Cooperative Goals Research Articles

Social responsibility and reflexivity for co-operative goals with government units in China

Prior research on co-operation and competition has established that co-operative goal relationships with government units are beneficial to business enterprises operating in China. We report a quantitative study, conducted in Shanghai and based on 119 paired responses by government officials and business managers, which sought to establish the antecedents of co-operative business–government goal relationships. We found that business enterprises in China that were represented by managers with favorable attitudes toward ethics and social responsibility were considered by government officials as more inclined to engage in reflexivity, i.e. to hold open discussions with them about organizational objectives and procedures, with a view to mutual adjustment and improvement. Greater reflexivity was, in turn, more likely to lead to business–government relationships based on co-operative rather than independent or competitive goals. Given the considerable importance of business–government relationships in China, these findings imply that concern for corporate social responsibility (CSR) may be advantageous for firms there, and we discuss how the HRM function may contribute to development of suitable CSR policies, projects and practices, to greater reflexivity, and to the increased likelihood of establishing co-operative goals.

Application of texture analysis to muscle MRI: 2 – technical recommendations

A goal of the multicenter European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) action MYO-MRI is to optimize Magnetic Resonance Imaging Texture Analysis (MRI-TA) methods for application in the study of muscle disease. This paper deals with recommendations on the optimal methodology to collect the MRI data, to analyse it via texture analysis and to make conclusions from the resultant texture parameter data. A full and detailed description is provided with respect to MR image quality control, sequence choice, image pre-processing, region of interest selection, texture analysis methods and data analysis. A series of conclusions are presented.

The world food crisis of 1972-1975

The term food security first came into use in reaction to the unfolding World Food Crisis of the early Seventies. Food security as understood then focused on supply of food on world markets. This focus on was not due to a neglect of the wider issues surrounding hunger, but was in answer to a supply shock on a grand scale. A curtailment of US production combined with a grain deal with the Soviet Union had depleted this country´s reserves and thus upset world markets. As a reaction to the worldwide shortage, the United Nations convened a World Food Conference in 1974. One of the main goals of international cooperation was to avoid another supply shock. The article considers the efforts to install an international food reserve and to raise the food aid commitment.

Open-minded Discussion between Departments: Goal Interdependence and Social Motives

To aid effective collaboration between departments, organizations need ways to help employees from diverse departments manage their conflicts constructively. Integrating theories of goal interdependence and social motives, this study examined a model in which open-minded discussion mediates and social motives moderate between interdepartmental goal interdependence and conflict outcomes. A sample of 133 employees from different business organizations in China were interviewed to recall a critical incident when they had a conflict with their coworker from another department. Results support the hypotheses that goal interdependence is an important foundation for open-minded discussion between departments that in turn impact the outcomes of conflict. Results suggest that pro-self motive employees very much discussed open-mindedly when goals were cooperative. Pro-social motive employees discussed issues open-mindedly even when their goals are competitive. Findings suggest that developing cooperative goals and open-minded discussion skills can help managers and employees manage their conflicts between departments and collaborate effectively. Key words: Open-minded discussion, interdepartmental goal interdependence, social motives, conflict management

Beyond Risk-Taking

In addition to risk-taking behavior, we propose that psychological safety also promotes prosocial behavior through cooperative goal interdependence. To differentiate these two types of effects, we contrasted the moderating effects of two interpersonal harmony motives. A survey in China supported the indirect effect of psychological safety on helping behavior through cooperative goal interdependence. This mediated relationship was moderated by harmony enhancement such that the mediated effect of psychological safety was weaker when harmony enhancement was high. Psychological safety was positively related to innovative behavior, and this relationship was moderated by disintegration avoidance such that it was weaker when disintegration avoidance was high. These results shed light on the different effects of psychological safety and their underlying mechanisms.

Cross-Border Low Value Payments and Regional Integration: Enablers and Disablers

his paper discusses the enablers and disablers of cross-border low value payments and regional integration. The current landscape for cross-border payments is dominated by correspondent banking relationships. Relying on one or more correspondent banks to send payments abroad is slow and expensive, and both sending and receiving banks often have little to no visibility of payments as they are being processed, and they often do not know what fees will be deducted until a payment arrives. As the speed of payments increases in domestic environments, banks, corporates, and consumers have come to expect faster and more efficient payments across borders as well, and the current reality of correspondent banking is increasingly falling short of customer needs and expectations.As regions integrate economically and promote open trade among member states, maintaining fragmented national payment systems can become a hindrance to larger goals of economic development and cooperation. Any form of regional integration will necessarily reflect local realities, including the level of domestic payment system development, technological and economic progress, the level of payment sophistication, political and business cooperation, and the level of integration desired by key stakeholders in the region. Pursuing regional payments integration means dealing with issues such as establishing centralized management, finding a common settlement currency, setting a targeted scope, implementing common data standards, and harmonizing IT infrastructures. Navigating these local realities and vested interests to develop a cross-border scheme or infrastructure that benefits local stakeholders is a complex task. Coupling local knowledge of domestic markets with lessons learned from other regions can be a key factor in ensuring success in regional payments integration.This paper will focus on key questions such as how “success” is defined for regional payment schemes and infrastructures, what enables and disables successful implementation, what the key features of schemes to foster cross-border transactions are, and the role that central banks and other stakeholders play in regional payments integration. It is meant to inform and guide participants who wish to pursue regional payments integration by offering lessons from other geographies and examining measures of success in a variety of regional payment models.

Swim or Sink Together

This article investigates collective team identification and team member alignment (i.e., the existence of short- and long-term team goals and team-based reward structures) as moderators of the association between task and relationship conflicts. Being indicators of cooperative goal interdependence in teams, both moderators are hypothesized to mitigate the positive association between the two conflict types. Findings from 88 development teams confirm the moderating effect for collective team identification, but not for team member alignment. Moreover, the moderating role of collective team identification is found to be dependent on the level of task conflict: It is more effective in decoupling task and relationship conflicts at medium as compared with high or low levels of task conflict.

The Role of Authentic Leadership in Fostering Workplace Inclusion: A Social Information Processing Perspective

The extant literature has largely overlooked the importance of a climate for inclusion as a response to the growing trend of workplace diversity. This conceptual article contends that an organization‐wide change effort comprising several reinforcing processes aimed at creating a climate for inclusion is needed to institutionalize workplace inclusion. Drawing on social information processing theory, authentic leaders are posited to transmit social information about the importance of inclusion into the work environment through inclusive leader role modeling. Reward systems that remunerate inclusive conduct can foster the vicarious learning of inclusive conduct by followers. Large and diverse workgroups offer a plethora of opportunities for followers to learn how to behave in an inclusive manner. Authentic leaders and followers who share cooperative goals related to developing a climate for inclusion can prompt the vicarious learning of inclusive behaviors by followers, thereby facilitating goal attainment for both parties. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Dance Moves

This article argues that a group of young African Americans in the 1940s and 1950s used ballet as a means of crossing racial and class barriers of an art form in which few blacks had until then participated. Founded in 1946 by white choreographer Joseph Rickard (1918–1994), the First Negro Classic Ballet was one of the first African American ballet companies in the country's history and the first black ballet company known to last over a decade. With the goal of multiethnic cooperation in the arts, the company created a series of original “dance-dramas,” several with musical scores by resident composer Claudius Wilson, to perform for white and black audiences in venues throughout Southern and Northern California during the postwar era.

Does it matter with whom you slay? The effects of competition, cooperation and relationship type among video game players

Cooperation and competition have emerged as factors that may affect video game players. Competition consistently has been found to elicit increased aggression whilst cooperation has been found to mitigate aggression and increase cooperative behaviors after game play. Of interest is the effect of the relationship between players (friend vs. stranger) in cooperative and competitive multiplayer contexts. In this study, we considered how game goal structure – competition or cooperation – and relationships between players – friend or stranger – affect aggression and cooperative behaviors. Compared with competition, cooperative play resulted in significantly more cooperative behaviors in a modified Prisoner’s Dilemma task. However, neither competitive nor cooperative goal structures significantly increased state hostility, suggesting that altering players’ gaming goals (e.g. competition or cooperation) may not be enough to elicit strong affective aggression. Additionally, cooperative game play was found to predict increased cooperative behaviors and trust in their partner. Implications of the findings are discussed.

FMAP: Distributed cooperative multi-agent planning

This paper proposes FMAP (Forward Multi-Agent Planning), a fully-distributed multi-agent planning method that integrates planning and coordination. Although FMAP is specifically aimed at solving problems that require cooperation among agents, the flexibility of the domain-independent planning model allows FMAP to tackle multi-agent planning tasks of any type. In FMAP, agents jointly explore the plan space by building up refinement plans through a complete and flexible forward-chaining partial-order planner. The search is guided by h D T G , a novel heuristic function that is based on the concepts of Domain Transition Graph and frontier state and is optimized to evaluate plans in distributed environments. Agents in FMAP apply an advanced privacy model that allows them to adequately keep private information while communicating only the data of the refinement plans that is relevant to each of the participating agents. Experimental results show that FMAP is a general-purpose approach that efficiently solves tightly-coupled domains that have specialized agents and cooperative goals as well as loosely-coupled problems. Specifically, the empirical evaluation shows that FMAP outperforms current MAP systems at solving complex planning tasks that are adapted from the International Planning Competition benchmarks.

Cooperative goals and team performance: Examining the effects of advice network

Based on the theory of cooperation and competition, this study examines the relationships between cooperative goals, advice network, and team performance, and their boundary conditions. Based on multi-source data from 189 teams in a military organization, results indicate that cooperative goals positively influence team performance via advice network density. Moreover, advice network centralization moderates the relationship between advice network density and team performance. In addition, advice network centralization moderates the indirect effect of cooperative goals on team performance via advice network density.

The Mediating Effect of Cooperative Goals on the Relationship Between Team Orientation and Team Member Exchange

We examined the relationships among team orientation, team member exchange (TMX), and cooperative goals. We predicted that, at the group level, average team orientation would be positively associated with TMX, and that cooperative goals would mediate that relationship. Over a 6-week period we conducted a 2-wave survey among 540 Chinese college students who were living in 93 dormitories. Results showed that, at the group level, team orientation at Time 1 significantly predicted TMX at Time 2, through the mediation of cooperative goals at Time 2. Implications of this research and future directions are discussed.

Relacionamentos interorganizacionais: fatores influencidores, facilitadores e dificultadores na formação de rede de cooperação

The present paper had as aim to identify factors of inter-organizational relationships which promotes and restricts the formation of companies’ cooperation network, from two levels of analysis (organizational and inter-organizational). To achieve this goal, it was developed a descriptive-qualitative study, with prospecting for primary and secondary data on a cooperation network. The universe was composed by 41 participating companies associated to the analyzed network. The sampling procedure was for researcher’s accessibility and convenience. As a result, it was identified that the network is guided by goals of cooperation among the participating companies, in addition to representing the sector and provide services in the interests of the associates. The main factors influencing the formation of the network were: business center, marketing and training; but only training has been achieved satisfactorily. The business center and marketing factors have not yet been fully developed, being both identified as restrictive factors.

Leader productivity and people orientations for cooperative goals and effective teams in China

Researchers have traditionally distinguished leaders by the extent to which they are oriented to people and productivity, and meta-analytic results indicate that these orientations have consistent and practically important effects. But research is needed to understand the dynamics by which these orientations induce team effectiveness. This study empirically relates leader orientations to teamwork by suggesting that productivity- and people-oriented leaders develop cooperative goals among team members that in turn results in team effectiveness. A total of 146 team leaders from 21 organizations in China completed measures of productivity and people orientations and their encouraging cooperative goals among team members; 1067 team members rated their effectiveness. Results of the structural equation analysis support the theorizing that leader productivity and people values when complemented by strengthening cooperative relationships can contribute to making teams effective in China and perhaps in other countries as well.

The COST model for calculation of forest operations costs

Since the late nineteenth century when high-cost equipment was introduced into forestry there has been a need to calculate the cost of this equipment in more detail with respect to, for example, cost of ownership, cost per hour of production, and cost per production unit. Machine cost calculations have been made using various standard economic methods, where costs have been subdivided into capital costs and operational costs. Because of differences between methods and between national regulations, mainly regarding tax rules and subsidies, international comparisons of machine costs are difficult. To address this, one of the goals of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action FP0902 was to establish a simple format for transparent cost calculations for machines in the forest biomass procurement chain. A working group constructed a Microsoft Excel–based spreadsheet model which is easy to understand and use. Input parameters are easy to obtain or possible to estimate by provided rules of thumb. The model gives users a simultaneous view of the input parameters and the resulting cost outputs. This technical note presents the model, explains how the calculations are made, and provides future users with a guide on how to use the model. Prospective users can view the model in the Supplementary Material linked to this article online.

Moving Statelessness Forward on the International Agenda

This paper aims at shedding more light on the recent re-emergence of the issue of statelessness on the international agenda, from a government perspective. I wish to outline what a government can do in order to address statelessness through foreign policy initiatives and to highlight the issue of protecting stateless persons in different international fora. Hungary is a good example for that, being party to all international conventions on the protection of the stateless and on the reduction and prevention of statelessness. This shows to the outside world Hungary’s strong commitment to protecting stateless people and preventing future cases of it as well as reducing their existing number. In 2007, Hungary also established a self-standing statelessness determination procedure. Since then, the government has put more emphasis on the promotion of the protection of stateless people and the reduction of statelessness in her international relations. This article gives some examples on implementing this policy goal and mainstreaming statelessness in international cooperation.

Improving Outcomes for Teenagers and Young Adults (TYA) with Cancer

The management of TYA with cancer is characterized by biological features in comparison to children. Therefore specialized treatment units have been established within professional structures of care for this group, and a European multidisciplinary framework for the treatment of TYA with cancer was founded.Objectives are to promote interdisciplinary collaboration and provide strategic concepts to improve patient care centered to the special needs of this age group. Access to clinical trials for all TYA in the EU will be improved and research initiated, examining biology, epidemiology and health services.Special goals of the interprofessional cooperation are:Different measurements are discussed improving outcomes for TYA is proceeding at different speeds in different parts of the world. In some there are established teams, bringing together paediatric and adult specialists from many healthcare professions, reviewing and contributing to the optimal care of all TYA with cancer as part of national health policy.

Contribution of the Japan International Cooperation Agency health-related projects to health system strengthening

BackgroundThe Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has focused its attention on appraising health development assistance projects and redirecting efforts towards health system strengthening. This study aimed to describe the type of project and targets of interest, and assess the contribution of JICA health-related projects to strengthening health systems worldwide.MethodsWe collected a web-based Project Design Matrix (PDM) of 105 JICA projects implemented between January 2005 and December 2009. We developed an analytical matrix based on the World Health Organization (WHO) health system framework to examine the PDM data and thereby assess the projects’ contributions to health system strengthening.ResultsThe majority of JICA projects had prioritized workforce development, and improvements in governance and service delivery. Conversely, there was little assistance for finance or medical product development. The vast majority (87.6%) of JICA projects addressed public health issues, for example programs to improve maternal and child health, and the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Nearly 90% of JICA technical healthcare assistance directly focused on improving governance as the most critical means of accomplishing its goals.ConclusionsOur study confirmed that JICA projects met the goals of bilateral cooperation by developing workforce capacity and governance. Nevertheless, our findings suggest that JICA assistance could be used to support financial aspects of healthcare systems, which is an area of increasing concern. We also showed that the analytical matrix methodology is an effective means of examining the component of health system strengthening to which the activity and output of a project contributes. This may help policy makers and practitioners focus future projects on priority areas.

Коммуникативное целеполагание как основа типологизации задач по формированию коммуникативных универсальных учебных действий

The didactic conditions related to formation of communicative universal learning activities (ULA) during Literary Reading classes in the lower forms, and the typologization’s basis of tasks for these ULA formation are considered in this paper.
 Along with the knowledge, value relations and positive experience of communication the ULA are a structural component of communicative competence. Communication ULA are the planned result of main secondary program assimilation in the fi rst stage of learning. One of their formation means is common tasks. Diff erent foundations may be used as basis for typologization of tasks related to ULA formation. The tasks whose typologization is based on communication subjects’ cooperation goal are considered in this paper.
 In accordance with this base the following groups of tasks are relieved: on information request, on information exchange, on emotional self-expression, on presentation (knowledge, action, results), on conviction, on reasoned refusal. The proposed paper has been dedicated to communicative ULA formation.