The effects of domain-specific avoid and prove goal orientations on performance: A multilevel analysis

Recently, goal orientation, a mental framework for understanding how individuals approach learning and achievement situadons, has emerged as an important predictor of performance. This study addressed the effects of domain-specific avoid and prove orientations on performance from the betweenand within-person levels of analysis. One hundred and three participants performed thirty trials of an airtraffic control task. Domain-specific avoid and prove orientations were measured before each trial to assess the effects of changes in goal orientadon on changes in performance (i.e. within-person relationships). Average levels of avoid and prove orientations were calculated to assess the effect of goal orientation on overall performance (i.e. between-person relationships). Findings from the between-person level of analysis revealed that high prove-orientated individuals performed better than low proveorientated individuals. Results also revealed that average goal orientation levels moderated the withinperson relationships. The effect of changes in avoid orientation on changes in performance was stronger for low versus high avoid-oriented individuals while the effect of changes in prove orientadon on changes in performances was stronger for low versus highprove oriented individuals. Implications of these findings are considered.

A comparative analysis of cultural value orientations of Indians and migrant Indians in the USA

Understanding the cultural value systems of nations is a key factor in anticipating the behaviour of business managers and employees in a specific business environment. Many research studies have acknowledged the impact of culture on communication across nations and its impact on business operations, however no study has attempted to measure and quantify the cultural orientations of people originating from one nation, but working in two different national settings. This study adopted Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck's framework to examine cultural dimensions of a total of 580 Indian respondents comprising two groups: 429 Indian natives living and working in India and 151 Indian migrants living and working in the USA. It initially compares the cultural orientations of the total population of each of the two groups and then examines cultural differences in the same based on demographic characteristics consisting of occupation, gender, age, and level of education. The study found significant cultural value differences between the two groups on both levels of analysis. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in detail.

A cross-national comparison of cultural value orientations of Indian, Polish, Russian and American employees

This study examines the cultural value orientations (VOs) of employees (managerial and non-managerial) working in three categories of organizations (professional, technical and local services) in India, Poland, Russia and the USA. The analysis is conducted at both the national and organizational levels. The paper hypothesizes cultural differences at the country level and cultural similarities among employees working for professional and technical oriented organizations and divergence in the VOs of employees working for local services organizations. It also hypothesizes differences in the VOs of managerial and non-managerial employees in the four countries. The investigation has been conducted with the help of a questionnaire survey of 1,852 respondents. The outcomes of the analysis show that there are both cross-country cultural differences and similarities among the VOs of employees of the four nations. Further, significant cultural convergence emerges in the VOs of employees working for both professional and technical organizations, however, no significant cultural similarities or differences are observed for employees of service-based organizations in the four countries. There are some similarities emerging between managerial employees in the research countries. The research contributes to the fields of cross-cultural management, international management and international human resource management.

MP-OWA: the most preferred OWA operator

In practical term any result obtained using an ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator heavily depends upon the method to determine the weighting vector. Several approaches for obtaining the associated weights have been suggested in the literature, in which none of them took into account the preference of alternatives. This paper presents a method for determining the OWA weights when the preferences of alternatives across all the criteria are considered. An example is given to illustrate this method and an application in internet search engine shows the use of this new OWA operator.

Individual differences in cognitive style and their effects on task and social orientations of self-managed work teams

When assembling self-managing work teams, the personalities of team members are often overlooked. One personality variable known to be critical for effective decision making in teams is cognitive style. This study sought to examine how differences and similarities in analytic/intuitive cognitive styles affected the behavior of team members on the task/emotionally expressive dimension identified by Bales. As hypothesized, intuitive individuals and homogeneous intuitive teams were found to initiate more social-emotional acts. Contrary to expectations, intuitive rather than analytic individuals and homogeneous intuitive rather than analytic teams engaged in more task-oriented behaviors. Teams also tended to select intuitive individuals as leaders. The possibility that different combinations of styles may be important for overall team effectiveness was subsequently discussed, and it was suggested that this may depend on whether the nature of the work environment is relatively well structured and mechanistic or relatively unstructured and organic.

Glycogen, the preferred energy source for extracellular protein formation and growth of Aeromonas salmonicida

A study was made of the effect of supplementing a rich 3% (w/v) tryptone soya broth (TSB) medium and a poorer 1.7% (w/v) tryptone-based medium with glucose, maltose and glycogen, as carbon sources, on growth and exoprotein formation by Aeromonas salmonicida. In TSB, glucose inhibited growth and repressed exoprotein formation whilst maltose and glycogen had little effect, up to 20 h, when compared with an unsupplemented control. By contrast, in the poorer medium, over a 24-h incubation period, growth was stimulated three-fold by glycogen, and whilst exoprotein formation was low in comparison with that observed in TSB, the greatest production was observed in the presence of glycogen. Extracellular alpha-amylase was measured in the tryptone medium in the presence of the three carbon sources and the highest level, produced in the presence of glycogen, was 1.6 times that with added maltose whilst none was detectable with glucose present. This pattern was repeated in the case of the maltose-inducible porin, LamB, of the outer membrane.