Communicating new product development openness – The impact on consumer perceptions and intentions

This article explores how firms can foster positive consumer inferences by communicating their new product development (NPD) openness. In particular, it analyzes inferences about a firm’s customer orientation, ability to develop high-quality products and innovativeness. Previous research has focused on examining inferences derived from cues about consumer contributions to the external design of products. This article extends current knowledge (i) by analyzing inferential processes when customer participation goes beyond external product design and affects functionality and (ii) by considering other forms of openness, namely expert contributions to NPD. The results of two experiments show that, in general, customer participation in NPD effectively triggers customer orientation inferences, while expert participation leads to inferences about a firm’s ability to develop high-quality products only in specific settings. Finally, counter to previous research, communicating external participation does not seem to be an effective cue to infer innovativeness for functional product contributions.     

Nano Risk Analysis: Advancing the Science for Nanomaterials Risk Management

Scientists, activists, industry, and governments have raised concerns about health and environmental risks of nanoscale materials. The Society for Risk Analysis convened experts in September 2008 in Washington, DC to deliberate on issues relating to the unique attributes of nanoscale materials that raise novel concerns about health risks. This article reports on the overall themes and findings of the workshop, uncovering the underlying issues for each of these topics that become recurring themes. The attributes of nanoscale particles and other nanomaterials that present novel issues for risk analysis are evaluated in a risk analysis framework, identifying challenges and opportunities for risk analysts and others seeking to assess and manage the risks from emerging nanoscale materials and nanotechnologies. Workshop deliberations and recommendations for advancing the risk analysis and management of nanotechnologies are presented.     

Expert Edge

No abstract available for this article.     

The 'heuristics and biases' bias in expert elicitation

Summary.  In the early 1970s Tversky and Kahneman published a series of papers on 'heuristics and biases' describing human inadequacies in assessing probabilities, culminating in a highly popular article in Science . This seminal research has been heavily cited in many fields, including statistics, as the definitive research on probability assessment. Curiously, although this work was debated at the time and more recent work has largely refuted many of the claims, this apparent heuristics and biases bias in elicitation research has gone unremarked. Over a decade of research into the frequency effect, the importance of framing, and cognitive models more generally, has been almost completely ignored by the statistical literature on expert elicitation. To remedy this situation, this review offers a guide to the psychological research on assessing probabilities, both old and new, and gives concrete guidelines for eliciting expert knowledge.     

Ordering the urban body: professional planning in early twentieth-century Britain

The early twentieth century has been regarded as a crucial period in the development of planning in Britain during which the key elements of the modern profession were put in place. At the time, planners represented their practice as a progressive answer to the environmental legacies of the Victorian era, capable of contributing decisively to the social and political reform of British society. Existing histories dealing with the subject uniformly locate planning within a historical trajectory that emphasizes its links with philanthropic experiment, reformism and the growth of the welfare state. This article scrutinizes such key propositions in order to show some of the ways that planning can be located within an alternative historical trajectory in which questions of orderliness, expert knowledge and government emerge to take priority. It examines the presence of rivalry among early professionals, the methodological commitment to civic surveying and the way planners sought to make use of the interconnections between space and social life to wield power over the environment and the private lives of urban dwellers.     

Three Poems

Within Southern Appalachia there are distinct, historic patterns of exploitation. These patterns have helped to give shape to certain cultural tendencies that are strikingly similar to the clinical manifestations of groups who have experienced traumatic stress. Once normative adaptations to the well documented crises that come with unemployment, over the generations they became ingrained in the culture. The resulting cultural traits-an enduring sense of resignation, deep depression, and disrupted relationships represent the presence of a culturally transmitted traumatic stress syndrome that is induced by exploitation.     

司法鉴定法律援助制度的模式选择及建构

全国人大《关于司法鉴定管理问题的决定》的实施使我国司法鉴定体制发生了重大变革，集中体现在司法鉴定机构的市场化运行机制的确立，赢利性成为其最大的特点。然而无序的司法鉴定收费对弱势群体的证据采集形成障碍，急需建立司法鉴定法律援助制度以适应体制改革的需要。我国司法鉴定法律援助制度的模式选择应为界于国家福利型和社会主导型的一种中间类型，并立法对受援对象、条件及法律援助主体做出明确规定。     

试论新世纪学报编辑的素质要求

面对新世纪知识经济时代的挑战,对高校学报编辑的素质提出了新的要求。既要编辑成为精通业务,能运用现代化设备加工编辑学报的行家,又要成为能处理好公共关系的社会活动家。     

企业技术支持能力(TSC)模型研究

本文通过一年多来对百余家企业的调查,在理论分析与实践相结合的基础上,提出了测量企业技术支持能力（TSC）的一般模型,并通过对模型指标体系的建立给出了计算企业技术支持能力（TSC）的一般方法。