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While scholars have long recognized the central importance of the cross within Syriac-speaking Christian communities in late antique Mesopotamia, the question of how physical crosses functioned as aids for prayer has only recently begun to be explored. The present article addresses this question with respect to East Syrian monastic communities in seventh-century Mesopotamia, focusing on the context of the monastic cell. Bringing together accounts of cross-directed prayer in Syriac monastic literature with archaeological evidence for crosses from the region, the article concludes that physical crosses played an important role as mediating devices of divine presence that were both always at hand and the frequent objects of monastics' sensorial attention. These conclusions are subsequently discussed through the lens of recent research from the field of new media studies toward the goal of understanding how cross-directed prayer may have served to bridge monastic spirituality and sociality in Mesopotamia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fathers' support can influence mothers' breastfeeding decisions and behavior. Potentially supportive behaviors have been reported in previous studies, but no studies have directly examined which, if any, of those actions are actually more likely to result in desired breastfeeding outcomes. The two studies reported in this paper address this gap by examining relationships between fathers' reported breastfeeding support and mothers' perceptions of received support and breastfeeding intentions, satisfaction, and duration. The Partner Breastfeeding Influence Scale (PBIS) was used in an online survey with 64 women and 41 men (34 couples) and a telephone survey with 80 mothers and 65 fathers (63 couples). Fathers' and mothers' reports of how often fathers engage in the types of support measured by the PBIS were used to predict breastfeeding intentions, satisfaction, and duration. In Study 1, responsiveness predicted breastfeeding success and satisfaction for men and satisfaction for women. However, mothers' intended breastfeeding duration was shorter when fathers both wanted them to breastfeed for a long time and were more appreciative and savvy about breastfeeding. In Study 2, when fathers reported being more appreciative and directly involved in breastfeeding, mothers reported shorter breastfeeding duration. In both studies, mothers' perceptions of their partners' responsiveness and fathers' reports of their own responsiveness predicted longer breastfeeding intentions and duration. These findings suggest that the most effective breastfeeding support is delivered using a sensitive, coordinated teamwork approach that is responsive to the mother's needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides an empirical test of a previously proposed assertion that intelligence as adaptation has an attitudinal as well as an ability component. The ability component deals with what the basic knowledge and skills are that underlie intelligence, and how much of each one an individual has. The attitudinal component deals with how an individual chooses to deploy the abilities they have. In other words, to what use are the abilities put? It is argued that it is impossible fully to separate the measurement of the ability component from the attitudinal one. In a diverse population, even taking an intelligence test will show itself to involve an attitude toward the test, which may enhance or detract from performance, as when one sees the test as irrelevant or harmful to one's life, or as a sociocultural misfit to one's life experience. To succeed, people need not only to have abilities, but attitudes that put those abilities to effective use to accomplish individuals' life goals. In the study, we found that intelligent attitudes are related, but non-identical, to germane constructs, such as wisdom, the need for cognition, creativity, and openness to experience. Scores on the attitudinal measure were not related to scores on tests of fluid intelligence and academic abilities/achievement. Thus, the range of attitudes regarding how to deploy intelligence can vary over ability levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligence, like creativity and wisdom, has an attitudinal component as well as an ability-based one. The attitudinal component is at least as important as the ability-based one. Theories of intelligence, in ignoring the attitudinal component of intelligence, have failed to account fully or accurately for why so many people who have relatively high levels of intelligence as an ability fail fully to deploy their ability, especially toward positive ends. The article reviews the need to view intelligence as comprising an attitude as well as an ability, and surveys reasons why people's lack of an intelligent attitude hinders their deployment of intelligence. Suggestions are made for how things could change in a positive way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to gain an understanding of the partner selection process for open innovation. The inability to choose partners can lead to problems such as opportunistic behavior, the failure of open innovation, and a reluctance to collaborate. Therefore, partner selection is crucial in open innovation. Attention is directed to the determining factors that must be considered in the selection of a partner. The contents of the paper are mainly based on in-depth interviews with experts and practitioners who represent both organizations and individuals as actors in open innovation activities. The results show that complementarity, compatibility, and trust are important considerations in selecting the right partner. The implication of this research is that a managerial approach is needed that supports the company's ability to find and evaluate external sources of knowledge to support innovation. The originality of this article is to provide an understanding that the existence of an organization in a network helps organizations access external knowledge resources. Involving external parties in the company's innovation process accelerates innovation. In this case, getting the right partner is very important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although combining friendship and business in the same relationship can be beneficial, it can also create conflict. A source of this conflict is incompatible relational expectations. True friends are expected to be unmotivated by benefits that can be used beyond the relationship (e.g., money, status), whereas business partners are, by definition, at least partly motivated by these more “instrumental” concerns. Using a role theory framework and data collected from a survey of 685 direct-selling agents, this article reports evidence that a conflict between friendship and instrumentality can undermine some of the business outcomes that friendship might otherwise foster. It also suggests that this conflict is more severe for friendships that become business relationships than for business relationships that become friendships. Study conclusions do not suggest that friendship is entirely “bad” for business and, instead, propose that friendship's influence can be both positive and negative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of two studies examining the potential for advertising to enhance a product's perceived trustworthiness. We find that prior experience is not an essential prerequisite for the seeds of trust to be planted, as advertising with a simple trust appeal for an unknown brand was able to enhance the perceived trustworthiness of the advertised brand. It is interesting to note that advertising was able to enhance a brand's perceived trustworthiness even in the absence of any overt trust claims. Finally, the effectiveness of simplistic trust appeals was found to be contingent on the presence of additional advertising claims about the brand's competency and benevolence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores recent advances in self-determination research to address why consumers develop strong attachments to "human brands," a term that refers to any well-known persona who is the subject of marketing communications efforts. Study 1 uses a survey that is analyzed with structural equation modeling. Study 2 is qualitative and offers corroborating evidence for the proposed theoretical model. Study 3 extends the model with a more naturalistic sample and tests several alternative hypotheses using hierarchical regression. The results suggest that when a human brand enhances a person's feelings of autonomy and relatedness and does not suppress feelings of competence, the person is likely to become more strongly attached to it. This article documents that strong attachments are predictive of satisfied, trusting, and committed relationships and proposes that attachment strength may be a parsimonious proxy for consumer-brand relationship strength. The results imply that benefits would accrue to organizations such as entertainment firms and political parties that establish direct and routine interaction between human brands and consumers, that human brands to which consumers are attached offer significant potential as endorsers, and that organizations should address how to make the human brands they manage more authentic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent news coverage on pricing portrays the importance of price fairness. This article conceptually integrates the theoretical foundations of fairness perceptions and summarizes empirical findings on price fairness. The authors identify research issues and gaps in existing knowledge on buyers' perceptions of price fairness. The article concludes with guidelines for managerial practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No readily available scales exist that are appropriate to the measurement of trust in direct selling. This paper presents a conceptualization of trust that focuses on its nature and presents it as an affect--that is, a combination of attitudes and emotions. To develop a scale that reflects this approach, a two-country study is conducted looking at the perceptions of buyers regarding the trust they place in direct selling salespeople. Three distinct measures of trust and two related measures, based on scales developed for use in contexts other than direct selling, ate utilized. The measurement properties of all five are shown to be adequate; however, differences are apparent in their robustness and in the pattern of responses in the two countries. Moreover, one measure (Trust 3) clearly is inferior to the other measures. The paper concludes with a discussion of the effectiveness of these measures of trust and suggestions for future refinements to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a strong normative bias toward the inherent value of trust among both marketing researchers and practitioners. Yet there is little empirical evidence of a positive impact of trust on performance. Indeed, scholars suggest that the sources of trust may provide opportunities for its abuse. Following this line of thinking, the authors investigate the dual roles of sales controls and supervisor behaviors as antecedents of salespeople's belief in the benevolence of the supervisor (i.e., supervisee trust). The authors then examine these antecedents as moderators of the relationship between supervisee trust and sales performance in the context of selling new products. Data on field salespeople from high-technology firms in China and the United States suggest that factors such as supervisor accessibility engender supervisee trust but do not necessarily enhance its impact on sales performance. In the Chinese sample, supervisee trust enhances sales performance when output control is adopted, when the supervisor has a higher level of achievement orientation style, and when the salesperson has higher role ambiguity. Furthermore, the results suggest that the supervisee trust-sales performance relationship is negative when supervisor accessibility is high. With the exception of achievement orientation and supervisor accessibility, these effects are negative or nonexistent in the U.S. sample. The authors discuss theoretical and practical implications of the study's findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an expanded view of industrial buyer-seller similarity. Past research indicates that business buyers may judge their degree of similarity with a salesperson in terms of observable characteristics (physical attributes and behavior) and internal characteristics (perceptions, attitudes, and values). The synthesis of findings suggests that internal similarity can increase a business buyer's willingness to trust a salesperson and follow the salesperson's guidance and, therefore, increase the industrial salesperson's effectiveness. In contrast, the literature reviewed also indicates that, under most circumstances, observable similarity exerts a negligible influence on a business buyer's perceptions or a salesperson's effectiveness. Thus, the key finding is that it is more important for buyers and sellers to think alike than to look alike. An implication is that managers will not derive a substantial benefit from simply matching salespeople and buyers demographically. Indeed, improvements to a sales force's performance can be gained by hiring salespeople who possess the flexibility to identify potential areas of internal similarity and training them to build upon those issues to foster positive perceptions with buyers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors advance a conceptual model of channel member satisfaction that distinguishes between economic and noneconomic satisfaction. The resulting model then is tested using meta-analysis. Meta-analysis enables the empirical investigation of a model involving several constructs that never have been examined simultaneously within an individual study. More specifically, the authors unify the stream of research on power use--the focus of many satisfaction studies in the 1970s and 1980s--with more recent work on trust and commitment, which usually explores antecedents other than power use. The results indicate that economic satisfaction and noneconomic satisfaction are distinct constructs with differential relationships to various antecedents and consequences. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that satisfaction is both conceptually and empirically separable from the related constructs of trust and commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on previous work suggesting that trust is critical in facilitating exchange relationship, the authors describe a comprehensive theory of trust in market research relationships. This theory focuses on the factors that determine user's trust in their researchers, including individual, interpersonal, organizational, interoganizational/interdepartmental, and project factors. The theory is tested in a sample of 799 users. Results indicate that the interpersonal factors are the most predictive of trust. Among these factors, perceived researcher integrity, willingness to reduce research uncertainly, confidentiality, expertise, tactfulness, sincerity, congeniality, and timeliness are most strongly associated with trust. Among the remaining factors, the formalization of the user's organization, the culture of the researcher's department or organization, the research organization's or department's power, and the extent to which the research is customized also affect trust. These findings generally do not change across different types of dyadic relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Channels research has consistently argued that asymmetric channel relationships are more dysfunctional than those characterized by symmetric interdependence. The authors propose that the degree of both interdependence asymmetry and total interdependence affect the level of interfirm conflict, trust, and commitment. Using survey data from automobile dealers, they demonstrate that, with increasing inter-dependence asymmetry, the dealer's trust in and commitment to the supplier decline while interfirm conflict increases. In addition, they demonstrate that relationships with greater total interdependence exhibit higher trust, stronger commitment, and lower conflict than relationships with lower interdependence. The effects on conflict are consistent with those predicted by bilateral deterrence theory, and the effects on trust and commitment are in accord with the authors' bilateral convergence predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the role of supplier fairness in developing long- term relationships between relatively smaller vulnerable resellers and larger, powerful suppliers. The authors conceptualize two components of fairness-distributive fairness, that is, the fairness of outcomes received by the reseller from carrying the supplier's line, and procedural fairness, the fairness of procedures and processes used by the supplier in relation to its resellers. Testing their hypotheses from the perspective of automobile dealers, the authors find strong evidence that vulnerable resellers' perceptions of both distributive and procedural fairness enhance their relationship quality, although these effects are moderated by the level of outcomes and environmental uncertainty. Furthermore, procedural fairness has relatively stronger effects on relationship quality than distributive fairness, which is a somewhat surprising result from a managerial perspective. The constructs and relationships among the constructs demonstrate cross-national stability across the two countries in the sample, the United States and the Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an empirical investigation of processes by which buyers form trustworthiness perceptions during an initial sales encounter. Verbal and nonverbal cues given off by a salesperson, as well as a business's physical appearance, are relevant to trustworthiness assessments. Results indicate that these cues significantly influence a buyer's judgment of a salesperson's expertise and likability, as well as a firm's capability. These assessments also influence trust of both the salesperson and the selling firm. The implications of these findings are discussed and include directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Couple cooperation is hypothesized to be essential in the resolution of interpersonal marital problems. Data from a sample of newlywed couples support this hypothesis as well as the validity of our measure of cooperation. We then test a model stipulating marital satisfaction and trust as antecedent conditions leading to cooperative problem solving for each of three time periods, using structural equation modeling methods. We also test the overall fit and lagged effects of the model combining all three periods. Finally, we examine how the amount and distribution of 10 resources influenced how the model functioned. By waves 2 and 3, education, liking, and a combined measure of interpersonal skills all showed significant effects on the model. We discuss the relevance of the findings for a theory of marital problem solving and consider the significance of studying newlyweds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines three trust-building processes and outcomes in sales manager--salesperson relationships. This study, based on a sample of more than 400 business-to-business salespeople from a variety of industries, shows two trust-building processes (predictive and identification) to be significantly related to salesperson trust in the sales manager. Interpersonal trust was found to be most strongly related to shared values and respect. Trust was directly related to job satisfaction and relationalism, and indirectly related to organizational commitment and turnover intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust and control are inextricably interlinked with risk in strategic alliances. Hence, to understand how partner firms can effectively reduce and manage this risk, we need to examine the inter-relationships between trust, control, and risk. In this article, we propose a comprehensive and integrated framework of the three constructs in the context of strategic alliances, contending that trust and control are the two principal antecedents of risk. First, we suggest that the three constructs are each comprised of certain key dimensions. Risk can be considered separately as relational risk and performance risk. The two dimensions of trust are identified as goodwill trust and competence trust, and control is differentiated in terms of the three modes of behaviour control, output control, and social control. Second, we discuss systematically the various linkages between the different types of trust, control, and risk in alliances. Third, we suggest several risk reduction approaches -- minimizing relational risk through goodwill trust, behaviour control, and social control, while minimizing performance risk through competence trust, output control, and social control. Fourth, we discuss a number of trust-building techniques and control mechanisms to reduce risk in different types of strategic alliances. Finally, we develop propositions for empirical testing of the integrated framework and offer brief comments on future research directions and managerial implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voluntary assisted dying (VAD) is when a terminally ill person with decision-making capacity consensually ends their life with assistance from an authorised professional. Many countries have legalised VAD, and health professionals' roles within VAD frameworks are varied. Health professionals must be well informed of their legal obligations to ensure they practice within the legal boundaries, and those professionals with objections toward VAD should ensure that their eligible patients have equitable access. Given the current landscape of VAD, it is important to understand different health professionals' attitudes toward VAD and what may underpin these attitudes. We explored (a) Australian health professionals' attitudes toward VAD; (b) the psychological components that underpin those attitudes; (c) health professionals' level of knowledge about VAD; (d) health professionals' most common beliefs, emotions, and experiences related to VAD. A cross-sectional correlational survey design was used. A total of 182 Australian health professionals participated in the online survey based on a tripartite model of attitudes. We conducted a binomial logistic regression through a Generalised Linear Mixed Model and found polarised attitudes toward VAD between health professionals. Attitudes were accounted for by beliefs, emotions, education, and strength of religious beliefs. Knowledge of VAD was low, but not associated with overall attitude in our model. We highlight the importance of reflexive practice to help health professionals identify their values and feelings related to VAD, and to understand how these may affect their clinical practice. Low knowledge of VAD suggests that legislative and procedural training should be mandatory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe and test a sequential process model derived from socialization theory and designed to expand on previous explanations of the transmission of marital conflict across generations. The model seeks to explicate the reported relationship between parental divorce and offspring's marital conflict by positing a five-phase process that combines in sequential order childhood experiences, self-images, trust, and magnitudes of disagreements. The first two factors are measured at the individual level; the last two at the couple level The model is tested with data from a three-year panel study of newly married couples. We obtained good fits with Year 1 data. We then constructed a dynamic model to test data for all three years. The results show that the individual factors had significant direct effects only in the first year, whereas couple level factors appeared to mediate the relationship between parental divorce and couple's marital conflict over all three years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has found that trust is positively related to commitment in buyer-seller relationships. However, the validity of this finding is questionable because trust has been operationalized in many different ways. For example, prior research has not distinguished among levels of trust (interpersonal or organizational trust) and dimensions or motives of trust (credibility or benevolence). In this study, we distinguish among the levels and dimensions of trust. The results indicate that trust in a sales representative (interpersonal credibility) is more strongly related to commitment than trust in an organization (organizational credibility). In contrast, trust based on organizational benevolence is a stronger predictor of commitment than interpersonal benevolence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]