Suchergebnisse

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of affective appraisal dimensions on the use of two ecologically rational, social heuristics: imitate the majority (IMH) and imitate the best (IBH) during an entrepreneurial strategic decision-making process (ESDM).


Design/methodology/approach
The authors test the hypotheses in a controlled field experiment, on a final sample of 98 entrepreneurs.


Findings
The study shows that entrepreneurs experiencing affect described by certainty appraisal display a preference for relying on IMH, but not on IBH. Moreover, entrepreneurs who experience unpleasant affect tend to rely more on IMH, rather than IBH. The reverse is true for the entrepreneurs who experience positive affect. Finally, the use of IMH is most likely under unpleasant and certain affect, while the use of IBH is most likely under pleasant and certain affect.


Originality/value
The main contribution of this study is that it provides initial support for the impact of affective appraisal dimensions on the use of ecologically rational heuristics (i.e. heuristics that save important resources, but bring beneficial results) during an ESDM process.

Selective pressures favoring rapid decisions would have led to the evolution of simple decision-making mechanisms that could take the form of heuristics and rules that use as little available information as possible. Such decision heuristics can only be ecologically rational—yielding accurate inferences in particular problem domains—if they exploit the way that information is structured in the environment. The author presents a variety of fast and frugal heuristics that are ecologically rational and shows how they can be organized in the mind's adaptive toolbox of decision-making strategies.

Abstract
Eduard Braun's paper entitled "The Ecological Rationality of Historical Costs and Conservatism" has many elements which recommend it. Professor Braun has done an excellent job of summarizing several key topics in accounting theory, in particular those related to the issue of the revenue-expense versus the asset-liability approach to income determination and the historical cost versus fair value debate. In his paper, Braun argues that the revenue-expense approach to accounting cannot be traced to a distinct event. He also maintains that the revenue-expense approach is ecologically rational; that is, it results from "social evolution", not human design. He goes on to argue that this ecological rationality is the reason why the efforts to impose the asset-liability approach favored by accounting standard-setters has encountered difficulties. He further argues that a solid basis for explaining the ecological rationality of the revenue-expense approach can be found in behavioral economics especially in Prospect Theory. He concludes that the revenue-expense approach is ecological rational and that it provides a basis for the organization of a market economy. The author supports his arguments with citations to well-respected accounting research which provides arguments against abandoning the revenue-expense approach (Waymire & Basu, 2007, Accounting is an evolved economic institution. Foundations and Trends in Accounting, 2(1–2), 1–173; Dickhaut, Basu, McCabe, & Waymire, 2009, Neuroaccounting II: Consilience between accounting principles and the primate brain. Retrieved January 30, 2009 from http://ssrn.com/abstract=1336517 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1336517; Dickhaut, 2009, The brain as the original accounting institution. The Accounting Review, 84(6), 1703–1712). This commentary will focus on two themes in Braun's paper. First, the question of ecological rationality and whether this concept implies evolutionary progress. Second, the historical evolution of the revenue-expense approach, and why this approach can traced to several distinct events.

Drawing on the perspective of classical liberalism, and developing a comparative institutions framework through which to evaluate alternative proposals for environmental improvement, the case is made for a system of polycentric environmental law. Within this context, contemporary theories that favour an extension of state regulation in order to address the trans-boundary nature of environmental goods are challenged. Problems arising from the complexity of social and ecological processes, the collective nature of environmental goods and the distributive consequences of environmental protection are unlikely to be met by a framework that emphasises greater unity in decisions. On the contrary, the principle of ecological rationality is more likely to be met within a classical liberal framework that facilitates market-like processes of competitive spontaneous order at multiple levels. (Environmental Politics / FUB)

This article considers theories of collective action in relation to the management of communal water resources in Nkayi District, Zimbabwe. Taking a critical view of institutional explanations of common property resource management, it illustrates how the addition of social theory can enrich such approaches. The prevalence of rational choice premises in defining the problem of collective action and the persuasiveness of institutionalism in apparently offering solutions to it is questioned. The article rejects simple evolutionary theorizing about institutions in favour of an embedded approach that allows for complexity, for the social and historical location of collective action and for an examination of the interface between agent and structure. It is argued here that collective management of water supplies does exist but that it is more partial, changeable and evolving and less attributable to single factors than suggested in much of the literature.

We have investigated manure management practices at three farm scales in Chinese pig and poultry production. The concept of ecological rationality was employed to explore empirically how environmental concerns drive adoption of environmental-friendly manure management technologies at different farm scales. The more developed Rudong County in Jiangsu Province and the less developed Zhongjiang County in Sichuan Province were chosen as cases for study of 258 animal breeders. On the contrary to our hypothesis, medium-scale farmers were not always found to be laggards in adoption of manure management technologies. Government ecological rationality played a key role to induce environmental-friendly technology adoption on its own, but also in cooperation with ecologically rational individual or network drivers. Authorities no longer applied their efforts in a conventional command-and-control way, but more in the form of incentives, stimulation, and information to farmers. Individual farmers in general showed low environmental responsibility in relation to manure handling.

Scholars disagree about the ability of people to use heuristics to make political judgments, with some arguing that heuristics are easy-to-use pieces of information and others arguing that applying heuristics may require some degree of political expertise. We argue that these debates have been somewhat intractable because most prior work has not considered the ecological rationality of political judgments—that is, the potential for cues to yield accurate judgments about a clearly defined reference class. In this paper, we present the results of two studies exploring whether people use party labels to make judgments about a random sample of U.S. Representatives' voting behaviors. We find that respondents consistently performed worse in guessing U.S. Representatives' votes than if they had correctly used a simple partisan heuristic. There is also some evidence that people performed worse with the presence of more nonparty cues. Attention to politics had a positive relationship with accuracy in both studies, although the relationship was modest. The results suggest that party cues may be more difficult to apply than some research has suggested.