Prior Empirical Findings Research Articles

People with disagreeable personalities (selfish, combative, and manipulative) do not have an advantage in pursuing power at work

Does being disagreeable-that is, behaving in aggressive, selfish, and manipulative ways-help people attain power? This question has long captivated philosophers, scholars, and laypeople alike, and yet prior empirical findings have been inconclusive. In the current research, we conducted two preregistered prospective longitudinal studies in which we measured participants' disagreeableness prior to entering the labor market and then assessed the power they attained in the context of their work organization ∼14 y later when their professional careers had unfolded. Both studies found disagreeable individuals did not attain higher power as opposed to extraverted individuals who did gain higher power in their organizations. Furthermore, the null relationship between disagreeableness and power was not moderated by individual differences, such as gender or ethnicity, or by contextual variables, such as organizational culture. What can account for this null relationship? A close examination of behavior patterns in the workplace found that disagreeable individuals engaged in two distinct patterns of behavior that offset each other's effects on power attainment: They engaged in more dominant-aggressive behavior, which positively predicted attaining higher power, but also engaged in less communal and generous behavior, which predicted attaining less power. These two effects, when combined, appeared to cancel each other out and led to a null correlation between disagreeableness and power.

The linguistic looming effect

Abstract We describe a new phenomenon related to language comprehension and memory: the Linguistic Looming Effect (LLE). The perceptual looming bias is the finding that objects approaching the self grab attention and generate quick adaptive action, such as avoidance of the object ( Neuhoff, 2018 ). The LLE is the finding that sentences that describe concrete objects or abstract entities moving toward the self are processed more quickly and remembered better than sentences describing motion of objects or abstract entities away from the self. The first three experiments of the present research describe the LLE as observed in experiments designed to examine the action-sentence compatibility effect, or ACE ( Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002 ) and its consequences for long-term memory. The fourth experiment was specifically designed to generate an LLE in the absence of two potential confounds, and the results again showed the effect. The fifth experiment served to replicate the effect and to analyze its occurrence when sentences with a third-person perspective were used. The LLE is discussed in relation to prior empirical findings, and it is interpreted in the light of theoretical frameworks related to the embodied approach to cognition and the role played by the self in the processing and remembering of information.

Mobile Internet Usage and Usage Based Pricing

Using data on mobile Internet usage of thousands of individuals, we provide some of the first analyses linking mobile usage to key demographics such as income. We find a reverse-U relationship between mobile Internet usage and income – notably different than the monotonically declining relationship found on home devices. This pattern suggests that data caps are particularly binding on low-income users. We then construct a simple model of mobile Internet usage that incorporates demand features suggested by our empirical finding and prior empirical findings on device adoption and usage. After abstracting away from cost and two-sided market considerations, we solve the model, and through comparative statics, identify demand conditions for which usage-based pricing (via a data cap) is, or is not, revenue enhancing. Key insights from this analysis are: 1) the tendency toward demand-driven price discrimination is hill-shaped (increasing then decreasing) in the number of low-income users and eventually declining in high-income users, and 2) a relatively high (low) proportion of total value attained from relatively low usage levels by low-income (high-income) users increases the tendency toward demand-driven price discrimination. Hence, to the extent that a market has a large number of low-income users and/or high-income users attain a higher proportion of their total value at the cap than low-income users, the use of caps by providers is more likely driven by cost (or other non-demand-side) considerations than by revenue enhancement. Lastly, additional analysis shows a largely monotonically increasing relationship between income and usage intensity (measured as page views in a session), suggesting that, ceteris paribus, price discrimination strategies may be more effective if tied to usage intensity rather than duration.

The Effect of Past Performance and Task Type on Managers’ Target Setting Decisions: An Experimental Investigation

This study investigates how performance-to-target (exceeding vs. missing prior target) and task type (ability-driven vs. effort-driven) affect manager’s target setting decisions in a setting in which a manager sets targets for multiple employees. We predict that target adjustments are greater when the prior target is exceeded than when it is missed, especially when the task is ability-driven rather than effort-driven. Additionally, we predict that target difference, i.e., the difference in target levels between stronger and weaker performer within the firm, is larger when task is ability-driven than when it is effort-driven and that this effect is attenuated when prior targets are missed compared to when they are exceeded. Our findings, from an experiment using executives from an EMBA alumni program with, on average, more than 16 years of professional work experience as participants, support our hypotheses as well as the underlying theoretical process. As prior empirical findings are inconclusive in this area of reseach, we contribute to the literature by providing controlled experimental evidence about the asymmetric nature of target adjustments when prior targets are exceeded vs. missed. Additionally, we identify an important factor that affects managers’ target setting decisions — task type — that has been neglected in prior work.

Commentary on the Special Section on Complex PTSD: Still Going Strong After All These Years.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is inherently complex, yet a growing evidence base indicates that a complex variant (CPTSD) can be distinguished from classic PTSD based on evidence of clinically significant affect, interpersonal, and self/identity dysregulation. This Commentary to the Journal of Traumatic Stress special section on CPTSD reviews the results of four new studies that empirically tested the structure, traumatic stressor antecedents, and construct validity of CPTSD in relation to PTSD and borderline personality disorder (BPD). Based on these and prior empirical findings, a reconceptualization of PTSD, CPTSD, and BPD as posttraumatic threat, betrayal, and rejection disorders, respectively, is proposed. Implications for treatment of trauma survivors are discussed in relation to articles in this special section, which describe a modular framework for CPTSD treatment and an innovative attachment and self-regulation focused on the redesign of a traditional outpatient mental health clinic.

PNS72 EVALUATION OF MEDICAL TECHNOLOGIES WITH UNCERTAIN BENEFITS

To incorporate measures of risk and uncertainty (variance, skewness and kurtosis of the distribution of treatment outcomes) into standard cost/effectiveness measures of economic value for medical treatments with uncertain (stochastic) outcomes. We use Taylor Series methods to introduce variance, skewness and kurtosis into measures of expected utility, incorporating previously-quantified measures of risk attitude, including risk-aversion, prudence and temperance. This approach uses standard economic models of expected utility maximization, building upon and extending current best-practices for cost-effectiveness evaluations. If treatments have uncertain (stochastic) effects, standard cost/effectiveness models relying only on mean clinical outcomes can produce significantly biased estimates of true economic value. Either upward or downward bias can occur, depending on how the new treatment alters variance, skewness, and kurtosis of the distribution of treatment outcomes (vs. existing treatments). In general, lower variance and positive shifts in skewness of health outcomes increase expected utility, while increases in variance and negative shifts in skewness reduce expected utility. This helps explain prior empirical findings of a “value of hope” for patients presented with treatments with right-skewed but uncertain benefits. We graphically demonstrate the degree of potential errors in technology evaluations that omit these stochastic components using plausible changes in relevant statistical parameters and risk preference parameters from the economic literature. Clinical trials regularly assess variance to determine the precision of estimated treatment effects. Practitioners can implement our new method with (at minimum) a single new data-type from clinical trials – skewness in treatment outcome distributions. Additionally, assessing kurtosis in treatment outcome distributions adds further to our method’s precision. Omitting information about variance, skewness and (potentially) kurtosis can seriously bias medical technology assessments when treatment outcomes have uncertain (stochastic) outcomes. Clinical trials may need to enlarge sample sizes to measure skewness and kurtosis with appropriate precision.

Conceptualising pedagogical designs for learning through object-oriented collaboration in higher education

ABSTRACTThis paper elaborates on the notion of object-oriented collaborative learning by building on empirical material from two case studies in higher education. Prior empirical findings show how knowledge objects are evolving entities, shaped by the interactions between participants, and how students learn from engaging in knowledge practice that involves different activities with knowledge objects. However, the pedagogy of teaching and learning with objects needs to be further explored and grounded in empirical data. Using two case studies, we examine how learning designs in higher education courses support students’ learning through work on shared knowledge objects, as well as how students experience these designs and the learning process. By means of complementary datasets, the learning design, enacted teaching practices, collaboration processes, experiences, and competence learned are mapped and analysed. The findings are helpful in elucidating the learning taking place through interaction and practices mediated by shared knowledge objects, as well as informing the development of principles of a pedagogy of object-oriented collaborative learning, which provide practical recommendations and invite further research endeavours.

Quantifying the cross sectional relation of daily happiness sentiment and stock return: Evidence from US

In this paper, we utilize the natural log value of Twitter happiness index as the measurement for investor daily happiness sentiment (DHS) and investigate its cross-sectional correlations with twelve US indices. With correlation coefficients and Granger causality tests, we find contemporaneous and long-term interactions between DHS and indices returns. In addition, we discover noticeable return differences across quantile subgroups and the differences are further qualified with significant statistics. We also carry out another robustness check with altered quantile setting. In general, the robustness results show no divergence with prior empirical findings.

From Bricks to an Edifice: Cultivating Strong Inference in Information Systems Research

MIS research studies often account for prior empirical research findings (i.e., they empirically cumulate) but do not conceptually build atop their ideas and those in adjacent research streams (i.e., they are theoretically less cumulative than they can be). An analogy for disciplines such as ours is that we end up making high-quality, standalone bricks when the intent all along was to build an edifice. We develop two philosophy-of-science ideas—nomological rubberbanding and retroduction—to help cultivate greater theoretical cumulation by shifting the MIS research community’s thinking from “weak” to “strong” inference. This shift characterizes faster-progressing disciplines such as molecular biology and nuclear physics. We use the IT-outsourcing literature to illustrate the application of the two ideas developed here. The two-pronged approach advocated here leverages the cross-disciplinary nature of the MIS discipline, the diversity of research traditions that it encompasses, and its strong culture of empirical cumulation.

Do interactions cancel associations of subjective well-being with individual-level socioeconomic characteristics? An exploratory analysis using the European Social Survey

Using the European Social Survey (2002–2014, 16 countries, N = 146,579), I examine whether significant associations between self-reported subjective well-being (SWB) and thirteen individual-level socioeconomic characteristics still hold in specific population sub-groups. The determinants are age, gender, children at home, education, work status, religiosity, political orientation, trust towards the parliament and the legal system, meeting friends, marital status, health and finances. Based on each characteristic’s values, I divide the sample into sub-groups and run separate regressions. Compared to regressions using the whole sample, only six of the aforementioned characteristics maintain the same association with SWB. For age, gender, children at home, education, religiosity and trust the previous associations with SWB now disappear. These results contradict prior theoretical and empirical findings.

The Association among Corporate Governance, Corruption, and Economic Prosperity in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam

AbstractThe OECD considers compliance with the OECD principles of corporate governance and reduced corruption to be positively associated with economic prosperity. Prior empirical research supports this notion for developed countries. However, findings for developing and emerging countries are more diverse, as some studies document an “East Asia paradox” and link higher levels of corruption with positive outcomes at the firm or country level. Our case study on the Socialist Republic of Vietnam contributes to the literature by identifying determinants of these mixed findings. Relying on triangulation, our results suggest that internationalizing and international firms must adhere to OECD expectations to prosper, while domestic firms prefer operating in corrupt but stable conditions. Due to this mechanism, noncompliance with OECD principles and corruption can deter foreign direct investments and thus negatively influence economic growth. Nevertheless, noncompliance with OECD principles and corruption can still work to benefit domestic firms. Given our results for Vietnam, we argue that the internationalization of the business models of the firms analyzed might explain the prior inconclusive empirical findings.

The complementarity of strategic orientations: A meta‐analytic synthesis and theory extension

Abstract Research SummaryA firm's strategic orientation has long been of interest in management and strategy research. In particular, entrepreneurial, market, and learning orientations have received thorough theoretical and empirical research attention. In this meta‐analysis, we compare the direct and combined performance effects of these orientations, explore their interrelatedness, and provide a theoretical foundation for complementarity between the three. Building on prior empirical findings from 210 samples and using structural equation modeling and seemingly unrelated regression techniques, we extend the knowledge base on strategic orientations. Our results provide evidence for interrelatedness and complementarity among strategic orientations, indicating that superior firm performance emerges from its capability to align entrepreneurial, market, and learning orientations. Managerial SummaryManagers might be tempted to divide rather than combine their attention on various aspects of strategy, such as entrepreneurial, market, and learning orientations. Similarly, organizational culture might inhibit or promote collaboration between distinct organizational functions. We synthesize a vast body of research on firm‐level strategy making and reveal that while each strategic orientation is beneficial on its own, together, the three strategic orientations create synergies that surpass the effects of individual strategic orientations. Therefore, to achieve superior performance, firms need to align their strategy making efforts to (a) monitoring changes in customer needs and competitor moves, (b) engaging in creative processes, and (c) assimilating the extensive knowledge gained from these activities.

Role of companies’ size in socio-economic development of regions in the Czech Republic

The aim of this paper is to investigate socio-economic development drivers of NUTS 3 regions in the Czech Republic. The aim is fulfilled by examination of the relationship between one of the regional development factors – the companies’ size structure and the development of the region from both socio and economic views. We derive from the theory of diversification and prior empirical findings, and empirically test the role of companies’ size in regional development. We use a balanced dataset of 14 regions covering the years 2000 – 2016 that provides the information about regions’ socio-economic performance in terms of GDP and unemployment rate. We hypothesise that unemployment rate in the regions with higher share of small firms is less sensitive to the general trend of the whole economy. However, the higher share of small firms leads to improved regional GDP. Our findings confirm that small firms accelerate economic growth while playing a role of a social stabiliser in Czech regions. Our conclusions could help in designing the regional policy in the Czech Republic.

Intraday price discovery and volatility spillovers in an emerging market

This paper extends the study of price discovery and volatility transmission between the cash and futures index prices in Athens Exchange by using a new high-frequency dataset. It also employs, for the first time in the Greek market, well-known techniques to examine the long-run relationships and the short-run dynamics between spot and futures prices. In sum, the error correction model estimations and the estimated information shares provide evidence in support of the leading role of the futures market in the price discovery process. Furthermore, our results suggest strong bi-directional dependence in the intraday volatility of both markets, refuting prior empirical findings. Finally, we show that the pricing efficiency of the futures contracts in Athens Exchange has improved over the last years, as we document fewer divergences from the no-arbitrage window.

Fronto-parietal mirror neuron system modeling: Visuospatial transformations support imitation learning independently of imitator perspective

Although the human mirror neuron system (MNS) is critical for action observation and imitation, most MNS investigations overlook the visuospatial transformation processes that allow individuals to interpret and imitate actions observed from differing perspectives. This problem is not trivial since accurately reaching for and grasping an object requires a visuospatial transformation mechanism capable of precisely remapping fine motor skills where the observer’s and imitator’s arms and hands may have quite different orientations and sizes. Accordingly, here we describe a novel neural model to investigate the dynamics between the fronto-parietal MNS and visuospatial processes during observation and imitation of a reaching and grasping action. Our model encompasses i) the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and inferior parietal lobule (IPL), regions that are postulated to produce neural drive and sensory predictions, respectively; ii) the middle temporal (MT) and middle superior temporal (MST) regions that are postulated to process visual motion of a particular action; and iii) the superior parietal lobule (SPL) and intra-parietal sulcus (IPS) that are hypothesized to encode the visuospatial transformations enabling action observation/imitation based on different visuospatial viewpoints. The results reveal that when a demonstrator executes an action, an imitator can reproduce it with similar kinematics, independently of differences in anthropometry, distance, and viewpoint. As with prior empirical findings, similar model synaptic activity was observed during both action observation and execution along with the existence of both view-independent and view-dependent neural populations in the frontal MNS. Importantly, this work generates testable behavioral and neurophysiological predictions. Namely, the model predicts that i) during observation/imitation the response time increases linearly as the rotation angle of the observed action increases but remain similar when performing both clockwise and counterclockwise rotation and ii) IPL embeds essentially view-independent neurons while SPL/IPS includes both view-independent and view-dependent neurons. Overall, this work suggests that MT/MST visuomotion processes combined with the SPL/IPS allow the MNS to observe and imitate actions independently of demonstrator-imitator spatial relationships.

CEO Inside Debt and Asymmetric Cost Behavior

We examine the impact of CEO inside debt on SG&A cost asymmetry using a broad sample of S&P 1500 nonfinancial U. S. firms. Theory and prior empirical findings suggest that CEOs with large inside debt holdings manage their firms conservatively and adopt less risky corporate decisions. This study investigates the impact of CEO inside debt on cost decisions. The core concept of cost asymmetry literature is the future value of slack resources when sales decrease: slack resources can avoid adjustment costs when sales rebound. However, slack resources are still a part of risky investment because the management future prediction cannot be perfectly precise. Therefore, we predict that firms managed by CEOs who have high CEO inside debt exhibit lower degree of cost asymmetry. Consistent with our conjecture, we find that CEO inside debt is negatively associated with SG&A cost asymmetry. Further, we find that the negative association is more pronounced among firms with higher risk, suggesting that CEO inside debt provides managers with incentives in correspondence to the firm’s business condition. Additional evidence shows that the negative relation between CEO inside debt and cost asymmetry is more pronounced when the CEO is older and when the CEO is an outsider. Overall, this study contributes to the literature by providing evidence that CEO inside debt influences managers’resource adjustment decisions.

Influence of empathy on hotel guests’ emotional service experience

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to assess the comparative influence of two empathy dimensions (cognitive and emotional attributes) on emotional service experience and behavioral intention among business and leisure hotel guests. Studies relevant to empathy dimensions are relatively scarce in tourism and hospitality.Design/methodology/approachThe current study reviewed the concepts of empathy, and empirically compared perceptions of empathy attributes between the two groups. The survey was intended to examine how well the hotel employees emotionally handle hotel guests’ incidents or inquiries related to any discomforts through personalized attention. The data were collected from 330 hotel guests who had actually complained about service failures while staying at the hotel during the record-breaking summer of 2013 in terms of number of visitors to Jeju. An active empathetic listening (AEL) tool has been taken to measure the hotel guest’s cognitive views and behavioral intentions, as well as emotional empathy measures under the empathic concern and emotional contagion.FindingsThe results revealed that empathetic dimensions strongly influenced the service experiences of hotel guests. While the emotional service experience of business guests was almost completely determined by the cognitive empathy, the emotional service experience of the leisure guests was mainly governed by the emotional empathy.Practical implicationsThese outcomes suggest that the empathetic services through a “purpose of visit”-oriented manner might enhance the guest’s overall emotion positively.Originality/valueAccording to the prior literatures and empirical findings in hospitality and tourism, empathy can be seen as subscale in SERVQUAL instrument. This paper focus on insights of empathy dimensions, and it was revealed that the interaction of both the cognitive and emotional dimensions of empathy conjointly determines the overall emotional service experience and intention of hotel guests.

Bringing cognition into strategic interactions: Strategic mental models and open questions

Research SummaryThis article explicitly introduces cognitive considerations into the treatment of strategic interactions, using the value‐based framework as an extended example. Through real‐world examples and prior empirical findings, it shows that many of the implicit assumptions of the framework are regularly violated in practice when actors simplify their complex realities into incomplete, inaccurate mental models. These violations lead to outcomes that are often contrary to the predictions of the classical framework. As initial steps toward developing a cognitively grounded theory of strategic interactions, the article characterizes the core components of strategic mental models that might form the foundation of such a theory and then lays out some open questions that this theory would need to address. These questions, when answered, can point to novel cognitive capabilities.Managerial SummaryThis article argues that a realistic analysis of interactions between strategic agents requires us to include the mental models, that is, belief systems, of those agents into the analysis. Real‐world examples and prior empirical findings are used to show that if such mental models are not accounted for, the outcomes predicted by the analysis could be quite different from those obtained in reality. The article identifies a few key aspects of these strategic mental models that deserve attention. It also identifies a few central questions that, when answered, could allow firms to develop novel cognitive capabilities that confer competitive advantage.

Tax competition among U.S. states: Racing to the bottom or riding on a seesaw?

Dramatic declines in capital tax rates among U.S. states and European countries have been linked by many commentators to tax competition, an inevitable “race to the bottom,” and underprovision of local public goods. This paper analyzes the reaction of capital tax policy in a given U.S. state to changes in capital tax policy by other states. Our study is undertaken with a novel panel data set covering the 48 contiguous U.S. states for the period 1965 to 2006 and is guided by the theory of strategic tax competition. The latter suggests that capital tax policy is a function of “foreign” (out-of-state) tax policy, preferences for government services, and home state and foreign state economic and demographic conditions. The slope of the reaction function – the equilibrium response of home state to foreign state tax policy – is negative, contrary to casual evidence and many prior empirical studies of fiscal reaction functions. This result, which stands in contrast to most published findings, is due to two critical elements that allow for delayed responses to foreign tax changes and responses to aggregate shocks. Omitting either of these elements leads to a misspecified model and a positively sloped reaction function. Our results suggest that the secular decline in capital tax rates, at least among U.S. states, reflects synchronous responses among states to common shocks rather than competitive responses to foreign state tax policy. While striking given prior empirical findings, these results are fully consistent with the implications of the theoretical model developed in this paper and presented elsewhere in the literature. Rather than “racing to the bottom,” our findings suggest that states are “riding on a seesaw.” Consequently, tax competition may lead to an increase in the provision of local public goods, and policies aimed at restricting tax competition to stem the tide of declining capital taxation are likely to be ineffective.

Confirmatory Factor Analytic Structure and Measurement Invariance of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents in a Longitudinal Sample of Adolescents

While adolescence is a critical stage of development marked by heightened bottom-up emotional reactivity and immature top-down regulatory control, research on emotion regulation has relatively neglected middle childhood to adolescence years. This may be attributed to the limited number and scope of age-appropriate, reliable, and valid measures of emotion regulation. This study examines the confirmatory factor analytic structure and measurement invariance of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (ERQ-CA), a 10-item self-report measure designed to measure habitual use of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, across a 1-year time interval in school samples of adolescents. Results indicate low test–retest reliability but high to acceptable internal consistency over a 1-year time period. The two-factor model has an approximate but close fit to the data collected, which is consistent with underlying theoretical framework and prior empirical findings. Tests of measurement equivalence support strong invariance, indicating that there were no statistically significant differences in factor means, variances, and correlations over a 1-year interval.