Search

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5915.2010.00290.x Byline: Alan R. Dennis (1[dagger]), Julie A. Rennecker (2), Sean Hansen (3) Keywords: Collaborative Decision Making; Team Decision Making; Virtual Teams Abstract: ABSTRACT Organizational decision making is dominated by teams. When an important decision is required, a team is often formed to make it or to advise the individual decision maker, because a team has more resources, knowledge, and political insight than any one individual working alone. As teams have become geographically distributed, collaboration technology has come to play an important role in such collective decision making efforts. Instant messaging (IM) is an increasingly prevalent workplace collaboration technology that enables near-synchronous text exchanges on a variety of devices. We examined the use of IM during face-to-face, telephone, and computer-mediated team meetings, a practice we call 'invisible whispering.' We introduce Goffman's characterization of social interaction as dramatic performance, differentiable into 'front stage' and 'backstage' exchanges, to analyze how invisible whispering alters the socio-spatial and temporal boundaries of team decision making. Using IM, workers were able to influence front stage decision making through backstage conversations, often participating in multiple backstage conversations simultaneously. This type of interaction would be either physically impossible or socially constrained without the use of IM. We examine how invisible whispering changes the processes of collaborative decision making and how these new processes may affect the efficiency and effectiveness of collaborative decision making, as well as participation, satisfaction, relationships among team members, and individual attention. Author Affiliation: (1)Operations and Decision Technologies Department, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, e-mail:ardennis@indiana.edu (2)Panoramic Perspectives, P.O. Box 26263, Austin, TX 78755, e-mail:julie@panoramicperspectives.com (3)E. Philip Saunders College of Business, Rochester Institute of Technology, 105 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY 14623-5608, e-mail:shansen@saunders.rit.edu Article History: [Received: February 2009. Accepted: May 2010.] Article note: ([dagger]) Corresponding author.

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5915.2009.00230.x Byline: Deborah E. Gibbons (1[dagger]), Subhashish Samaddar (2) Keywords: Agent-Based Models; Computational Models; Emergency Services; Health Care; Humanitarian Logistics; Interorganizational Networks; Network Structures; Public Health Systems; Referral Networks; Referral Partners; Simulation; Social Networks; and Vaccine Delivery Abstract: ABSTRACT This study uses fully factorial computer simulation to identify referral network attributes and referral decision rules that streamline the routing of people to urgent, limited services. As an example of a scenario, the model represents vaccine delivery in a city of 100,000 people during the first 30 days of a pandemic. By modeling patterns of communication among health care providers and daily routing of overflow clients to affiliated organizations, the simulations determine cumulative effects of referral network designs and decision rules on citywide delivery of available vaccines. Referral networks generally improve delivery rates when compared with random local search by clients. Increasing the health care organizations' tendencies to form referral partnerships from zero to about four partners per organization sharply increases vaccine delivery under most conditions, but further increases in partnering yield little or no gain in system performance. When making referrals, probabilistic selection among partner organizations that have any capacity to deliver vaccines is more effective than selection of the highest-capacity partner, except when tendencies to form partnerships are very low. Implications for designing health and human service referral networks and helping practitioners optimize their use of the networks are discussed. Suggestions for using simulations to model comparable systems are provided. Author Affiliation: (1)Graduate School of Business and Public Policy, Naval Postgraduate School, 555 Dyer Road, Ingersoll 333, Monterey, CA 93943, e-mail:degibbon@nps.edu (2)Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303, e-mail:s-samaddar@gsu.edu Article History: [Received: August 2007. Accepted: February 2009.] Article note: ([dagger]) Corresponding author.

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2007.00695.x Byline: Bob Kijkuit (1), Jan van den Ende (1) Abstract: abstract Existing theories on the influence of social networks on creativity focus on idea generation. Conversely, the new product development literature concentrates more on the selection of ideas and projects. In this paper we bridge this gap by developing a dynamic framework for the role of social networks from idea generation to selection. We apply findings from creativity and behavioural decision-making literature and present an in-depth understanding of the sociological processes in the front-end of the new product development process. Our framework builds on the importance of mutual understanding, sensemaking and consensus formation. The propositions focus on both network structure and content and highlight the need to have strong ties and prior related knowledge, to incorporate decision makers, and to move over time from a large, non-redundant and heterogeneous to a smaller and more cohesive network structure. We conclude with a discussion on empirical validation of the framework and possible extensions. Author Affiliation: (1)RSM Erasmus University Article note: Bob Kijkuit, Management of Technology and Innovation, RSM Erasmus University, Room T10-34, PO Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands (rkijkuit@rsm.nl; jende@rsm.nl).

Economic sociology furthers a healthy alternative to price-theory-oriented economics as it sets out to remedy the invisibility of the market within the latter. There is, however, no doubt that such a market-oriented .sociology is still in its infancy, given among other issues its inability to shoulder market change. The void thus recognized opens up the potential for a market idea with both social and dynamic properties. There is good reason to believe that such an endeavor would benefit from the constructive blending of economic sociology and Austrian economics. This paper argues that such a 'socio-Austrian' connection is in the position to enrich the socioeconomic discourse in general and its market conception in particular.

Upon the uniformity in individuals' decision-making mechanism rests a great deal of the legitimacy of natural liberty. As we are all equally sovereign (cognitive-wise), we only strike deals that inevitably make us better off. We all gain from trade and thus, as everyone is better off, so must be the whole of society. But could it be that people are rational yet not equally sovereign? In this paper, we examine Smith's interpretation of rationality, and we find that it is fundamentally a social concept. As such, the manifestation of rationality in individual behavior depends on how sophisticated is individuals' access to public opinion. Consequently, individuals who are equally self-interested may face very different sets of options, which are determined by their social circumstances. This difference may suggest that, although all agents may be motivated by the same objective, they cannot be considered as equally sovereign.

This paper examines how economists from David Hume to Irving Fisher have struggled with the applicability of their analyses to those who differed from them in gender, ethnicity, class, or race. Particular attention is paid to how Fisher's discussion of racial and ethnic differences in capital accumulation and time preference changed between The Rate of Interest (1907) and The Theory of Interest (1930), and how it drew on earlier work by John Rae (to whom Fisher dedicated both those books).

In two studies, we examined people's level of risk taking when making monetary decisions for other people rather than for themselves. Experiment 1 examined the role of regret in these situations; results show that regret concerns led to increased risk avoidance both when participants made decisions for other people as well as when making decisions for themselves. Experiment 2 tested whether skill tasks would lead to greater risk avoidance when the decision was for another person versus for oneself. This hypothesis was not supported, although men were more risk seeking than were women in both situations. Taken together, these studies suggest that many of the findings from risk research on individual decision making regarding financial situations generalize to decision making for others.

A cross-sectional sample of members of 3-generation families was used to evaluate life-sustaining medical treatment attitudes and decision factors for oneself and for parents. Results show that the older generation (G1) perceived mental capacity, family burden, and pain as the most important considerations. Among the middle generation (G2), family burden was hot an important factor, but the type of life-sustaining treatment was important. The youngest generation (G3) was similar to the other two generations in that mental capacity and pain were important, but a smaller percentage of the G3s considered this important.

This study assessed whether social value orientations influence decisions to actively support a proposal for a transportation pollution reduction program. Participants with prosocial or proself orientations were given the opportunity to send letters of support or opposition to the program director. Proself participants were more likely to send letters opposing the program, whereas prosocial participants were more likely to send letters of support. Although proself and prosocial participants reported equivalent support for the program and equivalent perceptions of the program's environmental benefits, proself participants reported higher perceptions of personal costs associated with the program. Social value orientations may lead to differences in environmental behaviors, primarily because of differences in perceptions of the personal costs incurred from engaging in these behaviors.

An effective method of reframing the purpose of social foundations in teacher education, is to invoke the idea of shared decision making. Shared decision making includes the concepts of site-based management, school restructuring and school-based decision making. Shared decision making helps bridge the gap between the idea of teachers as decision makers, and the moral, civic and social policy content of foundational studies. Empirical case studies point out that in order to describe the purpose of social foundations, the skill to identify and analyze the values at stake in educational issues is imperative.

Using the World Bank and Chinese Academy of Social Science survey data, this study examines employee participation in management decision making in Chinese local industrial firms. It argues that it is not only important to study why workers should participate but also why they want to participate. Three modes of participation are defined through a factor analysis. These modes are further discussed in light of the Western participation literatures. They are then examined under three sets of conditions: socioeconomic status, institutional constraints, and policy attitudes. The findings suggest that workers' desire for participation is related to the possibility of maximizing individual benefits. They also show that under parallel conditions, workers often make opposite decisions concerning different modes of participation. Finally, in a nondemocratic environment, the impact of socioeconomic development on workplace participation is mixed.

This experiment compares the decisions of individuals and groups on goals for the performance expected from individuals on a problem-solving or an error-checking task. For both tasks, two versions were constructed to reflect low and high levels of task difficulty. Predictions from two different social comparison of abilities approaches were formulated, with the social comparison based on success approach predicting that group goals would be easier than individual goals, while social comparison based on performance predicted the opposite pattern. Consistent with the social comparison based on success predictions, groups goals were observed to be significantly less difficult than individual goals for both tasks, both levels of task difficulty, and for both an initial and a second goal-setting occasion. Of particular interest was a finding that the easier group goals reflected group member preferences for easy goals in anticipation of group decision making. It is proposed that social factors such as evaluation apprehension and social comparison may be responsible for the differences observed in group and individual goal decisions, and that social factors may have an important role in a variety of goal-setting situations.

We evaluate the applicability of a decision making framework to the teenage contraceptive and sexual behavior of 1032 Philadelphia teenagers. We examine three reasons why the decision making perspective may not apply in this domain: (a) because the decision makers are teenagers, (b) because the decision concerns sexual behavior, and (c) because the costs of contraception and abstinence are immediate and certain, while the benefits are delayed and uncertain. Using multiple regression, we examine the predictors of sexual activity and contraceptive use. We find support for the decision making model in that the variables ordinarily included in decision analyses do significantly predict behavior. But respondents seem to place disproportionate weight on some considerations, such as the discomfort of using birth control, and very little on others, such as the effectiveness of birth control or their attitude toward motherhood.

Cognitive style was found to influence not only actual decision outcomes for executives, but also how others perceive an executive's decision performance. Cognitive styles studied included sensing/feeling, intuiting/thinking, judging, perceiving, introversion, and extroversion.

The effect of culture on work values has been studied in a number of ways, largely from a western perspective. Studies have predominantly employed questionnaires as the principal agent of data collection. Yet the Confucian work ethic attributes greater emphasis to collectivist values which bear more centrally on personal relationships. This research used discourse analysis in order to try to identify the implicit features of cultural values as they affected the transmission of financial information, a problem highlighted by the Asian currency crisis in 1997/98. The international hotel industry operates in a multicultural environment where very often foreign operators manage locally owned premises. In these circumstances, budgetary planning and control is an important mechanism. A sample of the interactions between 18 hotel general managers and their financial controllers were studied in Hong Kong. Financial controllers are already subject to a number of role conflicts and it was found that these may be exaggerated by culture. Chinese financial controllers seem to distort the outputs of budgetary planning and control processes in recognition of important organizational relationships. It is suggested that recognizing the direction and effect of these relationships has implications for leadership and performance judgements generally. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Research on various forms of mass-elite representational linkage and on public-president links specifically suggests that a reciprocal influence process exists between the attention to policy issues of the mass public and the president. Other research suggests that issue attention for both the president and the public is shaped by real-world cues. Time-series regression analyses of data from State of the Union addresses, Gallup polls, and for various indicators of policy-specific, real-world phenomena are employed to test these propositions and to extend prior research that has assumed presidents influence the public, but not vice versa. For foreign policy and economic policy there is a reciprocal influence process between the president and the mass public. For civil rights policy there is a one-way influence process from presidential to mass attention to the issue. The issue attention of the mass public, but not that of the president, is consistently influenced by real-world cues relevant to the particular policy area.