Disclosure, discrimination and desire: experiences of Black and South Asian gay men in Britain

Using findings from a qualitative investigation based on in-depth email interviews with 47 Black and South Asian gay men in Britain, this paper explores the cross-cutting identities and discourses in relation to being both gay and from an ethnic minority background. Taking an intersectional approach, detailed accounts of identity negotiation, cultural pressures, experiences of discrimination and exclusion and the relationship between minority ethnic gay men and mainstream White gay culture are presented and explored. The major findings common to both groups were: cultural barriers limiting disclosure of sexuality to family and wider social networks; experiences of discrimination by White gay men that included exclusion as well as objectification; a lack of positive gay role models and imagery relating to men from minority ethnic backgrounds. Among South Asian gay men, a major theme was regret at being unable to fulfil family expectations regarding marriage and children, while among Black gay men, there was a strong belief that same-sex behaviour subverted cultural notions related to how masculinity is configured. The paper concludes by highlighting the importance of social location, particularly education and income, when examining the intersection of ethnicity and sexuality in future research.

Implementation status of error disclosure standards reported by Swiss hospitals

QUESTION UNDER STUDY To establish at what stage Swiss hospitals are in implementing an internal standard concerning communication with patients and families after an error that resulted in harm. METHODS Hospitals were identified via the Swiss Hospital Association's website. An anonymous questionnaire was sent during September and October 2011 to 379 hospitals in German, French or Italian. Hospitals were asked to specify their hospital type and the implementation status of an internal hospital standard that decrees that patients or their relatives are to be promptly informed about medical errors that result in harm. RESULTS Responses from a total of 205 hospitals were received, a response rate of 54%. Most responding hospitals (62%) had an error disclosure standard or planned to implement one within 12 months. The majority of responding university and acute care (75%) hospitals had introduced a disclosure standard or were planning to do so. In contrast, the majority of responding psychiatric, rehabilitation and specialty (53%) clinics had not introduced a standard. CONCLUSION It appears that Swiss hospitals are in a promising state in providing institutional support for practitioners disclosing medical errors to patients. This has been shown internationally to be one important factor in encouraging the disclosure of medical errors. However, many hospitals, in particular psychiatric, rehabilitation and specialty clinics, have not implemented an error disclosure policy. Further research is needed to explore the underlying reasons.

Self-disclosure and privacy calculus on social networking sites: the role of culture

Social Networking Sites (SNSs) have become extremely popular around the world. They rely on user-generated content to offer engaging experience to its members. Cultural differences may influence the motivation of users to create and share content on SNS. This study adopts the privacy calculus perspective to examine the role of culture in individual self-disclosure decisions. The authors use structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis to investigate this dynamics. The findings reveal the importance of cultural dimensions of individualism and uncertainty avoidance in the cognitive processes of SNS users.

Online disclosure and privacy concerns: a study of Moroccan and American facebook users

In using online social networks to connect and interact with people has become extremely popular all around the world. Thelargest Social Networking Site (SNS), Facebook, offers its services in over 70 languages and increasingly relies oninternational users to grow its membership. Aiming to understand the role of culture in SNS participation, this study adopts a‘privacy calculus’ perspective to examine the differences in participation patterns between American and MoroccanFacebook users. Survey results show that Moroccans users disclose less on Facebook than US users, yet perceive moredamage should their privacy on Facebook be violated. American users, on the other hand, have lower privacy concerns, trustfellow SNS members and legal system more, and disclose more in their profile. From a practical standpoint, the resultsindicate that SNS providers cannot rely on the same methods to encourage user participation and disclosure in differentcountries.

"It won't happen to me!": self-disclosure in online social networks

Despite the considerable amount of self-disclosure in Online Social Networks (OSN), the motivation behind this phenomenon is still little understood. Building on the Privacy Calculus theory, this study fills this gap by taking a closer look at the factors behind individual self-disclosure decisions. In a Structural Equation Model with 237 subjects we find Perceived Enjoyment and Privacy Concerns to be significant determinants of information revelation. We confirm that the privacy concerns of OSN users are primarily determined by the perceived likelihood of a privacy violation and much less by the expected damage. These insights provide a solid basis for OSN providers and policy-makers in their effort to ensure healthy disclosure levels that are based on objective rationale rather than subjective misconceptions.

Essays on behavioral aspects of the design and disclosure of compensation contracts

This thesis consists of four essays on the design and disclosure of compensation contracts. Essays 1, 2 and 3 focus on behavioral aspects of mandatory compensation disclosure rules and of contract negotiations in agency relationships. The three experimental studies develop psychology- based theory and present results that deviate from standard economic predictions. Furthermore, the results of Essay 1 and 2 also have implications for firms’ discretion in how to communicate their top management’s incentives to the capital market. Essay 4 analyzes the role of fairness perceptions for the evaluation of executive compensation. For this purpose, two surveys targeting representative eligible voters as well as investment professionals were conducted. Essay 1 investigates the role of the detailed ‘Compensation Discussion and Analysis’, which is part of the Security and Exchange Commission’s 2006 regulation, on investors’ evaluations of executive performance. Compensation disclosure complying with this regulation clarifies the relationship between realized reported compensation and the underlying performance measures and their target achievement levels. The experimental findings suggest that the salient presentation of executives’ incentives inherent in the ‘Compensation Discussion and Analysis’ makes investors’ performance evaluations less outcome dependent. Therefore, investors’ judgment and investment decisions might be less affected by noisy environmental factors that drive financial performance. The results also suggest that fairness perceptions of compensation contracts are essential for investors’ performance evaluations in that more transparent disclosure increases the perceived fairness of compensation and the performance evaluation of managers who are not responsible for a bad financial performance. These results have important practical implications as firms might choose to communicate their top management’s incentive compensation more transparently in order to benefit from less volatile expectations about their future performance. Similar to the first experiment, the experiment described in Essay 2 addresses the question of more transparent compensation disclosure. However, other than the first experiment, the second experiment does not analyze the effect of a more salient presentation of contract information but the informational effect of contract information itself. For this purpose, the experiment tests two conditions in which the assessment of the compensation contracts’ incentive compatibility, which determines executive effort, is either possible or not. On the one hand, the results suggest that the quality of investors’ expectations about executive effort is improved, but on the other hand investors might over-adjust their prior expectations about executive effort if being confronted with an unexpected financial performance and under-adjust if the financial performance confirms their prior expectations. Therefore, in the experiment, more transparent compensation disclosure does not lead to more correct overall judgments of executive effort and to even lower processing quality of outcome information. These results add to the literature on disclosure which predominantly advocates more transparency. The findings of the experiment however, identify decreased information processing quality as a relevant disclosure cost category. Firms might therefore carefully evaluate the additional costs and benefits of more transparent compensation disclosure. Together with the results from the experiment in Essay 1, the two experiments on compensation disclosure imply that firms should rather focus on their discretion how to present their compensation disclosure to benefit from investors’ improved fairness perceptions and their spill-over on performance evaluation. Essay 3 studies the behavioral effects of contextual factors in recruitment processes that do not affect the employer’s or the applicant’s bargaining power from a standard economic perspective. In particular, the experiment studies two common characteristics of recruitment processes: Pre-contractual competition among job applicants and job applicants’ non-binding effort announcements as they might be made during job interviews. Despite the standard economic irrelevance of these factors, the experiment develops theory regarding the behavioral effects on employees’ subsequent effort provision and the employers’ contract design choices. The experimental findings largely support the predictions. More specifically, the results suggest that firms can benefit from increased effort and, therefore, may generate higher profits. Further, firms may seize a larger share of the employment relationship’s profit by highlighting the competitive aspects of the recruitment process and by requiring applicants to make announcements about their future effort. Finally, Essay 4 studies the role of fairness perceptions for the public evaluation of executive compensation. Although economic criteria for the design of incentive compensation generally do not make restrictive recommendations with regard to the amount of compensation, fairness perceptions might be relevant from the perspective of firms and standard setters. This is because behavioral theory has identified fairness as an important determinant of individuals’ judgment and decisions. However, although fairness concerns about executive compensation are often stated in the popular media and even in the literature, evidence on the meaning of fairness in the context of executive compensation is scarce and ambiguous. In order to inform practitioners and standard setters whether fairness concerns are exclusive to non-professionals or relevant for investment professionals as well, the two surveys presented in Essay 4 aim to find commonalities in the opinions of representative eligible voters and investments professionals. The results suggest that fairness is an important criterion for both groups. Especially, exposure to risk in the form of the variable compensation share is an important criterion shared by both groups. The higher the assumed variable share, the higher is the compensation amount to be perceived as fair. However, to a large extent, opinions on executive compensation depend on personality characteristics, and to some extent, investment professionals’ perceptions deviate systematically from those of non-professionals. The findings imply that firms might benefit from emphasizing the riskiness of their managers’ variable pay components and, therefore, the findings are also in line with those of Essay 1.

Disclosure attitudes and social acknowledgement as predictors of posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity in Chinese and German crime victims

Objective: Only rare data exist comparing cross-cultural aspects of civilian traumatization. We compared prevalence rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in German and Chinese crime victims, and investigated the cross-cultural effect of 2 interpersonal predictors. Method: German (n = 151) and Chinese (n = 144) adult crime victims were assessed several months postcrime. The parallel questionnaire set assessed PTSD symptom severity, disclosure attitudes, social acknowledgement, and demographic and crime characteristics. Results: German and Chinese participants differed significantly in their PTSD symptom severity. However, in both samples, disclosure attitudes and social acknowledgement predicted PTSD symptom severity with a similar strength, in addition to the effects of other PTSD predictors. Conclusions: The results suggest that interpersonal variables are predictors of PTSD symptom severity in both cultures and should be included in etiologic models of PTSD.