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There has been much debate in the literature regarding whether political pressures are beneficial or detrimental to public agencies’ performance and outcomes. This chapter explores under what conditions, if any, do political pressures have any positive effects.

A survey methodology and multivariate regression models are applied to assess the relationship between political pressures and public agencies’ performance and outcomes, using data from South-America and Europe. The theoretical scope is developed drawing from the public sector, management control, and goal-setting literatures.

The effects of political pressures on public agencies’ performance and public officers’ job satisfaction are moderated by technical certainty. At low levels of technical certainty political pressures have negative effects while at high levels they have positive effects.

All limitations of survey research apply.

Governments, public officers, and politicians should take into account the dynamics described in this study so as to limit the negative effects of political pressures and take advantage of the positive ones.

This is the first study to suggest that the effects of political pressures on public agencies vary depending on the nature of the task public agencies perform. The results reported here bring a new perspective to the literature, helping to clarify prior conflicting results. In addition, the fact that results are consistent for South American and European public agencies suggests that these findings might be generalizable across cultural boundaries.

Given the popularity of online health communities (OHCs) and medical question-and-answer (Q&A) services, it is increasingly important to understand what constitutes useful answers and user-adopted standards in healthcare domain. However, few studies provide insights into how health information characteristics, provider characteristics and recipient characteristics jointly influence user information adoption decisions. To fill this research gap, this study examines the combined effects of physicians' certainty tone as information characteristics, seniority as provider characteristics and disease severity as recipient characteristics on patients' health information adoption.

Drawing on dual-process theory and information adoption model, an extended information adoption model is established in this study to examine the effect of attitude certainty on patients' health information adoption, and the moderating effects of online seniority and offline seniority, as well as patient motivation level—disease severity. Utilizing logit regression models, the authors empirically tested the hypotheses based on 4,224 Q&A records from a popular Chinese OHC.

The results show that (1) attitude certainty has a significant positive impact on patients' health information adoption, (2) the relationship between attitude certainty and information adoption is negatively moderated by physicians' online seniority, but is positively moderated by offline seniority; (3) there is a negative three-way interaction effect of attitude certainty, online seniority and disease severity on patients' health information adoption.

This study extends the information adoption model to examine the two-way interaction between argument quality and source reliability, as well as the three-way interaction with user motivation level, especially for health information adoption in the healthcare field. These findings also provide direct practical applications for knowledge contributors and OHCs.

This study investigated why employees' cyberloafing behavior is affected by their coworkers' cyberloafing behavior. By integrating social learning theory and deterrence theory, the authors developed a model to explain the role of employees' perceived certainty of formal and informal sanctions in understanding the effect of coworkers' cyberloafing behavior on employees' cyberloafing behavior.

The authors conducted a survey that involved a two-stage data collection process (including 293 respondents) to test our developed model. Mplus 7.0 was used to analyze the data.

The results revealed that employees' cyberloafing was positively affected by their coworkers' cyberloafing both directly and indirectly. The indirect effect of coworkers' cyberloafing on employees' cyberloafing was mediated by the employees' perceived certainty of formal and informal sanctions on cyberloafing. Employees' perceived certainty of formal and informal sanctions were found to mediate the relationship both separately (each type of sanctions mediates the relationship individually) and in combination (the two types of sanctions form a serial mediation effect).

The study reveals an important mechanism – employees’ perceived certainty of formal and informal sanctions – that underlies the relationship between coworkers' cyberloafing and employees' cyberloafing, thus, contributing to the cyberloafing literature. It also demonstrates the importance of negative reinforcement (perceived sanctions) in the social learning process, which contributes to the literature on social learning theory because previous studies have primarily focused on the role of positive reinforcement. Lastly, the study reveals a positive relationship between employees' perceived certainty of formal sanctions and informal sanctions, which has important implications for deterrence theory.

This paper aims to introduce a new phenomenon related to creative motivation called creative resolve response (CRR). CRR predicts how creative motivation will vary during problem solving.

In total, 66 MBA students were asked to respond at random intervals during different class problem‐solving activities. Participants were asked to rate on two preset scales their perceived certainty of solving the problem successfully and creativity level required. Mean creativity required responses were calculated for subgroups with different cognitive style ranges at each outcome certainty level. T‐tests were used to determine significant differences between various means.

The results suggest that creative motivation will vary systematically as a problem solver's perception of problem solving progress increases in a wax‐wane‐wax pattern.

Post hoc analysis suggested that potentially confounding effects related to problem heterogeneity, learning effects, environment, group interaction and interviewer response bias were not significant. However the relatively small sample size and limited scope of the problem activities suggests that further research is required to establish the extent to which the findings can be generalised.

CRR promises a new form of extrinsic control for managers to enhance creativity via extrinsic motivation. The author makes suggestions on how managers may enhance creativity by influencing employees to reconsider their perceived level of problem‐solving progress.

This paper links expectancy theory, cognitive style and creative motivation, and provides an alternative approach to trying directly to motivate employees to be more creative.

This paper aims to examine, through the lens of language expectancy theory (LET), how sustainability assurors use optimism and certainty in possible persuasion attempts. The paper also explores a number of explanatory variables that could offer insights into the use of these verbal tones in sustainability assurance reports.

First, the paper relies on DICTION standard normalised optimism and certainty ranges in conjunction with descriptive statistics to analyse how sustainability assurors use optimism and certainty. Second, the paper uses quantile regression with robust standard errors to investigate the association between the measures of verbal tone used in this study and several possible explanatory variables.

Consistent with LET, the study documents that sustainability assurors exercise caution in using both certainty and optimism in persuasion attempts. The paper also finds that possible explanatory variables significantly associated with optimism include praise, assurance level, legal system and report location. However, reference to sustainability management control (SMC), status of assurance providers, praise, legal system and financial performance appear to explain the use of certainty.

The paper does not, at this stage, claim causality between the two measures of verbal tone, on the one hand, and the possible explanatory variables explored, on the other hand. It rather reports their possible associations. Furthermore, the study only measures reference to management control system and not reliance on it.

The main findings of this study imply that the use of optimism and certainty exhibits likely cautious practice by assurors. Nevertheless, assurors are more likely to use certainty more flexibly and appear more discreet when using optimism.

The findings of this paper also indicate how societal expectations play an important role in ensuring cautious persuasive behaviour by sustainability assurors in using verbal tones within sustainability assurance statements. This suggests that stakeholders may place reliance on attestations expressed in these statements.

The paper represents the first attempt to test LET in sustainability accounting by analysing verbal tones used by sustainability assurance providers. It contributes to the sustainability assurance literature in that it empirically demonstrates how sustainability assurors, as expert communicators, use optimistic tone and verbal certainty in careful persuasion attempts.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on investor reactions to unanticipated changes in income, and whether those reactions can be mitigated by managerial discussion. The authors investigate how top-management team certainty and optimism during post-earnings announcement conference calls can serve as corrective actions and add back firm value in times of unexpected changes in firm-specific risk.

The research question is tested empirically in the context of large, publicly traded, US firms’ quarterly earnings announcements, and their subsequent post-earnings announcement conference calls. The authors use the advanced content analysis software DICTION to measure the levels of managerial certainty and optimism displayed during post-earnings announcement conference calls, and event-study methodology to measure investors’ reactions.

Results indicate that earnings surprises are negatively associated with firm value, but that this relationship is mitigated positively by displays of managerial certainty and optimism during post-earnings announcement conference calls.

This work uses an innovative research design to study top-management team rhetoric in post-earnings announcement conference calls, and how specific discussions mitigate investors’ negative reactions to increases in firm-specific risk. The study highlights the importance of top-management team certainty and optimism for value creation in times of change in firm-specific risk, and the importance of rhetoric as a tool for corrective action.

Extreme online reviews can have great impacts on consumers’ purchase decisions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate when users are more likely to provide extreme ratings. The study draws inference from attitude certainty theory and proposes that review extremity is influenced by the interaction of evaluation duration and product/service types: for hedonic products/services, shorter evaluation duration can foster attitude certainty, leading to higher review extremity; in contrast, for utilitarian products/services, longer evaluation duration can increase attitude certainty, resulting in more extreme reviews.

Three studies were conducted to test the hypotheses: Study 1 is an empirical analysis of 3,000 reviews from an online retailing website; Studies 2 and 3 are two between-subject experiments.

Results from three studies confirm the hypotheses. Study 1 provides preliminary evidence on how review extremity varies in evaluations of different durations and product/service types. Results from Studies 2 and 3 show that for hedonic products/services, the shorter the evaluation duration, the more likely users are to give extreme ratings; however, for utilitarian products/service, the longer the evaluation duration, the more likely users are to give extreme reviews; and attitude certainty plays a mediating role between evaluation duration and review extremity.

Findings from this study provide understandings on when a fast rather than a slow evaluation can lead to more extreme reviews. The results also highlight the role of users’ attitude certainty in the underlying mechanism.

The first part of this issue investigated the properties of the adaptive rule initially proposed by Dubois and Prade given in the framework of possibility theory, when the certainty qualification is rather expressed in more general t‐norms and t‐conorms connectives. This led to two new family of adaptive rules expressed using residual implication and t‐conorm connective, respectively. The problem of addressing uncertain inputs has also been examined and a waved decomposition has been proposed in PII we study adaptative combinations with incomplete certainty qualification. However, another problem that arises when combining uncertain inputs consists of the relationship between the certainty attached to the inputs and the certainty attached to the output, conceptualized by the resulting distribution when using adaptive combination rule. In other words, how does the combination rule improves or deteriorates the certainty of the overall system? This paper seeks to address this issue.

This paper fully addresses this issue and attempts to evaluate the combination rule from the certainty viewpoint attached to the result in comparison to initial certainty values attached to the inputs.

Especially, it has been proven that under certain hypotheses, the rule allows the user to hide the local certainties attached to the initial inputs, while highlighting only the certainty due to the lack of consistency among the sources.

New functional adaptative rules are put forward based on residual implicators and t‐conorm operators.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: the primary purpose is to suggest a real estate paradigm spectrum to act as reference for the contextualisation of observed market phenomenon in system terms; the secondary purpose is for the spectrum to contextualise the efficacy of real estate and valuation theory, methods and techniques; and the tertiary purpose is to propose a confidence score for reporting uncertainty to the end user of a valuation report.

Literature was reviewed on the concepts of risk and uncertainty, rationality and several systems thinking domains.

The framework can provide context to observed market phenomenon and distinguishes between agency and mechanism in contributing to conditions of certainty and uncertainty. The argument followed in this paper is that it is necessary to contextualise the efficacy of real estate and valuation theory, methods and models under conditions of certainty, normal uncertainty and abnormal uncertainty. The characteristics of conditions can be used as basis to develop new theory and practical application or modify existing.

Real estate economic theory can be organised in terms of the spectrum and the framework can potentially identify where further research is required and the requirements it must meet as measured against the characteristics of the framework. Current valuation methods and models can continue to be used when valuing under conditions of certainty, however, modifications to methods and models are required to account for complexity when valuing under conditions of normal uncertainty and abnormal uncertainty. The confidence score included in this paper can also be used to report the conditions of certainty/uncertainty under which the valuation was performed.

This paper aims to set the basis for new theoretical and practical developments of insights into real estate economic and valuation theory, methods and models while also contributing to the reporting of uncertainty through the proposed confidence score.

This study aims to discuss and test the combined role of perceived risk, objective knowledge and certainty as moderators in the satisfaction‐loyalty relationship.

The authors use survey data of 387 Vietnamese consumers in a food context. A structural equation modeling (SEM) approach for moderator analysis with latent constructs is used to test the hypotheses.

Perceived risk is a barrier in the forming of loyalty with a negative moderating effect on the satisfaction‐loyalty relationship. However, the satisfaction‐loyalty relationship is stronger when objective knowledge and certainty increase.

The object and setting are limited to one product category in one market. In addition, other moderators (e.g. situation and ambivalence) can be added. The nature of causality is problematic due to the use of survey design.

Customer management based on satisfaction is not sufficient to keep customers' loyalty, especially in the situations of highly perceived risk and uncertainty. Marketing strategies, which reduce consumers' risks, consolidate their confidence and educate them with relevant knowledge, may be effective strategies to increase their loyalty.

The study fills several gaps in the present literature. First, it overcomes some shortcomings of previous studies of moderators in the satisfaction‐loyalty relationship by testing the combined role of three important moderators. Second, it tests the moderator effect of objective knowledge and adds an extra explanation to previous studies. While some previous studies suggest a negative moderator effect of subjective knowledge, this paper argues for and confirms a positive moderator effect of objective knowledge on this relationship. Finally, it uses SEM for moderator analysis with latent constructs.