Rational Goal Research Articles

Business leadership judgment integrity and sustainable competitive advantage in the global digital economy

To overcome the adverse impacts of overemphasizing external control in business leadership decision making and the adverse global impacts of extreme investor capitalism, the author proposes the development of judgment integrity capacity at both the microeconomic and macroeconomic levels. To address behavioral complexity at the microeconomic level, the author recommends the balanced, inclusive use of four global leadership theories in decision making: leadership rational goal theory, leadership internal process theory, leadership human relations theory and leadership open systems theory. The exercise of leadership by global business leaders implicitly disposes them to parallel ethics theories as they confront moral complexity at the microeconomic level and the opportunity to expand their judgment integrity capacity. To address economic complexity at the macroeconomic level, the author recommends the balanced, inclusive use of four global economics theories in decision making: investor capitalism, regulatory capitalism, managerial capitalism and entrepreneurial capitalism. Possible policy implications are mentioned.

The relation of organizational process orientation to effectiveness and efficiency in elementary public schools

Organizational psychology has identified four recurrent organizational models (rational goal, open systems, human relations, and internal processes), each placing different emphases on internal and external organizational processes. Using a sample of 122 elementary schools in a large suburban school district located outside a metropolitan area, the present study examined the relation of school emphases on internal and external processes to school effectiveness and efficiency. Consistent with hypotheses, inefficient schools (lower-than-average student achievement test scores, adjusted by the percentage of students enrolled in the free and reduced-price meal program and per-pupil expenditures) were identified by the human relations model or as inward-directed with emphasis on the quality of student-school staff interpersonal relationships, by higher levels of student enjoyment, and by smaller student enrollments and smaller student-faculty ratios. Contrary to expectation, results showed that effective schools (higher-than-average student achievement test scores) were best described in terms of the rational goal model or as outward-directed, with emphasis on involving and empowering parents and on internal structure, control, and inflexibility (i.e., more school order and discipline). Results are discussed in terms of the broader organizational literature, specifically, competing organizational value orientations, effects of organizational structure and member characteristics on organizational process orientation, and the use of organizational process orientation as means to achieve organizational effectiveness and efficiency.

Is the chemical prevention of gingivitis necessary to prevent severe periodontitis?

Gingival inflammation seldom causes discomfort, social embarrassment or loss of function. As most sites with gingival inflammation do not progress to severe periodontal disease, gingivitis should not be considered a public health problem. Periodontitis is always preceded by gingivitis. But most gingivitis remains stable for years without progressing to periodontitis. The number of gingivitis sites that do convert is small. The levels of oral cleanliness achieved by the majority of populations in industrialized countries are below the threshold for severe destructive periodontal disease of personal and public health concern. Because methods of measuring the progression of periodontal disease are unreliable, definitive answers regarding conversion of gingivitis to severe periodontitis are lacking. Gingival inflammation frequently remains contained; most gingivitis remains stable for years without progressing to periodontitis. Decreasing gingivitis does reduce shallow pocketing, but the effect on severe periodontitis is not clear. Although the underlying justification for the reduction of plaque is to reduce gingival inflammation to prevent or reduce severe periodontitis and tooth loss, the basis for the approach is equivocal. A reasonably high level of plaque appears to be compatible with acceptably low levels of periodontal disease. Reducing nonspecific plaque levels to such levels is therefore a rational goal. The conventional methods of controlling periodontal disease involve mechanical removal of plaque and calculus. A complimentary ecological approach, using chemicals, would be to alter the environment of the pocket to prevent growth of putative pathogens. Any ecological approach should be sensitive to the dangers of disrupting the natural ecology of dental plaque. Some antimicrobial and antimetabolic agents such as fluoride, chlorhexidine and triclosan and zinc citrate can selectively suppress certain organisms or inhibit bacterial proteases implicated in tissue damage. The uncertainties about factors that convert gingival inflammation into periodontitis and periodontitis into severe periodontitis coupled with insufficient data from controlled clinical trials on the effectiveness of chemical reduction of gingivitis to prevent severe periodontitis leads one to conclude that more research is required before the need for the chemical prevention of gingivitis to prevent severe periodontitis can be justified.

On Law and Logic

Abstract. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the role played by logic in the legal domain. In the traditional conception which underlies the movement of codification, judges are able to find in the legal system (the Master System) a unique answer for every legal problem. This entails its completeness, consistency and the possibility of deriving from it the contents of all judicial decisions. Although the ideal model of this conception is supported by important theoretical and political ideals, it has significant shortcomings. The elements of normative systems (Master Systems) are “norms” and not mere “norm‐formulations.” A “norm” is the meaning attributed to normative linguistic expressions. The set of all normative expressions, such as statutes, codes, etc. forms what is called the Master Book. One of the main problems for the ideal model is the identification of a normative system behind the Master Book. Interpretative arguments are the tools designed to solve these problems. Although the requirements of the model are not totally fulfilled in actual practice, it remains as an effective ideal rational goal behind legal activities linked to adjudication and most theoretical approaches to law.

Competing Values in Organizations: Contextual Influences and Structural Consequences

Managers recognize that they must satisfy a variety of demands, some contradictory. The authors investigated this circumstance using Quinn and Rohrbaugh's competing values model. They report the findings of a study that identified and measured the four competing values (internal process value, rational goal value, human relations value, and open system value) across organizations and investigated whether contextual and structural variables were systematically associated with those value sets. Data were gathered from a large sample of United States Air Force Commands. Results showed that the operating units pursued the four values defined by the model, but did not emphasize them equally. Certain environmental characteristics (information and resource scarcity and technological uncertainty) and aspects of the units' technology (their task routineness, workflow interdependence, and training complexity) were associated with organizational value sets. The values emphasized were associated in turn with the coordinating structure (vertical or horizontal coordination) adopted by the units. The study attempted to move the competing values model beyond theoretical concepts. The results confirm the competing values at work in organizations and also suggest that value sets differ from unit to unit. Certain patterns of values appear to exist within particular environmental and technological contexts. These findings indicate tradeoffs among values. Emphasizing some values may hamper pursuit of others. So when managers decide to give priority to programs designed to strengthen to the human relations value, efficiency and short-term profitability may drop off. Managers must be aware of this shifting balance. They must evaluate whether prescriptions for organizational success make sense. Decisions should reflect the organization's value structure (and its deficiencies), its technology, its environment, and its structure as well as show these elements fit together.

Predicting a taxonomy of organisational effectiveness in U.K. higher educational institutions

Major developments in organisational theory have witnessed the emergence of several models of organisational effectiveness (OE) and change (Keeley 1978; Hannan & Freeman 1977; Miles & Cameron 1982). The integrative competing values framework suggests organisations adopt uniquely effective approaches reflecting their needs at different stages in their life cycle by addressing varying degrees of emphasis on systems resource, human relations, internal process, and rational goal orientations (Cameron & Whetten 1981; Quinn & Rohrbaugh 1983; Quinn & Cameron 1983). This coincided with, and complemented, the growing recognition of the importance of developing systematic means for organisational speciation (McKelvey 1975, 1982; Muchinsky & Morrow 1980) and using the resulting taxonomies emerging from these studies to underpin theory building and further research.

Rational Cooperation and Collective Goals

Rational Cooperation and Collective Goals

Relationship of Managerial Work Roles to Tactics Used to Influence Subordinates

Interest in managerial work role activities has grown rapidly in recent years (Martinko & Gardner, 1990), yet the bulk of research which has been conducted has focused on typologies for classifying work roles rather than the relationship between managerial roles and actual communication behavior or behavioral intentions. The present study was undertaken to explore the relationship between self-reported managerial work roles and successful influence strategies with subordinates. The general importance of this area of research results from the belief that influence ability is central to being effective in a variety of work roles (Dreher, Dougherty, & Whitely, 1989). Manager Work Roles The literature on managerial work has changed significantly in the past decade or so. Previously, it was dominated by single case-oriented accounts of specific companies or biographies of specific leaders that had been subjected to minimal empirical study (Bowditch & Buono, 1985). Early controversies revolved around the participants' reasons for the observable activities. For instance, Carroll and Taylor (1968) pointed out that since managerial work is mental, it is not directly observable. Similarly, the works of Stewart (1976) and Turner and Lombard (1969) stress the limitations to using managers' descriptions of their jobs to describe managerial work roles. Recent literature have shifted in several directions. Multidimensional measures of competing roles not identified in previous frameworks are now more common (Kotter, 1982; Stewart, 1982). In addition, there is more emphasis on cognitive processes, as in Quinn's (1981, 1988) Competing Values concept which suggest that effective manager performance requires the simultaneous mastery of seemingly contradictory capabilities. There is also more emphasis on integrating typologies for describing managerial work activities (Carroll & Gillen, 1987). More recently, Hart and Quinn (1993) proposed a useful integrative way to distinguish managerial work roles. This approach revolves around the Competing Values concept as the organizing framework. Citing empirical support, Quinn and his colleagues (Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1983; Quinn, Spreitzer, & Hart, 1992) proposed that different value dimensions (flexibility to predictability and internal to external focus) underlie the conceptualizations of the four major perspectives of organizational and management effectiveness literature. For example, the human relations perspective (participation, openness, morale and commitment) emphasizes flexibility and internal focus. The open system perspective (innovation, adaptation, growth, and resource acquisition) stresses flexibility and external focus. The rational goal perspective (direction, goal clarity, productivity, and accomplishment) emphasizes predictability and external focus. Finally, the internal process perspective (information management, documentation, and control) stresses predictability and internal focus. Evidence suggests that an effective manager may need to perform well on all four conflicting demands (Quinn & Cameron, 1988; Quinn, 1988). An important extension of the Competing Values concept was made by Hart and Quinn (1993), who classified managerial work roles found in the literature into four competing role categories (Vision Setter, Motivator, Analyzer, Task Master. See Table 1.) that correspond to Quinn's value framework and examined how these roles are related to performance. Using Q-type cluster analysis they found the four hypothesized managerial roles could be grouped together on the basis of Quinn's Competing Values framework. In addition, they found that managers who focused on all four work roles achieved higher levels of performance. In this study, we extend that type of research to learn how managers effectively use different tactics to influence subordinates. Influence Strategies Much of the recent research on managerial influence with subordinates has focused on factors that condition the tactics that are used (Deluga, 1988; Harper & Hirokawa, 1988; Lamude, 1993; Lamude, Scudder, & Furno, 1993; Littlepage, Nixon, & Gibson, 1992; Yukl & Falbe, 1990). …

Separatism and national partition

In recent years, social movements have emerged around the world demanding state power on behalf of ethnic‐religious constituencies or “nations.” Because the interstate system consists primarily of independent nation‐state republics, this demand can be met only if nation‐states are partitioned. The demand by nations for states of their own is not the irrational expression of ancient animosities, but a modern, legitimate, and rational goal. It is “modern” because state power has been the objective of socialist and nationalist movements since the end of the last century; “legitimate” because the interstate system recognizes “self‐determination” as a “right,” and “rational” because the interstate system provides substantial political and economic rewards to groups that acquire state power. But although separatist nationalists advocate partition to redress historical grievances and right contemporary wrongs, they often do not anticipate the problems associated with it. In Warpaths (Hill 8c Wang), I found that ...

Chemotherapy waste reduction through shelf-life extension.

Minimization of total drug expenditures within the health care system, without affecting patient outcome has become a rational goal in today's economic, environment. The objective of this study was to observe the effect of extending the shelf-life for three chemotherapy medications, [doxorubicin, epirubicin and mitoxantrone] on wastage of these medications. Prior to and following the introduction of new, longer, shelf-lives for these three medications, prospective, non-randomized, unblinded four-month chemotherapy wastage audits for all chemotherapy medications were completed at 18 institutional sites within Ontario (six Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation clinics, ten Ontario hospitals and two preparation sites in a large cancer treatment centre). Data were provided by 18 sites in 1989 but from only 12 sites in 1990. Ten of the 12 sites extended their shelf-lives for each of doxorubicin, epirubicin and mitoxantrone, and on average, waste at these sites was reduced to less than 1% of the 1989 total for epirubicin, less than 15% for doxorubicin and 35% for mitoxantrone. Many sites eliminated waste entirely for these drugs. For sites which did not extend their shelf-lives, the waste remained unchanged. We conclude that appropriate extension of the shelf-life for chemotherapy medications can reduce waste, and is a relatively simple method of reducing expenditures without affecting health outcomes or adding additional complications to IV chemotherapy.

Brown and Educational Policy Making at 40

Over the years, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (Brown 1) (1954) and subsequent legal challenges by African Americans have spawned a number of findings governing educational policies and policy making at almost every phase of schooling (Brown, 1979; Crain, 1969; Orfield & Ashkinaze, 1991).(1) Brown I and Brown II (1955) set in motion a series of educational policy changes. However, despite the more positive features of Brown, African Americans have not achieved equal educational opportunities.In the present article, policy making refers to changes in direction made by the federal courts in their holdings regarding school desegregation cases as well as congressional actions affecting the courts. While this article addresses federal action and school desegregation, state action is also important. However, states tend to leave matters affecting school desegregation almost exclusively to the federal courts. Thus, federal action or inaction covers most policy making issues in school desegregation.Several assumptions have been made regarding Brown and the subsequent federal court decisions designed to implement various components of public school desegregation across the nation. The first of these is that social decisions by the courts or other governmental agencies are inherently political. Federal court judges, including Supreme Court justices, are appointed to their positions because of their judicial orientations and or political value systems. These views are reinforced by public opinion and legislative action taken by Congress. Second, the dominant values of federal court jurists typically reflect those of majority rather than minority group members. This is true, with rare exceptions, for both majority and minority members of the federal judiciary, who also serve by appointment. Third, changes in educational policies made by the courts and Congress are always represented by these branches of government as improvements, regardless of whether these changes are positive or negative. This symbolic use of language in politics explains both the lack of action on the part of policymakers and the persistence of negative educational policies (Blase, 1991: Brown 1990; Edelman, 1980; Spring, 1992). Fourth, racism and self-interest have a greater impact on policy making in social matters such as education than do rational goals and objectives (Hatcher, 1992). Fifth, almost nothing involving education is exempt from political motives--this includes testing and the evaluation of pupils and the assignment of students to classes, programs, and schools (Goodlad, 1990; McCarthy, 1990; Mercer, 1973; Oakes, 1990; Page & Valli, 1990; Rist, 1978; Spring, 1976, 1992).Major changes in school desegregation litigation in the federal courts have occurred since Brown (Brown, 1979). The Supreme Court's decision in Brown I, which involved several cases combined by the Court, declared de jure or public school segregation based on race to be unconstitutional. Brown II established the speed with which desegregation would be implemented. From 1954 to 1973, the Court limited its rulings to de jure segregated public schools. In 1973, with Keyes v. School District of Denver, the Court expanded Brown to include de facto segregated public schools in northern cities. In 1974, the Court began making a steady retreat from its positive actions of the 1960s and ended the decade with significant setbacks for school desegregation. The threshold was Milliken v. Bradley (1974), a decision involving the desegregation of the public schools in both the city and suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. In Milliken, the Court ruled that state schools were local for the purpose of Brown, and further decreed that the liberal judicial test of evidence usually granted in cases involving racial discrimination could not be evoked because suburban schools were involved. This test of evidence, strict scrutiny, requires the defendant school districts to carry the burden of proof of nonracial discrimination and not the plaintiffs. …

Innovation, cultural values, and the management of change in British hospitals

Abstract This paper describes the results of a study of innovation in the management teams of 27 UK hospitals. It is argued that the content of innovations provides an accurate representation of the underlying cultural values of the management teams, and the cultural values which they seek to purvey within the wider organizational settings. The authors propose that values in action (as opposed to espoused values) are manifest in the range of innovations introduced by top management within organizations. Using a typology of organizational culture, they categorize the innovations introduced by the management teams, in order to map their underlying cultural values. The results indicate predominant orientations of hospital management teams towards rational goal and hierarchical values in the current context of health care in Britain. Internal climate and service innovations were relatively infrequent, suggesting that the hospitals were dominated by management concern for control rather than flexibility. The c...

A Supporting System for Group Decision Making under Conflicts

According to the increase both in scale and complexity, problem-solvings in today's engineering are being forced to have a close relation to societal systems. This will tend, in turn, to produce conflicts referring to individual sense of value among the groups associated with decision making. To attain at a square and rational goal in such techno-socio-system, therefore, it becomes very important how we will deal with the conflicts.Concerned with such situation, in this paper, we have proposed a supporting system for group decision making in the paradigm of the systems approach. A procedure has been developed using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to reveal value structure and an interactive method of the multi-objective optimization to evaluate and adjust the attainability of each group's goal. Through numerical experiments applied to a rad-waste management system with risk evaluation, we have shown the proposed approach very promising to deal with such problem-solvings concerned here.

Miracles and method

Argumentation in the eighteenth‐century miracles controversy exhibits a controlling concern for procedural considerations. Of particular concern to Deist and Orthodox opponents is the most reasonable method for critically evaluating miracle accounts, an issue that elicits extensive argumentation on each side. Rival methods were seen as crucial to efforts to attack or defend the Christian miracles, while choices regarding method were shaped by sharply opposed rational commitments and rhetorical goals. Moreover, the success of argumentative cases was tied to positions concerning method.

Gallium-67 scintigraphy and non-small-cell bronchogenic carcinoma: A quantitative in-vivo predictive assay? : Lentle BC, Catz Z, Dierich HC, Scott JR, Hooper HR. Division of Nuclear Medicine, Vanvouver General Hospital, Vancouver, BC V5Z IM9. Can Med Assoc J 1987;137:815-7

Gallium-67 scintigraphy has been of limited use in detecting lung cancers and micrometastases. To study its potential for determining the aggressiveness of a cancer, we reviewed the charts of 44 patients with non-small-cell bronchogenic carcinoma who had not been receiving treatment when 67Ga scintigraphy was performed. The mean length of survival for the 18 patients with low or little uptake of the tracer, corrected for tumour size, was 19.7 months, and for the 26 with high uptake 9.4 months (p less than 0.01). Such in-vivo predictive assays may be a rational goal for tumour scintigraphy.

Evaluation of tamoxifen as a therapy to augment alpha-1-antitrypsin concentrations in Z homozygous alpha-1-antitrypsin-deficient subjects.

Tamoxifen, an agent that binds to intracytoplasmic estrogen receptors, was evaluated as a possible means of increasing alpha-1-antitrypsin (alpha 1AT) synthesis and/or secretion and thus alpha 1AT serum levels in subjects with the homozygous form of alpha 1AT deficiency. Administration of tamoxifen (10 mg twice daily) to 30 Z homozygotes for a 30-day period was not associated with adverse reactions. However, although serum alpha 1AT levels increased significantly (p less than 0.03), the increase was minor (average pretreatment levels, 32 +/- 1 mg/dl; levels at 30 days of therapy, 35 +/- 1 mg/dl) and far below the "threshold" level of 80 mg/dl considered "protective" against an increased risk for emphysema. Thus, while the concept that increasing alpha 1AT synthesis and/or secretion is a rational goal for treating the Z homozygous form of alpha 1AT deficiency, tamoxifen will not be useful in this regard.

The Relevance of the Burke-Paine Controversy to American Political Thought

Thomas Paine's social-contract theory, which asserts the protection of individual rights as the sole end of civil society and the consent of the majority of individuals as the sole source of government's authority, may seem to be better suited to the democratic Constitution of the United States than Edmund Burke's theory of prescription of government. Burke's theory is based on the rational moral goals of civil society, not on the supremacy of the people's or any other will. It asserts that the natural ends of society are prior to rights as Paine and other radical democrats conceived of them and that natural obligation is prior to and controls consent. Burke can therefore afford us a more realistic interpretation of popular consent and of the Constitution as the political form that makes us a people. He also offers a useful corrective to the currently popular view of the Supreme Court's function as being primarily to protect an ever-expanding array of constitutional rights. Burke was no democrat but he may help democrats to overcome the limitations of the liberal contractarian model of society.

Pulmonary Rehabilitation for the Elderly

The elements of a pulmonary rehabilitation program require a variety of different skills. However, the number of people involved in a rehabilitation program will vary with the clinical setting and the number of patients served. In a large program, a physician, respiratory nurse, physical and occupational therapist, psychologist, social worker, respiratory therapist, and dietitian might all be involved on a full- or part-time basis. In other settings, two or three individuals, mostly working part-time, may be the entire team. Pulmonary rehabilitation may be performed on an outpatient basis, in a group practice setting, or in an inpatient hospital unit. Whatever its size, a system must be developed that allows for thorough initial evaluation of patients, formation of rational goals with the patient, adequate time for patient education and training, ongoing re-enforcement to consolidate and maintain gains, and an appropriate means of intervention when the patient experiences an exacerbation of his disease. It should also be recognized that in many areas of the country, there are too few patients and scarce medical resources to mount an intensive pulmonary rehabilitation program. In such instances, referral can be made to larger medical centers. More importantly, the individual practitioner can successfully incorporate many of the elements of pulmonary rehabilitation into his practice by taking the time and effort necessary to ascertain how illness affects the daily lives of the patient with COPD and then addressing patient concerns in an ongoing, comprehensive manner.

Common Physiologic Patterns in General Surgical Patients: Hemodynamic and Oxygen Transport Changes during and after Operation in Patients with and without Associated Medical Problems

An examination of perioperative cardiorespiratory parameters in surviving and nonsurviving patients has identified several physiologic responses to the stress of surgical trauma, namely enhancement of circulatory performance and oxygen transport. When specific subsets of surgical illness are examined, it was found that these responses often began from different plateaus of baseline function. Because these responses are greater in survivors than nonsurvivors and this relationship is fairly consistent among a variety of surgical illnesses, it would seem that duplicating or augmenting these responses would be a rational goal for therapeutic intervention that would lead to improved patient outcome.

Organizational Life Cycles and Shifting Criteria of Effectiveness: Some Preliminary Evidence

This paper discusses the relationships between stage of development in organizational life cycles and organizational effectiveness. We begin the paper by reviewing nine models of organizational life cycles that have been proposed in the literature. Each of these models identifies certain characteristics that typify organizations in different stages of development. A summary model of life cycle stages is derived that integrates each of these nine models. Next, a framework of organizational effectiveness developed by Quinn and Rohrbaugh is introduced. This framework organizes criteria of effectiveness into four models—rational goal, open systems, human relations, and internal processes models. We hypothesize that certain of the models are important in evaluating the effectiveness of organizations in particular life cycle stages but not in others. The analysis of a state agency's development over five years provides some evidence to support these hypothesized relationships between life cycle stages and criteria of effectiveness. We conclude that major criteria of effectiveness change in predictable ways as organizations develop through their life cycles. Some shifts in state of development are resisted by the organization much more than are others, and intervention into organizations may be needed to help make the transitions less painful and costly. We also discuss why the predictions of contingency theory often are not substantiated by research because the responses of organizations to the external environment vary in different life cycle stages.