Understanding Cumulative Risk Perception from Judgments and Choices: An Application to Flood Risks

Catastrophic events, such as floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis, are rare, yet the cumulative risk of each event occurring at least once over an extended time period can be substantial. In this work, we assess the perception of cumulative flood risks, how those perceptions affect the choice of insurance, and whether perceptions and choices are influenced by cumulative risk information. We find that participants' cumulative risk judgments are well represented by a bimodal distribution, with a group that severely underestimates the risk and a group that moderately overestimates it. Individuals who underestimate cumulative risks make more risk‐seeking choices compared to those who overestimate cumulative risks. Providing explicit cumulative risk information for relevant time periods, as opposed to annual probabilities, is an inexpensive and effective way to improve both the perception of cumulative risk and the choices people make to protect against that risk.     

Mediating role of mentoring functions on linking personality and occupational commitment in Indian organizations

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the mediating effect of mentoring on the relationship between the Five Factor Model (FFM) Personality traits and occupational commitment (OC). The study used cross-sectional survey-based research design. Data were collected from 362 managers of public and private sector organizations located in North India. The results indicated that psychosocial mentoring acts as a partial mediator for facilitating the linkage between all the FFM traits and OC. Contrary to this, career mentoring was found to partially mediate the link between only conscientiousness-OC, agreeableness-OC and emotional stability-OC. No mediating effect of career mentoring was found for personality factors of openness and extraversion. HRD practitioners are encouraged to implement train-for-trainers’ sessions for raising awareness among senior managers/mentors about the importance of psychosocial mentoring functions. This study is unique, because it is among the few to appropriately capture the mediating role of mentoring functions vis a vis the personality and OC relationship. Further, it also enriches the existing body of research on workplace mentoring and careers, especially in the South-Asian context.     

Measuring autonomy freedom

In the measurement of autonomy freedom, the admissible potential preference relations are elicited by means of the concept of ‘reasonableness’. In this paper we argue for an alternative criterion based on information about the decision maker’s ‘awareness’ of his available opportunities. We argue that such an interpretation of autonomy fares better than that based on reasonableness. We then introduce some axioms that capture this intuition and study their logical implications. In the process, a new measure of autonomy freedom is characterized, which generalizes some of the measures so far constructed in the literature.We thank Martin van Hees, Robert Sugden, Prasanta Pattanaik, the participants at workshops at the CPNSS, London School of Economics, and at the University of Caen and an anonymous referee for their suggestions. The support of the CPNSS is gratefully acknowledged. This paper is part of a research project on “The Analysis and Measurement of Freedom” funded by the Ministero dell’Istruzione, Università e Ricerca (Italy). Its financial support is gratefully acknowledged.     

组织职业生涯管理与工作卷入关系的研究

本研究以龙立荣开发的组织职业生涯管理问卷的简缩版和修订过的Kanungo的工作卷入问卷为测量工具,对多家企业的员工进行了调查。统计分析结果显示:组织职业生涯管理与员工的工作卷入之间存在显著的正相关关系,组织职业生涯管理中的各个维度与员工工作卷入的相关关系均达到了显著性水平,其中与员工工作卷入相关性最大的是“晋升公平”,相关性最小的是“注重培训”。此研究证明了组织职业生涯管理的必要性。     

产业集群:提升天津滨海新区竞争力的战略选择

产业集群的研究已经成为地区或国家竞争力研究以及区域经济研究的热点.在发达国家,基于产业集群而形成的集群经济早已成为区域经济的重要板块和亮点.本文通过对产业集群理论的回顾以及对产业集群竞争优势的研究,深入思考天津滨海新区所特有的经济条件和发展优势,提出了为提升区域竞争力、加快实施产业集群的经济发展战略.     

Bayesian Estimation and Model Choice in Item Response Models

Item response models are essential tools for analyzing results from many educational and psychological tests. Such models are used to quantify the probability of correct response as a function of unobserved examinee ability and other parameters explaining the difficulty and the discriminatory power of the questions in the test. Some of these models also incorporate a threshold parameter for the probability of the correct response to account for the effect of guessing the correct answer in multiple choice type tests. In this article we consider fitting of such models using the Gibbs sampler. A data augmentation method to analyze a normal-ogive model incorporating a threshold guessing parameter is introduced and compared with a Metropolis-Hastings sampling method. The proposed method is an order of magnitude more efficient than the existing method. Another objective of this paper is to develop Bayesian model choice techniques for model discrimination. A predictive approach based on a variant of the Bayes factor is used and compared with another decision theoretic method which minimizes an expected loss function on the predictive space. A classical model choice technique based on a modified likelihood ratio test statistic is shown as one component of the second criterion. As a consequence the Bayesian methods proposed in this paper are contrasted with the classical approach based on the likelihood ratio test. Several examples are given to illustrate the methods.     

What is Mentoring?

What is mentoring? Is it just a buzz word or is this really valuable? How can mentoring help one to grow and advance personally and professionally? How and where does one even begin? Many of us have these questions. In this article, I will share my perspective and provide some reflections on these questions based on my own personal and professional journey.     

Enhancing the Career Planning Self-Determination of Young Adults with Mental Health Challenges

The impact of an intervention on the self-determination and career planning engagement of young adults with mental health challenges was studied. Sixty-seven young adults, 20 to 30 years of age, with mental health diagnoses (e.g., depression, bipolar disorder) were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. Statistically significant greater increases were made by the intervention group versus the control group for self-determination and career planning engagement, and self-determination at least partially mediated increases in career planning engagement. With career planning self-determination interventions, young adults with mental health challenges might be able to achieve better career and life outcomes than is typical for this population.     

贾宝玉形象的文化张力

贾宝玉形象的独特性在于,其形象内涵既不属于西方文化,又非中国传统文化所能涵盖。他源于中国传统文化而又不是中国的儒、道所能解释:无论在思想意识、价值追求还是在思维方式等方面均与当时的世俗文化构成极强的张力冲击。这种冲击主要体现在贾宝玉与其它人物在仕途文化、情色文化上的碰撞,以及贾宝玉自身多元素文化的冲突。曹雪芹就是通过这种文化碰撞所塑造的贾宝玉形象,完成了他对中国传统文化的穿越,从而造就了一个独具魅力的艺术张力世界。     

A Probabilistic Dealing Strategy

A probabilistic dealing strategy is proposed which allows all premium brands in an established market to earn nonnegative profits without cooperation. Following the strategy, brands take turns attracting deal-responsive customers. Relative to a reactive competitive strategy, the proposed strategy improves the positions of all premium brands. With use of the strategy, average deal sizes are positively related to a brand's market share, the proportion of quality conscious customers, the proportion of informed customers, the span of regular prices in a market, and the range of customers' acceptable prices.