Suchergebnisse

Toxicogenomics in ecological risk assessments: regulatory context, technical background, and workshop overview / Gerald Ankley, Ann Miracle, and Edward Perkins -- Application of genomics to screening / Sean W. Kennedy ... [et al.] -- Application of genomics to tiered testing / Charles R. Tyler ... [et al.] -- Application of genomics to regulatory ecological risk assessments for pesticides / Sigmund J. Degitz ... [et al.] -- Application of genomics to assessment of the ecological risk of complex mixtures / Edward Perkins ... [et al.] -- Applications of genomic technologies to ecological risk assessments at remediation and restoration sites / Ann L. Miracle ... [et al.] -- Toxicogenomics in ecological risk assessments: a prospectus / George P. Daston ... [et al.].

This article addresses the issue of public sector motivation. Essentially, do public sector employees elicit different motives regarding their work expectations in contrast to people working in the private sector? For instance, do public sector employees have a higher need to serve the public and a lower need for monetary rewards? This article explores the conceptual and theoretical basis for public sector motivation and then reports the results of a small empirical study that tests hypotheses derived from these constructs. Our findings suggest that if public sector motivation does exist, that its effect on employee behavior and attitudes toward work expectations and personal goals is negligible at best.

This article attempts to demonstrate that the score an employee receives on his or her performance appraisal can influence attitudes toward general management, organization change, and fairness of evaluation instruments. Employees who score well tend to be positive toward management and supportive of the evaluation process, whereas average to low scorers are more cynical toward management and feel the evaluation process is unfair. Thus, performance appraisal scores can alienate exactly those employees who most need to improve. Instead of trying harder, average to low scorers rationalize why they are right and the raters wrong. This hardens their attitude toward the organization and can lead to lower performance. Hence, good employees tend to continue doing well and average to poor employees can become worse. For this reason, performance appraisal, even though it is handled objectively, can lead to a Matthew Effect. In general, employees don't like hearing bad news, even if it is correct.

This article attempts to demonstrate that personnel reform can be implemented much more smoothly if formal employee participation groups are established to ease system development and acceptance. Based on the experience of Biloxi, Mississippi, in its implementation of a merit pay plan, the utilization of employee merit councils appears to have had a very positive effect on employee attitudes toward management and merit system acceptance. Employees who participated on the merit councils were much more likely to perceive the system as fair and as one which actually in creased individual and team productivity — when compared to those employees who did not engage in formal group participation. These results, while not unexpected, provide further evidence support ive of participative management strategies.