Resistance to technological innovations: An examination of the role of self-efficacy and performance satisfaction

Technological innovation is seen as the key to survival and success for many firms. Whether intended for internal use or for customers, adoption decisions must consider the response of the final user to such technological alternatives. This paper argues for greater attention to the factors which cause individual resistance to technological innovations. The results of two studies are reported which examined the effects of self-efficacy (Bandura 1977) and performance satisfaction on consumers’ response to technological changes. Results indicate that a person’s perceived ability to use a product successfully affects their evaluative and behavioral response to the product. In addition, the level of satisfaction experienced with an existing behavior increases resistance to and reduces likelihood of adopting an alternative.     

Gender differences in financial socialization in the home—An exploratory study

Recent literature has stressed the need for research examining the causes of females in general having lower levels of financial literacy than males. This article uses social cognitive theory of gender development as a framework to propose differing financial socialization of children in the home by gender as a possible cause of gender differences later in life. Evidence is found of gender based differences in the financial socialization of eleven and twelve year olds. Findings include more frequent parent‐child discussions being correlated to more positive financial attitudes, but not to saving behaviour. Saving behaviour of children is influenced by attitudes to money along with the presence of parents when spending, which is subject to a same sex gender bias for girls, with large effect sizes. Girls are over 200% more likely to state they save some of their pocket money if their mother is present when they spend their pocket money, compared to having no parent present. This difference does not exist for male children. When a boy is with both parents when spending, they are 245% more likely to report saving some of their pocket money then when neither parent is present. Having a father present when spending does not yield significantly different results to when no parent is present. These findings of gender biased financial socialization in the home are important considerations for the design of school‐based financial literacy programmes. Specifically, these programmes should consider a goal of encouraging discussion and questioning gender based attitudes and roles in the home. They are also important findings in terms of going some way to explaining the existence of a gender difference in financial knowledge in adulthood.     

Procedural and Distributive Fairness: Determinants of Overall Price Fairness

The present research isolates the fairness assessment of the process used by the retailer to set a price, as well as the distributive fairness of the price compared to the price that others are offered, and examines the combined effect of procedural fairness and distributive fairness on overall price fairness. Two experimental studies examine procedural and distributive fairness effects on overall price fairness. In study 1, procedural fairness and distributive fairness are manipulated and found to interact to bring about overall price fairness. In study 2, suspicion toward the seller is found to mediate the relationship between procedural fairness and overall price fairness when the price is disadvantageous.     

PCA oversedation: application of Healthcare Failure Mode Effect (HFMEA) Analysis

Hospital systems utilize many varied problem-solving processes to address system improvements and ensure patient safety. The Healthcare Failure Mode Effect Analysis (HFMEA) model is one of these tools and uses a multidisciplinary team to look at processes, diagramming the steps involved to identify potential failure points. The application of the HFMEA model allowed one large health care system to address a complex process by prioritizing proactive change improvements in order to prevent postoperative patient-controlled anesthesia oversedation events. The changes implemented identified 16 failure points with a hazard score of 16 or greater. One year later, the established system HFMEA goal was met: oversedation events were reduced by 50%.     

Subsistence Response to Market Shocks

Microeconomic models posit that transaction costs isolate subsistence producers from output market shocks. We integrate microeconomic models of many heterogeneous households into a general equilibrium model and show that supply on subsistence farms may respond, in apparently perverse ways, to changes in output market prices. Price shocks in markets for staple goods are transmitted to subsistence producers through interactions in factor markets. In the case presented, a decrease in the market price of maize reduces wages and land rents, stimulating maize production by subsistence households; however, real incomes of subsistence households fall.     

Constitutional Confusion: Slavery,Abortion, and Substantive Constitutional Analysis

A comparison of two U.S. Supreme Court cases about fundamental rights, one on slavery, the other on abortion, sheds light on constitutional law and the principles undergirding liberal constitutional democracy. The Dred Scott case in 1857 denied constitutional rights to enslaved Africans and their descendants living in the United States. The Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 created a constitutional right to abortion that denied constitutional personhood to human beings prior to birth. Both cases involved applications of what legal scholars call “substantive due process”—that is, a substantive interpretation of the constitutional requirement that governments provide persons with “due process of law” that moves beyond procedural formalism. Although many constitutional scholars deny the legitimacy of substantive due process as a legal doctrine, this article proposes that the judicial system cannot ultimately avoid substantive moral questions in constitutional interpretation. In both cases examined here, the crucial question was about who counts as part of the people whom the Constitution protects, and that question could not be answered in purely formal terms. Both Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade erred not by engaging substantive moral questions but rather by denying, in different ways, the natural rights of human persons.