Considerable evidence indicates that individuals with obesity are vulnerable to stigma and discrimination. However, comparably less research has examined strategies to reduce weight bias, and the existing evidence is mixed. To help clarify these findings and incorporate prejudice-reduction interventions that have been successfully applied to other stigmatized groups (i.e., empathy-induction and perspective-taking), we experimentally tested and compared four different, brief stigma-reduction interventions in a national sample of American adults. Participants (N = 650) were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 experimental conditions (Empathy, Perspective-Taking, Causal Information, or Empathy/Information Hybrid) or a control condition. Outcome variables included explicit weight bias (Fat Phobia), social distance, and affective reactions to individuals with obesity. The empathy and perspective-taking conditions induced more empathy than the control and informational conditions, and altered affective reactions towards persons with obesity in the expected directions. However, no experimental condition reduced Fat Phobia or social distance relative to the control condition. The current findings suggest that empathy-evoking and perspective-taking strategies may increase empathy and alter affective reactions towards individuals with obesity; however, these strategies remain questionable as effective means to reduce weight stigma.
This longitudinal study explores the stability and change of values in childhood. Children's values were measured in Poland three times (with one-year intervals) using the Picture Based Values Survey (PBVS-C; Döring, Blauensteiner, Aryus, Drögekamp, & Bilsky, 2010), developed to measure values differentiated according to the circular model of Schwartz (1992). 801 children (divided into 5 cohorts aged 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 years at the first measurement occasion) completed the PBVS-C three times on a yearly basis. Separate analyses were performed for each cohort using the data of the three measurement occasions. Multidimensional scaling revealed that, in children, Schwartz's (1992) circular structure of values is stable and does not change over time. Although priorities of values displayed moderate stability over time, the means changed between the ages of 7 and 11 years. Specifically, latent growth curve modeling revealed changes in children's values hierarchy as indicated by the decrease in the mean level of conservation values and the increase in the mean level of openness to change values. Self-transcendence and self-enhancement also changed in different directions. As indicated by mean levels over time, self-transcendence first increased in importance, slightly decreased, and finally increased again. In contrast, self-enhancement first decreased in importance, then increased, and finally began to decrease again.
Multinational corporations are operating in complex business environments. They are confronted with contradictory institutional demands that often represent mutually incompatible expectations of various audiences. Managing these demands poses new organizational challenges for the corporation. Conducting an empirical case study at the sportswear manufacturer Puma, we explore how multinational corporations respond to institutional complexity and what legitimacy strategies they employ to maintain their license to operate. We draw on the literature on institutional theory, contingency theory, and organizational paradoxes. The results of our qualitative longitudinal study show that managing corporate legitimacy is a dynamic process in which corporations adapt organizational capacities, structures, and procedures.
While many studies explain how social science theories shape social reality, few reflect critically on how such theories should shape social reality. Drawing on a new conception of social welfare and focusing on financial regulation, we assess the performative effects of theories on public policy. We delineate how research that focuses narrowly on questions of efficiency and stability reinforces today's technocratic financial regulation that undermines social welfare. As a remedy, we outline how future management research can tackle questions of social justice and thereby promote an inclusive approach to financial regulation that better serves social welfare.
The data used in this paper were collected by the “Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung (BIBB)” and the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) and are documented in the German “Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung (ZA).” Neither the producers of the data nor the ZA bear any responsibility for the analysis and interpretation of the data in this paper. This study is partially funded by the Swiss Federal Office for Professional Education and Technology through its Leading House on the Economics of Education, Firm Behavior and Training Policies. For comments and suggestions the authors are grateful to Ulrich Kaiser, Jens Mohrenweiser, and Andrew Oswald, and participants in the T.A.S.K.S workshop, the EALE in Cyprus, and discussants at the SMYE in Groningen.
Corporate lobbying activities are designed to influence legislators, regulators, and courts, presumably to encourage favorable policies and/or outcomes. In dollar terms, corporate lobbying expenditures are typically one or even two orders of magnitude larger than spending by Political Action Committees (PAC), and unlike PAC donations, lobbying amounts are direct corporate expenditures. We use data made available by the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, to examine this more pervasive form of corporate political activity. We find that on average, lobbying is positively related to accounting and market measures of financial performance. These results are robust across a number of empirical specifications. We also report market performance evidence using a portfolio approach. We find that portfolios of firms with the highest lobbying intensities significantly outperform their benchmarks in the three years following portfolio formation.
We assess the predictive and discriminant validity of the basic values in the refined Schwartz value theory by examining how value tradeoffs predict behavior in Italy, Poland, Russia, and the USA. One thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven respondents reported their values and rated their own and a partner’s behavior. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis supported the distinctiveness of the 19 values and the 19 self-rated and other-rated behaviors. Multidimensional scaling analyses supported the circular motivational order of the 19 values. Findings affirmed the theorizing that behavior depends upon tradeoffs between values that propel and values that inhibit it. Across four countries, value importance, behavior frequency, and gender failed to moderate the strength of value–behavior relations. This raises the question of the conditions under which the widely cited assumption that normative pressure weakens value–behavior relations holds.
Merchandise managers have long dreamt of automated dynamic systems to help them make well-informed pricing decisions. However, such systems have proved as elusive as the Holy Grail - until now, that is. The story of an Austrian DIY retailer shows often undetected opportunities to use valuable information, hidden in retailers' data warehouses, on consumer reactions to previous price changes in order to make automatic pricing and promotion decisions.
