The Moderating Role of Power Distance on the Reaction of Consumers to the CEO as a Spokesperson During a Product Harm Crisis: Insights From China and South Korea

During a crisis the corporate message is not the only issue facing the company. The role of the spokesperson is an under-researched area which is examined in this paper. In studies conducted in South Korea and China we examine the reaction of consumers to the CEO as a spokesperson during a product harm crisis. We find in both countries that consumer responses to the CEO was contingent on the consumers' level of power distance. When consumers had high levels of power distance they had higher future purchase intentions when compared with consumers who had low levels of power distance when the CEO was the spokesperson during the crisis. In addition, in a study conducted in South Korea we find that higher levels of power distance generate increased levels of brand trust when the CEO is the spokesperson, which in turn increases future purchase intentions. Our studies have important theoretical and managerial implications which are discussed in the paper.     

Socio-economic inequalities in mortality for Asian people: New Zealand Census-Mortality Study, 1996–2004

Journal of Population Research - This study examines the association of socio-economic factors with mortality for the Asian population, and compares with those of the European/Other group....     

Mental Health Trainees’ Explicit and Implicit Attitudes Toward Transracial Adoptive Families Headed by Lesbian,Gay, and Heterosexual Couples

We investigated 109 (79.8% female; 76% White, and 83.5% Heterosexual) mental health trainees’ explicit and implicit attitudes toward heterosexual, lesbian, and gay White couples adopting and raising Black children. To determine explicit attitudes, we used a vignette depicting a Black child ready for adoption and three types of equally qualified White families who were headed by a heterosexual couple, gay couple, or lesbian couple. The trainees were asked to indicate which type of family they preferred to adopt the child. To determine implicit attitudes, we used the computer programed latency-based multifactor implicit association test (IAT) protocol. The IAT data were collected from each participant individually. Explicit data showed that over 80% of the participants indicated no strong preference in terms of which type of family should adopted the child. However, IAT data showed that the trainees implicitly preferred lesbian couples. Overall, the degree of congruence between explicit and implicit was very low. Implications for training were discussed.     

Self-healing umbrella sampling: convergence and efficiency

The Self-Healing Umbrella Sampling (SHUS) algorithm is an adaptive biasing algorithm which has been proposed in Marsili et al. (J Phys Chem B 110(29):14011–14013, 2006) in order to efficiently sample a multimodal probability measure. We show that this method can be seen as a variant of the well-known Wang–Landau algorithm Wang and Landau (Phys Rev E 64:056101, 2001a; Phys Rev Lett 86(10):2050–2053, 2001b). Adapting results on the convergence of the Wang-Landau algorithm obtained in Fort et al. (Math Comput 84(295):2297–2327, 2014a), we prove the convergence of the SHUS algorithm. We also compare the two methods in terms of efficiency. We finally propose a modification of the SHUS algorithm in order to increase its efficiency, and exhibit some similarities of SHUS with the well-tempered metadynamics method Barducci et al. (Phys Rev Lett 100:020,603, 2008).     

Disclosure among victims of elder abuse in healthcare settings: a missing piece in the overall effort toward detection

Elder abuse remains a largely hidden problem in our society and only a small minority of victims are connected to formal support/protective services. Healthcare settings have been identified as a critical milieu to uncover cases of elder abuse; however, under-detection in these settings is a major issue. Victimization disclosure is an important component within the overall detection effort, yet it has received little attention in the elder abuse literature. Drawing on relevant literature from other domains of family/interpersonal violence, this article highlights the disclosure process, as well as disclosure barriers, facilitators, and competencies to consider when working with older adults.     

Differentiating Contemporary Racial Prejudice from Old-Fashioned Racial Prejudice

The present study addresses the distinction between contemporary and old-fashioned prejudice using survey data from a national sample (n = 600) of self-identified whites living in the United States and interviewed by telephone in 2001. First, we examine associations among indicators of contemporary and old-fashioned prejudice. Consistent with the literature, contemporary and old-fashioned prejudice indicators represent two distinct but correlated common factors. Second, we examine whether belief in genetic race differences uniformly predicts both types of prejudice. As might be expected, belief in genetic race differences predicts old-fashioned prejudice but contrary to recent theorizing, it also predicts contemporary prejudice.     

A family of measures to evaluate scale reliability in a longitudinal setting

Summary.  The concept of reliability denotes one of the most important psychometric properties of a measurement scale. Reliability refers to the capacity of the scale to discriminate between subjects in a given population. In classical test theory, it is often estimated by using the intraclass correlation coefficient based on two replicate measurements. However, the modelling framework that is used in this theory is often too narrow when applied in practical situations. Generalizability theory has extended reliability theory to a much broader framework but is confronted with some limitations when applied in a longitudinal setting. We explore how the definition of reliability can be generalized to a setting where subjects are measured repeatedly over time. On the basis of four defining properties for the concept of reliability, we propose a family of reliability measures which circumscribes the area in which reliability measures should be sought. It is shown how different members assess different aspects of the problem and that the reliability of the instrument can depend on the way that it is used. The methodology is motivated by and illustrated on data from a clinical study on schizophrenia. On the basis of this study, we estimate and compare the reliabilities of two different rating scales to evaluate the severity of the disorder.     

Issue and crisis management: Quicksand in the definitional landscape

The broad field of public relations is plagued by difficulties of definition, none more problematic than the definitional challenges facing issue management and crisis management. After considering the need for commonly understood language as a basis for meaningful discourse, the paper identifies the particular reasons for ongoing ambiguity in issue and crisis management and charts some distinct approaches which have developed within each discipline. It then analyzes how these evolutionary changes are creating further difficulties for defining the interplay between the two, and identifies a more integrated process approach focused on characterizing clusters of activities.