The boomerang effect of psychological interventions

Research has found that teaching people about psychological biases can help counteract biased behavior. On the other hand, due to the innate need for preservation of a positive self-image, it is likely that teaching people about biases they hold, may cause a boomerang effect in cases where being associated with a specific bias implies negative social connotations. In the three studies below we examine situations in which psychological bias implies negatively associated behavior, and show that teaching people about bias in those contexts can be counterproductive.     

The Palestinian minority in Israel: when common core curriculum in education meets conflicting national narratives

This paper starts with a brief survey of how the Israeli education system has handled the issue of the existence of an Arab community in Israel’s collective identity, and how this was affected by reforms that were initiated in the education system throughout the years. The second part of the paper examines various possibilities regarding how the inclusion of the Arab collective identity can best be accommodated in the education system and its curricula.     

The longevity gender gap: are telomeres the explanation?

In this Perspective, we focus on the greater longevity of women as compared with men. We propose that, like aging itself, the longevity gender gap is exceedingly complex and argue that it may arise from sex-related hormonal differences and from somatic cell selection that favors cells more resistant to the ravages of time. We discuss the interplay of these factors with telomere biology and oxidative stress and suggest that an explanation for the longevity gender gap may arise from a better understanding of the differences in telomere dynamics between men and women.     

Testing Multiple Forecasters

We consider a cross‐calibration test of predictions by multiple potential experts in a stochastic environment. This test checks whether each expert is calibrated conditional on the predictions made by other experts. We show that this test is good in the sense that a true expert—one informed of the true distribution of the process—is guaranteed to pass the test no matter what the other potential experts do, and false experts will fail the test on all but a small (category I) set of true distributions. Furthermore, even when there is no true expert present, a test similar to cross‐calibration cannot be simultaneously manipulated by multiple false experts, but at the cost of failing some true experts.     

Measuring the Implications of Sales and Consumer Inventory Behavior

Temporary price reductions (sales) are common for many goods and naturally result in large increases in the quantity sold. Demand estimation based on temporary price reductions may mismeasure the long‐run responsiveness to prices. In this paper we quantify the extent of the problem and assess its economic implications. We structurally estimate a dynamic model of consumer choice using two years of scanner data on the purchasing behavior of a panel of households. The results suggest that static demand estimates, which neglect dynamics, (i) overestimate own‐price elasticities by 30 percent, (ii) underestimate cross‐price elasticities by up to a factor of 5, and (iii) overestimate the substitution to the no‐purchase or outside option by over 200 percent. This suggests that policy analysis based on static elasticity estimates will underestimate price–cost margins and underpredict the effects of mergers.     

The shadow dance of political climate: Engagement in political behavior in local government authorities

In describing the processes of organizations as political acts, we are not making a moral judgment; we simply are making an observation about a process. Bacharach and Lawler, 1980, p. 2.This study focuses on the ways a perceived political climate influences engagement in political behavior during a national election period. By using social cognitive theory as a way to predict behavior in organizations, we study how managers' engagement in political behavior is shaped. A qualitative research methodology was used. Sixteen interviews with managers were conducted in various local authorities during the 2015 election campaign for Israel's parliament. Participants perceived an intensification of political climate during the pre-election period, which they attributed to a significant connection between electoral and intraorganizational politics. Additionally, a perceived organizational political climate intensifies engagement in a range of political behaviors throughout an organization and is connected with an administrative role. The findings suggest that managers use “political capital” that the election period provides to influence and manipulate their organization's future and their own.     

How a learning orientation affects drivers of innovativeness and performance in service delivery

Relying on organizational innovativeness for long-term growth and profitability can be difficult, time consuming, and expensive. In the context of service delivery of 395 strategic business units (SBU) in Israel's healthcare industry, this paper examines the role of a learning-orientation as a moderator in an integrative model of organizational innovativeness. We find moderation of the impacts of risk-taking, creativity, competitor benchmarking orientation, and environmental opportunities on innovativeness. Moreover, we find the influence on performance pronounced for high learning-oriented SBUs. The paper shows that learning orientation should be considered for understanding effective innovativeness work for competitive service delivery.     

Telomeres and human aging: facts and fibs

Can telomere dynamics, defined by telomere length and attrition rate, provide information about the biology of human aging above and beyond that provided by chronological age? Accruing data suggest that it can. White blood cells (WBCs) have been used as the primary model in attempts to decipher links between aging, aging-related disorders, and telomere dynamics in humans. The WBC model may be appropriate in clinical settings, provided that we fully appreciate its drawbacks and limitations. On the basis of WBC telomere data, it is evident that age-adjusted telomere length is highly variable, highly heritable, longer in women than men, and shorter in people who harbor a host of age-related disorders, whose common denominators may prove to be increased oxidative stress and inflammation. It appears that shorter age-adjusted WBC telomere length augurs a greater risk of morbidity and premature mortality in the elderly. However, it is unsettled whether human telomere dynamics is only a proxy for fundamental mechanisms that govern the course of aging or a key determinant in its progression.     

Strategic Cognition of Operations Executives

The nature of operations executives’ strategic cognition, as the antecedent to their choices about operations strategy, remains underexplored in the literature. This mixed‐methods study examines executives’ thinking about supply chain strategy through the lens of managerial cognition. Our qualitative study at a pharmaceutical distributor, which examined 25 executives’ outlook on the future of the turbulent U.S. healthcare sector and their suggestions for adapting the company's supply chain strategy to that future, suggests that an executive's strategic cognition can be defined by its regulatory focus—whether the executive envisions the future environment in terms of opportunities or threats—and the level of optimism in regards to the envisioned future. We propose a typology that predicts the strategic choices of operations executives based on four types of cognition: pioneering, pushing, protective, and provocative. It describes whether an executive's strategic choices target traditional or novel sources of revenue, and if they seek to influence either the firm's structure and practices or its environment. Our empirical test of the typology using quantitative data collected in a survey of senior operations executives supports the study's propositions associating three of the four types of cognition with their respective preferred strategic choices.