Professional Style Research Articles

Cognitive style as a component in meeting workplace demands for consumer services professionals: benchmarking professional and student styles

Job skill evolution suggests an increased complexity of tasks in consumer services. To provide benchmarks about the role of cognitive style in the development of a talent pool for consumer services the field-dependence cognitive styles of current professionals were assessed. Then, the field-dependence cognitive styles of secondary students were assessed to provide a comparison for the development of future professionals. Professionals were found to be more field-independent than students.

Understanding Interpersonal Behavior Changes from Student to Professional

ABSTRACT Personality instruments have been used in college classrooms to help students understand how their interpersonal behaviors will affect their professional work. This investigation assessed how the interpersonal behaviors of students majoring in commercial recreation changed over a five-year time frame, from college students to practicing professionals. Although from a small sample size, data indicated that a majority of students changed personality categories; however, these changes were not statistically significant. Demographic variables showed no relationship with personality changes. These findings indicated personality assessments used in undergraduate courses may be helpful in preparing students to understand their professional style.

Triadic Assessment

This article describes the findings of, and the conclusions drawn from, a research project sponsored by the University of Plymouth Student Centred Learning Initiative (SCLI) with the intention of gaining an indepth view of self, peer and tutor (triadic) assessment. The research employed an essentially qualitative methodology incorporating the use of questionnaire and semi-structured interview techniques. The research cohort was drawn from groups of students studying at different stages of the BA(Hons) Education and Training programme within the Faculty of Arts & Education at the University of Plymouth. The research project was designed to examine triadic assessment within the context of the formative and summative stages of the assessment process of the programme. Of significance to the research was the fact that triadic assessment was seen to form an integral part of the formative and summative stages of the programme assessment procedures. This involved all students in a collaborative process of setting their own assessment criteria; a process supported through directed study activities and ongoing monitoring and review. While the researchers all subscribed to the view that this process is a key part of triadic assessment, the discourse evaluation that the research also involved ensured that the assessment practices examined were closely and critically evaluated. The ongoing process of interrogation and re-conceptualisation of the epistemological foundations of the research practice were sustained throughout the research process. Questions of power and knowledge were closely examined, alongside a close critical analysis of the way in which the professional identity and assessment practice style of those involved in the research were influenced by the way in which they were situated within a variety of different practice contexts. This article proposes a problematising of triadic assessment and concludes that it is clearly not a transparent activity that reveals easily generalisable and universalisable features and characteristics. Depending upon chosen perspectives, triadic assessment will, therefore, possess strengths and weaknesses. Evidence from the research suggests that notions of self- and peer assessment are contested and negotiated within the context of situated and active discursive construction.

Personal perspective in TV news interviews

Two interviews by Christiane Amanpour televized September 8, 2000 on CNN, one with Ehud Barak and one with Yasser Arafat were analyzed for indicators of personal perspective. Generally, use of the same indicators as in Suleiman, O’Connell, & Kowal (2002) was confirmed: Number of syllables spoken; use of first-person singular and plural pronominals and second-person pronominals; hesitations; smooth and interruptive turn transitions; and questions posed by interviewees. The interview with Arafat was extraordinarily agonistic, as manifested in his excessive use of first-person singular and second-person pronominals, hesitations, questions, and interruptions. For her part, Amanpour incited the shift to agonism with her provocative questioning. She then moved toward a more personal perspective by speaking proportionally more and by using more first-person singular pronominals and hesitations, all the while still maintaining her professional style of smooth turn transition. The dialogical character of personal perspective is discussed.

Effective Organisational Response by Corporates to India's Liberalisation and Globalisation

The Indian economy began to liberalise and globalise in earnest beginning in 1991. The principal elements of the economy's structural adjustment that have created a far more competitive and turbulent but also opportunity-rich market environment are described. Based on prior Western and Indian research, a model of effective corporate coping with such a market environment has been developed. The model argues that the greater use of policy frameworks representing entrepreneurial, organic, professional, and participatory styles of management, and mechanisms of uncertainty reduction, differentiation, and integration tend to enhance corporate performance in such an environment, while their absence or low usage depresses it. Four sources of information are utilised to assess the model: published information on how Indian corporates have generally coped with economic liberalisation and globalisation, three corporate case studies, data from a recent study of 139 Indian corporates, and another study of 54 Indian corporates. All four sources broadly converge in their support for the model. Several issues relating to the contingency and strategic choice perspectives, and the generalisability, applicability, acceptability, and the diffusion of policy frameworks and redesign mechanisms are discussed.

Self-preventive oral behavior in an Italian university student population.

The aim of this study was to assess the oral hygiene attitude and the professional preventive examination compliance in Italian university students. A sample of 202 students attending the University of Bologna was randomly selected and interviewed about their preventive oral health attitude and compliance. All students reported using toothpaste and most of them (92.1%) brushed their teeth at least 2x a day using artificial, medium stiffness bristles. The toothbrush was generally (81.6%) replaced within 3 months. Few subjects (14.9%) said they used dental floss daily or utilized other devices. A majority of subjects (59.9%) had a dental examination within the year previous to the interview. Cluster analysis was performed. 4 groups were identified with homogeneous oral hygiene behavior and compliance toward professional preventive examination. Only one cluster, representing 33.6% of the sample, showed consistent frequency and modalities of oral hygiene habits. The other clusters seemed to be defective with interproximal cleaning procedures and compliance toward professional preventive care. Since the sample was characterized by a young, urbanized, homogeneous group with a high educational level and frequently from an upper middle class social status, the analysis probably gives a supra-estimation of the positive behavior. It is rational to suppose that strategies to promote dental service utilization, patients' compliance and a professional style oriented toward prevention may be useful to improve the oral health condition in the young adult Italian population.

Unexpected findings of a female team in Xochimilco, Mexico.

This is a reflection about the methodological circumstances that led the author to certain unexpected information during the course of a qualitative approach to the perception of health problems of a group of poor families in the south of Mexico City. Special attention is paid to the influence of the research team composition (four women with different professional backgrounds, ages, marital statuses, and styles of personal interaction) and the psychoanalytic technique that influenced the study. The inclusion of people of different ages, professions, and personality traits proved extremely valuable both as a means of widening the possibilities for empathetic relations between the research group and the population studied and for increasing the shades of meaning that the team was able to capture.

From Lady Teacher to Professional

In recent years there has been a growing interest in gender in educational management. In the late 1990s, such interest has gone beyond the issue of the under-representation of women in senior positions. Against this backdrop, this paper investigates the professional identity and leadership styles of women headteachers by taking us back to the latter decades of the 19th century when the first secondary schools for girls were established. In doing so it explores a number of issues using a case-study approach of the careers of three headmistresses of girls' secondary schools in Birmingham where, within seven years, from 1876 to 1883, two girls' high schools and a grammar school were opened.

State Building as Sandwich Making

Wilbur Cohen (1913-1987) is a courageous choice for a biographer. Cohen was a career bureaucrat who adopted a professional style, as Edward D. Berkowitz describes it, of determined drabness (p. 264). Cohen deliberately shaped his bureaucratic life to be free of high political drama. His personal life, too, was free of colorful detail. He was only occasionally subject to political attacks, and there never was any hint of personal impropriety or corruption. Wilbur Cohen is also a difficult choice. To understand him and his career, the biographer has to have the perseverance and patience-almost as much as Cohen himself displayed-to track his subject through the complex, intricate webs of federal bureaucratic politics and the Sisyphean tasks, which extended over more than three decades, of drafting and redrafting memos, speeches, and legislative bills for superiors and political clients. We are very much in Edward Berkowitz's debt for his biography of Wilbur Cohen. Berkowitz has provided us with a fine perspective on the making of the welfare state in the twentieth century, and with the best biography we have had of a major architect of social insurance. Historians who wish to generalize about the effects and fate of New Deal liberalism need to reckon with Cohen's career, and with Berkowitz's book. Cohen's career in government is especially important to understand because it stretches from the Progressive Era through the Great Society. Cohen's career, as Berkowitz makes clear, demonstrates the powerful lines of continuity within the development of national social insurance between those two periods. The continuity was at once intellectual and political. The principles of social insurance pioneered by the Progressives-contributory benefits and universality of protection-had a decisive influence on the development of

The graduate management trainee preselection interview

Describes a study which aimed to capture the candidates’ perceptions of a graduate employment interview, in particular how the interviewer’s manner and ability may affect interview outcomes. Eighty‐seven questionnaires were received from graduate candidates immediately after their interviews with an international retailing company based in the UK. Factor analysis produced five factors relating to “interpersonal manner” and two relating to “ability to communicate”. Outlines the findings which were that: the impact made by the interviewer was a function of his/her professional style rather than his/her empathetic behaviour; the degree of empathy shown by the interviewer affected the interviewees’ perceptions of the interviewer’s competence as a supplier of information; and overall satisfaction with the interview was a function of the empathetic behaviour of the interviewer. Discusses the findings in the framework of the “signalling hypothesis” and other communication literature.

Characterizing motivational styles of professionals who work on interdisciplinary healthcare teams

Relationship Awareness Theory is based on the premise that there is a purpose or motive behind all behavior. The Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) was designed to help individuals identify their motives in relating to others under two kinds of conditions; when everything is going well in their relationships and when they are in conflict with others. The authors administered the SDI over a ten year period to 516 health professionals and advanced level trainees who worked or trained on interdisciplinary healthcare teams. Individual motivation styles were analyzed by discipline, and formal leadership role. One team's pattern was analyzed over time. The predominant motivational style of respondents was altruistic/nurturing under normal conditions and analytic/ autonomizing under conflict conditions. Nurses and social workers were most similar under normal conditions and nurses and physicians were most similar under conflict conditions. There were differences for both conditions between formal leaders and those without formal leadership roles. The motivational patterns of an interdisciplinary team changed over time. Also, team members exhibited more diversity under normal conditions than they did when they were in conflict.

U.S. technological enthusiasm and British technological skepticism in the age of the analog brain

This article is a comparative analysis of the British and U.S. differential analyzers from 1930 to 1945. The author examines the development of the Vannevar Bush and D.R. Hartree analyzers in the context of the U.S. Engineering community and British scientific community, respectively. He argues that this practical machine was more readily and enthusiastically adopted by U.S. Engineers, while British scientists remained skeptical of the differential analyzer due to their theoretical professional style. As a result, Hartree was a "voice in the wilderness" in Britain, while Bush received extensive funding and had the support of an enthusiastic engineering environment.

The influence of corporate headquarters on leadership styles in Japanese and US subsidiary companies

Uses a questionnaire survey sent to CEOs of US and Japanese subsidiaries located in North America to assess the amount of influence exerted on such companies by corporate headquarters and the effect of this influence on leadership styles of subsidiary management. US subsidiaries are found to be insignificantly influenced by their parent companies and to practise a professional style of leadership. However, Japanese subsidiaries are found to be significantly influenced by overseas parent companies and to practise a corporate style of leadership (when the CEO is Japan‐educated) and a professional style of leadership (when the CEO is US‐educated). These findings reinforce the perceived link between leadership style and cultural upbringing and education.

Oxford Textbook of Surgery, vols 1 and 2

Considering critical mass-to-surface ratio, this textbook is an encyclopedia. By all criteria, this massive publication by Morris and Malt qualifies as an encyclopedia of general surgery. Its multiple authors completely encircle the subject. With more than 3000 pages—the index alone runs to 122 pages—307 authors, and more than 3000 color illustrations and weighing in at 19 1b, Oxford Textbook of Surgery is a physical and intellectual heavyweight. Encyclopedia editors have three responsibilities: to define their objectives, to select authoritative contributors who share their professional philosophy and style, and to wisely allocate page space. Peter Morris and Ronald Malt are ideally situated to meet each of these challenges. They are senior professors of surgery whose institutions, Oxford and the Massachusetts General Hospital, have for more than a century shared a common professional philosophy: to train respected, solid general clinical surgeons. Wisely, this is the focus of their book. Another advantage is

Professional Services Clients' Interaction Styles

Professional services providers and their clients fre- quently interact with one another personally and directly. Recogniz- ing, understanding, and adapting to the client's interaction styles will facilitate interactions and enhance their effectiveness. This article describes three client interaction styles-feeling-oriented. doing-ori- ented, and owning-oriented styles. It provides professionals with guidelines for recognizing clients with each orientation, outlines what to expect from each type of client during interaction, and explains how to respond to the client's preferred style smoothly and effectively.

Marconi and the Maxwellians: The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited

Marconi and the Maxwellians: The Origins of Wireless Telegraphy Revisited SUNGOOK HONG The point is which of the two was the first to send a wireless telegram? Was it Lodge in 1894 or Marconi in 1896? [Silvanus P. Thompson, London Times,July 15,1902] We live in a world where technological priority disputes and patent litigation are so commonplace that only a spectacular case, such as Kodak versus Polaroid over the instant camera, attracts our attention. In the past two hundred years, such disputes have become increasingly frequent. Notable examples include those over the invention of spin­ ning machines (John Hargreaves vs. Richard Arkwright), steelmaking (Henry Bessemer vs. William Kelly), the incandescent lamp (Thomas Edison vs. Joseph Swan), the telephone (Alexander Graham Bell vs. Elisha Gray), the airplane (the Wright brothers vs. Samuel Langley), and amplifiers and the heterodyne principle in radio (Lee De Forest vs. Edwin Howard Armstrong). Historians of technology, however, have generally paid little attention to the conflicting priority claims themselves, except when priority and patent disputes can be used as a window through which the character­ istics of the evolution of technology are analyzed.1 There are two well-grounded reasons for this neglect. First, unlike scientific discoverDr . Hong received his Ph.D. from Seoul National University with the dissertation “Forging the Scientist-Engineer: A Professional Career ofJohn Ambrose Fleming” and is working on the science-technology relationship in power and early radio engineering. He thanksJed Buchwald, Bert Hall, Bruce Hunt,Janis Langins, and the Technology and Culture referees for their valuable comments. He is indebted to Professor Thad Trenn of the University of Toronto and Roy Rodwell of the Marconi Company Archives for their help with the archives quoted here, and he thanks Youngran Jo, Shinkyu Yang, Jane Jenkins, André Leblanc, and Ben Olshin for their assistance, as well as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Fellowship in Electrical History for facilitating the research. ‘See, e.g., the important research of David E. Hounshell, “Elisha Gray and the Telephone: On the Disadvantage of Being an Expert,” Technology and Culture 16 (1975): 133-61; Robert C. Post, “Stray Sparks from the Induction Coil: The Volta Prize and the Page Patent,” Proceedings ofthe Institute ofElectrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 64 (1976): 1279-86; James E. Brittain, “The Introduction of the Loading Coil: George A. Campbell© 1994 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/94/3504-0004$01.00 717 718 Sungook Hong ies, priority disputes in technology often develop into patent litigation, which ultimately involves judicial decisions or interferences by the Patent Office. These court decisions act like a forcedjudgment on the question of priority. “Closure” of the controversy (to use the social constructivist’s term) is not brought about by negotiation among the engineers involved, but rather by external, compulsory forces. These court judgments, which historians cannot overrule and which funda­ mentally determine future histories, sometimes differ from those based on detailed historical analysis. Historians therefore treat historical assessments of inventions as a sphere separate from legal decisions about patents and avoid entering into the latter realm.2 Second, and more important, historians of technology have usually considered invention as a long-term, social process, which includes not only the creative activity of an inventor but also historically accumulated tradi­ tions in which the work of many people is merged.3 The priority dispute is itselfinterpreted as evidence for regarding the invention as something socially conditioned. The question, for example, of who first invented wireless telegraphy is hardly meaningful from such a perspective, because “wireless telegraphy” itself did not burst into being as a result of a single genius’s efforts, but was gradually shaped as several different technological traditions converged. Recent historical studies on the origin of radio reflect such a shift of emphases in the interpretation of technological inventions. In a highly influential monograph, Syntony and Spark: The Origins of Radio, Hugh G.J. Aitken argues that wireless telegraphy cannot be said to have been and Michael I. Pupin,” Technology and Culture 11 (1970): 36-57. Hounshell contrasts the amateurish style of invention (Alexander Graham Bell) with the professional style (Elisha Gray), arguing for the former’s...

The Value of Formal Conventions in Disciplinary Writing

The value of formal writing conventions has been diminished in mainstream composition scholarship; although research on occupational writing suggests that formal conventions are important, these findings are hard to generalize. This study, a content analysis of 12 professional style manuals, achieves generalizability by elucidating the institutional norms of disciplinary writing (a subset of occupational writing to which much scientific and technical writing belongs). Formal conventions prove to be highly valued. More important, the use of formal conventions often is justified on rhetorical grounds, suggesting that the dichotomy between formalist and rhetorical axiologies posited in composition scholarship is false.

Managing as Blended Care

As part of a research project on managerial work based on a new model of the roles, the head nurse of a hospital unit was observed during a working day. Her work is described, with reference especially to the roles of leading, linking, controlling, and doing. Conclusions are drawn about the advantages of a craft style of management as opposed to the more traditional "boss" or professional styles. The author also discusses what those in general management can learn from those in nursing management, which seems best practiced out in the open, on one's feet, as a kind of blended care.

Development of an Air Quality Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign

AbstractInterdisciplinary curricula, such as environmental engineering, are faced with the challenge of developing unified sets of courses for students from a variety of academic backgrounds. In addition to providing a rigorous technical education, engineering education should foster development of the professional skills that students need in the future, such as laboratory, computer, communication and teamwork abilities, and independence and creativity.This program improvement project integrated traditional lectures with carefully designed assignments, experiments, and demonstrations to teach principles of air quality in environmental engineering. Computer simulations helped students develop a better intuitive understanding of fundamental air quality phenomena. Field trips served to illustrate applications of classroom concepts, and an instructional laboratory was developed to teach students the essential techniques of air quality monitoring.The classroom and laboratory were also used as a supportive environment in which students learned professional skills applicable to graduate studies or professional employment. Students wrote “journal articles,” complete with peer review and revisions as part of a term project. Laboratory projects were used to introduce students to the techniques of writing proposals, and a professional style “class conference” gave students practice in making scientific presentations.

The social worker's style

The style of the social work practitioner is a very influential factor for therapeutic effectiveness and is a way of expressing the practitioner's creative artistry. The meanings and functions of style are clarified. The practitioner's general style is analyzed as a combination of personal and professional style elements, responsive to artistic role-task performances in helping clients. A case presentation illustrates a social worker's particular style. Wider cultural influences of a practitioner's style also merit recognition.