When is female leadership an advantage? Coordination requirements,team cohesion,and team interaction norms

This study seeks to understand to what extent and in what contexts women leaders may be advantageous for teams. More specifically, this study examines how team leader gender relates to team cohesion, cooperative learning, and participative communication. Furthermore, the study argues that advantages derived from female leadership may be contingent on teams' coordination requirements. I propose that as teams' coordination requirements increase (i.e., with functional diversity, size, and geographic dispersion), teams with women leaders report more cohesion and more cooperative and participative interaction norms than those with men leaders. I aggregated survey responses from the members of 82 teams in 29 organizations at the team level. Findings from hierarchical linear modeling analyses suggest that female leadership is more positively associated with cohesion on larger and more functionally diverse teams and more positively associated with cooperative learning and participative communication on larger and geographically dispersed teams. These results call for more research on boundary conditions on the relationship between leader gender and team outcomes, on the role of relational leadership on complex and diverse teams and, ultimately, on the potential mediating role of cohesion and team interaction norms on the relationship between leader gender and team performance. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Organisational aspects of public engagement in European energy infrastructure planning: the case of early-stage CCS projects

Recent years have witnessed a proliferation of studies on public perceptions of carbon capture and storage (CCS), accompanied by efforts to translate such knowledge into toolkits for public engagement and communication. At the same time, both literature and toolkits have paid little attention to the organisational dynamics and views of project implementers with regard to public engagement. Here we investigate the views of project development consortia employees in five European CCS projects, focusing on their experience of organisational norms and structures relating to engagement. Finding that planning for this engagement has, in several cases, been hampered by a lack of shared internal vision on engagement and communication within the project consortia, at least initially, we draw upon the socio-technical approach to technology embedment and new institutional theory, to observe that internal organisational alignment is crucial in multi-organisational projects when seeking effective public engagement and communication. We observe that this aspect of internal organisation is not yet reflected in the toolkits and guidelines designed to aid engagement in CCS projects. Engagement guides need to direct the attention of project implementers not only in specific outward directions, but also towards reflexively considering their own internal structures, perspectives, motivations, expectations and aims in relation to engagement and communication practice.     

The effectiveness of flood risk communication strategies and the influence of social networks—Insights from an agent-based model

Flood risk management is becoming increasingly important, because more people are settling in flood-prone areas, and flood risk is increasing in many regions due to extreme weather events associated with climate change. It has been proposed that appropriately designed flood risk communication campaigns can stimulate floodplain inhabitants to prepare for flooding, and encourage adaptation to climate change. However, such campaigns do not always result in the desired action, and the effectiveness of communication in raising flood risk awareness and improving flood preparedness has hardly been studied. We evaluate different flood risk communication strategies, using an agent-based modelling approach, which is especially suitable for examining the effect of communication on each individual, and how flood risk communication can propagate through an individual’s social network. Our modelling results show that tailored, people-centred, flood risk communication can be significantly more effective than the common approach of top-down government communication, even when tailored communication reaches fewer individuals. Furthermore, communication on how to protect against floods, in addition to providing information about flood risk, is much more effective than the traditional strategy of communicating only about flood risk. Another main finding is that a person’s social network can have a significant effect on whether or not individuals take protective action. This leads to the recommendation that flood risk communication should aim at exploiting this natural amplifying effect of social networks, for instance, through the use of social media.     

Shouting the odds: vocalization signals status in a lizard

Many species possess multiple sexually dimorphic traits, which incorporate different sensory modalities (e.g., acoustic, olfactory and visual), although their relative roles in sexual selection and in determining reproductive success are still poorly understood for most taxa. We assessed the role of multiple male traits, including one acoustic (dominant call frequency) and one visual (yellow throat patch) trait, in residency advertisement, contest behavior, and breeding success in barking geckos (Ptenopus garrulus garrulus). We show that male barking geckos maintain largely exclusive home ranges, with a trend for larger males to maintain larger home ranges. We also show that larger males have a lower dominant calling frequency. When aggressive behavior was elicited in the field using a recorded call of average frequency, resident males with low frequency calls were more likely to respond aggressively and charge the speaker compared to males with high frequency calls. However, body size and small relative throat patch size, rather than call frequency, were the best predictors of overall aggressiveness. Body size was also the best predictor of whether males bred. We suggest that call frequency in this crepuscular species constitutes an effective long-range signal of body size, used by males for remote rival assessment and to advertise home range boundaries in low-light environments.     

目前医患关系现状及对策研究

医患关系是社会关系的组成部分，医患关系是医疗实践活动中最基本的人际关系，良好的医患沟通是实现以病人为中心，促进社会和谐的基础．医患关系作为一种最基本的社会关系，已普遍受到人们的关注，它随着医学模式的发展，不断发生新的变化．目前我国经济正沿着市场化的轨迹发展，医疗制度改革也在深入进行，这对构建和谐医患关系提出了新的挑战和考验，要想构建和谐的医患关系，必须医方、患方、社会三者共同努力，国家增加卫生投资力度，准确定位医疗机构的性质，确保广大中低档人群的基本健康等实际问题已摆在我们面前，只有从根本上解决群众“看病难、看病贵”的问题，才能实现医患关系真正意义上的融洽．同时我们还要看到，理想化的期待与非理想化的现实差距是客观存在，融洽医患关系是一个漫长的过程，需要我们在健全法制的同时提高自律的约束，只有以诚信为杠杆、人文为基石，才能真正实现理想状态下的医患关系，即充满同情心的医生和对医生充满信任的病人．参8．     

Framing Shale Gas for Policy-Making in Poland

Despite enthusiasm about new gas reserves, shale gas has not come to Poland without controversies. This study examines how shale gas has been framed as a public issue by political and business elites, experts, local communities and civil society organizations. Through a frame analysis, we found three main frames about shale gas: shale gas as a novel economic resource, as a strategic resource for energy security and as a threat. However, only the first two frames, proposed by political and business elites, have shaped the policy process. The third frame, constructed by local actors and civil society groups, has had minimal impact. We explain this exclusion drawing on the deficit model of risk communication. This approach reveals that Polish experts, and business and political actors, during their interactions with local groups, have framed proponents of the threat frame as ‘incompetent actors’ effectively excluding the threat frame from policy processes.     

Communicating uncertainty via probabilities: The case of weather forecasts

Capturing uncertainty through numerical probabilistic statements is orthodoxy in risk science—and most of science and technology. There are a wide range of views on the utility of such statements for risk communication, and they are often seen as being central to the failure to generate common understanding about risks between science and non-scientists. The extent to which probability statements are understood is unclear. If such statements are misunderstood by many, what alternatives might communicate uncertainty better?

These questions are examined in the context of daily weather forecasts. The probabilities used in such statements concern daily events experienced by everyone, unlike the extremely small probabilities about unfamiliar events often used in risk communication. If people do not understand weather forecasts, there is little hope that statements about unfamiliar events using unfamiliar language will be understood. Some jurisdictions use numerical probabilistic statements on the likelihood of precipitation, and a variety of qualitative or categorical forecasts are also used. Drawing on a range of sources including public surveys conducted by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the paper examines public understanding of probabilities and public and specialist understanding of verbal categorical forecast terms.

The majority of those surveyed have basic understanding about probabilities as used in weather forecasts, but significant groups do not. However, there was limited agreement among forecasters on what the probabilistic statements meant. Similarly, there was limited shared meaning between forecasters and the public on the verbal forecast expression examined.     

Are mere instructions enough? Evaluation of four types of messaging on community depot recycling

Curbside recycling efforts have made an important contribution to waste containment, but many communities have specific limitations on what products can be recycled within their community bins (e.g., no cartons, styrofoam, soft plastics) and must rely on depots for recycling these other items. These specialty depots typically take the form of local community or large central municipal sites. The purpose of this randomized trial was to examine messages targeting (1) awareness/instructions, (2) utility, (3) affect, and (4) planning upon community and central depot recycling across eight weeks. One hundred and seventy-six community-dwelling residents between the ages of 18–65 years who self-identified as having the potential to improve their depot recycling activities completed baseline recycling measures and then were randomly assigned to one of the four messaging conditions. One hundred and forty-four of these participants subsequently answered follow-up recycling behavior measures four and eight weeks later. Intention to treat analyses showed that depot recycling increased significantly from baseline to four weeks. The effect waned for community recycling while holding for municipal depot recycling at eight weeks. Distance to recycling depot (closer proximity resulted in greater community recycling), access to a car (low access resulted in greater community recycling), and baseline recycling behavior (no prior recycling resulted in greater behavior change) all acted as significant moderators of the effect. There was no time by group interaction among conditions. The findings support the use of basic instructions – as a minimum – for promoting depot recycling efforts and provide evidence that local community depots, in conjunction with municipal depots, are important to increasing recycling behavior.     

The Story of an Emerging Energy Issue: National Television News Coverage of Fracking in the United States

ABSTRACT

This is a narrative analysis that documents how the issue of fracking emerged in national television evening news programs in the United States from 2010 to 2013. Four features of narrative – character, setting, narration, and causal relationships – are central to stories that began with controversy and contamination, but then shifted to boomtowns and energy independence, suggesting that news coverage became more industry-oriented over time.