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Do public managers’ religious beliefs and behaviors affect their work and their work-related attitudes? There is almost no empirical work on the topic. Questionnaire data (n=765) drawn from the National Administrative Studies Project-III11The data are drawn from the National Administrative Studies Project-III. is used to test hypotheses about the impacts of U.S. public managers’ religiosity and political activity, on work attitudes. Multiple regression shows that religious public managers tend to have a stronger orientation toward job security. Public managers who are members of political organizations are somewhat less oriented to security and have more negative views about their organization and fellow employees. Controls introduced into the model do not change these findings.

In this paper, the contaminating role of socially desirable responding (SDR) in the investigation of “dark-side” aspects in international services marketing is examined. The main question to be answered is whether or not relationships between consumer ethnocentrism towards international services and its antecedents are biased by SDR, manifesting itself as impression management by respondents. The results of an empirical study confirm that conscious impression management indeed is likely to represent a serious threat in this type of consumer behavior-related research. The relationship between cultural openness and consumer collectivism on the one hand and consumer ethnocentric tendencies towards foreign services on the other hand was found to be biased by SDR. Such bias, however, could not be found for the other antecedents, namely patriotism and conservatism. This suggests that whether or not respondents engage in impression management depends on the conceptual character of the constructs being studied in international services research. Accordingly, the results have several implications for international services research practice.

Changing work/family dynamics and economic developments have made it more likely that an employee might work with a family member or spouse. Such working relationships offer a unique perspective by which to understand the work/family interface; however, relatively little research has explored the implications of working with family for employee stress and well-being. In this chapter, we review the existing research concerning stress associated with working with family. We integrate this research into broader demand/resource perspectives on employee stress and well-being, highlighting the manner in which working with family provides unique demands and resources through differences in work–family linking mechanisms. We conclude with suggestions for future research that might enhance our understanding of the work/family interface by considering the dynamics of working with family.

In this chapter, we explicate two related techniques that help quantify the sensitivity of a given causal inference to potential omitted variables and/or other sources of unexplained heterogeneity. In particular, we describe the Impact Threshold of a Confounding Variable (ITCV) and the Robustness of Inference to Replacement (RIR). The ITCV describes the minimum correlation necessary between an omitted variable and the focal parameters of a study to have created a spurious or invalid statistical inference. The RIR is a technique that quantifies the percentage of observations with nonzero effects in a sample that would need to be replaced with zero effects in order to overturn a given causal inference at any desired threshold. The RIR also measures the percentage of a given parameter estimate that would need to be biased in order to overturn an inference. Each of these procedures is critical to help establish causal inference, perhaps especially for research urgently studying the COVID-19 pandemic when scholars are not afforded the luxury of extended time periods to determine precise magnitudes of relationships between variables. Over the course of this chapter, we define each technique, illustrate how they are applied in the context of seminal strategic management research, offer guidelines for interpreting corresponding results, and delineate further considerations.

This chapter deals with the question of how anti-corruption norms can emerge in authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes that actively suppress social dissent and protest. The chapter examines the capacity of Russian opposition movements to create a sustained anti-corruption discourse and to shape political governance. When it comes to addressing corruption through social action in the context of Russia, the situation does not often seem conducive to concerted opposition activity. Nevertheless, even though opposition movements repeatedly fail to impact political decision-making or elite practices, they are not exercises in futility. The chapter concludes that the anti-corruption discourse can be effectively utilized by the Russian opposition movements to unite its efforts and vocalize their demands in terms of democratic governance norms. Continually repressive governmental measures are creating dangerous public spaces, where massive and violent confrontations are increasingly likely to occur. As the opposition continues to find its voice, challenge elite corruption and vocalize its desires for democratic governance norms, the continuing demands for policies to be reflective of public interest (rather than interests of the powerful elites) will not abate. The anti-corruption discourse can play a powerful unifying role for the opposition given the endemic nature of corruption in today’s Russia.

The increasing prominence of environmental sustainability as an objective of transport policy, and in people's thinking about their travel-related decisions, brings new challenges for data collection because, uniquely in the transport sector, it brings three issues to the fore: firstly, the difficulties associated with gathering data and opinions on a topic which is socially and morally charged; secondly, the fact that the resulting adjustments to behaviour may be in dimensions (such as choice of vehicle characteristics and mode choice for infrequent trips) which are not traditionally covered very fully in travel surveys; and thirdly, the likelihood that any change in behaviour may emerge only slowly over an extended period of time (as and when the opportunity arises for the individuals' behaviour to be adjusted to fit their aspirations).

It is argued that, because the topic is socially charged, data on sustainable travel behaviour is particularly prone to social desirability bias and other related biases. The nature and implications of these biases are addressed and it is concluded that individuals will tend to exaggerate the likelihood of behavioural change in response to sustainability concerns and policy initiatives. Methods, which might be used to study the emergence of sustainable patterns of behaviour in general, and responses to sustainability orientated policy initiatives in particular, are discussed and attention is given to ways of minimising bias in the data.

One of the mechanisms by which organizations promote adherence to requirements that employees display appropriate emotions is the use of discipline to punish emotional deviance. This study analyzed selected cases, in unionized settings, where the imposition of discipline had been grieved and culminated in arbitration. Analysis of these cases showed that emotional deviance was most often characterized as rudeness and a lack of courtesy, which took the form of inappropriate displays of anger and hostility, and failure to display interest, concern, and caring. Although some deviance was not excusable, when employee deviance was the result of unprovoked customer emotion this mitigated the assignment of blame. Employees were sometimes found to lack awareness of display rules or how to follow them, and were expected to defuse customer emotion. While discipline is seen as one mechanism for formally controlling emotional deviance, its effectiveness may be limited, particularly in situations where employees are likely to encounter strong negative customer emotion.