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Showing papers on "Situational ethics published in 1993"


Book
01 Jan 1993
TL;DR: In this article, a middle-range theory of culture, self-identity and work behaviour is developed and applied to the development and application of a self-representative theory, where cultural and situational characteristics, cognitive representation of the self and managerial practices and techniques used in an organization are discussed.
Abstract: The focus of this book is the development and application of a middle-range theory of culture, self-identity and work behaviour. According to the authors' self-representative theory, three components are relevant to an individual's work behaviour: cultural and situational characteristics, cognitive representation of the self, and managerial practices and techniques used in an organization. Culture is viewed as a shared knowledge structure that results in decreased variability in individual interpretation of stimuli. The self is viewed as a dynamic interpretive structure that shapes an individual's interpretation of social milieu. Managerial practices influence work behaviour, and in this book the focus is on how these practices relate to the components of culture and the self. A final chapter provides a number of specific recommendations for how organizations might consider structuring their environment and managerial practices in order to match culture-self interaction.

1,059 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The role of social and situational influences in the performance-rating process has received relatively little research attention as mentioned in this paper, yet merits increased attention. Although there has been acknowledgements of acknowledgm...
Abstract: The role of social and situational influences in the performance-rating process has received relatively little research attention yet merits increased attention. Although there has been acknowledgm...

531 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A social psychological framework for the scientific study of sexual harassment is described in this article, where the sexual harassment of women is conceptualized as a behavior that some men perform some of the time.

275 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the late 1940s, Sutherland proposed that explanations of deviance and crime are either situational or dispositional, and that of the two, situational explanations might be the more important as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In the late 1940s Sutherland proposed that explanations of deviance and crime are either situational or dispositional, and that of the two, situational explanations might be the more important. Nonetheless, with a few notable exceptions, for the next four decades sociologists focused on dispositional theories to the near total exclusion of situational variables. However, an increasing awareness of the theoretical limitations of strategies based only on dispositions has begun to encourage researchers to reconsider situational explanations. Most of the research that explicitly examines situational dynamics in producing crime has originated in experimental psychology, symbolic interactionism, or opportunity theories. Experimental research has helped to identify the situational correlates of crime and deviance, but lacks a theoretical framework for organizing its disparate empirical findings. Symbolic interaction research has emphasized the actor's role in defining and interpreting situations but thus far has...

250 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of disciplinary content in the barriers to completion in distance education attrition was investigated in natural resource sciences distance education, and it was shown that both withdrawal and persisting students experienced situational, institutional, dispositional and epistemological problems that posed barriers to completing distance education.
Abstract: Ethnography was used to elucidate barriers to completion in natural resource sciences distance education. The aim was to increase understanding of those variables associated with persistence and withdrawal, particularly to discern better the role of disciplinary content in these phenomena. The courses provide exemplars of epistemological stances that are broadly relevant. Both withdrawal and persisting students experienced situational, institutional, dispositional and epistemological problems that posed barriers to completion. Elucidation of the epistemological problems makes it evident that course content itself cannot be ignored in any theoretical or practical consideration of distance education attrition.

166 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors assess the role of personality and situational influences on destructive interpersonal and organizational decisions and find that destructive individuals tended to make decisions that harmed the organization when self-efficacy was low.
Abstract: Leaders sometimes make decisions that harm organizational members and long-term organizational performance. The intent of the present study was to assess the role of personality and situational influences on destructive interpersonal and organizational decisions. Management majors were asked to complete a battery of personality and ability measures as part of a Regional Sales Manager Assessment Center. Additionally, they were asked to complete a 32-item “in-basket,” with eight items reflecting decisions that would harm others and eight items reflecting decisions that would harm the organization. Systematic manipulations were made in “in-basket” content to manipulate authority norms, feelings of self-efficacy, and psychological distance. It was found that destructive individuals tended to make decisions that harmed the organization when self-efficacy was low. However, they would not necessarily make decisions that harmed others unless actions of this sort were supported by authority. The implications of these findings for leadership and organizational performance are discussed.

75 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors explored the utility of Van Liere and Dunlap's (1981) measure of environmental concern in differentiating situational publics and found that the fatalistic public did not perceive environmental issues to be a problem because they favored economic development over concern for the environment.
Abstract: Public relations practitioners will find Grunig's situational communication theory to be a useful tool for identifying environmental publics and their orientations toward specific environmental issues. The research reported here explores the utility of Van Liere and Dunlap's (1981) measure of environmental concern in differentiating situational publics. The data were collected by telephone survey from 1,002 adult respondents. Members of the routine public did not perceive environmental issues to be a problem because they favored economic development over concern for the environment. The fatalistic public reported watching television news about pollution and held a pro-environmental attitude. Problem recognition provided a cognitive measure of environmental awareness and was consistently associated with communication behavior. Level of involvement and environmental concern provided attitudinal measures of the respondent's orientation toward environmental issues; however, these variables were not consistent...

57 citations


Journal Article
TL;DR: A survey of 141 lesbians in a metropolitan area of North Carolina found that during the initial stages of identity acceptance, when individuals may not have access to the lesbian community, the library is used heavily as an information resource.

49 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a measure for Pargament's Self-Directing, Deferring, and Collaborative religious coping styles was developed to evaluate situational and personal variations in religious coping.
Abstract: In this study, a state measure for Pargament's Self-Directing, Deferring, and Collaborative religious coping styles was developed to evaluate situational and personal variations in religious coping. Vignettes were used to vary situations. The state coping subscales were significantly correlated with their respective trait counterparts. Situational variability in religious coping style was established and related to the characteristics of the situations and individuals. A more active role was assigned to God for the state coping styles than was indicated by the trait measures. In addition, increased perception of stressors (stress, importance, challenge, loss, and threat) in the vignettes was correlated with a more active role for God and a less active role for the individual

45 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The work of Helen Fein stands out because, through its main findings, it encompasses the diversity of Nazi destructiveness: both the enthusiastic serf-initiated horrors of the hate-driven antisemite and the impersonal, routinized actions of the bureaucrat carrying out the orders of his superior.
Abstract: Three psychological approaches attempting to explain the behavior of the perpetrators of the Holocaust are reviewed and evaluated The first is a situational approach building largely on the laboratory experiments of the social psychologist Stanley Milgram The second is an approach focusing on the personal dispositions of the perpetrators, the primary example being work which has tried to find evidence of psychopathology among the Nazi leaders The third is an interactional approach-one that sees the Nazis' murderous actions as a product of both situational pressures and personal dispositions Among the last, the work of Helen Fein stands out because, through its main findings, it encompasses the diversity of Nazi destructiveness: both the enthusiastic serf-initiated horrors of the hate-driven antisemite and the impersonal, routinized actions of the bureaucrat carrying out the orders of his superior

42 citations


Journal Article
TL;DR: A growing body of literature suggests that situational constraints make it difficult for nurses to uphold ethical standards for nursing, and concerted efforts will take concerted efforts in nursing education, administration, practice and research.
Abstract: Awareness of nurses' ethical concerns has increased greatly over the last few years. In response to this awareness, the Canadian Nurses Association revised the Code of Ethics to provide direction for the implementation of ethical standards for nursing. Yet, a growing body of literature suggests that situational constraints make it difficult for nurses to uphold these standards. Overcoming these constraints will take concerted efforts in nursing education, administration, practice and research.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper employed parenting dilemmas to determine whether restriction of domain would reduce gender differences in moral reasoning orientation, finding that women and men did not differ in their use of care or justice reasoning when the domain was restricted.
Abstract: Some researchers have proposed that women prefer care reasoning, which considers issues of need and sacrifice, and men prefer justice reasoning, which considers issues of fairness and rights. However, differences in approach to moral reasoning may be due to the different types of dilemmas women and men encounter rather than to differences in the ways men and women approach moral problems. The present study employed parenting dilemmas to determine whether restriction of domain would reduce gender differences in moral reasoning orientation. Dilemmas were presented or elicited and differed in difficulty, importance, and personal relevance to investigate the relationship between situational characteristics and care or justice reasoning. Women and men did not differ in their use of care or justice reasoning when the domain was restricted, supporting the conclusion that differences in moral reasoning orientation result from differences in current life situations rather than from stable gender characteristics.

Journal Article
TL;DR: The Canadian Nurses Association as discussed by the authors revised the Code of Ethics to provide direction for the implementation of ethical standards for nursing, but a growing body of literature suggests that situational constraints make it difficult for nurses to uphold these standards.
Abstract: Awareness of nurses' ethical concerns has increased greatly over the last few years. In response to this awareness, the Canadian Nurses Association revised the Code of Ethics to provide direction for the implementation of ethical standards for nursing. Yet, a growing body of literature suggests that situational constraints make it difficult for nurses to uphold these standards. Overcoming these constraints will take concerted efforts in nursing education, administration, practice and research.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is suggested that the Ludus love style may serve as a unifying construct for dispositions related to sexual aggression, and was the best predictor of sexual coercion among the six love styles.
Abstract: The relationship between sexual aggression and theoretical love styles was studied. Based on self-reported sexual history, 63 college men were grouped as having either consensual sexual experience only (n =33) or having verbally coercive sexual experience (n =30). Analyses were conducted using six love style scales, likelihood to rape, likelihood to use sexual force, masculinity, and sociopathy to predict sexual coercive group membership. Logistic regression indicated that the Ludus love style, a manipulative, game-playing orientation towards intimate relationships, was the best predictor of sexual coercion among the six love styles. Additionally, logistic regression indicated that the Ludus love style was as effective in classifying men as coercive or noncoercive as other dispositions related to sexual aggression. These results suggest that the Ludus love style may serve as a unifying construct for dispositions related to sexual aggression. This study constitutes an initial attempt to link sexually coercive behaviors to a theoretical model of intimate relationships. Results are discussed in the context of a situational model of sexual coercion.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the influence of situational constraints on observed performance levels and the performance evaluation process, including scale design, cognitive processing and rater training, and concluded that situational constraints have the potential to exert a significant influence on the performance appraisal process and should be more vigorously examined in future research.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper argued that the state of ethics in public relations is more a consequence of practitioners' perfunctory adherence to the three motifs of situationism (agapeic love (a social attitude), human welfare, happiness) than of their preference for the theory of situational ethics in its classical context.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, employment commitment is measured at two points in time, two years apart, on two large cohorts within the 15-19 age span and career trajectory was grouped into five categories according to routes between education, training and employment.
Abstract: This paper addresses the question of whether employment commitment is a stable, dispositional aspect of work attitudes or a situationally based construct. The concept was measured at two points in time, two years apart, on two large cohorts within the 15–19 age span. The situational factors were career trajectory and labour market locality. Career trajectory was grouped into five categories, according to routes between education, training and employment. Four labour market localities were studied, with varying unemployment rates and job opportunities. The hypothesis that employment commitment is stable over time was not supported, there being a significant fall over the two-year period, despite a retest correlation of .41. Furthermore, the change was similar across the situational, gender and cohort groups. There were, in addition, significant effects of career trajectory and locality. Results are discussed in the context of the dispositional versus situational debate, and in relation to the origins of work attitudes.

Journal ArticleDOI
Joseph A. Raelin1
TL;DR: The Persean ethic refers to the willingness of managers to follow through on their espoused beliefs with others in their immediate working network as discussed by the authors, which is considered to be among the most important of managerial practices since through it managers can monitor their beliefs to ensure that their actions are consistent with otherwise salutary espoused theories.
Abstract: The Persean ethic in managerial practice refers to the willingness of managers to follow through on their espoused beliefs with others in their immediate working network. It is considered to be among the most important of managerial practices since through it managers can monitor their beliefs to ensure that their actions are consistent with otherwise salutary espoused theories. In order to assess the dependent variable of Persean conduct, or consistency of belief and action, the core respondents' immediate work set, including their superior, peers, and subordinates, were surveyed as well as themselves. In an attempt to create an explanatory model of Persean conduct, individual personality and background factors, situational characteristics, their interaction, and learning factors were evaluated. Respondents were found to vary on Persean conduct, the Persean ethic was found not to be unidimensional, and although each of the independent variable clusters was represented in the predictor list, personality f...

Book
30 Jul 1993
TL;DR: The Significance of Male Bonding Autonomy and Independence In Search of Self Interaction: Integration of Learning and Subjective Experience Psychosexual Adjustment Situational Ethics for Work and Play Sexuality and Relationships.
Abstract: Preface Overview: Review of the Issues Growing Up Male Sex and Gender The Significance of Male Bonding Autonomy and Independence In Search of Self Interaction: Integration of Learning and Subjective Experience Psychosexual Adjustment Situational Ethics for Work and Play Sexuality and Relationships References Index

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors show that the teller-listener extremity effect is very robust but is not mediated by a teller's tendency to omit either situational information (as Gilovich argued) or stylistic information about the target person's level of remorse.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the case of a racist paper, some seemingly universal principle far beyond "political correctness," beyond situational truths, was at issue as mentioned in this paper, and it was clear she was having some difficulty reconciling her own moral fervor.
Abstract: So ends Arthur Clarke's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, and, as David Bowman contemplates with some dismay his seeming mastery of the universe, his unstated question is one the contemporary writing or literature teacher might well appropriate for his or her own contemporary pedagogical dilemma: So what do I do now with my students? It is the question a high-school English teacher once asked me as she read some Derrida and Nietzsche as part of a required Contemporary Theory and Pedagogy class I was teaching. Her pedagogical quandary was not an isolated one. I answered her with another question: "What if a student in your freshman writing class submits to you a rough draft of a paper which you consider to be racist-very racist? Would you, or should you, with that paper-or perhaps one that asserts that it is the duty of Christians to ferret out every gay and 'beat some sense into him'-mark it as any other paper?" She seemed to squirm in her seat. She had, in fact, once gotten a racist paper, and her response had been unequivocal: she did not allow the paper and "sat the student down and set him right." Whatever truth there is to Foucault's assertion that each "society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth-i.e., the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true" ("Truth" 131), and whatever personal power agendas are working subtly at the heart of any particular discourse, still, to that teacher that morning, there were some things you could be certain about. In the case of a racist paper, some seemingly universal principle far beyond "political correctness," beyond situational truths, was at issue. Still, as she struggled through some of the assigned readings for the course, it was clear she was having some difficulty reconciling her own moral fervor

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 1993
TL;DR: For instance, this article argued that situation rather than person variables account for behavior, and the focus of empirical study was on the interaction of the two variables rather than the interaction between them.
Abstract: In academic circles, the past 20 years have shown a decline in the influence of personality theorizing. For the first part of that period, the person-situation debate fulminated, with the social psychologists and behaviorists joining with some in the personality field to argue that situation rather than person variables account for behavior. Although there were counterarguments raised, some psychologists came to wonder whether personality exists at all, and even those who did not go this far were likely to conclude that the personality area is a mess. Finally, cooler heads prevailed, and an interactional accord was reached in which behavior was regarded as a joint function of situational and person variables, with the emphasis of empirical study being on the interaction of the two.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The relationship between situational constraints and individual job performance has received increasing attention by researchers within the past decade as discussed by the authors, and a review of the literature on this relationship can be found in this paper.

Journal Article
TL;DR: This study demonstrates the importance of situational influence on services marketing by delineating a consumer-based, situationally characterized competitive market structure for health care services in terms of the similarity/substitutability of the three-factor, situational characterizations of ten health care alternatives.
Abstract: The impact of situational factors has typically been investigated in the context of goods marketing. Very few studies have investigated the influence of situational factors on services marketing. This study demonstrates the importance of situational influence on services marketing by delineating a consumer-based, situationally characterized competitive market structure for health care services. The competitive structure of the health care market is delineated in terms of the similarity/substitutability of the three-factor, situational characterizations of ten health care alternatives. The general marketing implications of the market-structure delineation procedure and the health care-specific implications of the findings are discussed.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper found that subjects' willingness to infer a corresponding trait from an instance of a type of behavior was greater for behaviors believed to be consistent with situational forces and to have desirable consequences.
Abstract: People may function like 'naive Thondikeans" whose willingness to make a correspondent inference is increased when they believe that the repeated or prolonged circumstances of a type of behavior facilitate acquiring a disposition to perform that behavior-the acquisition principle In Study 1, subjects' willingness to infer a corresponding trait from an instance of a type of behavior was greater for behaviors believed to be consistent with situational forces and to have desirable consequences. In Study 2, subjects' beliefs that the actor's immediate circumstances (a liberal or conservative audience) facilitated producing a liberal or conservative statement were negatively related to their correspondent inferences about his real attitude. Subjects' beliefs that the speaker's prolonged circumstances (a liberal or conservative upbringing) facilitated producing the statement were positively related to their correspondent inferences. Three types of dispositional judgment are identified that take circumstances in...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper examined the effects of four situational factors on the severity of punishment chosen by a manager following a rule infraction and found that superiors are likely to base disciplinary judgements on situational factors and that situational factors affect superiors' decisions in a simple linear fashion.
Abstract: This study examined the effects of four situational factors on the severity of punishment chosen by a manager following a rule infraction. Two attributes of the offender, gender and performance history, and two outcomes of the infraction, physical damage and personal injury, were combined within a scenario evaluated by 421 graduate business students in a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA design. Results indicated strong main effects for performance history, physical damage, and personal injury but not for gender. Further analyses indicated that the gender composition of the superior/offender dyad did not have a significant effect on the severity of discipline, although some variation occurred across dyads. These results imply that superiors are likely to base disciplinary judgements on situational factors, and that situational factors affect superiors' decisions in a simple, linear fashion.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a specification for an integrated theory of religious development is presented, and a speculative scheme is advanced in which the weight of the partial theories depends on the native endowment of individuals, their levels of development and personal investment, and situational conditions.
Abstract: Developmental psychology of religion is like a smorgasbord: For some authors conation is a major driving force, for others emotion, for yet others cognition, socialization, psycho-dynamics, and/or coping with critical or stressing life events, not forgetting attribution theory as a significant predictor. After recalling the necessary background knowledge, a specification for an integrated theory of religious development is presented, and a speculative scheme is advanced in which the weight of the partial theories depends on the native endowment of individuals, their levels of development and personal investment, and situational conditions.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a cognitive-social-learning conceptualization of the contribution of static person by situation interaction to overt behaviour variance was proposed, and individual differences in the relation between, on the one hand, situational variation in behaviour and on the other hand, situation variation in objective situational characteristics, situational variations in construed situational characteristics and situational variation of goals-in-situations were systematically investigated.
Abstract: This study starts from a cognitive-social-learning conceptualization of the contribution of static person by situation interaction to overt behaviour variance. Individual differences in the relation between, on the one hand, situational variation in behaviour and, on the other hand, situational variation in objective situational characteristics, situational variation in construed situational characteristics, and situational variation in goals-in-situations were systematically investigated. Thirty-six first-year psychology students had to freely generate and briefly describe 20 interpersonal situations that they had encountered during the last year. Afterwards, they had to rate each situation for four basic behavioural continua, eight supplied objective situational characteristics, eight supplied constructs, and eight supplied goals. Correlational analysis revealed many stable individual differences, not only in degree, but also in direction (sign) of situation-behaviour, construct–behaviour, and goal–behaviour relations. These relational variables could be reduced to seven relational factorial dimensions. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Aug 1993
TL;DR: A literature review of empirical research that examines the incidences of cheating behaviors, characteristics of "cheaters" and situational factors that affect the prevalence of cheating is presented in this article.
Abstract: A literature review of empirical research that examines the incidences of cheating behaviors, characteristics of "cheaters" and situational factors that affect the prevalence of cheating is present...

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Aug 1993
TL;DR: In this article, individual and situational predictors of feedback-seeking cost were studied for 145 student helicopter pilots, using the Fishbein-Ajzen theory of reasoned action as a theoretical foundation.
Abstract: Individual and situational predictors of feedback-seeking cost were studies for 145 student helicopter pilots, using the Fishbein-Ajzen theory of reasoned action as a theoretical foundation. Predic...