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Economists have long sought methods whereby efficient collective decisions can be made. When a group is confronted with the problem of choosing one policy from several alternatives, some decision‐making mechanism must be employed. Whether the mechanism is choice by democratic vote, the whim of the reigning dictator, coin tossing, or some other, the choice is made by the application of some decision‐making mechanism.

Human performance, particularly that of the warfighter, has been the subject of a large amount of research during the past few decades. For example, in the Medline database of medical and psychological research, 1,061 papers had been published on the topic of “military performance” as of October 2003. Because warfighters are often pushed to physiological and mental extremes, a study of their performance provides a unique glimpse of the interplay of a wide variety of intrinsic and extrinsic factors on the functioning of the human brain and body. Unfortunately, it has proven very difficult to build performance models that can adequately incorporate the myriad of physiological, medical, social, and cognitive factors that influence behavior in extreme conditions. The chief purpose of this chapter is to provide a neurobiological (neurochemical) framework for building and integrating warfighter performance models in the physiological, medical, social, and cognitive areas. This framework should be relevant to all other professionals who routinely operate in extreme environments. The secondary purpose of this chapter is to recommend various performance metrics that can be linked to specific neurochemical states and can accordingly strengthen and extend the scope of the neurochemical model.

This chapter examines the role of stress and emotional well-being as critical antecedents of important outcomes in the military context. In it, we provide a framework for understanding the sources of stress among military personnel. Using this model, we review the risk factors associated with combat and deployment cycles in addition to protective factors, such as personality characteristics and social support, which mitigate the effects of stress on emotional well-being and performance. Finally, we evaluate efforts by military organizations to enhance the emotional well-being of service members through training programs designed to build resiliency.

Relatively few comparative studies have examined how perceptions across cultures might converge or diverge regarding careers in general and new venture careers in particular. Our research addresses this gap by providing a comparative study of career perceptions among undergraduate business students in three countries with different levels of experience with capitalism: Ukraine, South Korea, and the United States. Results suggest both surprising differences and interesting similarities between undergraduate students in the three countries with regard to how they perceive characteristics associated with entrepreneurial careers. Findings are discussed in the context of distinct differences and commonalities across cultures and implications for future research provided.

Corporate codes of conduct originated around 1900 in the USA gaining further momentum in the 1950s in relation to anti‐trust legislation. Subsequently, the adoption of codes of ethics has spread throughout the world and they now feature extensively in many organisations. The literature relating to codes of ethics, therefore, spans many decades and is undoubtedly comprehensive. The purpose of the paper is to provide an appropriate anthology of codes of ethics.

A descriptive, historical, anthological approach has been taken.

This paper examines the motivations for the adoption of codes of ethics, which naturally also includes international codes, their frequency of use and content. Codes are also not without critique and it is appropriate to highlight the criticisms of codes, to provide an assessment of their potential effectiveness, the issues surrounding implementation and enforcement and the relationship to organisational culture and leadership.

As noted, the literature on codes of conduct is extensive and while effort has been made to capture the key themes the review is not necessarily exhaustive.

The literature is characterised by the means of institutionalising ethics in organisations and the paper concludes with a summative reflection on the key dimensions that appear to be paramount for improving the efficacy of codes of conduct.

Currently, most research about the autism spectrum has examined Caucasian autistics. Consequently, African American autistics have not received much attention from scholars. This chapter begins with an overview of statistics from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about the population of Black and Latino autistics in the United States from 2000 to 2016. Plausible reasons for why there is a lack of research about African American autistics are then presented along with a section about the underrepresentation of ethnic minorities in autism spectrum research. Four strategies that can improve the production of research about African American autistics are then presented. The purpose of presenting these strategies is to help stimulate the production of research about African American autistics.

The original contribution that this chapter makes to the field of autism spectrum research is to inform the reader about the lack of research about African American autistics in comparison to other ethnicities.

This study examines chronic illness, disability and social inequality within an exposure-vulnerabilities theoretical framework.

Using the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), a preeminent source of national behavioral health estimates of chronic medical illness, stress and disability, for selected sample years 2005–2014, we construct and analyze two foundational hypotheses underlying the exposure-vulnerabilities model: (1) greater exposure to stressors (i.e., chronic medical illness) among racial/ethnic minority populations yields higher levels of serious psychological distress, which in turn increases the likelihood of medical disability; (2) greater vulnerability among minority populations to stressors such as chronic medical illness exacerbates the impact of these conditions on mental health as well as the impact of mental health on medical disability.

Results of our analyses provided mixed support for the vulnerability (moderator) hypothesis, but not for the exposure (mediation) hypothesis. In the exposure models, while Blacks were more likely than Whites to have a long-term disability, the pathway to disability through chronic illness and serious psychological distress did not emerge. Rather, Whites were more likely than Blacks and Latinx to have a chronic illness and to have experienced severe psychological distress (both of which themselves were related to disability). In the vulnerability models, both Blacks and Latinx with chronic medical illness were more likely than Whites to experience serious psychological distress, although Whites with serious psychological distress were more likely than these groups to have a long-term disability.

Several possibilities for understanding the failure to uncover an exposure dynamic in the model turn on the potential intersectional effects of age and gender, as well as several other covariates that seem to confound the linkages in the model (e.g., issues of stigma, social support, education).

This study (1) extends the racial/ethnic disparities in exposure-vulnerability framework by including factors measuring chronic medical illness and disability which: (2) explicitly test exposure and vulnerability hypotheses in minority populations; (3) develop and test the causal linkages in the hypothesized processes, based on innovations in general structural equation models, and lastly; (4) use national population estimates of these conditions which are rarely, if ever, investigated in this kind of causal framework.

The purpose of this paper is to reinterpret addiction to social network services (SNSs), not from the traditional clinical perspective as a disorder, but from a management perspective as consumer behaviour to examine its possibility as a manageable resource.

A survey was conducted on heavy users of SNSs. Based on the data the authors performed an exploratory factor analysis to define SNS addiction and to construct its dimensions.

The authors termed SNS addiction as an “addictive consumption trait” (ACT) of SNS and its underlying dimensions are salience, euphoria, immersion, compulsion, and association.

The authors used SNS user behaviour as the sample for their empirical analysis. However there is a variety of other internet services available and different internet services may show different consumer behaviour. Therefore, for future research, the authors suggest conducting a comparative study on the influence of addiction on different types of internet services.

With the newly constructed dimensions of ACT of SNS, firms could find out the causal relationships between the attributes of their SNSs on each dimension of ACT of SNS. Once firms understand the influences of each one of the attributes on ACT of SNS, they can re‐strategise their resource allocation for maximising consumers' ACT of SNS.

SNS addiction has been viewed as a clinical disorder for treatment. The paper considers SNS addiction from the marketing perspective, which is a novel approach in the study of addiction. Through this study the authors hope to trigger academic discussions about ACT of SNS as consumer behaviour and as a manageable resource.