Rival Explanations Research Articles

Leveraging fairness and reactance theories to deter reactive computer abuse following enhanced organisational information security policies: an empirical study of the influence of counterfactual reasoning and organisational trust

AbstractResearch shows that organisational efforts to protect their information assets from employee security threats do not always reach their full potential and may actually encourage the behaviours they attempt to thwart, such as reactive computer abuse (CA). To better understand this dilemma, we use fairness theory (FT) and reactance theory (RT) to explain why employees may blame organisations for and retaliate against enhanced information security policies (ISPs). We tested our model with 553 working professionals and found support for most of it. Our results show that organisational trust can decrease reactive CA. FT suggests that explanation adequacy (EA) is an important factor that builds trust after an event. Our results also suggest that trust both fully mediates the relationship between EA and CA and partially mediates the relationship between perceived freedom restrictions related to enhanced ISPs and reactive CA. EA also had a strong negative relationship with freedom restrictions. Moreover, organisational security education, training and awareness (SETA) initiatives decreased the perceptions of external control and freedom restrictions and increased EA, and advance notification of changes increased EA. We also included 14 control variables and rival explanations to determine with more confidence what drove reactive CA in our context. Notably, the deterrence theory (DT)‐based constructs of sanction severity, certainty and celerity had no significant influence on reactive CA. We provide support for the importance of respectful communication efforts and SETA programmes, coupled with maximising employee rights and promoting trust and fairness to decrease reactive CA. These efforts can protect organisations from falling victim to their own organisational security efforts.

Contribution analysis as an evaluation strategy in the context of a sector-wide approach: Performance-based health financing in Rwanda

Sector-wide approaches (SWAps) emerged as a response to donor fragmentation and non-adjusted and parallel programming. In the health sector, SWAps have received considerable support by the international donor community due to their potential to reduce inefficiencies through alignment to common procedures and hence to increase development effectiveness. Evaluating development cooperation in the context of a SWAp, however, translates into methodological challenges for evaluators who have to disentangle the cumulative effects in strongly donor-aligned, complex sector environments. In this article the authors discussed the application of a methodological strategy for evaluating development interventions in complex settings – for example in the context of a SWAp –and reflected the suitability of the approach. The authors conducted a contribution analysis, a theory-based approach to evaluation, and exemplified the approach for an intervention of performance-based financing for Rwandan health workers supported by the Rwanda-German cooperation. The findings suggested that the Rwandan system of performance based financing increased service orientation and outputs of health professionals, but also indicated that negative motivational side effects and resource constraints are real. With regard to the methodological approach, the authors conclude that contribution analysis has a high potential to evaluate development cooperation in the context of a SWAp dueto its high flexibility to use different data collection tools and its capability to assess risks and rival explanations. Challenges can be identified with regard to the efficiency of the evaluation strategy and a remaining trade-off between scope and causal strength ofevidence.

Situational Evidence

There is unexamined potential for developing and testing rival causal explanations in the type of data that participant observation is best suited to create: descriptions of in situ social interaction crafted from the participants’ perspectives. By intensively examining a single ethnography, we can see how multiple predictions can be derived from and tested with field notes, how numerous strategies are available for demonstrating the patterns of nonoccurrence which causal propositions imply, how qualitative data can be analyzed to negate researcher behavior as an alternative causal explanation, and how folk counterfactuals can add to the evidentiary strength of an ethnographic study. Explicating the potential of field notes for causal explanation may be of interest to methodologists who seek a common logic for guiding and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research, to ethnographic fieldworkers who aim at connecting micro- to macro-social processes, to researchers who use an analogous logic of explanation when working with other forms of qualitative data, and to comparative–analytic sociologists who wish to form concepts and develop theory in conformity with an understanding that social life consists of social interaction processes that may be captured most directly by ethnographic fieldwork.

Harsh climate promotes harsh governance (except in cold-dry-wealthy environments)

Human societies are usually thought to adapt culturally to mean climatic temperature. Here we alternatively propose that cultural adaptations are fine-tuned, using monetary means as tools, to harsh deviations from optimally livable winter and summer temperatures around 22°C. We test for the first time the interactive impacts of cold demands, heat demands, precipitation, and income on the autocracy of central government. Eight regression analyses across 173 nations, with R2 ranging from 0.29 to 0.55, show that political cultures vary from maximally autocratic in poor countries threatened by demandingly cold and dry climates, to maximally democratic in rich countries challenged by demandingly cold and dry climates. Moreover, demandingly hot and dry climates appear to promote autocracy everywhere, irrespective of the country’s level of income. The best documented rival explanations, including human-to-human transmitted diseases, ethnic diversity, and low average intelligence of the population, could not account for the findings. This kind of evidence may lead climate-culture scholars to move away from climatic determinism toward climato-economic theory building on the origins of cultures.

Definite Descriptions and Semantic Pluralism

We pose two arguments for the view that sentences containing definite descriptions semantically express multiple propositions: a general proposition as Russell suggested, and a singular proposition featuring the individual who uniquely satisfies the description at the world-time of utterance. One argument mirrors David Kaplan's arguments that indexicals express singular propositions through a context-sensitive character. The second argument mirrors Kent Bach's and Stephen Neale's arguments for pluralist views about terms putatively triggering conventional implicatures, appositive, and nonrestrictive relative clauses. After presenting these arguments, we show that rival explanations (appeals to implicature, referential use, presupposition, etc.) do not offer equally compelling explanations of the data, and defend the methodology employed in the arguments against some criticisms.

Spirit or Fleeting Apparition? Why Spirituality’s Link with Social Support Might Be Incrementally Invalid

Previously published path models apparently confirm the belief-as-benefit perspective that spirituality boosts well-being via social support. The broad acceptance of such findings has motivated recommendations that clinical psychologists and psychiatrists routinely assess their patients' spiritual status. Skeptics retort that past findings are statistically confounded and that numinous beliefs and well-being are unrelated. A multivariate regression analysis testing whether spirituality explains variance in social support after personality traits are simultaneously included is reported. Although spirituality displays a significant positive correlation and partial correlation (after controlling for socio-demographics) with social support, regression analysis specifying agreeableness and conscientiousness-individual differences related to both spirituality and social support-as predictors renders spirituality nonsignificant. In summary, spirituality's correlation with social support appears spurious; demonstrating the hazards of relying on simple associations and highlighting the urgent need for researchers to utilize statistical methods capable of establishing cause and parsing effects across rival theoretical explanations.

Trapping the tigers: Regulation of market entry and the rule of law in SE Asia

Recent research identifies high barriers to registering a business as critical impediments to economic development around the world. Similarly, the lack of credible commitment to the rule of law – especially in the areas of property rights and contract enforcement – is also connected to economic underdevelopment. Scholarship treats these factors as rival explanations for underdevelopment. However, I argue the rule of law is the causal mechanism through which barriers to entry in the marketplace influence economic outcomes. Specifically, I present evidence perceptions of the rule of law in Southeast Asia decline as the legal restrictions on registering a business increase because public officials use their gatekeeping positions to extract rents and raise the costs of formalizing private enterprises. High disincentives to register a business drive entrepreneurs underground, which in turn leaves them vulnerable to extortion or confiscation by public officials and undermines perceptions of the rule of law. I employ pooled cross-sectional time-series data for all countries in SE Asia between 1996 and 2010 to test my theoretical argument. I use Two-Stage Least Squares Instrumental Variables, Time Series, Cross-Sectional and OLS regression models to isolate causal mechanisms and causal directions among my variables. My analyses demonstrate the deleterious effect of legal barriers to entry on the rule of law and provides a new direction for scholarship on the topic.

How Images of Other Consumers Influence Subsequent Taste Perceptions

Images of food are seemingly everywhere, and yet the influence that such images have on important consumer outcomes is not well understood. The authors propose that the effect that image exposure has on taste perceptions largely depends on the interaction between the type of food (healthy vs. unhealthy) and whether the image shows the food alone (food image) or the food being consumed by a person (consummatory image). Specifically, the authors show that exposure to consummatory images of unhealthy (vs. healthy) foods increases taste perceptions relative to food images. To explain this effect, the authors argue that seeing an image of someone else indulging in an unhealthy food serves as social proof of the appropriateness and acceptability of indulgent consumption. As such, images of consumers eating act as a justification agent for real consumers, thereby reducing the conflict associated with the subsequent indulgent consumption experience and, in effect, increasing taste perceptions. The authors test this effect across five studies and eliminate rival explanations pertaining to emotional contagion, goal contagion, and source attractiveness.

Formative Evaluation

Performance-based accountability along with budget tightening has increased pressure on publicly funded organizations to develop and deliver programs that produce meaningful social benefits. As a result, there is increasing need to undertake formative evaluations that estimate preliminary program outcomes and identify promising program components based on their effectiveness during implementation. By combining longitudinal administrative data, multiple comparison group designs, and a progressive series of analyses that test rival explanations, evaluators can strengthen causal arguments and provide actionable program information for key stakeholders to improve program outcomes. In this article, we illustrate the application of rigorous methods to estimate preliminary program effects and rule out alternative explanations for preliminary effects, including site selection bias, individual selection bias, and resentful demoralization through the evaluation of the Collaborative Project, a North Carolina educational improvement project that incorporated multiple components aimed at boosting student achievement.

How is freedom distributed across the earth?

Although Van de Vliert presented an entertaining story containing several original observations, an implicit assumption that climate affects human society identically through the history is not realistic. If almost everything is explained by cold winters or hot summers, then nothing is explained. Ignoring rival explanations does not make the proposed theory more convincing.

Validity and generalization in future case study evaluations

Validity and generalization continue to be challenging aspects in designing and conducting case study evaluations, especially when the number of cases being studied is highly limited (even limited to a single case). To address the challenge, this article highlights current knowledge regarding the use of: (1) rival explanations, triangulation, and logic models in strengthening validity, and (2) analytic generalization and the role of theory in seeking to generalize from case studies. To ground the discussion, the article cites specific practices and examples from the existing literature as well as from the six preceding articles assembled in this special issue. Throughout, the article emphasizes that current knowledge may still be regarded as being at its early stage of development, still leaving room for more learning. The article concludes by pointing to three topics worthy of future methodological inquiry, including: (1) examining the connection between the way that initial evaluation questions are posed and the selection of the appropriate evaluation method in an ensuing evaluation, (2) the importance of operationally defining the ‘complexity’ of an intervention, and (3) raising awareness about case study evaluation methods more generally.

Investigating diplomatic transformations

This article investigates the role that diplomacy—especially at the highest levels—can play in transforming adversarial relationships. Building on Martin Wight's exploration of these issues, in particular the question of how two adversaries can convince each other that they are serious negotiating partners, the article contends that achieving a significant de-escalation of a conflict depends upon the growth of trust. In contrast to Wight's limited conception of what diplomacy could achieve in terms of ending conflicts, the argument made here is that particular types of communicative encounters between diplomats, and especially leaders, can build a level of trust at the interpersonal level which can lead policy-makers to make conciliatory frame-breaking moves. To make good on this claim, the article employs a case-study of the summitry between US President Ronald Reagan and his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev. The key contention here is that the face-to-face encounters between Reagan and Gorbachev promoted a level of trust between them that made possible the fundamental de-escalation of the Cold War that took place in the second half of the 1980s. Rival explanations focusing on nuclear weapons and Soviet economic decline are analysed, but while these were enabling conditions in the transformation of relations, the article argues that it is necessary to recognize the critical role that interpersonal trust between US and Soviet leaders played in achieving this diplomatic transformation.

Understanding and Explaining the Kyrgyz–Uzbek Interethnic Conflict in Southern Kyrgyzstan

The violence between the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan in 2010 has shocked many who thought of Kyrgyzstan as the most liberal country and the strongest democracy in Central Asia. That conflict, still, has not been explained and understood very well. Opposing and rival explanations often accuse one or other party, or certain obscure and even foreign forces. Many analysts, on the other hand, rely only on the internal Kyrgyzstani affairs in order to explain that conflict. This article tries to find explanations and offer an understanding of the Uzbek–Kyrgyz interethnic conflict. Its aim is beyond a mere description and understanding of a single case. It will use different kinds of data in order to offer analytic explanations of the events. The legacy of the Soviet nationalities policy, in combination with regional peculiarities – particularly its ethno-demographic features – were the ultimate causes of the eruption of the Uzbek–Kyrgyz conflicts in southern Kyrgyzstan in 1990 and 2010.

Diffusion of good government: social sector reforms in Brazil

(SUGIYAMA, Natasha Borges. The Diffusion of Good Government: Social Sector Reforms in Brazil. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012)The book Diffusion of Good Government: Social Sector Reforms in Brazil by Natasha Sugiyama is one of the most important recent contributions to a litera- ture dedicated to confronting the policy choices made by States who face the persistence of poverty and social inequality in Latin America. With a theoretical and methodological support that mixes traditional and sophisticated approaches to the study of the formation of new agendas, the author presents an original analytical vision of the factors which ori- ent the mechanisms behind the formulation of public policies in countries with a complex institutional arrangement, such as Brazil, a highly decentralized federation with specific attributes as to the definition of a social protection network. The author's central inter- est is to investigate why and how these social reforms originate and are diffused among sharply distinct governmental units in terms of their administrative capacity, fiscal contri- bution, socioeconomic development, and political and cultural history. In order to develop her analysis the author selects two programs implemented in the country from the mid- 1990s, which currently represent two of the main national policies in health and educa- tion: Family Health Program and School Grant Program1 (Programa Saude da Familia and Programa Bolsa Escola). Therefore, based on the municipal adherence to both pro- grams, the object of the research is to investigate why ideas which represent social solu- tions arise and are adopted by a set of governments in time. According to theorists such as Heclo (1974) and Kingdon (2011), these ideas are proposals marked by new forms and resources potentially applicable in a conservative system dominated by traditional rules and models for public policies. In a rereading that approaches classical views such as the one by Cohen, March and Olsen (1972) concerning the institutional changes in anarchi- cally organized systems, Sugiyama then becomes interested in explaining the factors that motivate similar political behavior within contexts of diffuse social reforms. To this goal the author defines a multi-method research framework that brings together qualitative and quantitative approaches with an extensive fieldwork, comparing major cities and applying the Event History Analysis (survival analysis) statistical model with an interest in analyz- ing the factors that explain the different time periods for adopting the programs among government leaders.According to the author, the advantage in applying survival analysis is that the model allows us to annually observe the interdependence among jurisdictions, thus allowing for a more thorough analysis of the internal and external determinants in diffusion processes. In diffusion studies that seek to investigate the political behavior of actors in political de- cision-making, the determinants employed in the analysis are based in three explanations: political incentives, ideology and the role of social networks.Starting from this approach, the author skillfully develops and adapts each one of these theoretical perspectives in order to test how electoral motivations, ideological for- mation or participation in social networks influence or motivate political actors to emulate innovative social programs. By treating these schools of thought as rival explanations, the author points out, in reference to Walker (1969), that more electorally competitive jurisdictions probably replicate more policies since the actors act rationally in the sense of attending the voters' social demands. When referring to Mullins (1972), the author signals that certain principles or worldviews guide ideological preferences and, to this sense, po- litical actors in an ideological spectrum closest to the left are eventually more inclined to adopt innovative institutional designs. …

I'm like you and you're like me: Social projection and self-stereotyping both help explain self–other correspondence.

Social projection and self-stereotyping are rival explanations for self-other correspondence, in which people tend to perceive a high degree of similarity between themselves and others. The present research shows that both accounts are correct-that is, that knowledge of the self and knowledge of others are mutually constraining. In Study 1, participants whose self-views were experimentally manipulated revised their judgments of an immediate ingroup. In Study 2, an analogous manipulation of ingroup traits altered participants' self-views. In Study 3, participants who were ascribed a trait readily projected to and stereotyped from their relevant ingroup, but not to or from an outgroup. Finally, Study 4 provides reaction-latency evidence for social projection and self-stereotyping as judgmental processes leading to self-other correspondence. In this task, participants referenced self-knowledge when reaching ingroup-descriptiveness judgments (evidence for social projection) and ingroup knowledge when judging the self (evidence for self-stereotyping). Implications for the debate between protocentric and egocentric accounts of person perception are discussed.

When modesty wins: Impression management through modesty, political skill, and career success—a two-study investigation

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of employees' upward self-presentation through modesty and political skill on their subsequent career success. Study 1 used a predictive design over a 3 year period with 141 employees, controlling for age, gender, and self-esteem. Political skill positively moderated the relationship between employees' upward modesty and career success (attained position, career satisfaction) after 3 years. Study 2 (n = 132 employees) provided construct validation, demonstrating high discriminant validity of the impression management through modesty scale used in Study 1 with a trait-modesty scale, thus attenuating rival explanations of the findings in Study 1. Implications, limitations, and future directions for research are discussed.

The insight-value-perception (iVP) model for user-centered design

Through an inductive, multi-case analysis of eight medical device firms, this paper maps user-centered design and development practices to product performance outcomes. First, the data highlight that designing products under variable use conditions enabled firms to optimize products for widespread use and to increase the predictability of product outcomes. Second, the study shows that product adoption relied on maximizing benefits for multiple product stakeholders with often-conflicting needs, while minimizing required changes in end user behavior. Third, the paper highlights that managing perceptions toward product use through performance data positively influenced product adoption among the cases studied to a greater degree than did market demand or regulatory clearance. Fourth, rival explanations for outcomes involving limited user involvement, indicate that competitive advantages were achieved through maintaining dominant financial and intellectual property positions. From these findings, the insight-value-perception (iVP) model for user-centered design was constructed. This model links design and development practices to outcomes, from a combination of consumer-oriented, technical, and financial perspectives. Although rooted in the experiences of device developers within early stage medical device companies, the iVP Model may be used as a theoretical framework to examine a range of complex systems involving an embedded network of product users and stakeholders.

Evaluating competing theories of street entrepreneurship: some lessons from a study of street vendors in Bangalore, India

Conventionally, street entrepreneurs were either seen as a residue from a pre-modern era that is gradually disappearing (modernisation theory), or an endeavour into which marginalised populations are driven out of necessity in the absence of alternative ways of securing a livelihood (structuralist theory). In recent years, however, participation in street entrepreneurship has been re-read either as a rational economic choice (neo-liberal theory) or as conducted for cultural reasons (post-modern theory). The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically these competing explanations for participation in street entrepreneurship. To do this, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 871 street entrepreneurs in the Indian city of Bangalore during 2010 concerning their reasons for participation in street entrepreneurship. The finding is that no one explanation suffices. Some 12 % explain their participation in street entrepreneurship as necessity-driven, 15 % as traditional ancestral activity, 56 % as a rational economic choice and 17 % as pursued for social or lifestyle reasons. The outcome is a call to combine these previously rival explanations in order to develop a richer and more nuanced theorisation of the multifarious motives for street entrepreneurship in emerging market economies.

Mediating Mars: Perceptual Experience and Scientific Imaging Technologies

The philosophical tradition of phenomenology, with its focus on human bodily perception, can be used to explore the ways scientific instrumentation shapes a user’s experience. Building on Don Ihde’s account of technological embodiment, I develop a framework of concepts for articulating the experience of image interpretation in science. These concepts can be of practical value to the analysis of scientific debates over image interpretation for the ways they draw out the relationships between the image-making processes and the rival scientific explanations of image content. As a guiding example, I explore a contemporary debate over images of the surface of Mars which reveal a landmass that resembles river delta formations on Earth, and which thus has important implications for the history of Martian climate and water flow. The phenomenological framework I develop can be used to help evaluate the different interpretations on offer for these images, and to analyze the roles in this discussion played by spacecraft equipped with cameras and laser and thermal imaging devices.

Getting a Grip on the Saddle: Chasms or Cycles

The saddle is a sudden, sustained, and deep drop in sales of a new product, after a period of rapid growth following takeoff, followed by a gradual recovery to the former peak. This paper tests for the generalizability of the saddle across products and countries and for three rival explanations: chasms in adopter segments, business cycles, and technological cycles. The authors model both boundary points of the saddle: start of the sales drop and recovery to the initial peak, using split-population models. Empirical analysis of historical sales data from 10 products across 19 countries shows that the saddle is fairly pervasive. The onset of the saddle occurs in 148 product-country combinations. On average, the saddle occurs 9 years post-takeoff, at a mean penetration of 30%, lasting for 8 years with a 29% drop in sales at its depth. Results support explanations of chasms and technological cycles for information/entertainment products and business cycles and technological cycles for kitchen/laundry products. The authors discuss findings, contributions, and implications.