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It is the general purpose of this chapter to introduce assumptions, postulates and hypotheses concerning the social nature of human emotions. I will propose some universal social causes of emotion categories by integrating Kemper’s (1978) power and status dimensions in dyadic relations to universal structures of human groups. These structures, of Self and Other meeting or not meeting expectations and receiving rewards or not, predict specific emotion categories. Power and status dimensions are added to the model and defined in terms of expectation/sanction (E/S) states, and are proposed to be universal as well. Furthermore, changing E/S conditions produce corresponding changes in power/status relations, and changes in emotion categories. These changing social structural conditions cause individual anxieties to emerge. Extending Kemper’s theoretical conceptualizations, gaining or losing power-advantage or status-advantage predicts syndromes of universal anxiety emotions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the value of active fund management using a sample of hybrid mutual funds.

Instead of using traditional risk‐adjusted measures, the paper employs an alternative attribution return methodology where the actual monthly fund return is compared to the return that would have been earned by the indexing strategy that best reflects the fund's prior month allocation. Value is measured by defining a fund's attribution return as the difference between a fund's actual month t return and the return that would have been generated in month t by the indexing strategy that most closely approximates the fund's month t−1 portfolio allocation.

It is found that hybrid funds as a group do not add value and that this underperformance does not appear to be driven by the poor performance of non‐surviving funds. However, these funds perform significantly better than the style benchmark under weak vs strong stock market conditions. This performance difference between bull and bear market conditions suggests some hedge fund‐like downside protection that may offer a reason why investors choose these funds despite the funds’ average underperformance and despite their higher costs relative to index funds.

The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it concentrates on hybrid mutual funds, which despite a surge in their interest over the last five years have attracted very little academic study. Second, in the implementation of its non‐traditional performance measure, it employed daily fund returns, stock market indices and bond market indices as opposed to the monthly or quarterly data used in other related studies.

The psychological study of personal reputation has implications for the study of corporate identity and reputation. One set of implications deals with the way organisations are perceived by members of internal and external groups. Another set deals with the relationships between identity and reputation. Historical trends suggest the possibility of a shift of emphasis from the study of individual organisations to the study of similarities and differences between organisations. The size, shape and multiplicity of corporate reputations appear to be neglected areas of research. Other issues include: language usage, the distribution of attributions, visual identity, subculture, cognitive functions, ideals, and leadership.

This article comprises an attempt to find a practical method of applying the decision in the case of the Commissioner for the South African Revenue Service v Woulidge (63 SATC 483) (‘Woulidge’) to limit the application of section 7(3) of the Income Tax Act (‘the Act’). It is proposed in this article that Woulidge would also apply to the provisions of section 7(5) and paragraphs 69 and 70 of the Eighth Schedule to the Act. The approach proposed is illustrated by means of examples. The approach adopted by the Commissioner for the South African Revenue Service is also discussed. A conclusion is drawn regarding the practicality of applying Woulidge in the light of the examples.

This paper reports the findings of a study designed to explore web searchers' perceptions of the causes of their search failure and success. In particular, it seeks to discover the extent to which the constructs locus of control and attribution theory might provide useful frameworks for understanding searchers' perceptions.

A combination of inductive and deductive approaches were employed. Perceptions of failed and successful searches were derived from the inductive analysis of using open‐ended qualitative interviews with a sample of 37 biologists at the University of Sheffield. These perceptions were classified into “internal” and “external” attributions, and the relationships between these categories and “successful” and “failed” searches were analysed deductively to test the extent to which they might be explainable using locus of control and attribution theory interpretive frameworks.

All searchers were readily able to recall “successful” and “unsuccessful” searches. In a large majority of cases (82.4 per cent), they clearly attributed each search to either internal (e.g. ability or effort) or external (e.g. luck or information not being available) factors. The pattern of such relationships was analysed, and mapped onto those that would be predicted by locus of control and attribution theory. The authors conclude that the potential of these theoretical frameworks to illuminate one's understanding of web searching, and associated training, merits further systematic study.

The findings are based on a relatively small sample of academic and research staff in a particular subject area. Importantly, also, the study can at best provide a prima facie case for further systematic study since, although the patterns of attribution behaviour accord with those predictable by locus of control and attribution theory, data relating to the predictive elements of these theories (e.g. levels of confidence and achievement) were not available. This issue is discussed, and recommendations made for further work.

The findings provide some empirical support for the notion that locus of control and attribution theory might – subject to the limitations noted above – be potentially useful theoretical frameworks for helping us better understand web‐based information seeking. If so, they could have implications particularly for better understanding of searchers' motivations, and for the design and development of more effective search training programmes.

Preface The functions of business divide into several areas and the general focus of this book is on one of the most important although least understood of these—DISTRIBUTION. The particular focus is on reviewing current practice in distribution costing and on attempting to push the frontiers back a little by suggesting some new approaches to overcome previously defined shortcomings.

The production of most services depends heavily on human involvement which, by definition, implies variability. The difficulty of standardising human behaviour during service delivery at a level expected by customers is exacerbated by the simultaneity of production and consumption. When service failures occur, the presence of customers leaves little scope for corrective action without the customer being aware of the mishap. The difficulty in avoiding visible service failures does not have to result in dissatisfied customers, however. Service firms can go a long way towards turning dissatisfied customers who have had a negative service experience into ones who are likely to remain loyal to the firm. That, however, requires an effective service recovery programme. This study pursued two objectives. The empirical results show that attribution (the firm accepting blame) is, relatively speaking, the dimension most important to customers in their assessment of the service recovery effort, followed by empowerment and apology. Once a service failure has occurred, customers prefer to deal with staff who are empowered to solve their problem quickly and they do not want to hear that someone else is to blame. An apology in person or, alternatively, by telephone is preferable. Surprisingly, pre‐service failure perceptions do not influence the customer’s satisfaction with the recovery effort, suggesting that service recovery is situation‐specific.

Though geographically distributed teams are rapidly increasing in prevalence, empirical research examining the effect of distance on group process has not kept pace. In a study of 24 product development teams located within five companies, we attempt to bridge the gap between research and practice by comparing the amount of affective and task conflict reported in collocated versus geographically distributed teams. We further examine how conflict is impacted by shared team identity, cultural heterogeneity, and reliance on technology for communication. As hypothesized, shared team identity was associated with less task conflict within distributed, but not collocated teams. Similar effects were found for affective conflict, suggesting that a shared identity may help distributed teams to better manage conflict. Our results also suggest more task conflict on teams that rely heavily on technology to mediate their communications. In examining performance, we found some support for our hypothesis that conflict would be more detrimental for distributed than collocated teams.

Self-regulation skills, such as organisation, self-evaluation, personal elaboration, metacognitive attitude and strategic awareness are very important predictors of academic achievement. However, research has not studied in depth the factors that facilitate the use of good self-regulatory skills. The present research was intended to study the role of some factors that could affect these self-regulation skills, in particular depressive attitude and motivational beliefs. A group of 246 adolescents, aged between 14 and 18, were administered self-report questionnaires devised to test aspects underlying self-regulation. A preliminary factor analysis confirmed the centrality of the three-hypothesised aspects: motivational beliefs, depressive attitude, and self-regulation-skills. A path analysis revealed that there are important links between motivational beliefs and self-regulation and between depressive attitude and motivational beliefs. Some educational implications are discussed.