How firms respond to being rated Chatterji, Aaron K.; Toffel, Michael W.
Strategic management journal,
September 2010, Volume:
31, Issue:
9
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
While many rating systems seek to help buyers overcome information asymmetries when making purchasing decisions, we investigate how these ratings also influence the companies being rated. We ...hypothesize that ratings are particularly likely to spur responses from firms that receive poor ratings, and especially those that face lower-cost opportunities to improve or that anticipate greater benefits from doing do. We test our hypotheses in the context of corporate environmental ratings that guide investors to select 'socially responsible,' and avoid 'socially irresponsible,' companies. We examine how several hundred firms responded to corporate environmental ratings issued by a prominent independent social rating agency, and take advantage of an exogenous shock that occurred when the agency expanded the scope of its ratings. Our study is among the first to theorize about the impact of ratings on subsequent performance, and we introduce important contingencies that influence firm response. These theoretical advances inform stakeholder theory, institutional theory, and economic theory.
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Many of the links of religiousness with health, well-being, and social behavior may be due to religion's influences on self-control or self-regulation. Using
Carver and Scheier's (1998)
theory of ...self-regulation as a framework for organizing the empirical research, the authors review evidence relevant to 6 propositions: (a) that religion can promote self-control; (b) that religion influences how goals are selected, pursued, and organized; (c) that religion facilitates self-monitoring; (d) that religion fosters the development of self-regulatory strength; (e) that religion prescribes and fosters proficiency in a suite of self-regulatory behaviors; and (f) that some of religion's influences on health, well-being, and social behavior may result from religion's influences on self-control and self-regulation. The authors conclude with suggestions for future research.
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Interpersonal provocation is a common and robust antecedent to aggression. Four studies identified angry rumination and reduced self-control as mechanisms underlying the provocation—aggression ...relationship. Following provocation, participants demonstrated decreased self-control on an unpleasant task relative to a control condition (Study 1). When provoked, rumination reduced self-control and increased aggression. This effect was mediated by reduced self-control capacity (Study 2). State rumination following provocation, but not anger per se, mediated the effect of trait rumination on aggression (Study 3). Bolstering self-regulatory resources by consuming a glucose beverage improved performance on a measure of inhibitory control following rumination (Study 4). These findings suggest that rumination following an anger-inducing provocation reduces self-control and increases aggression. Bolstering self-regulatory resources may reduce this adverse effect.
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The authors suggest that injunctive and descriptive social norms engage different psychological response tendencies when made selectively salient. On the basis of suggestions derived from the focus ...theory of normative conduct and from consideration of the norms' functions in social life, the authors hypothesized that the 2 norms would be cognitively associated with different goals, would lead individuals to focus on different aspects of self, and would stimulate different levels of conflict over conformity decisions. Additionally, a unique role for effortful self-regulation was hypothesized for each type of norm-used as a means to resist conformity to descriptive norms but as a means to facilitate conformity for injunctive norms. Four experiments supported these hypotheses. Experiment 1 demonstrated differences in the norms' associations to the goals of making accurate/efficient decisions and gaining/maintaining social approval. Experiment 2 provided evidence that injunctive norms lead to a more interpersonally oriented form of self-awareness and to a greater feeling of conflict about conformity decisions than descriptive norms. In the final 2 experiments, conducted in the lab (Experiment 3) and in a naturalistic environment (Experiment 4), self-regulatory depletion decreased conformity to an injunctive norm (Experiments 3 and 4) and increased conformity to a descriptive norm (Experiment 4)-even though the norms advocated identical behaviors. By illustrating differentiated response tendencies for each type of social norm, this research provides new and converging support for the focus theory of normative conduct.
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5.
Power and Goal Pursuit Guinote, Ana
Personality & social psychology bulletin,
08/2007, Volume:
33, Issue:
8
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Powerful individuals more easily acquire desired outcomes compared to powerless individuals. The authors argue that these differences can partly be attributed to self-regulation. The effects of power ...on the ability to act in a goal-consistent manner were analyzed across different phases of goal pursuit. Study 1 examined goal setting, Study 2 focused on the initiation of goal-directed action, Study 3 examined persistence and flexibility, and Study 4 assessed responses to good opportunities for goal pursuit and the role of implementation intentions. Consistently across studies, power facilitated prioritization and goal-consistent behavior. Power had, however, independent effects from implementation intentions. Consequences for performance are discussed.
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Despite consensus that development shapes every aspect of coping, studies of age differences in coping have proven difficult to integrate, primarily because they examine largely unselected age ...groups, and utilise overlapping coping categories. A developmental framework was used to organise 58 studies of coping involving over 250 age comparisons or correlations with age. The framework was based on (1) conceptualisations of coping as regulation to suggest ages at which coping should show developmental shifts, and (2) notions of hierarchical families to clarify which coping categories should be distinguished at each age. Developmental patterns in coping (e.g., problem-solving, distraction, support-seeking, escape) were scrutinised with a focus on common age shifts. Two kinds of age trends were discerned, one reflecting increases in coping capacities, as seen in support-seeking (from reliance on adults to more self-reliance), problem-solving (from instrumental action to planful problem-solving), and distraction (adding cognitive to behavioural strategies); and one reflecting improvements in the deployment of different coping strategies according to which ones are most effective in dealing with specific kinds of stressors. Results were used to formulate guidelines for future research on the development of coping. Author abstract, ed
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The authors examined a new assessment of behavioral regulation and contributions to achievement and teacher-rated classroom functioning in a sample (
N
= 343) of kindergarteners from 2 geographical ...sites in the United States. Behavioral regulation was measured with the Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders (HTKS) task, a structured observation requiring children to perform the opposite of a dominant response to 4 different oral commands. Results revealed considerable variability in HTKS scores. Evidence for construct validity was found in positive correlations with parent ratings of attentional focusing and inhibitory control and teacher ratings of classroom behavioral regulation. Hierarchical linear modeling indicated that higher levels of behavioral regulation in the fall predicted stronger levels of achievement in the spring and better teacher-rated classroom self-regulation (all
p
s < .01) but not interpersonal skills. Evidence for domain specificity emerged, in which gains in behavioral regulation predicted gains in mathematics but not in language and literacy over the kindergarten year (
p
< .01) after site, child gender, and other background variables were controlled. Discussion focuses on the importance of behavioral regulation for successful adjustment to the demands of kindergarten.
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This review builds on self-control theory (Carver & Scheier, 1998) to develop a theoretical framework for investigating associations of implicit theories with self-regulation. This framework ...conceptualizes self-regulation in terms of 3 crucial processes: goal setting, goal operating, and goal monitoring. In this meta-analysis, we included articles that reported a quantifiable assessment of implicit theories and at least 1 self-regulatory process or outcome. With a random effects approach used, meta-analytic results (total unique N = 28,217; k = 113) across diverse achievement domains (68% academic) and populations (age range = 5-42; 10 different nationalities; 58% from United States; 44% female) demonstrated that implicit theories predict distinct self-regulatory processes, which, in turn, predict goal achievement. Incremental theories, which, in contrast to "entity theories", are characterized by the belief that human attributes are malleable rather than fixed, significantly predicted goal setting (performance goals, r = -0.151; learning goals, r = 0.187), goal operating (helpless-oriented strategies, r = -0.238; mastery-oriented strategies, r = 0.227), and goal monitoring (negative emotions, r = -0.233; expectations, r = 0.157). The effects for goal setting and goal operating were stronger in the presence (vs. absence) of ego threats such as failure feedback. Discussion emphasizes how the present theoretical analysis merges an implicit theory perspective with self-control theory to advance scholarship and unlock major new directions for basic and applied research. (Contains 5 figures, 4 tables and 6 footnotes.)
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Background: Neurofeedback (NF) is a form of behavioural training aimed at developing skills for self‐regulation of brain activity. Within the past decade, several NF studies have been published that ...tend to overcome the methodological shortcomings of earlier studies. This annotation describes the methodical basis of NF and reviews the evidence base for its clinical efficacy and effectiveness in neuropsychiatric disorders.
Methods: In NF training, self‐regulation of specific aspects of electrical brain activity is acquired by means of immediate feedback and positive reinforcement. In frequency training, activity in different EEG frequency bands has to be decreased or increased. Training of slow cortical potentials (SCPs) addresses the regulation of cortical excitability.
Results: NF studies revealed paradigm‐specific effects on, e.g., attention and memory processes and performance improvements in real‐life conditions, in healthy subjects as well as in patients. In several studies it was shown that children with attention‐deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) improved behavioural and cognitive variables after frequency (e.g., theta/beta) training or SCP training. Neurophysiological effects could also be measured. However, specific and unspecific training effects could not be disentangled in these studies. For drug‐resistant patients with epilepsy, significant and long‐lasting decreases of seizure frequency and intensity through SCP training were documented in a series of studies. For other child psychiatric disorders (e.g., tic disorders, anxiety, and autism) only preliminary investigations are available.
Conclusions: There is growing evidence for NF as a valuable treatment module in neuropsychiatric disorders. Further, controlled studies are necessary to establish clinical efficacy and effectiveness and to learn more about the mechanisms underlying successful training.
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How often and how strongly do people experience desires, to what extent do their desires conflict with other goals, and how often and successfully do people exercise self-control to resist their ...desires? To investigate desire and attempts to control desire in everyday life, we conducted a large-scale experience sampling study based on a conceptual framework integrating desire strength, conflict, resistance (use of self-control), and behavior enactment. A sample of 205 adults wore beepers for a week. They furnished 7,827 reports of desire episodes and completed personality measures of behavioral inhibition system/behavior activation system (BIS/BAS) sensitivity, trait self-control, perfectionism, and narcissistic entitlement. Results suggest that desires are frequent, variable in intensity, and largely unproblematic. Those urges that do conflict with other goals tend to elicit resistance, with uneven success. Desire strength, conflict, resistance, and self-regulatory success were moderated in multiple ways by personality variables as well as by situational and interpersonal factors such as alcohol consumption, the mere presence of others, and the presence of others who already had enacted the desire in question. Whereas personality generally had a stronger impact on the dimensions of desire that emerged early in its course (desire strength and conflict), situational factors showed relatively more influence on components later in the process (resistance and behavior enactment). In total, these findings offer a novel and detailed perspective on the nature of everyday desires and associated self-regulatory successes and failures.
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