Propensity For Action Research Articles

Social capital influences farmer participation in collective irrigation management in Shaanxi Province, China

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of four components of social capital on farmers’ participative behaviour in collective actions for constructing and operating small-scale groundwater irrigation systems on the Guanzhong Plain, Shaanxi Province, China.Design/methodology/approach– The four components (social networks, social trust, social reciprocity and social participation) were derived by employing exploratory factor analysis. Logistic model was used to estimate the influence of these components on farmers’ participative behaviour. Information was obtained from a field survey covering six counties in 2011 of Shaanxi Province, China.Findings– The findings indicate that considering different components of social capital allows for a better understanding of farmers’ participative behaviour. The authors find that higher levels of social trust and social participation lead to a higher propensity for collective action, while social reciprocity reduces the probability of participation. Other socio-economic factors and farming characteristics such as education levels, cultivated area, cropping patterns and grain subsidies also have a significant impact.Practical implications– The findings suggest creating favourable conditions for communication and information exchanges between households, which enhance their trust of each other, and encourage farmers to participate in collective affairs. Moreover, supportive rules are necessary for the future development of collective action. The results of this study also have implications for national irrigation plans for small-scale irrigation facilities in other developing countries.Originality/value– A consideration of the different components of social capital allows for a more precise understanding of farmers’ participative behaviour.

Enlarging the scope: grasping brain complexity.

To further advance our understanding of the brain, new concepts and theories are needed. In particular, the ability of the brain to create information flows must be reconciled with its propensity for synchronization and mass action. The theoretical and empirical framework of Coordination Dynamics, a key aspect of which is metastability, are presented as a starting point to study the interplay of integrative and segregative tendencies that are expressed in space and time during the normal course of brain and behavioral function. Some recent shifts in perspective are emphasized, that may ultimately lead to a better understanding of brain complexity.

‘Thinking Before Acting’ or ‘Acting Before Thinking’: Antecedents of Individual Action Propensity in Work Situations

AbstractWe introduce the concept of ‘individual action propensity’ to examine the approach of individuals towards solving situations for which they lack knowledge and/or experience about what to do. We focus on a naturally contrasting pair of responses: ‘thinking before acting’ or ‘acting before thinking’, and associate low action propensity with thinking one's way into understanding how to act, and high action propensity with acting one's way into understanding such situations. We build on regulatory mode theory – with its dimensions of locomotion and assessment and the trade‐off between speed and accuracy – to examine individual characteristics as predictors of individual action propensity. We find that individual action propensity is associated with being a woman, having fewer years of formal education, not relying on help‐seeking behaviours, and having a positive attitude towards spontaneity. Our findings shed light on why individuals take action, or not, and provide implications for research on organizational action propensity.

Opportunities and constraints to improving milk quality in Ireland: Enabling change through collective action

Ireland plays a key role in contributing to the global supply of dairy produce, and increasing international demand, as well as the abolition of milk quotas in the European Union in 2015, present opportunities for the Irish milk industry. Improving milk quality is required to maximize these opportunities. National action on milk quality is spearheaded by Animal Health Ireland, yet the potential for collective action at an industry level is undermined by the inability of individual stakeholders to accept responsibility for action. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with n=12 stakeholder representatives. The theoretical concepts of collective action (i.e., when a group of people with a shared interest undertake some kind of voluntary common action in pursuit of that shared interest) is applied to understanding the results and identifying a collective way forward. Though consensus is apparent on the need to improve milk quality, differences exist about individual responsibility and the best way to achieve higher quality standards. The propensity for collective action is undermined by shifting responsibility to other stakeholders, stakeholder positions, trust concerns, and concerns over the commitment of other stakeholders to cooperate. Understanding how collective action works provides Animal Health Ireland with a knowledge framework in which to build stakeholder consensus. The paper concludes with practical examples of how Animal Health Ireland continues to apply this understanding by bringing individual stakeholders together to achieve milk quality improvement.

The Effects of a Summer Camp Program in China on Children's Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviors Toward Animals: A Model for Conservation Education

ABSTRACT This summative evaluation, conducted in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China, studied whether participation in a conservation education camp positively changed 8–12-year-old children's (a) knowledge of how to protect animals, (b) care about animals, (c) propensity for environmental and wildlife stewardship, and (d) compassionate behavior toward animals and nature. Influenced by conservation psychology, social learning theory, empathy and moral development, constructivism, and conservation biology, 5-day overnight camps were conducted at 2 zoological institutions. Activities were designed to help children form bonds with animals and care enough to positively change their behavior toward animals and nature. Mixed methods, using pre- and postvisit surveys, researcher field notes, vignettes, student journals, an end of camp questionnaire, and a camper behavior ethogram, revealed significant increases in knowledge, care, and propensity for action, and an additional theme, empathy. This study identified effective strategies to promote positive behavior toward animals, empathy, and conservation behavior.

Impaired goal-directed behavioural control in human impulsivity

Two dissociable learning processes underlie instrumental behaviour. Whereas goal-directed behaviour is controlled by knowledge of the consequences, habitual behaviour is elicited directly by antecedent Pavlovian stimuli without knowledge of the consequences. Predominance of habitual control is thought to underlie psychopathological conditions associated with corticostriatal abnormalities, such as impulsivity and drug dependence. To explore this claim, smokers were assessed for nicotine dependence, impulsivity, and capacity for goal-directed control over instrumental performance in an outcome devaluation procedure. Reduced goal-directed control was selectively associated with the Motor Impulsivity factor of Barrett's Impulsivity Scale (BIS), which reflects propensity for action without thought. These data support the claim that human impulsivity is marked by impaired use of causal knowledge to make adaptive decisions. The predominance of habit learning may play a role in psychopathological conditions that are associated with trait impulsivity.

Can Social Capital Be Measured? An analysis of territorial differences among the districts of Czechia

This paper focuses on measuring collective social capital. Theoretical and methodological approaches are discussed, leading to a conceptualisation of social capital with a set of ten indicators. These indicators reflect structural (social networks) and cultural aspects (trust, civic norms and values) of social capital and can be divided into five categories (local social life, institutional life, trust and propensity for collective action, trust in institutions, outer relationships). Analysis of the territorial differentiation of social capital at the district level of Czechia is then carried out using principal component analysis.

Central City Size, Metropolitan Institutions and Political Participation

Despite decades of research, our understanding of how institutional contexts influence urban political participation remains muddled. It is argued here that this confusion arises from the diversity of competing hypotheses, failures to conceptualize the causal processes underlying these hypotheses thoroughly, and the use of inadequate controls for rival hypotheses. A more comprehensive specification of the relationship between metropolitan jurisdictional contexts and two modes of participation is provided. After a presentation of a theoretical framework organizing the many extant hypotheses, these are tested, using survey data collected by the Knight Foundation from 2002 in twenty-five urban counties. Contrary to prior work, it is found that the size of local governments is positively associated with participation, while governmental fragmentation diminishes the propensity for political action.

Prior conditions and early international commitment: the mediating role of domestic mindset

Our study investigates why some firms engage in low international commitments such as exports in the early phases of internationalization, whereas others leapfrog the internationalization process and start with high international commitments in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI). Process models of internationalization propose that firms start with low commitment activities and gradually increase their commitments to international markets. However, recent empirical evidence has shown that many firms make high international commitments from the start. Our findings suggest that domestic resources and competitive action propensity affect early international commitments indirectly through domestic mindsets. A domestic mindset refers to the knowledge structures of the top management team prior to starting international activities, based on their managerial experience and learning in domestic markets. Our results suggest that knowledge and learning gained in domestic markets through diverse resource and competitive activities may be crucial in early international commitments.

Artificial evil and the foundation of computer ethics

Moral reasoning traditionally distinguishes two types of evil: moral (ME) and natural (NE). The standard view is that ME is the product of human agency and so includes phenomena such as war, torture and psychological crueltys that NE is the product of nonhuman agency, and so includes natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, disease and famines and finally, that more complex cases are appropriately analysed as a combination of ME and NE. Recently, as a result of developments in autonomous agents in cyberspace, a new class of interesting and important examples of hybrid evil has come to light. In this paper, it is called artificial evil (AE) and a case is made for considering it to complement ME and NE to produce a more adequate taxonomy. By isolating the features that have led to the appearance of AE, cyberspace is characterised as a self-contained environment that forms the essential component in any foundation of the emerging field of Computer Ethics (CE). It is argued that this goes some way towards providing a methodological explanation of why cyberspace is central to so many of CE's concernss and it is shown how notions of good and evil can be formulated in cyberspace. Of considerable interest is how the propensity for an agent's action to be morally good or evil can be determined even in the absence of biologically sentient participants and thus allows artificial agents not only to perpetrate evil (and for that matter good) but conversely to `receive' or `suffer from' it. The thesis defended is that the notion of entropy structure, which encapsulates human value judgement concerning cyberspace in a formal mathematical definition, is sufficient to achieve this purpose and, moreover, that the concept of AE can be determined formally, by mathematical methods. A consequence of this approach is that the debate on whether CE should be considered unique, and hence developed as a Macroethics, may be viewed, constructively, in an alternative manner. The case is made that whilst CE issues are not uncontroversially unique, they are sufficiently novel to render inadequate the approach of standard Macroethics such as Utilitarianism and Deontologism and hence to prompt the search for a robust ethical theory that can deal with them successfully. The name Information Ethics (IE) is proposed for that theory. It is argued that the uniqueness of IE is justified by its being non-biologically biased and patient-oriented: IE is an Environmental Macroethics based on the concept of data entity rather than life. It follows that the novelty of CE issues such as AE can be appreciated properly because IE provides a new perspective (though not vice versa). In light of the discussion provided in this paper, it is concluded that Computer Ethics is worthy of independent study because it requires its own application-specific knowledge and is capable of supporting a methodological foundation, Information Ethics.

Student Ethical Perceptions and Ethical Action Propensities: An Analysis of Situation Familiarity

Recently McCuddy and Peery (1996) have suggested that business students may not respond the same way to “unfamiliar” business ethical dilemmas as they would to more “familiar” academic ethical dilemmas. The purpose of this study was to present the same students with both “unfamiliar” business dilemmas as well as possibly more “familiar” academic dilemmas in order to examine this issue.

The Influence of Top Management Team Heterogeneity on Firms' Competitive Moves

The authors acknowledge support from Columbia University's Management Institute. Warren Boeker, Sara Keck, John Michel, Peter Murmann, Michael Tushman, and Ruth Wageman made helpful suggestions on earlier drafts. We are grateful for access to the airline data base jointly assembled by the third author, Martin J. Gannon, Curtis M. Grimm, and Ken G. Smith. This paper explores the executive origins of firms' competitive moves by focusing on top management team characteristics, specifically on team heterogeneity, rather than on the more often studied environmental and organizational determinants of such behaviors. Arguing that competitive actions and responses represent different decision situations, we develop propositions about how heterogeneity may enhance some competitive behaviors but impair others. With a large sample of actions and responses of 32 U.S. airlines over eight years, we find results that largely conform to our propositions. The top management teams that were diverse, in terms of functional backgrounds, education, and company tenure, exhibited a relatively great propensity for action, and both their actions and responses were of substantial magnitude. Heterogeneous teams, by contrast, were slower in their actions and responses and less likely than homogeneous teams to respond to competitors' initiatives. Thus, although team heterogeneity is a double-edged sword, its overall net effect on airline performance, in terms of changes in market share and profits, was positive.*

Does Education Induce People to Improve the Environment?

One of the most enduring puzzles of public choice theory stems from attempts to explain why some people participate in actions that promote a collective outcome and others do not.' This article considers one aspect of this puzzle by evaluating whether educational prograins induce people to support collective activities intended to improve the environment. Firms appear to recognize differences in the propensities for collective action in different communities and use this information in their decisions about siting new facilities that might cause externalities as well as in choices about expanding existing sites. Hamilton's [1993, 1995] research first documented these relationships by using differences in the rates of voter participation as a proxy for the likelihood of collective action that opposes the location or expansion in an undesirable activity. His model recognizes and accounts for the potential effect of differences in the propensity for collection action, but it does not explain the reasons why they might exist. A second motivation for this research is the commonplace argument that enhancing the educational attainment of the electorate will improve the quality of their resulting collective decisions. Although there is little empirical evidence to support this argument for any set of public decisions, it has apparently been accepted for the case of environmental policy. There have been both federaland state-level initiatives to develop curriculums intended to change people's behavior through environmental education.2

Attitudes Towards Supervision:

A study of attitudes towards supervision held by child care supervisors and supervisees revealed that amoung other findings, supervisors underestimate supervisees' needs for specific supportive behaviors. Inter-term correlations reveal that four supervisory attitudes can be identified. These are tentatively labeled Staff Support, Preference for Structure, Propensity for Action, and Structured Uniformity.

The Train to Estelline by Jane Roberts Wood

248 Western American Literature With Schroder’s move into the affairs of the Steele family there enters family attorney John Lloyd Branson. “Exceedingly tall, thin with graying blond hair,” Branson is a man of intelligence and strong will, a man in control. He speaks in a precise, studied drawl. The story accelerates with the contest between Schroder and Branson— that is, between pre-pondered motivation as cause for murder and human nature’s propensity for impulsive action. The book, therefore, takes on a dimen­ sion not found in a typical mystery. Further, Meredith has sharpened the techniques that made the Panhandle Sheriff series uncommonly successful: humor, suspense, witty dialog, and mem­ orable characterizations. An obvious change is in her use of place. Whereas her earlier books were “cozy,” a term coined to describe a closed environment where the lore of place is stronger than the detecting procedure, Murder by Impulse places its challenge on character. As someone has said of the better mysteries, man is the puzzle. ERNESTINE P. SEWELL Commerce, Texas The Train to Estelline. By Jane Roberts Wood. (Austin: Ellen C. Temple, Publisher, 1987. 227 pages, $14.95.) The Train to Estelline, a first novel by Jane Roberts Wood, would make a great choice for an eighth grade girl in need of a book for a report due on Friday. For the adult reader, however, the book fails in just about every way. Regrettably, Wood has chosen an epistolary form in which her heroine, a plucky schoolmarm of eighteen named Lucy, tells the story through letters to family, friends, and in desperate moments, to “Dear Diary.” She sets out to win the hearts and minds of her students and their proud but stubborn families. To this end, she climbs down a well to rescue one of her pupils, converts even the roughest of the boys, delivers a baby, discovers a dead body, all while battling the community’s poverty, bigotry, and lack of culture. Everything about this book is predictable. Lucy’s younger sister, who is “too wild” for her own good, is shipped off to Estelline, predictably pregnant, and predictably runs off with the rather boring, unimaginative Bob Sully, with whom the plucky heroine is madly in love. Hovering about the scene is the right man, but Lucy is so busy climbing down wells that she doesn’t notice. The reader, however, picks this up on about page twenty-two. It’s a sort of Texas style Gone With the Wind without the Civil War. Gratefully, there are several interesting minor characters who create some mystery. But the book doesn’t work because the voice doesn’t work. It just doesn’t present a sustained authentic sound. Even the “Gol-dern it ma’m”s don’t sound right. The voice is totally inadequate to the story, and it is too bad, because I think Wood has a story here in the urgency of the landscape, the terror and possibility of the open Reviews 249 spaces, the worship of water, the beauty of the Texas prairies, the social impli­ cations of the coming of the railroad, all of which remain frustratingly in the background. In fact the voice becomes increasingly irritating as the novel progresses. Wood too often tells us how we should feel about events rather than shows us: “The scene takes my breath away. It is truly lovely. I wish you could be here ... to see it.” I wish I had been. ANN PUTNAM University of Puget Sound Exile in Alaska. By John Mitchell. (Wasilla: Plover Press, 1987. 113 pages, $13.95.) In the last of seven stories here, “Points North,” the first-person narrator— presumably John Mitchell himself—is driving away from his homestead and Alaska for the last time, the thoughts of all he has abandoned bawling in his head “like cows waiting to be milked, yet I knew they never would be. When you left a place, you killed it.” This last assertion is ironic in the context of these stories, for they all illustrate how capitalists have killed Alaska’s genius and wilderness areas. Mitchell’s only mention of wildlife comes in the form of a reference—in “Squaw Man”—to...

Stratification and Voting Behavior

Despite agreement on the importance of class in voting behavior, scholars have not integrated research on class-based political behavior with broader theories about the sources of group cohesion in a mass electorate. This article explores the potential for political cohesion among a variety of occupational groups within the British working class. The propensity for collective action in the electoral arena is evaluated in terms of each group's social situation—its differentiation, level of within-group interaction, need for collective effort, and organizational capacity. Using the 1891 population census and general election results from 1885 to 1910, we then observe the relationship between the spatial concentration of each occupational group and the left-wing vote. The results indicate clearly that alternate conceptions of stratification are associated with different directions of class-party relationships and different levels of class-based voting. The results of both correlation and multivariate regression analysis confirm that the level of class voting increased as the definition of “working class” was narrowed to identify groups with a high potential for collective action. As the scope of the independent variable was narrowed, the relationship more closely conformed to that predicted in the literature on class and politics. This suggests the wisdom of Kornhauser's admonition to analyze the social basis of voting “within a structure of explicit theory about class relations as dynamic functioning processes.”

Sense-controlled flexible robot behavior

The creation of physical behavior by computational means has been approached differently by industrial and artificial intelligence robotics. Industrial robotics, considering fast response of a robot its most important characteristic, has equipped the robot with predefined, specific behavioral trajectories resulting in fast but inflexible behavior. Artificial intelligence robotics, claiming flexibility as the paramount robot feature, has employed inferred behavior whereby the robot itself determines behavioral patterns for tasks based on the robot's general knowledge about a task domain. Response is now flexible, but the response time is commonly badly degraded. This work defines an action propensity “skill” which generates flexibleand fast behavior. Flexibility is achieved by attaching “perceptions” in skills to guide behavior; fast response results from the direct activation of skills. The acquisition and generalization of skills happens under the supervision of a human teacher in an advice-taking mode into which the robot shifts from the execution mode after recognizing lacking competence for a given task. This paper defines such skills, describes an implemented skilled robot system, and discusses some simulation results.

Determinants of the Psychiatric Patient Career: Family Reaction Patterns and Social Work Intervention

The ways in which the family responds or fails to respond to deviance are crucial determinants for the evolution of the psychiatric patient career of the deviant member. Various conclusions in respect to pathways to hospitalization, readiness to accept the sick role, extent of adjustment to hospitalization, favorability of attitudes toward the treatment staff, and likelihood of readmission can be deduced by examining two "sensitizing concepts" or dimensions of family reactions to deviance: level of expected performance and propensity for action. With these dimensions combined, a typology of family reaction patterns is described, and 79 cases are followed from prepatient to inpatient to postpatient status. Mental health professional workers may find the typology and the dimensions on which it is based useful for planning patient care, for prediction of readmission, and for decision- making in situations confronting patients and their families before, during, and after hospitalization.

Active Waiting As Business Strategy: Learning From The Serengeti Plains

Fast decision making, a propensity for action, and getting things done appearto be highly valued by both practitioners and academics in the United States. Undersuch monikers as exhibiting initiative, being proactive, walking the talk, and takingcharge, getting things done is widely lauded and promoted. As a result, most managersare content to deal with day-to-day operational activities that require immediateattention, daily routines, and superficial behaviors rather than addressing importantissues requiring reflection, systematic planning, creative thinking—and above all—time. To address this often unproductive busyness the authors propose active waitingwhich involves the recognition that not all problems are open to a quick fix andthat sometimes waiting can be a valuable option. However, waiting does not haveto be passive. The authors recommend that managers act like the skilled, veteranlions of the Serengeti plains and adopt active waiting in order to be able to seize theopportune moment in pursuit of effective business strategy. This paper offers a six-stepprocess to help leaders integrate active waiting into their supervision style andconcludes with recommendations for managers.