Rule Compliance Research Articles

Employee conscientiousness, agreeableness, and supervisor justice rule compliance: A three-study investigation.

Researchers have paid limited attention to what makes organizational authority figures decide to treat their employees either justly or unjustly. Drawing from the actor-focused model of justice, as well as the stereotype content model, we argue that employee conscientiousness and agreeableness can impact the extent to which supervisors adhere to normative rules for distributive, procedural, informational, and interpersonal justice, as a result of supervisors' evaluations of their employees' effort and their liking of the employees. Supervisory compliance with justice rules may, in turn, impact the extent to which employees judge themselves to be treated either justly or unjustly. We tested these possibilities in 3 studies. In Study 1, we utilized a meta-analysis to demonstrate positive relationships between employees' conscientiousness, agreeableness, and their justice perceptions. In Study 2, we conducted 3 experiments to test the causal relationship between employee personality and supervisor intentions to comply with justice rules. In Study 3, we conducted an employee-supervisor dyadic field survey to examine the entire mediation model. Results are discussed in terms of the potential roles that both employees and supervisors may play in shaping employees' justice perceptions. (PsycINFO Database Record

What about nudges in the process industry? Exploring a new safety management tool

Since the nineteen sixties, after the successive introductions of safety equipment, standards, inherently safe process designs, sophisticated safety management systems and a suite of process safety indicators, all that remains to be slayed in ‘safe work’ would seem to be the person centered part. The presence of major hazard and risk control via well-established safety management systems in the process industry offers a unique opportunity to add safety via nudges. Psychology and behavioural economics have already entered the safety science realm. Behaviour-based safety emerged in the early nineteen eighties and is in need of an upgrade. Where conscious behaviour according to unwritten cultural rules and written instructions are not enough for safety, additional manipulation of unconsciously made choices might be used. This principle, which is called a ‘nudge’ towards desirable behaviour, is already being applied in e.g. traffic control, public space, politics, energy saving, health care and trade practice. Nudging may have uncertainties about its feasibility and magnitude of its effects, might be developed specifically for certain application areas, might raise ethical concerns and – hence – requires investigation of its application boundaries. The potential of improving safety this way resides in the human error domain and may not only reduce hitherto unaffected unsafe behaviour but also increase rule compliance on legislation, procedures and codes of conduct. This article explores ‘safety nudges’ and proposes a new safety management tool for influencing behaviour of workers in safety controlled environments in the process industry. Based on currently available evidence, a set of 9 nudge types and an implementation approach are proposed.

New perspectives on language and gender: Linguistic prescription and compliance in call centres

AbstractDespite a shift to service-based economies, male-dominated, high-status workplaces have been the predominant focus of research into language and gender in the workplace. This study redresses this shortcoming by considering one female-dominated, low-status, highly regimented workplace that is emblematic of the globalized service economy: call centres. Drawing on 187 call centre service interactions, institutional documents, interviews, and observations from call centres in two national contexts, the study employs an innovative combination of quantitative and qualitative discourse-analytic techniques to compare rule compliance of male and female workers. Female agents in both national contexts are found to comply more with the linguistic prescriptions despite managers and agents emphatically denying the relevance of gender. The study offers a new perspective on language and gender, pointing to the need to expand the methodologies and theories currently favoured to understand how language perpetuates occupational segregation in twenty-first-century workplaces. (Call centres, language and gender, new perspectives, male/female differences, globalized service economy)*

Trade-offs between conservation and development in community-based management initiatives

Community-based management (CBM) has attracted much interest as a conservation and development strategy in natural resource-dependent communities in recent decades. However, most initiatives fail to achieve both objectives. The most analyzed CBM strategies in the literature include donor- and government-driven initiatives, but other types exist as well. The research objective was to identify the internal and external factors that influence the trade-offs between conservation and development in three internally driven CBM initiatives in Latin America: a long-term indigenous-based conservation strategy, the constitutional recognition of ancestral land rights of Afro-American communities and artisanal fisheries management. The results showed that livelihoods depend on natural resources, but none of the cases identified a balance between conservation and development. Community activities are not the primary cause of natural resource degradation. Conservation is supported by ethnicity and cultural values and is challenged by current development models and worldviews that push intensification of resource use and by power asymmetries. Internal pressures include limited rule compliance and enforcement authority to stop free-riding and unauthorized activities. Internal challenges for development include the lack of capacities, rigid rules and non-inclusive CBM, and the inertia and risk aversion that prevail in many communities. External challenges include the lack of economic incentives and compensation models that enable welfare opportunities linked to sustainable management

Self-organization in the commons: An empirically-tested model

A appropriate bottom-up rule system can support the sustainability of common-pool resources such as forests and fisheries. The process that leads to the developments of such institutional settings requires the considerations of multiple social, physical, and institutional factors over long time horizons. In this paper, we present the SONICOM model as a general exploratory model of CPR systems. The model can be configured to represent different CPR systems in order to explore what kind of institutional settings result in stable systems, i.e. situations where the resource and the appropriators are in a state of well-being. We use a large-N-dataset of CPR management institutions to validate the model. The results show numerous correlations between various parameters of the system such as rule compliance, social influence and resource growth rate which help explaining the process of institutional emergence as well as unveiling the conditions under which systems are stable.

Philosophical View of Sport Competition: Globalizing and Universalizing Participation to University Sport

Philosophical View of Sport Competition: Globalizing and Universalizing Participation to University Sport

Towards a compliance requirement management for SMSEs: a model and architecture

Today’s business entities face an ever-growing number of laws and regulations due to recent high profile business scandals and failures. Small and medium scale enterprises (SMSE) in developing countries do not have an efficient compliance checking mechanism to make their business processes compliant with these regulatory standards. This checking mechanism is needed to give the enterprises full assurance of complete adherence to regulatory standards, bodies, or Service Level Agreements. Therefore, a structured and efficient compliance management model is needed to aid SMSE in launching their businesses safely and to ensure business processes fit into the classical regulatory standards. This paper presents a business rules compliance checking model and architecture for SMSEs in developing countries to verify and monitor their business process models at design time and at run time. It involves a systematic compliance requirements classification and analysis that employs a goal based requirement engineering approach prior to design time verification. It also introduces the idea and demonstration of network analysis for runtime business processes monitoring. The business process model will be verified at design time using a Simple PROMELA Interpreter model checker through Linear Temporal Logic rules. The approaches were tested on a financial institution in Nigeria, a developing nation in Africa at the time of this research. In order to ensure that the choice of the requirements analysis approach was efficient, a number of standard metrics for evaluating requirements engineering techniques were used and promising results were obtained. We also carried out a comparative analysis of the proposed approach in this paper with the approaches of previous research papers. This approach proved to be effective in terms of clarity, simplicity, flexibility and expressiveness while reducing incomplete adherence of business processes and enhancing the correctness of the business process.

Improving mobility by optimizing the number, location and usage of loading/unloading bays for urban freight vehicles

The role of urban freight vehicle trips in fulfilling the consumption needs of people in urban areas is often overshadowed by externality-causing parking practices (e.g., double-parking associated with traffic delays). Loading/unloading bays are generally viewed as an effective way to avoid freight vehicles double-parking, but are often misused by non-freight vehicles. We assess the potential of reducing freight vehicles double-parking mobility impacts by changing: (a) the spatial configuration (number, location, size) of loading/unloading bays and, (b) the non-freight vehicles parking rules compliance levels.Parking demand models were created with data from an establishment-based freight survey and a parking observation exercise. Two case studies were defined for 1km2 zones in the city of Lisbon, Portugal. Alternative bay systems were derived from an iterative implementation of the “maximize capacitated coverage” algorithm to a range of bays to be located. Parking operations in current and alternative bay systems were compared using a microsimulation. Bay systems’ ability in reducing double-parking impacts was assessed via a set of indicators (e.g., average speed).Freight traffic causes a disproportionate amount of externalities and the current bay configuration leads to greater mobility impacts than some of the proposed systems. Enforcement was a crucial element in reducing parking operations impact on traffic flow in one of the case-studies. Road network characteristics were demonstrated to play a role in the adequate strategy of arranging the spatial configuration of bays.

Prevention of white-collar crime through licensing: The case of the licensing of employees in the Swedish securities industry

Licensing programmes for employees in the securities industry have been introduced in an increasing number of countries and have become a significant element of control of the associated markets, which are important for public finances. This article documents the licensing programme in the Swedish securities industry, and analyses its potential to foster rule compliance and prevent white-collar crime. The programme’s knowledge requirements, sanctions system, reporting obligation and organisational structure are central components that are analysed, particularly regarding their ability to create predictability, confidence and interdependent relationships that can counteract risk factors for white-collar crime, namely, social disorganisation, responsibility diffusion, institutional market imbalances and isolated subcultures.

On sanction-goal justifications: How and why deterrence justifications undermine rule compliance.

Authorities frequently justify their sanctions as attempts to deter people from rule breaking. Although providing a sanction justification seems appealing and harmless, we propose that a deterrence justification decreases the extent to which sanctions are effective in promoting rule compliance. We develop a theoretical model that specifies how and why this occurs. Consistent with our model, 5 experiments demonstrated that-compared with sanctions provided without a justification or sanctions provided with a just-deserts justification-sanction effectiveness decreased when sanctions were justified as attempts to deter people from rule breaking. This effect was mediated by people feeling distrusted by the authority. We further demonstrated that (a) the degree to which deterrence fostered distrust was attenuated when the sanction was targeted at others (instead of the participant) and (b) the degree to which distrust undermined rule compliance was attenuated when the authority was perceived as legitimate. We discuss the practical implications for authorities tasked with promoting rule compliance, and the theoretical implications for the literature on sanctions, distrust, and rule compliance. (PsycINFO Database Record

Does training improve security decisions? A case study of airports

A cardinal belief in airport security is that workers’ training has a direct impact on actual rule compliance behavior and thereby assuring optimal security. Given the complex social and organizational nature of airports, however, it is not surprising that substantial proportions of security employees, including screeners, security guards and ground personnel bend, break or ignore rules and protocols, bringing into question the effectiveness of training. In a comprehensive study of airports across Europe, the impact of security training on security-related decisions was examined in detail. As airports are complex high-reliability organizations, their security levels are based on regulations that require both initial and refresher courses annually. We hypothesized that those more trained would comply more with the protocols and rules than those with less training. In addition, we contend and test the hypothesis that the robustness of the training process is modified as it becomes enmeshed in the reality of an airport’s organizational processes. Our results confirmed both general observations but also led us to discover that training itself is constrained in its ability to determine security decision behavior primarily because of an employee’s experience of actual threats. We then suggest a solution that incorporates a scenario simulation to bridge the gap between rule compliance and reality.

Enhancing Cycling Safety at Signalized Intersections: Analysis of Observed Behavior

Urban transportation systems tend to operate most effectively when common expectations exist about all user travel behavior under various conditions. A wide range of behavior among cyclists presents a significant challenge to the achievement of safer and improved designs at intersections. In this research, cyclists were observed (i.e., through the use of video at fixed-camera locations) as they made left turns at six intersections in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The intersections were classified into five types on the basis of their physical designs and operational characteristics. Cyclist behavior was assessed to determine the propensity to traverse the intersection legally, designated as “rule compliance.” Further, the analysis determined the likelihood that a cyclist would traverse an intersection in a path that was consistent with the design; this outcome was defined as “facility compliance.” The results revealed that the presence of bike boxes, two-phase lefts, and turning lanes with advanced green phases positively influenced cyclists by increasing the likelihood that left turns would be legal and consistent with the behavior intended through the design. The results also suggested that the highest rates of rule and facility compliance existed under the condition in which cyclists approached an intersection during a green signal. On the basis of the observations in the research, design recommendations were made to accommodate cyclists better and produce more consistent behavior and presumably to enhance safety.

Design of Novel Compounds with the Potential of Dual PPARγ/α Modulation for the Management of Metabolic Syndrome

This study sought to identify a single molecule capable of managing all three manifestations of metabolic syndrome–hyperglycaemia, dyslipidaemia and hypertension. Two Protein Data Bank (PDB) depositions were selected and used to establish the baseline affinity that any designed molecule in this study should ideally exceed in order to be considered for further optimisation. These were PDB depositions 3VN2 and 2P54 describing the bound co-ordinates of the Peroxisome Proliferator Activated Receptor (PPAR)γ partial agonist and Angiotensin II Receptor (Ang(II)R) blocker telmisartan and of the experimental PPARα fibrate agonist GW590735 bound to their respective cognate receptors. These small molecules were extracted from their cognate receptors, docked into their non-cognate counterparts, conformational analysis performed, and the optimal conformers were selected as template scaffolds in two parallel processes. The first was a fragment based de novo approach. Here, molecular moieties from the optimal telmisartan and GW590735 scaffolds modelled in their non-cognate targets and considered critical to binding were identified and modelled, in order to produce seed structures capable of sustaining molecular growth at user-directed sites designated as H.spc atoms subsequent to their being docked within the non-cognate Ligand Binding Pockets (LBPs). The second approach was a Virtual Screening (VS) exercise. Here, the optimal telmisartan and GW590735 conformers were submitted as query molecules to VS databases both individually and in the form of a consensus pharmacophore. This VS exercise identified structurally diverse molecules which were electronically and spatially similar to the queries and which were capable of modulating the target receptors. The molecular cohorts identified through both VS and the de novo approaches were filtered for Lipinski Rule compliance. The molecules that survived filtering were then re-docked into the non-cognate PPARα and/or γ_LBPs, conformational analysis re-performed and the affinity of the optimal conformer measured for its cognate receptor quantified. Comparison was made to the baseline and non-cognate receptor affinities previously established, and the molecules exhibiting dual affinities exceeding baseline values were selected for further optimisation. The use of the “tried and tested” Ang(II)R blocker and fibrate scaffolds as templates predisposes to the identification of novel structures devoid of unacceptable toxicity.

Supplemental Material for Employee Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Supervisor Justice Rule Compliance: A Three-Study Investigation

Supplemental Material for Employee Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Supervisor Justice Rule Compliance: A Three-Study Investigation

Corporate governance and voluntary disclosure: Content analysis on Borsa Istanbul hospitality industry companies

While corporate governance is an important mechanism for the success of any firm, the issue has attracted little interest in tourism sector. Therefore the main aim of this study is to highlight the corporate governance mechanisms of hospitality companies on Borsa Istanbul, so as to provide initial empirical evidence on corporate governance. The findings revealed that although the annual reports must give detailed information about corporate governance indicators, such as board of directors, top management and corporate governance rules compliance report, annual reports of analyzed companies do not satisfy those criteria and voluntary disclosure level is low. On the other hand, Public Disclosure Platform is the best resource for corporate governance and other information related to those companies. General corporate governance structure of the listed hospitality companies is comprehensible, but still they should spend much more effort in order to improve corporate governance mechanisms. The originality of the study lies in the fact that it considers a subject that is frequently neglected by tourism researchers in Turkey. Noteworthy contribution of this study is to offer a policy to hospitality companies to improve their corporate governance mechanisms.

Achievements and Challenges in Anti-Doping Research.

The most important element in achieving athlete compliance with anti-doping rules is the certainty of detection. Thus, scientific research plays a mission critical role in achieving clean competition. Many factors contribute to the advances in detection. Incremental advances in the ability to detect prohibited substances and methods, and identification of long-lived metabolites continue to lengthen detection windows. While the athlete biological passport hematological and steroidal modules hold great promise, experience shows that new research is needed to improve the sensitivity and specificity of the approach for current doping techniques. Indirect detection strategies using biomarkers or transcriptomic techniques have been increasingly investigated. The incorporation of more cost-effective sampling strategies using dried blood and plasma spots, oral fluid, and breath analysis show great promise toward increasing the number of tests while remaining within testing budget constraints. Despite the importance of research to ensuring rule compliance, a major challenge for anti-doping research is achieving and maintaining sufficient funding in the reality of the myriad of new substances introduced for disease treatment but abused for performance enhancement. In addition, obtaining metabolism and population reference range data, particularly for new drugs or designer drugs that have not obtained approval for administration to human subjects, remains a significant problem. Nevertheless, research continues to contribute important data to support anti-doping efforts.

Organizational Rule Attributes and Compliance: A Multi-Method Green Tape Study

This study examines the attributes of organizational rules that influence compliance. Rule compliance fosters organizational effectiveness by aligning individual behaviors with organizational preference. While a range of theoretical explanations has been offered for compliance behavior, the characteristics of rule design and implementation have received less empirical attention. Borrowing from the green tape theory of effective rules, this study examines the influence of two particular characteristics – rule formalization and rule consistency – on compliance behavior. Three studies, two vignette experiments and a survey of two local government organizations, provide the data for the research. The results suggest that rule formalization and rule consistency independently increase compliance, with mixed evidence of interaction effects. The broad implication is that public managers must attend to both rule design and implementation to secure compliance from employees.

Research challenges in legal-rule and QoS-aware cloud service brokerage

The ICT industry and specifically critical sectors, such as healthcare, transportation, energy and government, require as mandatory the compliance of ICT systems and services with legislation and regulation, as well as with standards. In the era of cloud computing, this compliance management issue is exacerbated by the distributed nature of the system and by the limited control that customers have on the services. Today, the cloud industry is aware of this problem (as evidenced by the compliance program of many cloud service providers), and the research community is addressing the many facets of the legal-rule compliance checking and quality assurance problem.Cloud service brokerage plays an important role in legislation compliance and QoS management of cloud services. In this paper we discuss our experience in designing a legal-rule and QoS-aware cloud service broker, and we explore relate research issues. Specifically we provide three main contributions to the literature: first, we describe the detailed design architecture of the legal-rule and QoS-aware broker. Second, we discuss our design choices which rely on the state of the art solutions available in literature. We cover four main research areas: cloud broker service deployment, seamless cloud service migration, cloud service monitoring, and legal rule compliance checking. Finally, from the literature review in these research areas, we identify and discuss research challenges.

Reducing Organizational Rule Breaking Through Task Variety: How Task Design Supports Deliberative Thinking

In this paper we argue that task design affects rule breaking in the workplace. Specifically, we propose that task variety activates deliberative (Type 2) processes as opposed to automatic/intuitive (Type 1) processes, which, in turn, helps prevent individuals from breaking rules in order to serve their own hedonic self-interest. We use data from the home loan application processing operations of a Japanese bank to establish the phenomenon in the field. We document that increased task variety at a daily level is associated with lower levels of rule breaking in the form of violating corporate break time policies (Study 1). We further explore the relationship between task variety and rule breaking in three lab experiments, using different operationalizations of rule breaking (Studies 2, 3a, and 3b) and provide direct evidence for the mediating effect of deliberative thinking in this relationship (Studies 3a and 3b). We discuss implications for rule compliance in organizations, behavioral ethics, and work design.

Using cognitive pre-testing methods in the development of a new evidenced-based pressure ulcer risk assessment instrument.

BackgroundVariation in development methods of Pressure Ulcer Risk Assessment Instruments has led to inconsistent inclusion of risk factors and concerns about content validity. A new evidenced-based Risk Assessment Instrument, the Pressure Ulcer Risk Primary Or Secondary Evaluation Tool - PURPOSE-T was developed as part of a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) funded Pressure Ulcer Research Programme (PURPOSE: RP-PG-0407-10056). This paper reports the pre-test phase to assess and improve PURPOSE-T acceptability, usability and confirm content validity.MethodsA descriptive study incorporating cognitive pre-testing methods and integration of service user views was undertaken over 3 cycles comprising PURPOSE-T training, a focus group and one-to-one think-aloud interviews. Clinical nurses from 2 acute and 2 community NHS Trusts, were grouped according to job role. Focus group participants used 3 vignettes to complete PURPOSE-T assessments and then participated in the focus group. Think-aloud participants were interviewed during their completion of PURPOSE-T.After each pre-test cycle analysis was undertaken and adjustment/improvements made to PURPOSE-T in an iterative process. This incorporated the use of descriptive statistics for data completeness and decision rule compliance and directed content analysis for interview and focus group data. Data were collected April 2012-June 2012.ResultsThirty-four nurses participated in 3 pre-test cycles. Data from 3 focus groups, 12 think-aloud interviews incorporating 101 PURPOSE-T assessments led to changes to improve instrument content and design, flow and format, decision support and item-specific wording. Acceptability and usability were demonstrated by improved data completion and appropriate risk pathway allocation. The pre-test also confirmed content validity with clinical nurses.ConclusionsThe pre-test was an important step in the development of the preliminary PURPOSE-T and the methods used may have wider instrument development application. PURPOSE-T proposes a new approach to pressure ulcer risk assessment, incorporating a screening stage, the inclusion of skin status to distinguish between those who require primary prevention and those who require secondary prevention/treatment and the use of colour to support pathway allocation and decision making. Further clinical evaluation is planned to assess the reliability and validity of PURPOSE-T and it’s impact on care processes and patient outcomes.