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This chapter reviews and integrates recent research on curiosity. We discuss potential costs and benefits of curiosity, both hedonic and motivational. In particular, we examine the Pandora effect, the teasing effect, and the motivating-uncertainty effect.

We develop a theoretical model to compare forecast uncertainty estimated from time-series models to those available from survey density forecasts. The sum of the average variance of individual densities and the disagreement is shown to approximate the predictive uncertainty from well-specified time-series models when the variance of the aggregate shocks is relatively small compared to that of the idiosyncratic shocks. Due to grouping error problems and compositional heterogeneity in the panel, individual densities are used to estimate aggregate forecast uncertainty. During periods of regime change and structural break, ARCH estimates tend to diverge from survey measures.

This paper examines the relationship between environmental uncertainty and tax avoidance at the firm level. We posit that managers faced with more uncertain environments are likely to engage in more tax avoidance activities. We find a significant and negative relationship between environmental uncertainty and effective tax rates, and our results persist through a battery of robust checks. We further find that managerial ability mitigates the above relationship. Moreover, we find that small, highly leveraged, and innovative firms operating in uncertain environments engage in more tax avoidance.

This study explores the yet understudied productive aspects of uncertainty in the organization of creative collaboration and scrutinizes the practices that allow participants to fruitfully use it as a resource for the creation of novelty. In contrast to former conceptualizations of uncertainty as a quantity to be reduced through organizing, we apply a qualitative heuristic where uncertainty may shift different dimensions regarding participation (who?), procedure (how?) and content (what?). Based on eight creativity biographies in two creative fields, music production and pharmaceutical development, encompassing 36 semi-structured qualitative interviews, we identify embracing, ignoring, and fixing uncertainty as three distinct, yet interrelated practices to engage with uncertainty and thereby enable the emergence of valuable novelty in interaction. We further discover that the participants shift these practices between the different dimensions of uncertainty during the process of creative collaboration. Moreover, we argue that these shifts are necessary to maintain creativity in collaborative processes. Thereupon, we contribute insights to the so far enigmatic notion of organizing for collaborative creativity.

The Public Organisation Risk Management concept challenges managers to develop a means of systematically identifying and managing key features of the organisation’s uncertainty field (its risks, uncertainties, the unknown and emergent, and the human perception/behaviour component). This presents an immense challenge, as it seems an organisation would need – in some sense – to identify all aspects of the environment before then isolating that subset of the most important risks and uncertainties. Clearly this is impossible, but a conscious awareness of this limitation might be valuable in its own right.

Assessment and analysis refers to the systematic and ongoing process by which a public organisation identifies, analyses, and measures the key components of its uncertainty field. A foundation concept that governs assessment and analysis is the view that public organisations are, in effect, collections of contracts, obligations, commitments, and agreements between the government and resource holders. Those arrangements serve as means by which the public organisation becomes exposed to the elements of the uncertainty field. Those elements, in turn, arise from the physical, social, political, economic, legal, operational, and cognitive environments.

A more detailed exposition of assessment and analysis appears in both Chapters Six and Seven. Here, in Chapter Five the goal is to set the foundation for such an exploration. Key terms and concepts are presented, and some core issues are introduced. As with all chapters, the discussion will address what have been identified as ‘traditional’ as well as enterprise risk management influenced perspectives. This in turn will lead to some coverage of alternative thinking about the assessment and analysis process.

Uncertainty-identity theory serves as our guiding theoretical framework to explore subjective uncertainty, especially uncertainty about self and identity, and the ways in which communication within groups provides valuable social identity information to group members as a means to manage subjective uncertainty.

We review and synthesize research in communication science and social identity theory, specifically uncertainty-identity theory, to compare diverse understandings of uncertainty and the identity-shaping function of communication within groups.

Uncertainty inherent in dyadic interactions has received extensive attention in communication science. However, the identity-defining function of communication that flows within and between groups as a means to resolving uncertainty about subjectively important matters has received little attention in both social psychology and communication science.

We explore how communication that flows from in-group sources (e.g., leaders) serves to shape a shared reality and identity for group members while providing a framework for self-definition. We propose an agenda for future research that would benefit from an articulation of the importance of communication in the shaping and management of identity-uncertainty.

Uncertainty arousing rhetoric by influential in-group sources, such as leaders and the media can have serious implications for intergroup relations, as uncertain individuals seek distinctive and tight-knit groups and autocratic leaders under conditions of heightened uncertainty. The role that communication plays in shaping clear and distinct identities as a panacea for identity-uncertainty has implications for the intragroup normative structure of the group and for intergroup relations.

This chapter develops a return forecasting methodology that allows for instability in the relationship between stock returns and predictor variables, model uncertainty, and parameter estimation uncertainty. The predictive regression specification that is put forward allows for occasional structural breaks of random magnitude in the regression parameters, uncertainty about the inclusion of forecasting variables, and uncertainty about parameter values by employing Bayesian model averaging. The implications of these three sources of uncertainty and their relative importance are investigated from an active investment management perspective. It is found that the economic value of incorporating all three sources of uncertainty is considerable. A typical investor would be willing to pay up to several hundreds of basis points annually to switch from a passive buy-and-hold strategy to an active strategy based on a return forecasting model that allows for model and parameter uncertainty as well as structural breaks in the regression parameters.

Uncertainty about Intellectual Property Regulations (IPR) is prevalent in today’s knowledge-based and creative industries. While prior literature indicates that regulatory uncertainty affects creative processes, studies that systematically analyze the effects of IPR on the experiencing of involved actors in creative processes across fields are rare. We ask how core professional actor groups including creators, legal professionals and managers involved in creative processes experience regulatory uncertainty in the fields of music and pharma. By studying practices of engaging with, circumventing and avoiding regulatory uncertainty about IPR, we show how creative processes in both the music and pharma fields are entrenched with emotional-cognitive experiences such as anxiety, indifference and hope that vary by professional group. Our findings point toward managers and legal professionals observing, exposing and cultivating emotions by ascribing experiences to other actor groups. We conclude that comparing regulation-related emotions of involved actors across fields helps to develop a deeper understanding of the dynamics of creative processes.

This chapter focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on academic leadership. Interview data from 13 academic leaders (department chairs, deans, vice-rectors) at two Turkish universities are used to voice their experiences. Two main themes emerged from the analysis: the challenges encountered in an era or uncertainty, and the experience of being in between balance and resilience. While all of the leaders interviewed got through the uncertainty produced by the pandemic, and some thrived, it is clear that universities need to do more to prepare themselves and their leaders for future crises.