Burke D. Grandjean

Professional autonomy and the work satisfaction of nursing educators.

The importance and satisfaction associated with 21 characteristics of a nurse faculty position were examined, using 1974 questionnaire data from schools of nursing at four major state universities. Teaching, supportive colleagues, keeping clinical knowledge current, and faculty autonomy were seen as the most important aspects of the job by the 154 nursing educators surveyed, while salary, fringe benefits, and other extrinsic rewards ranked substantially lower in importance. Satisfaction with the more important conditions was generally low, with lack of faculty participation in decision making a particularly noteworthy source of dissatisfaction. Importance and satisfaction ranking of the 21 characteristics remained fairly stable across the four schools and across groups broken down by martial status, experience, and other personal attributes. Increased professional autonomy, it was suggested, would benefit faculty morale, recruitment, retention, and overall effectiveness in nursing education.

Sex and Centralization in a Semiprofession

Because direct empirical comparisons of the organizational participation of women and men have been lacking, attempts to incorporate gender as an explanatory variable in theories of organizational authority have had to rely on unverified sex stereotypes. This research examines contentions which have appeared repeatedly in such attempts, namely (a) that there are differences between men and women in four types of work orientation, and (b) that these differences are reflected in greater centralization of authority in predominantly female organizations. To isolate the effects of gender, semiprofessionals in ten very similar organizations were surveyed (Catholic secondary schools). Results show little difference in career commitment, and no support for stereotypes of women as less concerned with intrinsic characteristics of work and more submissive to authority than men. With or without multivariate controls, women do appear to value interpersonal relationships on the job somewhat more highly. However, faculty sex composition is not associated with degree of centralization, disconfirming the major prediction of those theoretical discussions which have suggested that gender is a partial determinant of the authority structure in complex organizations.

Confidence, concentration, and competitive performance of elite athletes: a natural experiment in Olympic gymnastics.

During the womens all-around gymnastics final at the 2000 Olympics, the vault was inadvertently set 5 cm too low for a random half of the 36 gymnasts. The error was widely viewed as undermining their confidence and adversely affecting their subsequent performance. This paper examines whether the vault problem had such a carryover effect. Both pretest scores (from preliminary rounds) and posttest scores (from the final) are available on vault, bars, beam. and floor. Manipulation checks establish that the error had experimental impact on vault performance. However, from comparing means, from analysis of covariance, from multiple regression, and from statistically adjusting the official scores, it is clear that the vault error had little if any effect on later performances or on the final standings. Elite athletes in a closed-skill sport apparently learn to concentrate so well that most can recover from a mishap and refocus successfully for the next effort.