Search results

One particular egregious type of workplace mistreatment is supervisor abuse, which has received extensive attention due to its heavy cost to organizations including up to 23 billion dollars in annual loss resulting from increases in absenteeism, health care costs, and productivity loss. Employees attribute causes to abusive supervision, and these attributions impact subsequent reactions. In some cases, employees may feel that abusive supervision is justified, leading to the reaction of Schadenfreude, or pleasure in another’s pain. In this chapter, we discuss antecedents to Schadenfreude, its role in observed mistreatment, and propose a conceptual model based on attribution theory.

Peace support operations and the role of the United Nations is getting important in changing the global power system. But generally peace support missions are creating new problems while trying to solve the original ones. In this presentation I will try to examine the relative effectiveness of the UN in the military observer missions, which is the most common type of UN peace support operations. The UN Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) is used to show their relative effectiveness in the current world system by means of differentiating the problems they are facing. After showing the common problems, I will give special emphasis to the genuine problems of UNOMIG. First of all we have to take a brief look at the origins of military observer missions. During the long Cold War, the UN had to engage in conflict resolution/management in a world widely divided between two superpowers. The Security Council (SC) suffered lots of problems to handle conflicts without jeopardising the interests of the superpowers. So in most of the cases (except Korea and Congo) the SC did not authorise the necessary military forces to the conflict areas. Instead the SC preferred to send interpositional forces with light arms or military observers without arms after getting the consent of the conflicting parties. Currently we are calling this approach traditional peacekeeping. By experiences gained on the ground and in the SC it was understood that the best and easiest reaction is establishing a UN military observer mission (UNMOM) (Mackinlay, 1996, pp. 9–11; British Army, 1995, pp. 1–2/2–7). According to this limited and conservative logic this process must follow standard steps: First an armed conflict between two states; second a stalemate that nobody is able to defeat the other side completely; third conflicting states ask the UN to enforce a ceasefire; fourth the SC authorises neutral military observers to monitor a ceasefire and to achieve some other limited objectives, according their mandate; fifth conflicting states try to reach a peaceful solution by diplomatic negotiations with the help of the UN; sixth agreement is reached and end of UNMOM. In short, the duty of the military observers is to monitor the ceasefire and the restrictions agreed to by both parties in a geographically limited area for a limited time. But in reality, diplomatic negotiations often do not provide fast and lasting solutions. UNMOMs have remained and temporary missions turned into permanent ones. The answer to the question why is that they are economically cheap operations and politically easier to maintain than to remove. Most of the UNMOMs that were established in different continents are still going on without an end in sight (Brahimi et al., 2000, p. 3).

Most anger research has adopted a within-person view, focusing on the effects of experienced anger on a person's feelings, cognition, and behavior. Less research has examined the effects of anger expressed by one person on other people in the workplace. We review available literature on the interpersonal effects of anger and propose a theoretical framework that addresses two main questions (1) What mechanisms can explain the effects of observed anger on other people? and (2) What factors may strengthen or attenuate these effects? We propose that observed anger affects observers’ performance via emotional and cognitive routes that are interrelated, and that this effect depends on the properties of the expressed anger, the situation in which the anger occurs, and the task being performed by the observer.

Although manufacturer-initiated rewards are widely used to secure distributors’ compliance, the spillover effect on unrewarded distributors (i.e. observers) in the same distribution channel is under-researched. Using insights from social learning theory, this paper aims to investigate how manufacturer-initiated rewards affect observers’ expectation of reward and shape observers’ compliance toward the manufacturer. Furthermore, this paper explores how such effects are contingent upon distributor relationship features.

To test the hypotheses, hierarchical multiple regression and bootstrapping analyses were performed using survey data from 280 Chinese distributors.

The magnitude of a manufacturer-initiated reward to a distributor stimulates expectation of reward among observers, which enhances compliance; observers’ expectation of reward mediates the impact of reward magnitude on compliance. Moreover, network centrality (of the rewarded peer) negatively moderates the positive impact of reward magnitude on observers’ expectation of reward, whereas observers’ dependence (on the manufacturer) positively moderates this dynamic.

Manufacturers should pay attention to the spillover effects of rewards. Overall, they should use rewards of appropriate magnitude to show willingness to recognize outstanding distributors. This will inspire unrewarded distributors, which will then be more compliant. Furthermore, manufacturers should know that specific types of distributor relationship features may significantly vary the spillover effects.

This study illuminates the spillover effects of manufacturer-initiated reward by opening the “black box” of the link between reward magnitude and observers’ compliance and by specifying the effects’ boundary conditions.

Drawing on the social presence theory, this study aims to explore how supplier–customer social media interactions influence supplier observers’ trust in the customers and what mechanisms contribute to variation in trust experience.

A total of 36 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Chinese suppliers using WeChat for business-to-business interactions. Data were analyzed in three steps: open coding, axial coding and selective coding.

Findings reveal that varied trust is based not only on the categories of social presence of interaction – whether social presence is embedded in informative interactions – but also on the perceived selectivity in social presence. Observer suppliers who experience selectivity during social and affective interactions create a perception of hidden information and an unhealthy relationship atmosphere, and report a sense of emotional vulnerability, thus eroding cognitive and affective trust.

The findings contribute new understandings to social presence theory by exploring the social presence of interactions in a supplier–supplier–customer triad and offer valuable insights into business-to-business social media literature by adopting a suppliers’ viewpoint to unpack the mechanisms of how social presence of interaction positively and negatively influences suppliers’ trust and behavioral responses.

Considerable research has examined the negative consequences of customer incivility on employees (e.g. turnover intention and sabotage behavior toward the customer). However, there is scant research investigating how other customers, as observers, may react to incivility. This knowledge gap should be filled because hospitality services are often consumed in the public setting where customers can observe and be influenced by each other. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap by examining observing customers’ willingness to revisit the company following customer incivility.

Participants are American consumers recruited from a crowdsourced online panel. Two scenario-based experimental studies in the restaurant setting are conducted. Customer incivility and relationship norms (communal versus exchange) are manipulated, while relationship closeness is measured.

Study 1 shows that following fellow customer incivility (vs civility), observing customers’ intention to revisit the company was lower when they perceive a distant relationship with the employee. This intention did not differ regardless of incivility and civility when they perceive a close relationship with the employee. Study 2 shows that when observing customers perceive a communal relationship with the employee, their revisit intention was even higher following customer incivility (vs civility).

Hospitality managers need to train employees to identify signs of customer incivility and assume appropriate actions to reduce the negative consequences on observers. Hospitality managers should also communicate their expectations for respectful customer behaviors through an organization-wide campaign. Finally, hospitality businesses should foster a close relationship with their customers, particularly a communal relationship to offset the negative consequences of customer incivility on observers.

This study adds to previous research by challenging the universally negative view of customer incivility. The authors do so by examining the moderating effects of relationship closeness and norms in observer reactions to customer incivility. This study contributes to previous research drawing on script theory and deontic justice theory.

This paper deals with the problem of rotor speed and position detection in sensorless permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drives. A concept based on detecting the back EMF induced in stator windings was developed and modified. A general structure of an adaptive observer with the proportional‐integral function of a corrector is introduced. The non‐stationary character of the observer presented in this paper requires an adaptive change of observer corrector settings. Such observer structure was implemented on a DSP system and verified experimentally. Both simulation and experimental results show good properties of the proposed observer structure.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a decentralized observer for large‐scale singular systems.

In this paper, the authors investigate the problem of observers' design for large‐scale singular systems. The proposed decentralized observer is based on a new parameterization of the generalized Sylvester equation solution. The considered system is partitioned into small‐sizes interconnected subsystems with unknown interconnections.

A decentralized observer based on new parameterization of generalized Sylvester equation. The performance of the proposed approach is illustrated by a numerical example.

The proposed approach unites the full‐order, the reduced‐order and the minimal order observer design for large‐scale system. The conditions of the existence of this observer are given in the linear matrix inequalities (LMI) form.

To reflect on the matter of self‐consciousness.

The purpose is achieved through the process of answering four questions presented to me by Heinz von Foerster in the course of our many conversations.

It is not possible to understand the nature of self‐consciousness without understanding the operation of human beings as living systems that exist as emotional languaging living systems: self‐consciousness is a manner of living.

We human beings can become more aware of our responsibility in the design of robots that imitate us.

Reflects on what makes us humans special, on subjective experience, and on the world we bring forth.

Sensorless online measurements, application of variable speed drives has been given a great attention, especially over the past few years. In most of the previous literates dealing with permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drives, the combination of inter-sampled behavior with high gain design approach has not been discussed yet. This paper aims to discuss this feature in-depth.

The study contains a different approach for an observer running with surface-mounted permanent magnet synchronous machine drives to implement sensorless control. Design of sampled data observer methodology for one kind of AC machine having non-linear model and backed by an elegant formal stability convergence analysis using the tools of Lyapunov stability techniques was highly recommended in scientific contributions, and it is yet needed to be solved.

In this study, a solution to observation problem is covered and developed by combining ideas from the high-gain design approach and inter-sample predictor based on stator voltage measurements. The output state currents are accessible only at the sampling instant to solve the problem of states observation at continuous-time mode. This allows to reducing the usage of online appliances, improving reliability of control design and saving costs.

The proposed observer is capable of guaranteeing an acceptable closed loop dynamic response over a wide range of operation region and industrial process for random initial conditions.

The output state predictor has been interred in constructing the innovation correct term to prove the robustness of the proposed observer against attenuated sampling interval. To validate the theoretical results introduced by the main fundamental theorem and prove the observer stability convergence, the proposed observer is demonstrated through a sample study application to variable speed permanent magnet synchronous machine drive.