Alan E. Singer

Situational constraints on transformational versus transactional leadership behavior, subordinates' leadership preference, and satisfaction

Abstract The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Bass, 1985) was administered to police officers in New Zealand (Study 1) and to employees of three companies in Taiwan (Study 2). Results showed that siruational constraints affected actual leader behavior, as well as leadership preference scores. The results indicated that mechanistic organizations such as the police force do not necessarily foster transactional leadership. Leadership in the Taiwanese companies was equally transformational and transactional. Preferences for the transformational leadership style were evident in both samples, although Taiwanese employees had a greater liking for transactional leaders. Finally, discrepancy scores between actual and preferred leader ratings may have less efficacy in predicting subordinate satisfaction than scores of actual leader behavior alone.

Is There Always Escalation of Commitment

The Staw (1976) study and the Bazerman, et al. (1984) study showed that individuals responsible for negative consequences consistently escalated their commitment to the previously chosen course of action. The present study attempted to replicate the escalation of commitment phenomenon. Staws experimental procedures for the condition of high responsibility and negative feedback were followed. The present sample consisted of 93 university students. Analysis showed that there was no escalation of commitment following negative feedback. There was a significant reduction in commitment following the initial allocations to the Industrial Products Division. Possible interpretations for the inconsistent findings were proposed.

Strategy as Rationality

Alan Singer teaches strategic management at the Department of Management, University of Canterbury. He read mathematics at the University of Oxford, (The Queen s College) and psychology at London University. He worked for several years in the private sector in London , particularly with Emile Woolf & Associates and has since held academic positions in New Zealand and Australia. Professor Singer has published and conducted research in several areas related to corporate management, including articles in Omega, Intern. J. of Research in Marketing, Intern. J. of Forecasting, J. Bus. Ethics, Accountancy, Decision Sciences, J. Social Psych , and elsewhere . His current research concerns rationality and ethics in management.

Ethical myopia: The case of “framing” by framing

The behavioural decision-theoretic concepts of mental accounting, framing and transaction utility have now been employed in marketing models and techniques. To date, however, there has not been any discussion of the ethical issues surrounding these significant developments. In this paper, an ethical evaluation is structured around three themes: (i) utilitarian justification (ii) the strategic exploitation of cognitive habits, and (iii) the claim of scientific status for the techniques. Some recommendations are made for ethical practices.

Corporate conscience and foreign divestment decisions

The rational-agent frame of reference for the analysis of corporate strategic decision-making may be expanded to a moral-agent perspective where decision content is seen as comprising both commercial and ethical factors. Relevant factors may then be classified on the basis of the ethical decision principles to which they relate: rational-egoism, self-referential altruism or deontology. This approach is then applied to the problem of decision support for strategic divestment by MNCs.

Profit Without Copyright

An elite consensus appears to have formed around the strengthening of IPR regimes. At the same time, many people, particularly in developing countries, are questioning the idea of paying for what they intuitively sense might possibly be free. In view of the potential for global dissensus on this issue, businesses that produce and distribute explicit knowledge, or digital sequences, would be quite prudent to start making contingency plans for a new form of global capitalism: one characterised by much weaker IPR regimes. Competitive business strategies based upon rival-complementarity (i.e. physical goods and human services that complement digital products) indicate the feasibility of a global economy-of-things, resting upon a freely accessible ecology of knowledge. This might be built in the future, in much the same way that an industrial economy was built, historically, upon a natural ecology of available land and biosystems. Such an arrangement conforms to several rather fundamental political intuitions.

Corporate Moral Agency and Artificial Intelligence

The debate about the moral status of corporations has been wide-ranging and complex. In this paper a way of structuring the debate is proposed. At the same time, arguments within the “corporate moral agency†debate are considered in relation to the notion of Artificial Moral Agency. The entire exercise points to the importance of philosophical pragmatism and the prospect of ‘artificial ethics’.

Justice in preferential hiring

AbstractsThis paper reports studies designed to examine perceptions of preferential selection. Subjects evaluated the fairness of hypothetical cases of selection decisions based on either candidate sex or ethnic origin. A within-subjects design and a between-subjects design yielded convergent results showing that (1) preferential selection was perceived as unfair, irrespective of respondent sex or the basis for the preferential treatment (i.e., candidate sex or ethnic origin), (2) the level of perceived injustice was directly related to the discrepancy in merits between the successful minority candidate and the more qualified yet unsuccessful majority candidate, and (3) the provision of either an “ethical” or “legislative” justification for the selection decisions further exacerbated feelings of injustice. Possible interpretations for the findings and practical implications of the study were then discussed.

Role of Transactions in Mental Accounting

The role of the transaction as a mediator of responses to the “theatre ticket” problems of Kahneman and Tversky was investigated. The hypothesis that implicit budgeting triggers topical organisation received some support. A further hypothesis, that social interaction is a salient feature of the problem, was not supported.

Entrepreneurship as wisdom

The pragmatic correspondence thesis regarding strategic management theory and moral philosophy is adapted in this paper to apply it to the constructs of entrepreneurship and wisdom. Accordingly, a mapping between elements of both constructs is set out. The resulting qualities of wise entrepreneurship include (1) the selection of good purposes, (2) a mindfulness of the business and personal life cycles, (3) authentic prioritisation and (4) explication: the demonstration as well as explanation of enterprise purposes and plans.