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Cause Groups (cause + groups)
Selected AbstractsPast success and convergent thinking in groups: The role of group-focused attributionsEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2004Jack A. Goncalo Past success often causes groups to think narrowly around strategies that have worked in the past, even when environmental change has rendered these strategies ineffective. From a psychological perspective, this research seems to indicate that past success may give rise to convergent thinking in groups. Why might successful groups be prone to convergent thinking? I argue that the relationship between past success and convergent thinking may depend on the attributions that groups generate to explain their shared success. In this paper, I focus on two distinct attributions at the group level: Individual-focused attributions that reflect the idiosyncratic characteristics of individual group members and group-focused attributions that reflect the emergent properties of the group as a whole. I found that group-focused attributions for past success cause groups to generate fewer ideas that are, on average, more convergent. In contrast, individual-focused attributions cause groups to generate more ideas that are on average more divergent. These findings suggest that the experience of success may actually stimulate divergent thinking depending on how a group chooses to explain it. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Interest Group Strategies: Navigating Between Privileged Access and Strategies of PressurePOLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2005Anne Binderkrantz The literature often contrasts interest groups possessing insider status and outsider groups forced to seek influence through more indirect means. Drawing on data from a survey of all national Danish interest groups, this article demonstrates that most groups have an action repertoire including both direct contacts to bureaucrats and parliamentarians and indirect activities such as media campaigns and mobilizations of members. Different strategies of influence are correlated positively, hence, there is no contradiction between pursuing strategies associated with insider access to decision-making and strategies where pressure is put on decision makers through media contacts and mobilizations. An analysis of four distinct strategies , an administrative, a parliamentary, a media and a mobilization strategy , finds interesting variations in the factors that affect the pursuance of the various strategies of influence. Groups with a privileged position vis-à-vis decision makers have high levels of activities targeting these decision makers, but the lack of a privileged position does not lead groups to pursue indirect strategies. Indirect strategies are most intensively pursued by cause groups and groups who find themselves in a competitive situation with regard to attracting members. [source] External cause-specific summaries of occupational fatal injuries.AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL MEDICINE, Issue 3 2003Part II: An analysis of years of potential life lost Abstract Background Fatal injury surveillance data provide an opportunity to assess the impact of occupational injuries and may indicate which industries or occupations are appreciably more hazardous than others, and thus should be given priority in public health intervention. Methods Fatalities from the National Traumatic Occupational Fatality surveillance system served as the basis for examining external cause (E-code) specific impact summaries. Years of potential life lost (YPLL) were calculated for fatal injuries in the years 1983,1994. Industries and occupations were compared with respect to frequency of fatal injuries. In addition, injuries in categories of external causes are examined across all industries and occupations. Results Machinery, electric current, homicide, falls, and transportation-related are the external cause groups highlighted by high frequency/rate of occurrence. Electric current event groups are also characterized by high average YPLL. Poisoning, conflagration, and lightning were also identified in several occupations as having high associated average YPLL. Conclusions The external-cause-specific analysis of average YPLL identified industries and occupations where, on average, younger workers were dying in fatal injuries. Noteworthy in this assessment were homicides and falls. The YPLL measure coupled with more commonly employed indices (e.g., rates) may provide a fuller description of the impact of occupational fatal injuries. Am. J. Ind. Med. 43:251,261, 2003. Published 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] The Epidemiologic Transition Revisited: Compositional Models for Causes of Death by Age and SexPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 2 2002Joshua A. Salomon For decades, researchers have noted systematic shifts in cause-of-death patterns as mortality levels change. The notion of the "epidemiologic transition" has influenced thinking about the evolution of health in different societies and the response of the health system to these changes. This article re-examines the epidemiologic transition in terms of empirical regularities in the cause composition of mortality by age and sex since 1950, and considers whether the theory of epidemiologic transition presents a durable framework for understanding more recent patterns. Age-sex-specific mortality rates from three broad cause groups are analyzed: Group 1 (communicable diseases, maternal and perinatal causes, and nutritional deficiencies); Group 2 (noncommunicable diseases); and Group 3 (injuries), using the most extensive international database on mortality by cause, including 1,576 country-years of observation, and new statistical models for compositional data. The analyses relate changes in cause-of-death patterns to changing levels of all-cause mortality and income per capita. The results confirm that declines in overall mortality are accompanied by systematic changes in the composition of causes in many age groups. These changes are most pronounced among children, for whom Group 1 causes decline as overall mortality falls, and in younger adults, where strikingly different patterns are found for men (shift from Group 3 to Group 2) compared to women (shift toward Group 2 then Group 3). The underlying patterns that emerge from this analysis offer insights into the epidemiologic transition from high-mortality to low-mortality settings. [source] | ||||||||||