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Leaders' Perceptions (leader + perception)
Selected AbstractsAlcohol Use Among Rural Middle School Students: Adolescents, Parents, Teachers, and Community Leaders' Perceptions*JOURNAL OF SCHOOL HEALTH, Issue 2 2009Laura DeHaan PhD ABSTRACT BACKGROUND:, Although rural adolescents use of alcohol is at some of the highest rates nationally, rural adolescent alcohol use has not been studied extensively. This study examines how community attitudes and behaviors are related to adolescent drinking in rural environments. METHODS:, Data were gathered in 22 rural communities in the Upper Midwest (North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming). Surveys were collected from 1424 rural sixth- to eighth-grade adolescents and 790 adults, including parents, teachers, and community leaders. Census data were also collected. RESULTS:, Drinkers differed from nondrinkers by the following factors: higher perceptions of peer, parental, and overall community drinking, as well as lower levels of parental closeness and religiosity. Factors distinguishing binge and nonbinge drinkers were increased drinking to reduce stress, drinking to fit in, perceptions of peer drinking, and perceived lack of alternatives to drinking. Parents were significantly less likely to perceive adolescent alcohol use as a problem than other community adults; school officials were most likely to perceive it as a problem. Parental perceptions were also the least correlated to actual adolescent use, while adolescent perceptions were the most highly correlated. CONCLUSIONS:, Community fac tors such as overall prevalence of drinking, community support, and controls against drinking are important predictors of reported use in early adolescence. School officials were more likely to view adolescent alcohol use as a problem than were parents. School officials' perceptions of adolescent use were also more related to actual adolescent use than were parental perceptions of adolescent use. [source] The Effects of Transformational Leadership on Organizational Performance through Knowledge and Innovation,BRITISH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2008Víctor J. García-Morales Today's information and knowledge society requires new leaders who can confront a reality based on knowledge and foster innovation to achieve improvements in organizational performance. However, organizations sometimes fail to achieve sustainable competitive advantage due to their limited understanding of the relationships between these strategic variables. To date, very little research has analysed the direct and indirect relationships between these variables. Our study seeks to fill this research gap by analysing theoretically and empirically how the leader's perceptions of different intermediate strategic variables related to knowledge (knowledge slack, absorptive capacity, tacitness, organizational learning) and innovation influence the relation between transformational leadership and organizational performance. Based on the literature, we develop a theoretical model that shows the interrelations between these variables. We then test the model using data from 408 Spanish organizations, discuss the findings and provide several implications for business practitioners. [source] Leadership Style, Regime Type, and Foreign Policy Crisis Behavior: A Contingent Monadic Peace?INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2005Jonathan W. Keller While a substantial body of theory suggests that democracies should behave peacefully toward all states (monadically), most empirical evidence indicates they are only pacific in their relations with fellow democracies (dyadically). A new theoretical synthesis suggests that the missing link between democratic constraints and pacific monadic behavior is leaders' perceptions of, and responses to, these constraints. Research on political leadership indicates that, contrary to conventional wisdom, leaders respond in systematically different ways to domestic constraints: "constraint respecters" internalize constraints in their environments, while "constraint challengers" view such constraints as obstacles to be surmounted. An analysis of 154 foreign policy crises provides strong support for this contingent monadic thesis: democracies led by constraint respecters stand out as extraordinarily pacific in their crisis responses, while democracies led by constraint challengers and autocracies led by both types of leaders are demonstrably more aggressive. [source] Why do some hospital leaders "speak no evil" about their organizations' medical errors?JOURNAL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES, Issue 3 2008Ruby A. Rouse Sentinel events, preventable medical errors resulting in serious disability or death, are a significant problem for hospital leaders. Accreditation agencies, such as the Joint Commission, urge hospitals to voluntarily disclose information about medical errors. However, some healthcare leaders "speak no evil" by choosing not to release sentinel-event data. In an effort to increase the reporting of medical errors, several states passed laws mandating disclosure of sentinel events to the government. The state-reported medical error rates of Indiana hospitals were compared with their leaders' perceptions of quality of care. Regardless of the number of sentinel events occurring at their hospitals, leaders consistently claimed their organizations provided high-quality care. Two theories, rationalization and gaming, are presented to explain why leaders do not acknowledge the presence of serious quality-management problems in their organizations. [source] |