high levels of problem behaviour and associated negative symptoms of psychosis, but also, independently, with an appraisal of the voices in terms of anxiety, depression, dissociation and frequency of occurrence. In 60 per cent of the participants the voices disappeared during the three-year research period. The relationship between the disappearance of voices and the course of mental health treatment is, however, ambiguous.     

Continuous-time state-space modelling of the hot hand in basketball

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis - We investigate the hot hand phenomenon using data on 110,513 free throws taken in the National Basketball Association. As free throws occur at unevenly...