Can former Soviet Union top managers of large industries become successful leaders of privatized corporations?

Management training as a facilitative process in organizational change is a complicated undertaking even in the most innovative companies in the West. The Russian context adds problems of cultural and management unfamiliarity with the socio-business and the political environment within which Western management trainers operate. In the early 1990s 180 Russian senior managers from four large state corporations participated in a training-needs analysis, which was to estimate the level of knowledge of how market economy concepts work in the West. They were asked to 1) state their organization's training objectives, 2) indicate their understanding of the process, and 3) indicate the level of their personal ownership in carrying out the training objectives. The results showed that Russian top industrial management had no experience of top decisionmaking processes, and individually they felt disorientated by the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Their historical understanding of their professional roles and distrust of the present changes left them demotivated and without any constructive personal aspirations. By 1998, after a period of focusing solely on financial auditing training, large Russian companies began to be interested in management training and development programmes. These findings have some basic cultural implications for Western trainers working with Russian management.     

“And Now I’m Just Different,but There’s Nothing Actually Wrong With Me”: Asexual Marginalization and Resistance

This article explores the relationship between contemporary asexual lives and compulsory sexuality, or the privileging of sexuality and the marginalizing of nonsexuality. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews, I identify four ways the asexually identified individuals in this study saw themselves as affected by compulsory sexuality: pathologization, isolation, unwanted sex and relationship conflict, and the denial of epistemic authority. I also identify five ways these asexually identified individuals disrupted compulsory sexuality: adopting a language of difference and a capacity to describe asexuality; deemphasizing the importance of sexuality in human life; developing new types of nonsexual relationships; constituting asexuality as a sexual orientation or identity; and engaging in community building and outreach. I argue that some of these practices offer only a limited disruption of compulsory sexuality, but some of these practices pose a radical challenge to sexual norms by calling into question the widespread assumption that sexuality is a necessary part of human flourishing.     

Reclothing the Emperor: The Swimming Pool as a Negotiated Order

This article examines the unspoken rules, routines, and rituals of the swimming pool, using ideas from negotiated order theory, Foucault, Goffman's dramaturgical theory, and symbolic interactionism. It identifies three sets of social norms: respect for personal space, respect for individuals' disciplinary regimes, and the desexualization of encounters. I show how these rules are (normally) followed or (occasionally) breached through various rituals, and examine the consequences for interaction order. The tale of “The Emperor's New Clothes” is used analogously to explain why actors cannot consciously attend to their precarious construction of reality, yet remain poised to defend it.     

Examining the joint impact of relationship norms and service failure severity on consumer responses

ABSTRACT

This study investigates consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral outcomes after service failure encounters with companies with which they have previously established good relationships. It indicates that conformity with or violation of relationship norms guides consumers’ decision making, and that their subsequent attitudinal and behavioral outcomes further depend on the severity of the service failure. Through a 2 (relationship norm types: exchange vs. communal) × 2 (service failure severity: minor vs. major) between-subjects experiment, the study shows that when the prior relationship norms are exchange-based, consumers demonstrate similar attitudes toward the minor and major failures. However, when these relationship norms are communally-based, consumers respond relatively positively in the minor failure situation, but they display more negative attitudes in the major failure situation. This study contributes to public relations literature regarding the role of company-consumer relationships in service failure situations.     

Is Risk Analysis Scientific?

This article discusses to what extent risk analysis is scientific in view of a set of commonly used definitions and criteria. We consider scientific knowledge to be characterized by its subject matter, its success in developing the best available knowledge in its fields of study, and the epistemic norms and values that guide scientific investigations. We proceed to assess the field of risk analysis according to these criteria. For this purpose, we use a model for risk analysis in which science is used as a base for decision making on risks, which covers the five elements evidence, knowledge base, broad risk evaluation, managerial review and judgment, and the decision; and that relates these elements to the domains experts and decisionmakers, and to the domains fact‐based or value‐based. We conclude that risk analysis is a scientific field of study, when understood as consisting primarily of (i) knowledge about risk‐related phenomena, processes, events, etc., and (ii) concepts, theories, frameworks, approaches, principles, methods and models to understand, assess, characterize, communicate, and manage risk, in general and for specific applications (the instrumental part).     

Measuring and explaining tax evasion: Improving self-reports using the crosswise model

Due to its sensitive nature, tax compliance is difficult to study empirically, and valid information on tax evasion is rare. More specifically, when directly asked on surveys, respondents are likely to underreport their evasion behavior. Such invalid responses not only bias prevalence estimates but may also obscure associations with individual predictors. To generate more valid estimates of tax evasion, we used a new method of data collection for sensitive questions, the crosswise model (CM). The CM is conceptually based on the randomized response technique (RRT), but due to its advanced design, it is better suited for large surveys than classical RRTs. In an experimental online survey, we compared the CM (N = 862) to standard direct questioning (DQ; N = 305). First, our results showed that the CM was able to elicit a higher proportion of self-stigmatizing reports of tax evasion by increasing privacy in the data collection process. Second, on average, we found stronger effects of our predictor variables on tax evasion in the CM condition compared with the DQ condition such that an egoistic personality and the opportunity for tax evasion predicted actual tax evasion only in the CM condition.     

Evaluation considerations for community-based gender-informed health interventions

Evaluations of gender-based interventions have been consistently criticized for their lack of methodological rigor. This is largely due to the complex design of many of the interventions, coupled with difficulties in measuring the outcome and impact of these interventions. This article proposes a number of ways to improve these evaluations both at the community and individual level. We recommend use of organizational theory and narrative inquiry methods, such as the appreciative inquiry technique, to examine how communities design gender-based interventions. In addition, we suggest a variety of methods to measure the effects of these interventions on gender norms in the community for example, policy analysis, multilevel modeling, and social conversations. With respect to measuring outcomes at the individual level, we argue for more rigorous evaluation designs in order to improve internal and external validity claims. Additionally, we suggest that evaluations should incorporate different methodologies, for example autobiographical narratives, which allows one to give saliency to the subjective voices of participants. Finally, we emphasize that evaluation designs need to document the long term effects of intervention programs and define the expected outcomes with greater specificity.     

守规与译者的主体性——关于翻译规范的认识

翻译标准历来是译论家们争论不休的问题。一方面,作为一定社会群体成员的译者在翻译过程中,从潜意识里有遵守该群体的由历史、文化、传统、意识形态等因素积淀而成的具有规约性的翻译规范的愿望;另一方面,作为主观价值判断的翻译规范具有流变、历时性的特点,它反过来有助于译者主体性的彰显。文章借用图里（Toury）的规范（norms）理论,从心理角度和翻译规范的主观性两方面探讨译者在翻译过程中的守规以及规范的宽容性与译者主体性的关系。     

试述语文教学中的语言训练

面对语文教学"缓慢差费"这个问题,我们究竟应该怎样上语文课?语文课应回归本位,抓住语言训练这个重点,掌握语言训练规律,进行有效的语言训练,以提升学习者运用语言文字的能力。     

论手术同意书的法律属性

关于“手术同意书”法律性质的不同学说，各有特点利弊。它是手术治疗的前提，其实质是患者自主决定权的法律保障，是医师履行说明义务的证明，并不是医院转移风险或责任的手段，符合一定条件的手术同意书具有一定的法律效力。由此需要对手术同意书的适用规范加以完善。