The triangle model of responsibility

Can Treating Oneself Kindly Inspire Trust? The Role of Interpersonal Responsibility

Self-compassion, as a personal psychological resource, has been proved to play an important role in coping with suffering. Based on self-determination theory, the present study attempts to establish that self-compassion can promote trust, and the sense of interpersonal responsibility mediates this relationship. Study 1 used cross-sectional data in a community sample of 322 adults to reveal that self-compassion was positively related to trust, and the mediating effects of the sense of interpersonal responsibility were significant. Study 2 used the latent cross-lagged panel model among 1304 college students at three-time points set at six-month intervals to replicate the results and proved the longitudinal mediating effects across groups. Finally, a casual chain design was used to test the mediation effect in Studies 3 and 4. The results indicated that self-compassion induced by writing task resulted in a sense of responsibility in Study 3 (N = 145), and the manipulated sense of responsibility promoted both trust behaviors and beliefs in Study 4 (N = 125). Through four studies, this study highlights a novel but unexpected viewpoint that treating oneself in a self-compassionate way can not only help individuals cope with various challenges but also motivate them to obtain interpersonal benefits. These findings can help motivate community workers and mental health researchers to increase social capital by focusing on self-compassion and interpersonal responsibility.

A scoping review of health system guidelines for pharmacist responsibilities when dispensing opioids

Introduction

Prescription opioid use and evidence of the harm caused by these medicines has increased over the past 20-30 years. Despite a number of system level interventions, the opioid crisis has not yet resolved in Australia or globally. Pharmacists are increasingly required to take a proactive, clinical role to fulfil their responsibility for patient outcomes relating to both medication efficacy and safety.

Aim

To evaluate the current health system guidelines available to pharmacists dispensing opioids and to examine the implications of this guidance on pharmacist responsibility.

Methods

A scoping review was conducted by searching in CINAHL, MEDLINE, Embase, PubMed and Web of Science, in addition to the grey literature and referral from topic experts to collate a list of current health system guidelines relevant to pharmacists dispensing opioids. These guidelines were then examined through thematic analysis and the use of the "Appraisal of Guidelines Research & Evaluation-Health Systems" tool (AGREE-HS).

Results

Ten health system guidelines were identified in the search. Identified guidelines were published in Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Health system guidelines analysed in this study most commonly provide general practice statements that are not specific to opioid medicines. Current guidelines frequently recommend risk assessment, but less commonly provide implementable risk mitigation advice. Additionally, guidelines are of poor overall quality when analysed through metrics relating to their development and implementation.

Conclusion

There are gaps in current health system guidelines which contribute to perceived barriers in pharmacy practice. Current health system guidance does not provide a clear account of the responsibilities of pharmacists when dispensing opioids. This study provides an argument for the development of implementable health system guidelines that support pharmacists in taking direct responsibility for patient outcomes when dispensing opioid medicines.

Development and validation of a personal responsibility scale for Chinese college students

Introduction

The complexity of the concept of responsibility has led to a relative lack of measuring tools. Meanwhile, the widely used measurement of conscientiousness in the Big Five personality traits suffers from inconsistencies in measuring personal responsibility. Therefore, measuring personal responsibility must be adapted to its cultural context. Spurred by these reasons, we developed a "Chinese College Student Personal Responsibility Scale" (CCSPRS) based on local theoretical foundations. Furthermore, we conducted a preliminary exploration using the new scale, examining the correlations between college students' responsibility, trust propensity, and prosocial behavior tendencies.

Methods

The initial version of the scale was subjected to item analysis, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to form the formal version of the scale. A total of 1,038 college students were assembled. The reliability and validity of the scale were also analyzed. We collected data using the proposed CCSPRS, Interpersonal Trust Scale, and Prosocial Tendencies Measure Questionnaire and obtained 301 valid questionnaires.

Results

The scale's reliability and validity indicators met the development requirements, and the investigation revealed that women students scored significantly higher in responsibility than men students. Additionally, the responsibility scores were relatively high in the first and fourth years and low in the second and third years, presenting an approximate U-shaped trend. Besides, the college students' personal responsibility, trust propensity, and prosocial behavior tendencies were positively correlated.

Discussion

The proposed CCSPRS is an effective tool for measuring personal responsibility among Chinese college students. Additionally, this study analyzed the internal beliefs of individuals and concluded that personal responsibility, prosocial behavior, and trust propensity are closely interconnected, especially the relationship between responsibility and prosocial behavior.

Digging deeper into responsibility: an investigation of responses to online help-request marketing campaigns in social networking groups

Purpose

There is a growing trend among online merchants to conduct help-request marketing campaigns (HMCs), which refers to a kind of marketing campaign that leverages participants' help-request to encourage the subsequent engagement of participants' online friends. The paper aims to investigate how individuals respond to online HMCs in social networking groups (SNGs). Integrating the norm activation model and regulatory focus theory, this paper examines the mediation effects of the two facets of responsibility perception, i.e. perceived causality and perceived answerability.

Design/methodology/approach

A field experiment was conducted by organizing a real HMC on WeChat. To manipulate request individuation, experimental confederates were engaged to serve as requesters in the HMC. The actual responses provided by the recipients (subjects) were captured via the HMC pages. The multiple-group analysis was used for data analysis.

Findings

Empirical results reveal that request individuation strengthens the effect of relationship closeness on perceived causality but reverses the effect of relationship closeness on perceived answerability from being positive to negative. Except for the negligible impact of perceived answerability on inaction, both perceived causality and perceived answerability affect recipients' reactions to HMCs as expected.

Practical implications

First, social media platforms should promote other-oriented prosocial values when designing features or launching campaigns. Second, the designers of HMCs should introduce a “tagging” feature in HMCs and provide additional bonuses for requesters who perform tagging. Third, HMC requesters should prudently select tagging targets when making a request.

Originality/value

First, this paper contributes to the literature on social media engagement by identifying responsibility as an other-oriented motivation for individuals' social media engagement. Second, this paper also extends our understanding of responsibility by dividing it into perceived causality and answerability as well as measuring them with self-developed instruments. Third, this study contributes to the research on WOM by demonstrating that individuals' response behaviors toward help-requests embedded in HMCs can take the form of proactive helping, reactive helping or inaction.

Pharmacy Workplace Wellbeing and Resilience: Themes Identified from a Hermeneutic Phenomenological Analysis with Future Recommendations

This study applied a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to better understand pharmacy workplace wellbeing and resilience using respondents' written comments along with a blend of the researchers' understanding of the phenomenon and the published literature. Our goal was to apply this understanding to recommendations for the pharmacy workforce and corresponding future research. Data were obtained from the 2021 APhA/NASPA National State-Based Pharmacy Workplace Survey, launched in the United States in April 2021. Promotion of the online survey to pharmacy personnel was accomplished through social media, email, and online periodicals. Responses continued to be received through the end of 2021. A data file containing 6973 responses was downloaded on 7 January 2022 for analysis. Usable responses were from those who wrote an in-depth comment detailing stories and experiences related to pharmacy workplace and resilience. There were 614 respondents who wrote such comments. The findings revealed that business models driven by mechanized assembly line processes, business metrics that supersede patient outcomes, and reduction of pharmacy personnel's professional judgement have contributed to the decline in the experience of providing patient care in today's health systems. The portrait of respondents' lived experiences regarding pharmacy workplace wellbeing and resilience was beyond the individual level and revealed the need for systems change. We propose several areas for expanded inquiry in this domain: (1) shared trauma, (2) professional responsibility and autonomy, (3) learned subjection, (4) moral injury and moral distress, (5) sociocultural effects, and (6) health systems change.

Dancing in Shackles: The Double-Edged Sword Effect of Felt Accountability on Work Outcomes and Individual Wellbeing

Accountability is a core element for groups and societies to operate efficiently. However, there have been confusing findings in previous studies on felt accountability, and few efforts have been made to clarify its complicated role. Drawing on self-determination theory, we developed an integrative model to examine the double-edged sword effect of felt accountability on work outcomes and individual wellbeing. We utilized a three-wave sample of 294 employees to test our hypotheses. The findings supported our hypotheses. Specifically, felt accountability is positively related to both task performance and emotional exhaustion, and obsessive passion mediates the positive relationship between felt accountability and task performance, while work overload mediates the positive relationship between felt accountability and emotional exhaustion. This study integrates the positive and dark sides of felt accountability, provides new insights into its mechanism and expands the application of self-determination theory.

Interpersonal coordination enhances brain-to-brain synchronization and influences responsibility attribution and reward allocation in social cooperation

Fair distribution of resources matters to both individual interests and group harmony during social cooperation. Different allocation rules, including equity- and equality-based rules, have been widely discussed in reward allocation research; however, it remains unclear whether and how individuals' cooperative manner, such as interpersonal coordination, influence their subsequent responsibility attribution and reward allocation. Here, 46 dyads conducted a time estimation task-either synergistically (the coordination group) or solely (the control group)-while their brain activities were measured using a functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning approach. Dyads in the coordination group showed higher behavioral synchrony and higher interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) in the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during the time estimation task than those in the control group. They also showed a more egalitarian tendency of responsibility attribution for the task outcome. More importantly, dyads in the coordination group who had higher IBS in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) were more inclined to make egalitarian reward allocations, and this effect was mediated by responsibility attribution. Our findings elucidate the influence of interpersonal coordination on reward allocation and the critical role of the prefrontal cortex in these processes.

Autonomy and the folk concept of valid consent

Consent governs innumerable everyday social interactions, including sex, medical exams, the use of property, and economic transactions. Yet little is known about how ordinary people reason about the validity of consent. Across the domains of sex, medicine, and police entry, Study 1 showed that when agents lack autonomous decision-making capacities, participants are less likely to view their consent as valid; however, failing to exercise this capacity and deciding in a nonautonomous way did not reduce consent judgments. Study 2 found that specific and concrete incapacities reduced judgments of valid consent, but failing to exercise these specific capacities did not, even when the consenter makes an irrational and inauthentic decision. Finally, Study 3 showed that the effect of autonomy on judgments of valid consent carries important downstream consequences for moral reasoning about the rights and obligations of third parties, even when the consented-to action is morally wrong. Overall, these findings suggest that laypeople embrace a normative, domain-general concept of valid consent that depends consistently on the possession of autonomous capacities, but not on the exercise of these capacities. Autonomous decisions and autonomous capacities thus play divergent roles in moral reasoning about consent interactions: while the former appears relevant for assessing the wrongfulness of consented-to acts, the latter plays a role in whether consent is regarded as authoritative and therefore as transforming moral rights.

Transfer of training from an internal medicine boot camp to the workplace: enhancing and hindering factors

BACKGROUND

The transfer of training to the workplace is the aim of training interventions. Three primary factors influence transfer: trainee characteristics, training design and work environment influences. Within medical education, the work environment factors influencing transfer of training remain underexplored. Burke and Hutchins' review of training transfer outlined five work environment influences: opportunity to perform, supervisor/peer support, strategic link, transfer climate and accountability. This study aimed to explore the ways in which work environment factors influence the transfer of training for medical trainees.

METHODS

Internal Medicine Training in Scotland includes a three-day boot camp involving simulation-based mastery learning of procedural skills, immersive simulation scenarios and communication workshops. Following ethical approval, trainees were invited to take part in interviews at least three months after following their boot camp. Interviews were semi-structured, anonymised, transcribed verbatim and analysed using template analysis. Member checking interviews were performed to verify findings.

RESULTS

A total of 26 trainees took part in interviews between January 2020 and January 2021. Trainees reported a lack of opportunities to perform procedures in the workplace and challenges relating to the transfer climate, including a lack of appropriate equipment and resistance to change in the workplace. Trainees described a strong sense of personal responsibility to transfer and they felt empowered to change practice in response to the challenges faced.

CONCLUSIONS

This study highlights barriers to transfer of training within the clinical workplace including procedural opportunities, a transfer climate with challenging equipment availability and, at times, an unsupportive workplace culture. Trainees are driven by their own sense of personal responsibility; medical educators and healthcare leaders must harness this enthusiasm and take heed of the barriers to assist in the development of strategies to overcome them.

Predicting responsibility judgments from dispositional inferences and causal attributions

The question of how people hold others responsible has motivated decades of theorizing and empirical work. In this paper, we develop and test a computational model that bridges the gap between broad but qualitative framework theories, and quantitative but narrow models. In our model, responsibility judgments are the result of two cognitive processes: a dispositional inference about a person's character from their action, and a causal attribution about the person's role in bringing about the outcome. We test the model in a group setting in which political committee members vote on whether or not a policy should be passed. We assessed participants' dispositional inferences and causal attributions by asking how surprising and important a committee member's vote was. Participants' answers to these questions in Experiment 1 accurately predicted responsibility judgments in Experiment 2. In Experiments 3 and 4, we show that the model also predicts moral responsibility judgments, and that importance matters more for responsibility, while surprise matters more for judgments of wrongfulness.

Reaction of users as potential victims of information security breach

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine whether users’ perceived moral affect explains the effect of perceived intensity of emotional distress on responsibility judgment of a perpetrator and company, respectively, in an ill and good intention breach.

Design/methodology/approach

Participants completed a questionnaire containing items measuring their perceived intensity of emotional distress, perceived moral affect and responsibility judgment of a perpetrator and company, respectively.

Findings

The results support the mediating hypothesis on responsibility judgment of a perpetrator regardless of intention. The mediating hypothesis is also supported in an ill intention breach in responsibility judgment of a company. However, the mediating effect is not observed in a good intention breach when users assess a company’s responsibility.

Originality/value

The findings support the notion that users use the consequentialism approach when assessing a perpetrator’s responsibility because they focus on the victims’ emotional distress and discount a perpetrator’s intent, resulting in similar mediating effect of perceived moral affect in an ill and good intention breach. The results also indicate that perceived moral affect increases the negative effect of perceived intensity of emotional distress on responsibility judgment of a company, suggesting that users may exhibit empathetic feelings toward a company and perceive it as a victim of an ill intention breach. The lack of mediating effect in responsibility judgment of a company in a good intention breach may be attributed to the diminished effect of a perpetrator’s feelings of regret, sorrow, guilt and shame for causing emotional distress to the victims.

Workplace accountabilities: worthy challenge or potential threat?

Purpose

Combining early and untested accountability perspectives with stress research, the authors examined the degree to which employees perceive workplace accountabilities as either worthy challenges to be overcome or potential threats to be avoided.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors utilized structural equation modeling to evaluate our hypotheses and tested them across two data samples, using two different sampling techniques collected four years apart.

Findings

Employees' individual differences of attribution style, negative affectivity and core self-evaluations influenced how subjects approached accountability pressures in their workplace, which in turn, was associated with job satisfaction and turnover intentions.

Originality/value

By examining how employees evaluate accountability pressures, this investigation advances existing research by exploring the different ways in which employees perceive workplace accountabilities.

Primary care physicians' concerned voices on sickness certification after a period of reorganization. Focus group interviews in Sweden

Objective: This study explored the views of primary health care (PHC) physicians on sickness certification after reforms in 2005 prompted by the Swedish government to increase the quality and decrease the inequalities, and costs of sickness certification.Design: Qualitative design with focus group interviews. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis.Setting: Urban and rural PHC centres in Region Västra Götaland, Sweden.Subjects: GPs, interns, GP trainees and locums working in PHC centres 2015. Six focus group interviews with 28 physicians were performed.Main outcome measures: Experiences and reflections about the sickness certification system.Results: The latent content was formulated in a theme: 'The physicians perceived the sickness certification process as emotive and a challenge to master with differing demands and expectations from authorities, management and patients'. Sickness certification could be easy in clear-cut situations or difficult when other factors besides the pure medical were ruling the decisions. The physicians' coping strategies for the task included both active measures (cooperation with health care staff and social insurance officers) and passive adaptation (giving in or not caring too much) to the circumstances. Proposals for the future were to transfer lengthy sickness certifications and rehabilitation to specialized teams and increase cooperation with rehabilitation coordinators and social insurance officers.Conclusions: Political decisions on laws and regulations for sickness certification impacted the primary health care making the physicians' work difficult and burdensome. Their views and suggestions should be carefully considered in future organization of primary care. KEY POINTSIn 2005 Swedish government introduced reforms to decrease the inequalities and costs of sickness certification and facilitate the physicians' work. Focus group interviews with Swedish primary care physicians revealed that sickness certification was challenging due to differing demands from authorities, management and patients.Coping strategies for the sick-listing task included both active measures and passive adaptation to the circumstances.A proposal for future better working conditions for physicians was to transfer lengthy sickness certifications and rehabilitation to specialized teams.

Oxytocin modulates responsibility attribution and hypothetical Resource allocation during cooperation

Reasonable responsibility attribution and resource allocation in intragroup contexts benefit the evolution of group cooperation. Oxytocin (OT) has been shown to promote prosocial behavior; however, it remains unclear whether OT affects responsibility attribution and hypothetical resource allocation. In the present study, participants were intranasally administered OT or placebo (PLC) before a response task with a partner. The participant could win a certain amount of money depending on the group's performance, which was determined by the faster player. The contribution was manipulated to be similar in the first phase, while the participants could individually contribute more in the second phase. Our results show that both groups attributed more credit to the player who performed better in a trial. Moreover, reward magnitude only enhanced effort-based attribution in the OT group. Although both groups proposed to distribute money based on individual efforts, the PLC group increased their effort-based allocation when they contributed more, regardless of the fact that the money was eventually equally distributed. Our study demonstrates that OT modulates responsibility attribution and hypothetical resource allocation in different manners, suggesting that OT has different effects on a participant's perception of individual contribution and fairness when allocating a reward during social cooperation in a real effort task.

The Role of Work Environment in Training Sustainment: A Meta-Analysis

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this meta-analytic review is to examine the role of three work environment support variables (i.e., peer, supervisor, and organizational support) in training transfer and sustainment or long-term use of learned knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs).

BACKGROUND

Estimates demonstrate that little training is transferred to the job, wasting billions in organizational spending each year and resulting in significant loss to safety and individual and team performance. Prior research shows the importance of a supportive work environment to facilitating transfer; however, we know little of the relative importance of specific support variables. This study seeks to examine the unique roles of distinct support variables in training transfer.

METHOD

A meta-analysis was conducted with multiple regressions to answer three primary research questions.

RESULTS

All work environment support variables demonstrate moderate and positive correlations with transfer of training. Furthermore, multiple regressions demonstrate that each factor of the work environment explains unique variance as a predictor, with the model accounting for 32% of transfer and peer support accounting for most of R². Motivation to transfer mediates the relationship between all three work environment support variables and transfer. Furthermore, three support variables are positively related to sustainment, with peer and supervisor support showing the strongest relationships.

CONCLUSION

Findings illuminate the relative contribution of peer, supervisor, and organizational support to transfer and sustainment of training. As transfer continues to be an important yet understudied measure of the effectiveness of workplace training, these findings hold implications for both research and practice.

Moral Leadership and Unethical Pro-organizational Behavior: A Moderated Mediation Model

In this paper, we aim to examine the indirect effects of moral leadership on unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). Drawing on Social Identity Theory, identification with supervisors (social identity) and taking responsibility (personal identity) were hypothesized as mediators linking moral leadership and UPB. In addition, we aim to investigate the moderating role of moral courage in the relationship between moral leadership and UPB. We conducted two studies with two distinct samples: one on a sample of 161 MBA students, and the other on a sample of 205 enterprise employees in China. Data were collected through a self-reported questionnaire based on a two-wave research design and analyzed through Structural Equation Modeling. Results showed that moral leadership increased UPB through promoting identification with supervisors while reducing UPB via increasing taking responsibility. Additionally, the results also showed that moral courage moderated the mediating effects of identification with supervisors and taking responsibility upon the relationship between moral leadership and UPB. We contribute to the literature by demonstrating that moral leadership exerts its paradoxical effects on UPB indirectly through its impact on identification with supervisors and taking responsibility and therefore offers a better understanding of how and when moral leadership influences UPB. A number of managerial implications are also discussed.

“Green” Information Promotes Employees’ Voluntary Green Behavior via Work Values and Perceived Accountability

A range of different approaches has been used to involve employees in green workplace initiatives. One example of such an approach is to spread awareness by displaying “green” information concerning work-related environmental protection and sustainability information on organizational bulletin boards. The study aims to examine how green display rules and felt accountability influence the relationship between new-generation employees’ work values and green behavior. There were 567 Chinese millennial employees who participated in this study. The results showed that intrinsic preference, interpersonal harmony, innovative orientation, and long-term development had a positive influence on employees’ green behavior through the effect of felt accountability. Besides, the more green information displayed, the stronger the effect of intrinsic preference, interpersonal harmony, and long-term development on employees’ green behavior. This study provides valuable insights for managers to understand the work values of the new-generation employees and, in turn, improve their green awareness, which can help execute corporate social responsibility.

Building relationships through accountability: An expanded idea of accountability

Previous literature has focused on how external forces impose accountability on individuals (i.e., holding individuals to account), but has not considered the possibility of internal, personal accountability. We explain how an internalized sense of accountability, which we term internally assumed accountability, can enrich our understanding of why some organizational members might assume ownership for organizational problems, even ones that they did not actually cause. We offer a typology of accountability in organizations based on contrasting relationship norms and personal orientations. Our article concludes with a discussion on connections between different kinds of accountability and stakeholder relationships, suggesting a number of avenues for further investigation and practice.

Pharmacists' perceived responsibility for patient care when there is a risk of misadventure: a qualitative study

OBJECTIVE

To investigate how community pharmacists view their responsibility for patient care in a scenario involving opioid use with significant risk of toxicity or misadventure.

METHODS

A case scenario was developed based on an Australian coronial inquiry involving a patient suffering fatal toxicity following misuse of opioids. Community pharmacists working in Brisbane, Queensland, were invited to take part in face-to-face semi-structured interviews at their place of work. Participants were asked how they would respond to the scenario in practice and their perceived responsibilities.

KEY FINDINGS

Twenty-one pharmacists were interviewed. Participants identified similar actions in response to the case, and potential barriers and enablers. Participants differed with regard to how they described their perceived scope of practice and degree of responsibility in response to the case. Most participants described their scope of practice in terms of medication management with a focus on patient outcomes. Some participants described a narrower scope of practice that focused on either medicine supply or legal aspects. Participants who described a medication management focus differed in their views regarding their responsibility for patient outcomes in the case.

CONCLUSION

Pharmacists in this study varied in terms of their perceived scope of practice and responsibility to patient outcomes in response to a case involving a patient at risk of opioid-related harm. Further work on pharmacist responsibility may reduce this variability.

Global Identity and Preference for Environmentally Friendly Products: The Role of Personal Responsibility

This research tests the idea that a salient global identity positively affects people’s willingness to pay for environmentally friendly products. Results from a large-scale multi-nation survey ( N = 75,934) as well as two studies ( N = 322) conducted in Singapore supported this prediction. We found that participants with a more (vs. less) dominant global identity indicated greater support for environmentally friendly products and exhibited increased pro-environmental behavior. We further show that the effect is driven by a stronger feeling of personal responsibility toward the environment among individuals who possess a dominant global identity. Findings from this research suggest that the formation of stronger global identity, a psychological consequence of increasing globalization, can have an important impact on people’s pro-environmental behavior.

The interactive effect of person and situation on explorative and exploitative behavior

The purpose of this study was to examine contextual factors (empowerment, ownership, and accountability) that facilitate and promote exploration and exploitation behavior. Data were obtained from an American manufacturing company using employee and supervisor surveys (n = 297). Findings indicate that empowerment improved exploitation and that when employees perceived they would have to be accountable for their actions, employees who felt empowered showed lower gains in exploration behaviors compared with those who felt less empowered; in contrast, those having feelings of ownership exhibited higher gains in exploration behavior than those who scored low in ownership. Although ownership was theorized to have a positive effect on exploitative behavior, we found evidence for its negative effects instead. We contribute to the limited individual-level ambidexterity literature by providing empirical evidence on the effects of contextual factors on ambidextrous behavior. This knowledge could help firms better manage employee behavior and implement effective supervisory oversight.

Felt accountability: the role of personality and organizational factors

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to employ the meso-level theory of felt accountability to investigate the relationships among positive affect, negative affect, perceived organizational support, organizational structure and felt accountability.

Design/methodology/approach

To avoid common method bias, this study employed a time-lag data collection technique in collecting data from 132 participants. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine the relationships among the variables.

Findings

The results show a positive association between positive affect and perceived organizational support and felt accountability, whereas negative affect and organizational structure were negatively correlated with felt accountability, in that machine structures constraint the development of felt accountability.

Originality/value

This research advances the meso-level theory of felt accountability and social exchange frameworks by integrating personality and organizational factors influencing felt accountability, and demonstrating that that the tangible advantages offered by an organization are reciprocated by employees’ accountability.

Disappearance of self-serving bias: Reward positivity reflects performance monitoring modulated by responsibility attribution in a two-person cooperative task

Performance monitoring plays a virtual role in individual reinforcement learning. However, it remains unclear how responsibility attribution modulates the individual monitoring process in a social cooperative context. In the present study, 46 participants received feedback on the team's monetary outcome, teammate performance, and their own performance sequentially for a two-person task. Using event-related potential (ERP), we analyze brain activity in response to performance monitoring during team and self feedback, indexed according to reward positivity (RewP). Overall, the participants reported a modest tendency towards causal attribution in terms of taking more responsibility for negative rather than positive team-feedback, thus indicating an opposite pattern to the so-called self-serving bias phenomenon. Based on post-experiment responsibility attribution, participants were further divided into a 'Modest' group (N = 23) who reported more responsibility for team failure than success, and an 'Ordinary' group (N = 23) who made comparable attribution irrespective of team outcome. The ERP results show that there is no difference in RewP amplitudes between the two groups when the participants were processing the team's monetary feedback. However, the observed RewP amplitudes are notably different in the Modest group when processing self-performance feedback at different levels of responsibility attribution. These findings demonstrate that neural activity during performance monitoring does not differ between the two groups. However, using different responsibility attribution tendencies does affect brain activity during individual performance monitoring. The observed RewP effect sheds light on the automatic and implicit evaluation of one's own performance in a social cooperative context.

Behavioral Genetics and Attributions of Moral Responsibility

While considerable research has examined how genetic explanations for behavior impact assessments of moral responsibility, results across studies have been inconsistent. Some studies suggest that genetic accounts diminish ascriptions of responsibility, but others show no effect. Nonetheless, conclusions from behavior genetics are increasingly mobilized on behalf of defendants in court, suggesting a widespread intuition that this sort of information is relevant to assessments of blameworthiness. In this paper, we consider two sorts of reasons why this kind of intuition, if it exists, is not consistently revealed in empirical studies. On the one hand, people may have complex and internally conflicting intuitions about the relationship between behavior genetics and moral responsibility. On the other hand, it may be that people are motivated to think about the role of genetics in behavior differently depending on the moral valence of the actions in question.

Emergency volunteering willingness and participation: a cross-sectional survey of residents in northern China

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to identify factors that influence people's willingness to volunteer and participation in emergency volunteering in northern China.

DESIGN/SETTING

This study was conducted in Heilongjiang province in September and October 2014 using a mixed methods approach, which included a cross-sectional questionnaire survey on community residents and in-depth interviews with community residents and relevant organisational managers and officials in relation to emergency responses. A stratified cluster sampling strategy was employed to select questionnaire respondents.

PARTICIPANTS

2686 respondents completed the questionnaire survey; 19 key informants were interviewed.

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES

Willingness to volunteer was the major concern of this study. Self-reported past experience of the participants in emergency volunteering served as a secondary outcome.

RESULTS

65.7% of respondents were willing to volunteer in emergencies. 24.3% of respondents had participated in emergency actions. Higher levels of willingness to volunteer and participation in volunteering were found in those who resided in rural areas (OR=1.308 (1.064 to 1.608) for willingness; OR=1.518 (1.208 to 1.908) for participation), had stronger community attachment (OR=1.720 (1.429 to 2.069) for willingness; OR=1.547 (1.266 to 1.890) for participation), had higher recognition of responsibility (OR=1.981 (1.498 to 2.619) for willingness; OR=1.517 (1.177 to 1.955) for participation), demonstrated preparedness behaviour (OR=1.714 (1.424 to 2.064) for willingness; OR=1.391 (1.151 to 1.681) for participation) and were covered by injury insurance (OR=1.335 (1.102 to 1.619) for willingness; OR=1.822 (1.500 to 2.214) for participation). The in-depth interviews revealed that an inappropriate policy environment and poor volunteer organisational management were major barriers for converting willingness into actions.

CONCLUSION

A relatively high level of willingness to volunteer in emergencies in northern China is associated with a range of individual, community and institutional factors. Efforts should be made to translate willingness into effective contributions to the emergency response system. This can be done through improving policies, regulations, coordination mechanisms and volunteer training and support.

Feeling Interpersonally Controlled While Pursuing Materialistic Goals: A Problematic Combination for Moral Behavior

We created a life-goal assessment drawing from self-determination theory and achievement goal literature, examining its predictive power regarding immoral behavior and subjective well-being. Our source items assessed direction and energization of motivation, via the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic aims and between intrinsic and extrinsic reasons for acting, respectively. Fused source items assessed four goal complexes representing a combination of direction and energization. Across three studies ( Ns = 109, 121, and 398), the extrinsic aim/extrinsic reason complex was consistently associated with immoral and/or unethical behavior beyond four source and three other goal complex variables. This was consistent with the triangle model of responsibility's claim that immoral behaviors may result when individuals disengage the self from moral prescriptions. The extrinsic/extrinsic complex also predicted lower subjective well-being, albeit less consistently. Our goal complex approach sheds light on how self-determination theory's goal contents and organismic integration mini-theories interact, particularly with respect to unethical behavior.

Information-Acquisition Processes in Moral Judgments of Blame

When people make moral judgments, what information do they look for? Despite its theoretical and practical implications, this question has largely been neglected by prior literature. The recent Path Model of Blame predicts a canonical order in which people acquire information when judging blame. Upon discovering a negative event, perceivers consider information about causality, then intentionality, then (if the event is intentional) reasons or (if the event is unintentional) preventability. Three studies, using two novel paradigms, assessed and found support for these predictions: In constrained (Study 1) and open-ended (Study 2) information-acquisition contexts, participants were most likely, and fastest, to seek information in the canonical order, even when under time pressure (Study 3). These findings indicate that blame relies on a set of information components that are processed in a systematic order. Implications for moral judgment models are discussed, as are potential roles of emotion and motivated reasoning in information acquisition.

Perceptions of Active Versus Passive Risks, and the Effect of Personal Responsibility

Not getting vaccinated or not backing up computer files are examples of passive risk taking: risk brought on or magnified by inaction. We suggest the difficulty in paying attention to absences, together with the reduced agency and responsibility that is associated with passive choices, leads to the perception of passive risks as being less risky than equivalent active risks. Using scenarios in which risk was taken either actively or passively, we demonstrate that passive risks are judged as less risky than equivalent active risks. We find the perception of personal responsibility mediates the differences between the perception of passive and active risks. The current research offers an additional explanation for omission or default biases: The passive nature of these choices causes them to appear less risky than they really are.

The role of explicit ethics institutionalization and management accountability in influencing newcomer trust

Purpose

It was common for newcomers to organizations to feel anxiety and uncertainty. Yet, gaining the newcomers’ trust may contribute to solving these problems. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impacts of explicit ethics institutionalization and management accountability on newcomer trust in manager and company.

Design/methodology/approach

A sample of novice salespeople in the life insurance companies in Taiwan was used to investigate the relationships among the constructs.

Findings

It was found that newcomers’ recognition of explicit ethics institutionalization was positively associated with the newcomers’ perception of management accountability, and the perception was positively related to trust in manager and company.

Practical implications

Explicit ethics institutionalization and management accountability could play an important role in enhancing newcomer trust. Thus, it was suggested that researchers and managers should focus on these issues and considered how explicit ethics institutionalization and management accountability could be enhanced in the workplace.

Originality/value

Newcomer distrust may lead to newcomer job dissatisfaction and newcomer turnover behaviors. This research examines the mediating role of management accountability in the relationship between explicit ethics institutionalization and newcomer trust.

The impact of duty cycle workflow on sign-out practices: a qualitative study of an internal medicine residency program in Maryland, USA

OBJECTIVES

Although JCAHO requires a standardised approach to handoffs, and while many standardised protocols have been tested, sign-out practices continue to vary. We believe this is due to the variability in workflow during inpatient duty cycle. We investigate the impact of such workflows on intern sign-out practices.

DESIGN

We employed a prospective, grounded theory mixed-method design.

SETTING

The study was conducted at a residency programme in the mid-Atlantic USA. Two observers randomly evaluated three types of daily sign-outs for 1 week every 3 months from September 2013 to March 2014. The compliance of each observed behaviour to JCAHO's Handoff Communication Checklist was recorded.

PARTICIPANTS

Thirty one interns conducting 134 patient sign-outs were observed randomly among the 52 in the programme.

RESULTS

In the 06:00 to 07:00 sign-back, the night-cover focused on providing information on overnight events to the day interns. In the 11:00 to 12:00 sign-out, the night-cover focused on transferring task accountability to a day-cover intern before departure. In the 20:00 to 21:00 sign-out, the day interns focused on transferring responsibility of their patients to a night-cover.

CONCLUSION

Different sign-out periods had different emphases regarding information exchange, personal responsibility and task accountability. Sign-outs are context-specific, implying that across-the-board standardised sign-out protocols are likely to have limited efficacy and compliance. Standardisation may need to be relative to the specific type and purpose of each sign-out to be supported by interns.

Moral judgments of risky choices: A moral echoing effect

Two experiments examined moral judgments about a decision-maker’s choices when he chose a sure-thing, 400 out of 600 people will be saved, or a risk, a two-thirds probability to save everyone and a one-thirds probability to save no-one. The results establish a moral echoing effect — a tendency to credit a decision-maker with a good outcome when the decision-maker made the typical choices of the sure-thing in a gain frame or the risk in a loss frame, and to discredit the decision-maker when there is a bad outcome and the decision-maker made the atypical choices of a risk in a gain frame or a sure-thing in a loss frame. The moral echoing effect is established in Experiment 1 (n=207) in which participants supposed the outcome would turn well or badly, and it is replicated in Experiment 2 (n=173) in which they knew it had turned out well or badly, for judgments of moral responsibility and blame or praise. The effect does not occur for judgments of cause, control, counterfactual alternatives, or emotions.