Public sector reforms are commonplace in developing countries. Much of the literature about these reforms reflects on their failures. This paper asks about the successes and investigates which of two competing theories best explain why some reforms exhibit such positive deviance. These theories are called ‘solution and leader driven change’ (SLDC) and ‘problem driven iterative adaptation’ (PDIA...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effectiveness of a positive deviance strategy for the improvement of hand hygiene compliance in 2 adult step-down units. DESIGN A 9-month, controlled trial comparing the effect of positive deviance on compliance with hand hygiene. SETTING Two 20-bed step-down units at a tertiary care private hospital. METHODS The first phase of our study was a 3-month baseline pe...

This paper presents a conceptual model to explain employee security behaviors as a function of manager’s transgressions in the workplace. To date, most information systems security (ISS) studies neglect the effects poor leadership can have on the security of organizational ISS. This paper seeks to broaden the study of leadership in information systems security by examining negative effects of l...

Novelty is often prioritized and detected automatically. It attracts attention-eliciting the orienting response. However, novelty is not a unitary concept, and the extent to which the orienting response is elicited depends on several factors. In the present study we investigated how stimulus novelty, deviance from the context, and complexity of the stimulus context contribute to the anterior N2...

OBJECTIVES Cultural variability (CV) is introduced as an overlooked dimension of cultural identity development pertaining to emphasizing and de-emphasizing the influence of a single cultural identity (i.e., cultural influence [CI]) on daily interactions and behaviors. The Cultural IDentity Influence Measure (CIDIM) is introduced as a novel measure of CI and CV, and hypothesis-driven validation ...

In recent years, far from arguing that evolutionary approaches to our own species permit us to describe the fundamental character of human nature, a prominent group of cultural evolutionary theorists has instead argued that the very idea of 'human nature' is one we should reject. It makes no sense, they argue, to speak of human nature in opposition to human culture. The very same sceptical argu...

While technological innovations over the last thirty years have markedly improved the ways in which people communicate and gather information, these advances have also led to computer crimes and related deviance becoming permanent fixtures in our society. In an effort to curtail internet offending, it is important for academics and practitioners alike to better understand why some individuals e...

Baker and Bray (1) continue Bray’s thoughtful development of a particular Bayesian age-period-cohort model for cancer rate projections. This model has an elegant formulation and has brought to the forefront a Bayesian interpretation of cancer projections. However, we feel that there are more appropriate models for cancer rate projections. Why? The Bayesian age-period-cohort model suffers from v...