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Information distortion affects the perception of quality, which, in turn, influences investment decisions and determines the pledge results of fundraising. This study combines signalling theory with persuasion theory to empirically study the effects of linguistic information distortion from fraudulent cues on a crowdfunding campaign's fundraising outcomes using text analytics, with implications for entrepreneurs, platforms and investors.

This study empirically analyzes 328,974 crowdfunding projects from the Kickstarter platform. Information distortion is detected using four indicators, based on text mining analytics. An econometric model is built to estimate the impact of information distortion, while the predictive power of the information distortion is detected through machine learning.

The results inform that distortion in the blurb, detailed description and reward statement dampen a campaign's success, but embellishing the entrepreneur's biography enhances the success of financing. Furthermore, information distortion exhibits a significant inverted U-shaped influence. The effect of the interaction terms suggests that campaigns with high pledge goals are more sensitive to information distortion, and that native-speaking entrepreneurs are adept at applying linguistic skills to promote the campaign.

This study provides a linguistic method to detect the influence of information distortion on crowdfunding campaigns. Further, the study offers some practical suggestions for entrepreneurs on how to generate attractive narratives, and contributes to the investor's decision-making and informs the platform's promotion strategy.

The response management of the Kobe earthquake in 1995 provides practitioners and theorists of crisis and disaster management with much to consider. As in other efforts around the world the Kobe response management appeared slow and less than optimal in performance. Focuses on the effects of magnitude of impact and degree of strategic preparedness that may affect response. Magnitude of impact is the degree to which impact damage seems random in occurrence, the size of the impact area, the severity of impact, the ratio of visible to invisible damage, the number of major sub‐event crises triggered by the impact of the event, and the degree of psychological distortion caused by (or accelerated by) the impact of the event. The degree of strategic preparedness depends on the degree to which response managers can successfully translate meta‐strategic missions and objectives into operational strategies that are realistic and achievable in any given crisis or disaster event. Components of strategic preparedness include the provision of escalation triggers, establishing cascaded priorities, and having and maintaining a dynamic reserve. Planning and preparing for crises and disasters needs to include cascade strategic priority profiles for communities, consideration of cultural features of organizations and communities in developing plans and preparedness, establishing quantifiable escalation triggers for response management, and developing and maintaining a working dynamic reserve.

This conceptual paper aims to shed light on the nature and determinants of managerial behaviour when affected by supply chain disruptions. It aims to argue that the managerial decision‐making process is an important component in determining the eventual long‐term impact of a supply chain disruption.

The paper introduces a continuous simulation model that is based on a Bayesian robot decision‐maker. Using the system dynamics approach, it illustrates the process of evaluating competing hypotheses of functional vs dysfunctional supply chain design in a disruption scenario. Model validity is assessed by means of a case study based on secondary data.

The model provides insight into the drivers of decision‐maker confidence dynamics that are used when evaluating the competing hypotheses. Furthermore, it identifies the psychological distortions that make actual managerial inference processes different from the Bayesian robot and incorporate these adjustments into the system dynamics model. Several propositions about the nature and determinants of decision‐maker confidence are stated.

For policy makers, the paper clarifies the important moderating role of confidence in the realisation of wider implications of supply chain disruptions, especially from the perspective of industrial development, and trade and transport facilitation.

The research enhances understanding of the wider implications of supply chain disruptions, contributing to behavioural research in logistics and supply chain management.

The aim of this paper is to highlight the relevance of the inner future of an organization for diagnosing and treating organizational disorders, as it relates to the concept of future‐oriented psychotherapy.

This paper combines the concept of future‐oriented psychotherapy, with the categorization of organizations using the means of psychiatric disorders.

The paper finds that the importance of an organization's future is underlined by evidence from psychiatry. Time distortions in psychiatric illness can cloud the personal future of an individual and distort the view of the future and thereby disrupt goal‐directed behavior. The claim of future‐oriented psychotherapy is that in order to treat mental disorders, the future needs to be brought under self‐control; this process is futuring. It is suggested that in an organizational context, the Scenario technique or Strategic Issue Management can be applied to treat organizational disorders.

Additional research will be needed to explore the implications of future‐oriented psychotherapy for other disorders, besides those discussed here (depression, schizophrenia, paranoia), and which methodologies beside the Scenario technique and Strategic Issue Management can be applied for future‐oriented psychotherapy for organizations.

The paper suggests that how the future is dealt with in an organization, has implications for diagnosing the mental health of an organization and for treating such disorders in an organization.

This paper fills a gap in the research on organizational disorders by highlighting the relevance of the inner future of an organization.

The purpose of this paper is to provide information for non-specialists on identifying the characteristics, assessment and support needs of people with intellectual disabilities (ID) accessing mainstream services.

A review of relevant policy and research literature is supplemented with observations from the authors’ own experience of working in mental health services for people with ID.

With change in provision of services the likelihood of mainstream staff encountering someone with ID will increase. However, information on whether a person has ID or their level of ID is not always available to professionals in acute mental health services meeting an individual for the first time. Reliance on observational and interview-based assessments can leave people with ID vulnerable to a range of over- and under-diagnosis issues. This is as a result of difficulties with communication and emotional introspection, psychosocial masking, suggestibility, confabulation and acquiescence. For people with poor communication, carers will be the primary source of information and their contribution has to be taken into account.

Knowing or suspecting an individual has ID allows staff to take into account the various assessment, diagnosis and formulation issues that complicate a valid and reliable understanding of their mental health needs. Awareness about an individual’s ID also allows professionals to be vigilant to their own biases, where issues of diagnostic overshadowing or cognitive disintegration may be important considerations. However, understanding some of the practical and conceptual issues should ensure a cautious and critical approach to diagnosing, formulating and addressing this population’s mental health needs.

This synthesis of a review of the literature and observations from the authors’ experience of working in mental health services for people with ID provides an informed and practical briefing for those encountering people with ID accessing mainstream services.

We investigate causes for the cost overrun and delay of the railway project Stuttgart 21. Besides, we try to forecast the actual costs and completion date at an early stage.

The results of exploratory research show the causes for the cost overrun and delay of Stuttgart 21; we compare our findings with other railway projects. To estimate the costs at an early stage, the reference class forecasting (RCF) model is applied; to estimate the time, we apply an OLS regression.

We find that the following causes are relevant for the cost overrun and delay of Stuttgart 21: scope changes, geological conditions, high risk-taking propensity, extended implementation, price overshoot, conflict of interests and lack of citizens' participation. The current estimated costs are within our 95% confidence interval based on RCF; our time forecast underestimates or substantially overestimates the duration actually required.

A limitation of our approach is the low number of comparable projects which are available.

The use of hyperbolic function or stepwise exponential discount function can help to give a clearer picture of the costs and benefits. The straightforward use of the RFC for costs and OLS for time should motivate more decision-makers to estimate the actual costs and time which are necessary in the light of the rising demand for democratic participation amongst citizens.

More realistic estimates can help to reduce the significant distortion at the beginning of infrastructure projects.

We are among the first who use the RCF to estimate the costs in Germany. Furthermore, the hyperbolic discounting function is added as a further theoretical explanation for cost underestimation.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the initial validation of a new method, called the “Meaning of the Child Interview” (MotC), to assess the psychological meaning all children have for their parents, but which in cases of risk, submerge or distort the child’s identity. The MotC analyses parental discourse using a method developed from the discourse analysis used to classify the Adult Attachment Interview together with patterns derived from the infant CARE-Index, a procedure that evaluates face-to-face parent-child interaction. This allows the MotC to illuminate how the parent’s thinking influences the developing relationship between parent and child.

Parents are interviewed using the Parent Development Interview (PDI), or an equivalent, and then the interview transcript is classified using the MotC system. The coding method was developed from interviews drawn from the first author’s work with children and families in the family court system, and then tested with a sample of 85 mothers and fathers, 62 of whom were parents drawn from an “at risk” context. The parents were also videoed in a short free play interaction, using the CARE-Index.

The study found a strong correspondence between the levels of risk as assessed by the MotC patterns of parental representation of care giving, the risk to the parent-child relationship observed using the CARE-Index. There was also corroboration of the patterns of interaction identified by the MotC.

The results of the study provide good evidence for the Meaning of the Child as an identifiable construct, and as an assessment tool to identify and assess the nature of “at risk” parent-child relationships. MotC was developed in a clinical setting within the Family Court justice system, and is designed to offer assistance to child protection and mental health practitioners deciding how to intervene in particular parent-child relationships.

Natural and technological catastrophes are worrying our societies at all levels (economical, political, social, psychological) because of the disturbances they generate on the populations in a large scale. Natural catastrophes reveal an old reality to which mankind has always been exposed and industrial risks are the consequence of technological development in the present century. Our study will analyse the influence of risk perception on psychological stress in two populations exposed to extreme risk and that have already lived in a catastrophe situation. We propose a theoretical model of the risk perception process and we observe that there is a direct effect of risk perception factors in stress. Interactions between the nature of risk individuals are exposed to and the risk perception in stress and coping strategies prove that risk perception interacts as a mediator in a complex process facing the risk situation responses.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a gaming approach to making key theoretical ideas accessible, understandable and useful for security practitioners confronting “terrorism” in the real world.

The tool is instrumental “red-team” matrix gaming: a structured way to first build and then wargame instrumental “terrorist” attack plans. The working assumption is that “terrorist” violence is designed with purpose, and that it reflects Fromkin’s understanding that terrorism is a form of jujitsu to manipulate more powerful opponents into politically and ideologically self-destructive behaviours. By designing and gaming attack plans with political objectives as the focus, practitioners quickly gain a deeper understanding of the processes of violent influence and the role of responders and decision makers. The paper is structured to, first, provide a theoretical explanation of contemporary conflict, focussing on the public support and how violence can be differently designed to political ends. On this foundation, the methods for learning are explained. A “playing-card” technique for setting students objectives in terms of psychological levers, vulnerabilities, political purposes and influence targets is described and options for participants generating scenarios outlined. Then the matrix-gaming approach, where play progresses according to the result of a dice roll applied to a probability based on the merit of participants’ competing arguments is explained with an example.

The described method of creating and wargaming terrorist attack plans offers a new and engaging method of exploring and understanding the processes of terrorism while preparing practitioners by potentially developing both their decision making and resilience.

The method described has potential value for teaching about terrorism by generally improving student engagement, preparing practitioners to respond to terrorism and wider application (of matrix gaming) to other topics.

This is a novel application of matrix gaming in a simplified format suited for classrooms.

This paper aims to explain why CSR policies have failed to render organizations more ethical and to propose concepts for using CSR for improving the ethics of organizations.

The paper examines the literature on CSR to compare how gaps in this field of literature are similar to those in leadership theory.

The paper posits that the different logical approaches to CSR are not necessarily ethical since ethics is based on the emotional involvement of the actor. The paper explains that leadership is not a hierarchical position but the emotional ability to follow one's worldview – either the Theta or Lambda worldviews – based on how one perceives his life purpose. The paper shows how to integrate knowledge from leadership theory to render the various CSR policies more ethical.

The paper shows the implication of the need for emotional involvement in research, in general. While the paper indicates a direction for how to integrate CSR policies into organizations, it does not provide examples.

The paper argues for a definition of leadership as the ability to act authentically according to one's worldview, either Theta or Lambda. Based on this context, it provides a better definition of strategy and tactics while arguing that CSR is only applicable to the latter category.