Hardiness, stress, and use of ill-time among nurse managers: is there a connection?

Intense job-related demands often result in effects on job performance and increased use of ill-time. In this study, associations between hardiness, stress, and use of ill-time among nurse managers were examined. High-hardy/low-stress managers used 27% less ill-time than those low-hardy/high-stressed.     

Cross-Cultural Business Research: Introduction to the special issue

As markets become increasingly global, an understanding of the world's cultures is imperative. This special issue consists of nine articles devoted to increasing our understanding of culture. It follows the 11th Cross-Cultural Research Conference, which was held in Puerto Rico in December 2005. An open invitation to conference participants and other interested researchers resulted in 56 submissions for the special issue. Articles chosen were subjected to several rounds of double-blind reviews and revisions. They cover a variety of topics including vacationing, managerial competency appraisal, horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism, consumer services, cultural conditioning, electronic word-of-mouth, the global hip-hop culture, ethical attitudes, and impulse buying behavior.     

A Current and Future Agenda for Cognitive Research in Organizations

The study of cognition in organizational settings has expanded dramatically over the last decade in response to the interdisciplinary growth of cognitive science. The first papers to appear generated great enthusiasm for the possible applications of a cognitive perspective but, understandably, focused on cognition itself, tended to work in the absence of empirical data, were sceptical about the possibility of defining collective cognition, and introduced too many similar but somewhat inconsistent concepts. The papers in this volume illustrate how we have moved beyond those early days in several critical areas, as detailed below.     

What organic and Fair Trade labels do not tell us: towards a place‐based understanding of certification

Certified organic and Fair Trade food products are making their way into the mainstream among Western consumers and, as such, are increasingly viewed as sustainable and preferable alternatives to the conventional food system, with its many negative social and environmental externalities. Two case studies discussed in this paper indicate, however, that operationalizing the goals for organic and Fair Trade food via certification can be a complex and difficult process. Specifically, the implementation of certification creates a disconnect between expectations raised by labels and the ‘lived experience’ of small farmers. In the case of small farmers in Mexico growing certified organic tomatoes and herbs, certification exacerbated socio‐economic inequality and disrupted local social norms by creating a hyperfocus on surveillance. In the case of small farmers in the Dominican Republic growing Fair Trade bananas, the certification process prioritized the demands of the market to such a degree that the farmers were largely unaware that they were participating in anything ‘alternative’, and it simultaneously reinforced socio‐economic inequalities within the communities. These findings suggest that if the appeal of certified labels rests on the integrity of what the label represents to consumers, then such consumer movements would benefit from a more robust analysis of how certification intersects with and affects local spaces, cultures and communities at the point of production.     

Seeing isn’t Believing: Understanding Diversity in the Timing of Strategic Response

There is general consensus in the strategy literature that successful firms alter strategy to address changes in their environments and enact more favourable conditions. Studies of organizational change suggest that this adjustment is not always made in a timely manner. Different beliefs about cause and effect have been established as a plausible explanation for differential responses to environmental change. This exploratory study of six pharmaceutical firms suggests more specifically that multiple concepts associated with environmental changes must be directly linked to organizational performance before new strategies are initiated. The results emphasize the importance of stress as a precursor to strategic response and have implications for the way we conceptualize `response' when referring to significant changes in strategy.     

Trying to Serve Two Masters is Easy,Compared to Three: Identity Multiplicity Work by Christian Impact Investors

Journal of Business Ethics - While research has focused on financial and social goals in impact investing, we add to the limited research that focuses on how individuals manage identity...     

The generation of organizational commitment in a cross-cultural context

This contribution explores the cross-cultural variations in the generation of organizational commitment. Participants were Chinese and Western employees of organizations operating in Hong Kong. Both groups believed that effort should be rewarded. However, Chinese and Western participants were committed to different constituencies within the organization. Westerners viewed interpersonal relationships as a means to the end, with the organization being the object of commitment. Chinese committed to interpersonal networks and saw these relationships as the primary organization-member engagement. Chinese and Westerners defined the organization differently and this influenced the way they generated their attachment to the firm.     

Incentives to underprice

In an initial public offering, the choices made by issuers, such as the offer price, might not appear to be wealth maximizing. In this article, we argue that the choices are strategic. Based on the model developed by Barry (1989), we show that the average change in the issuer's wealth (4.52 per cent) is lower than the average loss implied by underpricing (12.09 per cent). Our results support the notion that the choices issuers make at the offering generate a compensatory benefit in the aftermarket. That the issuer may well not suffer a net wealth loss from the offering is in accordance with continued initial public offering activity.     

Experimental evolution of color preference for oviposition in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Drosophila melanogaster</Emphasis>

Preferences are the foundation of economics. Preferences are taken by economists as fixed by some implicitly biological process. In recent decades, behavioral economics has documented the divergence between the nature of human preferences and the assumptions of standard economics. In this study, we use the tool of experimental evolution to study the evolution of color preferences in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster). In particular, we select for a preference for laying eggs on the color aqua. We find that the flies evolve to lay more than twice as many eggs on aqua. However, this evolution occurs entirely because the flies lay more eggs overall. The flies in this study, do not evolve to lay a higher percentage of eggs on the selected color, aqua.