Choice Of Goals Research Articles

Forecasting by econometric models as support to management

In the contemporary environment characterized by the dynamic structure of factors and the unpredictability of the relations existing between them, the central problem is the selection of strategic goals. Forecasting is the necessary precursor to the planning process and includes research into the future course of events. Numerous methods and techniques of forecasting are used nowadays. Econometric models can be used successfully for predicting the future development of a phenomenon, and thereby facilitate the choice of strategic goals.

Seven Steps Toward Freedom and Two Ways to Lose It

Psychological approaches often conceptualize “free will” as self-determined decision-making. However, the functional mechanisms potentially underlying volitional freedom or its limitations have barely been elaborated. Starting from a functional definition of volition, we illustrate how personality systems interactions (PSI) theory may contribute to explaining underlying mechanisms of volitional freedom. Specifically, based on neurobiological evidence, this theory postulates that degrees of volitional freedom increase with an increasing involvement of more complex levels of psychological functioning (e.g., from habits and affective impulses toward motives, specific goals, intentions, and more global, personal goals). We will demonstrate how, at a psychological level, demand-related stress limits the pursuit of specific goals, whereas threat-related stress limits self-congruent choice of specific goals. Empirical evidence will be reported that relate to these two possible ways of losing volitional (“top-down”) control. In addition, we report on neurobiological findings supporting the present view of volitional freedom and its limitations.

Treat-to-target strategies in pulmonary arterial hypertension: the importance of using multiple goals

Major advances have occurred in the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) over the past decade. The advent of PAH-specific pharmacological treatments has offered hope to patients with a debilitating, progressive disease and a poor prognosis. Combined drug treatment offers improved benefits over monotherapy, and current treatment guidelines for PAH recommend a sequential add-on approach to combination therapy for patients in New York Heart Association (NYHA)/World Health Organization functional class (WHO FC) II-IV. Goal-oriented therapy determines the timing of treatment escalation by inadequate response to known prognostic indicators. Close monitoring of patients aids the early identification of inadequate response, so that treatment can be escalated promptly and before the patient's condition deteriorates further. Existing treatment goals are based on baseline values of prognostic indicators, but it is vital to identify risk factors that are both relevant during treatment and that can be assessed during follow-up appointments. Data from different PAH aetiologies indicate that NYHA/WHO FC is the most appropriate prognostic marker, with 6-min walk distance and several haemodynamic parameters representing alternatives. Future refinement of goal-oriented therapy could include the use of multiple prognostic markers, while additional, large clinical trials will answer questions concerning choice and combination of treatment goals.

Interactions between States and Markets in a Global Context of Change: Contribution for Building a Research Agenda on Stakeholders’ Social Responsibility

textabstractThis working paper is part of ongoing research on international comparison between European and Brazilian public policies for cross-sector and multi-actor social responsibility based on a concept of stakeholders’ social responsibility as proposed by Ashley (2010). One of the propositions presented here is that the process and content of public policy-making and business strategies for CSR can be seen in a co-evolution process, which is co-shaped by social, economic, environmental, political and institutional aspects through interactions between markets, civil society and the State, either at local, regional and national level, as well as at the global level. This proposition can serve as lenses for comprehension on the variety of perspectives for public policies on CSR in an international context. The paper presents, in a first section, an analysis and discussion on a literature review concerning European public polices for corporate social responsibility. In a second section, it presents a discussion on some recent contributions for research on social responsibility at the organizational and inter-institutional levels. One contribution is the ISO 26000 revised final draft, which migrates from the concept of corporate social responsibility to organizational social responsibility. Another one is a model for an inter-institutional framework for multi-level and multi-actor governance of stakeholders’ social responsibility (Ashley, 2010), to be further developed as part of a research agenda from a perspective of critical social studies. It is here assumed that the choice of theories, methods and goals for a research agenda is also a political decision, affecting the role definition of higher education institutions as relevant contributors for policy making on development cooperation. Thus, one key aspect for future research is on the choice of scope of content – from narrow to broad concepts – and on the time-frame – short, medium or long term time-frames - adopted by researchers for the concept of social responsibility. Another key political aspect for a research agenda on social responsibility is considered on the embedded quality of political interaction between the State, markets and civil-society concerning the mutual contribution for an inter-institutional learning framework in the research agenda and design.

Government Adoption of Sales Promotions: An Initial Appraisal

Governments have begun to adopt sales promotions to shape household consumption. Successful private-sector promotions hinge on choice of goals, design parameters, and implementation, particularly coordination between manufacturers and retailers. In the public setting, additional considerations—including equitable and nondiscriminatory treatment of citizens, the influence of the political process on goal setting and program design, the lack of experience in managing marketing programs, and a high level of public scrutiny—may constrain their application. The authors evaluate two recent incentive programs implemented by the U.S. government—the TV Converter Box Coupon program and the “cash-for-clunkers” stimulus in the automotive industry. Both programs encountered problems with goal clarity, forecasting of consumer demand, contractor performance, and logistical coordination with retailers, necessitating legislative extensions. Despite these difficulties, both promotions met their specified short-term objectives, though long-term outcomes are less clear. Government-run consumer promotions are worth considering when there is good reason to shape the timing or amount of household consumption in a specific product category.

Collaborative and cross‐company project management within the automotive industry using the Balanced Scorecard

PurposeThis paper aims to summarize the scope, methodology, and main findings of a doctoral thesis about cross‐company project management in the automotive industry. The concept of the collaborative project scorecard (CPS) is described and the results of its application to a project are summarized and discussed.Design/methodology/approachThe project adopted an action research approach which included a series of interviews, surveys, workshops, and a case study where the developed project management concept was tested and evaluated in a real project setting.FindingsThe concept of the CPS supports the alignment of project goals with business strategies, improves transparency in networked project organizations with respect to roles, responsibilities, goal achievement, stakeholder identification, and performance assessment. Project goals is not only based on and measured by hard facts but also on soft facts such as trust and employee satisfaction. The balanced choice of common strategic project goals improves the achievement of long‐term strategies in a project partnership.Practical implicationsDifficulties in defining appropriate indicators are identified, and resistance to change can need to be overcome so that every project member has a clear understanding of the concept's benefits. Legal issues (contract) may need to be discussed when the concept is used by a cross‐corporate project team. The method helps the delivery of performance to become more clearly measurable.Originality/valueThe project gives insight into a new cross‐company project management concept that was tested and evaluated in the automotive industry. Furthermore, an information technology (IT) solution is developed and implemented, and advantages and disadvantages of the concept and its IT solution are analysed and recommendation on its application given. The project demonstrates how the Balanced Scorecard can successfully be applied to networked project environments.

Sexual Citizenship and the Pursuit of Relationship-Recognition Policies in Australia and the United States

Sexual Citizenship and the Pursuit of Relationship-Recognition Policies in Australia and the United States Mary Bernstein (bio) and Nancy A. Naples (bio) Achieving the right to marry has arguably been the one of the most important agenda items for the U.S. lesbian and gay movement for more than a decade (Bernstein 2002; Eskridge 1996). In contrast, achieving same-sex marriage has not been central to the political agenda of lesbian and gay activists in Australia until very recently. Instead, activists have pursued entrance into “de facto” relationships that are in some ways similar to common-law marriages in the United States. However, de facto relationships do not carry all the rights, responsibilities, and obligations of marriage, nor do they necessarily affect parental rights in the case of same-sex couples. Although initially heralded as a great victory in the United States, civil unions, originally developed in Vermont as an alternative to marriage, are now viewed by most activists as a second-class form of relationship recognition. Until recently, major advances in relationship recognition, including same-sex marriage (Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa) as well as comprehensive (Vermont, California, New Jersey, and Washington) or limited (Hawaii) domestic partnerships or civil unions in the United States were achieved through the courts, under threat of a court decision, or were passed as compromise measures in response to the enactment of state-level defense of marriage acts (DOMAs) that denied marriage rights to same-sex couples.1 In stark contrast, Australian activists have almost entirely eschewed the courts in their pursuit of official recognition of their relationships. Given that Australia and the United States are both considered liberal welfare states (Esping-Andersen 1990) with similar approaches to the development of public policy, what accounts for the differences between the two countries in the strategies they have developed [End Page 132] to achieve relationship recognition? What explains why activists in the United States and Australia have pursued different paths toward attaining relationship recognition? Why, in contrast to those in the United States, have Australian activists pursued recognition of de facto relationships as well as other types of nonmarital relationships? Why isn’t marriage the major marker of citizenship in Australia as it is in the United States? In short, what explains the different choice of goals for Australian lesbian and gay activists? In this article, we draw on the multi-institutional politics model (Armstrong and Bernstein 2008), feminist theories of the state (e.g., Orloff 1993), and studies of sexual citizenship (e.g., Evans 1993) to explain differences between the United States and Australia in how activists conceptualize the importance of marriage as a marker of citizenship. We argue that four factors account for these differences: structural differences in legal systems between the two nations, differences in welfare regimes and policy frameworks—namely, the relative importance and history of de facto relationships and marriage in the two countries—and cultural norms about marriage. In addition, we argue that shifts in the trajectory of and value attached to achieving different types of relationship recognition is the result of interactions with opposing movements and of the international diffusion of marriage-related conceptions of citizenship. We draw primarily on interview data, analysis of policy debates, documents produced by activist organizations, and historical data to answer these questions and focus briefly on differences between South Australia, Tasmania, and Vermont to illustrate our argument. Sexual Citizenship, Feminist Theories of the State, and Multi-institutional Politics Recent scholarship views citizenship as more than a collection of social and political rights and obligations. Instead, citizenship entails the ways in which individuals achieve legitimate status as full members of communities. “Citizenship describes a specific type of social bond between members of a community that is symbolic of material connections of culture, tradition, and geography” (Jones 1994, 256). More recently, “sexual citizenship” has been conceptualized narrowly as the set of rights based on sexuality that are granted or denied by the state or, more broadly, as how a person’s sexuality influences inclusion in a society, including its various [End Page 133] institutions and culture (Mann 2009; see also Waites 2005; Evans 1993; Richardson 2000). We adopt the broader view of sexual citizenship...

Valuing health: a new proposal

After criticizing existing systems of health measurement for their unargued commitment to evaluating health states in terms of preferences or well-being, this essay argues that public rather than private values of health states should help guide the allocation of health-related resources. Private evaluation of health states is relative to a prior individual choice of specific activities and goals, while public evaluation is relative to the whole range of important activities and goals. Public evaluation is concerned with securing a wide range of choices as well as with success given one's choice. A reasonable simplification from the public perspective is to focus on just two features of health states: the subjective feelings attached to health states and the limitations that health states imply on the range of important activities that individuals can pursue. Focusing on just these two dimensions permits the construction of a parsimonious classification of health states with regard to what matters most from the public perspective. This classification, which resembles those in the HALex and the Rosser and Kind Disability and Distress Index, might best be built on top of existing health-state classifications, by mapping the health states they define to activity-limitation/feeling pairs. To assign values to these pairs, I propose relying on deliberative groups to make comparisons among the pairs with respect to the relation 'is a more serious limitation on the range of objectives and good lives available to members of the population'. A ranking according to this property, is not a preference ranking, because it is not a ranking in terms of everything that matters to individuals. Working back from the weights attached to the activity-limitation/feeling pairs, one can impute weights for the health states in other classification systems that were mapped to those pairs. If those weights coincide roughly with current weights, then one legitimizes current weights and provides a vehicle for their public discussion and possible revision. If those weights do not coincide, then one has both an argument for revising current views of the cost effectiveness of treatments and policies and a method to carry out such a revision.

Factors Affecting Goal Difficulty and Performance When Employees Select Their Own Performance Goals: Evidence from the Field

ABSTRACT: This study examines factors influencing the difficulty of self-set goals and performance in a setting where employees were able to choose their performance goal from a menu of three choices established by management. Rewards for goal attainment were increasing in the difficulty of the goal. We develop a behavioral model of the factors expected to affect employees’ goal choices and performance. Anticipated influences on goal difficulty include employees’ impression management intentions, past performance, experience, and prior eligibility for rewards. We also expect performance to be related to goal difficulty. We use a unique combination of archival and questionnaire data from 476 employees at several call centers of a financial services company to test our hypotheses. All predictions are supported: the difficulty of self-set goals is negatively associated with employees’ impression management intentions; employees with better past performance set more difficult goals; and both prior performance and goal difficulty are positively associated with current period performance. We conduct supplementary analysis examining the extent to which employees selected attainable goals and the impact this had on performance. We also analyze the extent to which ratcheting concerns may have influenced actual performance for those employees who attained their goal. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

A formal, computational theory of multiple-goal pursuit: Integrating goal-choice and goal-striving processes.

Understanding the processes involved when pursuing multiple goals over time is a central question for motivational theorists. A dynamic, computational model integrating theories of goal striving and goal choice is presented to account for data emerging from Schmidt and DeShon's (2007) multiple-goal-pursuit protocol. The simulated results match the results reported in their study, including the finding that relative discrepancy from the goals positively predicted resource allocation early on but negatively predicted it toward the end of the session. Variance in parameters in the model also accounted for individual differences found in the data. Discussion focuses on the theoretical contribution of formally integrating elements of self-regulation theories, further empirical work needed to test the model, and further theoretical work needed to continue the integration process exemplified here.

Social cognitive influences on Mexican Americans’ career choices across Holland’s themes

This study examined several propositions of social cognitive career theory ( Lent et al., 1994, 2000) with a sample of 393 Mexican American college students. It was hypothesized that person input (i.e., age) and background contextual variables (i.e., Anglo orientation, Mexican orientation, familism, instrumentality, and expressivity) would predict career self-efficacy across Holland’s (1997) six RIASEC types. In addition, we examined the proposed relations between career self-efficacy, career interests, and career choice goal across the six RIASEC areas. Our results indicated that (a) Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional career models were similar across gender and university affiliation groups, (b) gender differences were found in the Realistic career model, (c) institutional affiliation differences were found in the Investigative career model, and (d) the models were a good fit to the data. Implications for future vocational research and career interventions are discussed.

Business students' perception of corporate social responsibility: the United States, China, and India

AbstractThis study used a questionnaire to assess perceptive differences in corporate social responsibility among business students in the United States, China, and India. The study finds that American and Indian respondents attached more importance to the noneconomic aspects of social responsibility than Chinese respondents. Chinese students were more accepting of making facilitating payments to get things moving. Indian respondents placed more emphasis on philanthropy while the US group emphasized legal obligations. In the choice of business goals, there is generally little difference between the three nationality groups. The two main goals selected are taking care of owners' interests and consumers' needs. The study's findings have implications for business school curriculum, public policy, and multinational corporations. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Embodied goal pursuit

Daum, Sommerville, and Prinz propose that the interrelation between the symbolic and embodied system needs more research attention. The proposal is based on the observation that human infants start out with embodied processes to understand the actions of others, and that these processes allow them to communicate with other people surprisingly well. What does the symbolic (language) system add to an infant’s communication when it becomes available to the infant around the end of the first year of life? Because the embodied versus the symbolic system are potentially dissociable and can yield different perception and interpretation of the same social behavior, the study of whether and how embodied and symbolic understanding is coordinated seems crucial. The authors suggest that the interaction between the embodied and symbolic systems can best be studied by analyzing how the bi-directional relation of the two systems affects socialcognitive development, as the infant becomes a mature social agent. Specifically, they propose to investigate the extent to which the embodied and the symbolic systems work together, impede each other, or are independent in affecting social communication and thus a person’s social-cognitive development. The authors also suggest studying the interaction of the two systems at their developmental roots. Indeed, it is when the embodied system is ‘‘hit’’ by the symbolic system that processes of how the two systems affect each other should become evident. Daum et al. describe various lines of research supporting each of the proposed relations between the systems: Collaboration, interference, and independence. For instance, regarding collaboration, children’s early embodied social understanding and skills are observed to form the bedrock for a more formal understanding of other persons’ behavior (Aschersleben, Hofer, & Jovanovic, 2008). Daum et al. provide valuable insights into a new and exciting route of analyzing how the embodied and the symbolic systems interrelate. These insights from an ontogenetic perspective may be supplemented by research from a situational perspective. The latter research would ask: How do the embodied and the symbolic systems relate in influencing the behavior of a person in a specified context? The analysis of goal pursuit provides an ideal opportunity to study this question. Research on goal pursuit (goal setting and goal striving) so far has focused on the symbolic system. Specifically, people are considered to commit to goals and plan their attainment by using symbolic procedures. Stepping back from this traditional perspective (Oettingen & Gollwitzer, 2001), the question arises to what extent the embodied system and the symbolic system work together, work against each other, or work independently in affecting goal setting and goal striving. Research on goal pursuit has long distinguished between aspects of goal setting, such as goal choice and commitment, and aspects of goal striving, such as goal enactment and shielding (Lewin, Dembo, Festinger, & Sears, 1944; summary by Oettingen & Gollwitzer, 2001). Successful goal attainment requires sufficient commitment to goals. It also requires the planning of appropriate goal-oriented behaviors during the subsequent goal-striving phase. Mentally contrasting a desired positive future with its impeding negative reality is a self-regulatory strategy that may lead to strong goal commitments

Knowledge-driven enhancements for task composition in bioinformatics.

BackgroundA key application area of semantic technologies is the fast-developing field of bioinformatics. Sealife was a project within this field with the aim of creating semantics-based web browsing capabilities for the Life Sciences. This includes meaningfully linking significant terms from the text of a web page to executable web services. It also involves the semantic mark-up of biological terms, linking them to biomedical ontologies, then discovering and executing services based on terms that interest the user.ResultsA system was produced which allows a user to identify terms of interest on a web page and subsequently connects these to a choice of web services which can make use of these inputs. Elements of Artificial Intelligence Planning build on this to present a choice of higher level goals, which can then be broken down to construct a workflow. An Argumentation System was implemented to evaluate the results produced by three different gene expression databases. An evaluation of these modules was carried out on users from a variety of backgrounds. Users with little knowledge of web services were able to achieve tasks that used several services in much less time than they would have taken to do this manually. The Argumentation System was also considered a useful resource and feedback was collected on the best way to present results.ConclusionOverall the system represents a move forward in helping users to both construct workflows and analyse results by incorporating specific domain knowledge into the software. It also provides a mechanism by which web pages can be linked to web services. However, this work covers a specific domain and much co-ordinated effort is needed to make all web services available for use in such a way, i.e. the integration of underlying knowledge is a difficult but essential task.

A Pragmatist Approach to the Problem of Knowledge in Health Psychology

The multiplicity of forms of health-related knowledge, including biomedical knowledge, lay knowledge and critical constructionist knowledge, raises challenges for health researchers. On one hand, there is a demand for a pluralist acceptance of the variety of health-related knowledge. On the other, the need to improve health calls for action, and thus for choices between opposing forms of knowledge. The present article proposes a pragmatist approach to this epistemological problem. According to pragmatism, knowledge is a tool for action and as such it should be evaluated according to whether it serves our desired interests. We identify implications for research methodology and the choice of research goals.

Model-based reinforcement learning under concurrent schedules of reinforcement in rodents

Reinforcement learning theories postulate that actions are chosen to maximize a long-term sum of positive outcomes based on value functions, which are subjective estimates of future rewards. In simple reinforcement learning algorithms, value functions are updated only by trial-and-error, whereas they are updated according to the decision-maker's knowledge or model of the environment in model-based reinforcement learning algorithms. To investigate how animals update value functions, we trained rats under two different free-choice tasks. The reward probability of the unchosen target remained unchanged in one task, whereas it increased over time since the target was last chosen in the other task. The results show that goal choice probability increased as a function of the number of consecutive alternative choices in the latter, but not the former task, indicating that the animals were aware of time-dependent increases in arming probability and used this information in choosing goals. In addition, the choice behavior in the latter task was better accounted for by a model-based reinforcement learning algorithm. Our results show that rats adopt a decision-making process that cannot be accounted for by simple reinforcement learning models even in a relatively simple binary choice task, suggesting that rats can readily improve their decision-making strategy through the knowledge of their environments.

Goal Orientation and Quality Management Practices of Farm and Non-Farm Family Businesses

Effective quality management requires setting appropriate goals for the firm. Quality management practices of small farm and non-farm family businesses are compared and a multi nomial logit model was used to analyze the choice of primary business goal by the firm owner. Business owners had the choice of five primary business goals: adequate financing, profit, a positive reputation with customers, long-term viability, or growth. We found statistically significant differences between farm and non-farm family businesses in quality management practices and in their choice of primary business goal. Farm family businesses reported a primary emphasis on financial record keeping in their quality management practices and reported profit as their primary business goal whereas non-farm businesses emphasized product and employee management and customer oriented goal preference.

THE LONG-RUN FORECAST: IN SEARCH OF THE RUSSIAN AND WORLD FUTURE

The article is devoted to the substantiation of the necessity of fundamental change of the Russian political science problematic focus. Stating that the Russian political science is at a bifurcation point now, V.Martyanov talks about several possible directions of its development. The first one is to be satisfied with the status of “normal” (in comparison to the already existing “universal” patterns) science and by doing so throw itself to playing secondary role and being dependent in its choice of values and goals. The second way is to go into shell interpreting universal as national. The third one is tied to the belief that our political as being specific might become interesting for the rest of the world and therefore, universal, might produce values and goals if not now, then in the future. Martyanov thinks that Russia can no doubt take upon the role of being a generator of new principles of the global Modernity, but only in that case if it offers decisions not as much for itself, but for the humanity as a whole.

Sex, Age Group and Locality Differences in Adolescent Athletes' Beliefs, Values and Goal Orientation in Track and Field

This study used the Eccles et al. expectancy-value model of achievement choice and achievement goal theory to investigate sex, age group and locality differences in adolescent athletes' expectancy-related beliefs, subjective task values and achievement goals in track and field. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 632 (349 male, 283 female) athletes from the under 15 and 18 years age groups (mean, 15.2 ± 1.28 years) who volunteered to participate in the annual state track and field meet. The participants completed the expectancy-related beliefs, subjective task values measures, and Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire. Results indicated a significant interaction effect between sex, age group and locality for expectancy-related beliefs, F(1, 624) = 8.02 (p 0.05) and ego orientation, F(1, 624) = 0.04 (p > 0.05). Expectancy-related beliefs were found to be related with subjective task values (r = 0.64, p

Reducing the risk of Atlantic thermohaline circulation collapse: sensitivity analysis of emissions corridors

We present emissions corridors for the 21 st century reducing the risk of collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (THC) while considering ex- pectations about the socio-economically acceptable pace of emissions reductions. Emissions corridors embrace the range of CO2 emissions that are compatible with normatively defined policy goals or 'guardrails'. They are calculated along the conceptual and methodological lines of the tolerable windows approach. We inves- tigate the sensitivity of the emissions corridors to key uncertain physical quantities (i.e. climate sensitivity and North Atlantic hydrological sensitivity, emissions of non- CO2 greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols) as well as to the guardrails. Results indicate a large dependency of the width of the emissions corridor on climate and hydrological sensitivity: for low values of the climate and/or hydrological sensitivity, the corridor boundaries are far from being transgressed by business-as-usual emis- sions scenarios for the 21 st century. In contrast, for high values of both quantities already low non-intervention scenarios leave the corridor in the early decades of this century. The width of the CO2 emissions corridor is also affected by the emissions pathway of non-CO2 greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols, but to a lesser extent. We further find that the choice of the policy goal strongly influences the shape of the emissions corridor. Pursuit of a more ambitious THC target, for instance, tightens the corridor considerably. More strict expectations concerning the socio-economically admissible pace of emissions reduction (expressed in terms of a maximum emissions reduction rate and a transition time towards a de-carbonizing economy) act in the