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Cognitive dissonance, mental frames and the financial value of agricultural co-operativesLamprinakis, Lampros 05 June 2008
<p>The co-operative as an economic and social institution has long been recognized for its contribution to economic development as well as its positive effect on local communities. However, over the last decade or so substantial structural changes in the agricultural sector have undermined some of the most prominent North American co-operatives. In some cases, co-ops asked for bankruptcy protection, others ceased operations while some were transformed to for-profit firms. The present study offers three essays that explore the challenges that co-operatives are facing in terms of their relationship with their members in local markets, the decision-making process of their leaders and the co-ops' role in the modern economy.</p>
<p>These first two essays are linked by the fact that they both develop models that are about cognitions. Examining cognition offers some new insights to understanding the process behind the decline of agricultural co-ops. In the first essay the model examines consumers' cognitions, while the model in the second essay examines management's cognitions. The essays differ on the agent's ability to change the perceptions that result from those cognitions. Essay One assumes that consumers' perceptions are partially flexible and thus can change over time with some cost; on the other hand, essay Two assumes that beliefs are inflexible due to the high cost of changing them.</p>
<p>Essay One examines the relationship between a co-operative and its membership in a local market using an economic psychological approach. More specifically, the essay presents a modified rational-choice model to investigate how cognitive dissonance can influence members' loyalty. The effect of cognitive dissonance is analyzed in a case where a local co-operative operates alongside with an investor-owned firm (IOF) in a market. The model illustrates how cognitive dissonance can give rise to switching costs for those consumers who wish to switch to the IOF. Analytical results demonstrate the effect of these switching costs on equilibrium market shares and discuss how a drop in the dissonance cost because of managerial decisions by the co-op can result in dramatic drops in its market share.</p>
<p>Essay Two illustrates how management's mental frame can be incorporated into an economic model and develops a theoretical underpinning for the link between a strong mental frame and the financial difficulties that a firm might experience. The case of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool with its Project Horizon plan is proposed as an example of a situation where the established mental frame gave rise to a belief regarding future member support that had a significant influence on the decision-making process of the co-op's CEO. The analysis includes a game theoretic model of a duopoly between a co-operative and an IOF, where mental framing is explicitly incorporated into the primitives of the model. Analytical results illustrate how the CEO's belief regarding member commitment can influence decision-making and therefore affect the market share and profits of the firm.</p>
<p>Essay Three uses non-parametric econometric techniques to examine the stock price effect of a co-op's acquisition by a publicly-traded IOF. The potential for this study emerged as a result of the takeover of Dairyworld, a dairy co-op, by Saputo, a publicly-traded private corporation. The study uses the prediction-error approach to estimate Saputo's returns after the acquisition as a deviation from its expected returns. A non-parametric bootstrap technique simulates Saputo's stock returns and examines its behavior around the acquisition date. The empirical results are consistent with a number of hypotheses, including the pro-competitive role that co-operatives are believed to have in the economy. The essay also includes a comprehensive discussion regarding the greater financial value that co-ops have for IOFs.</p>
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Cognitive dissonance, mental frames and the financial value of agricultural co-operativesLamprinakis, Lampros 05 June 2008 (has links)
<p>The co-operative as an economic and social institution has long been recognized for its contribution to economic development as well as its positive effect on local communities. However, over the last decade or so substantial structural changes in the agricultural sector have undermined some of the most prominent North American co-operatives. In some cases, co-ops asked for bankruptcy protection, others ceased operations while some were transformed to for-profit firms. The present study offers three essays that explore the challenges that co-operatives are facing in terms of their relationship with their members in local markets, the decision-making process of their leaders and the co-ops' role in the modern economy.</p>
<p>These first two essays are linked by the fact that they both develop models that are about cognitions. Examining cognition offers some new insights to understanding the process behind the decline of agricultural co-ops. In the first essay the model examines consumers' cognitions, while the model in the second essay examines management's cognitions. The essays differ on the agent's ability to change the perceptions that result from those cognitions. Essay One assumes that consumers' perceptions are partially flexible and thus can change over time with some cost; on the other hand, essay Two assumes that beliefs are inflexible due to the high cost of changing them.</p>
<p>Essay One examines the relationship between a co-operative and its membership in a local market using an economic psychological approach. More specifically, the essay presents a modified rational-choice model to investigate how cognitive dissonance can influence members' loyalty. The effect of cognitive dissonance is analyzed in a case where a local co-operative operates alongside with an investor-owned firm (IOF) in a market. The model illustrates how cognitive dissonance can give rise to switching costs for those consumers who wish to switch to the IOF. Analytical results demonstrate the effect of these switching costs on equilibrium market shares and discuss how a drop in the dissonance cost because of managerial decisions by the co-op can result in dramatic drops in its market share.</p>
<p>Essay Two illustrates how management's mental frame can be incorporated into an economic model and develops a theoretical underpinning for the link between a strong mental frame and the financial difficulties that a firm might experience. The case of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool with its Project Horizon plan is proposed as an example of a situation where the established mental frame gave rise to a belief regarding future member support that had a significant influence on the decision-making process of the co-op's CEO. The analysis includes a game theoretic model of a duopoly between a co-operative and an IOF, where mental framing is explicitly incorporated into the primitives of the model. Analytical results illustrate how the CEO's belief regarding member commitment can influence decision-making and therefore affect the market share and profits of the firm.</p>
<p>Essay Three uses non-parametric econometric techniques to examine the stock price effect of a co-op's acquisition by a publicly-traded IOF. The potential for this study emerged as a result of the takeover of Dairyworld, a dairy co-op, by Saputo, a publicly-traded private corporation. The study uses the prediction-error approach to estimate Saputo's returns after the acquisition as a deviation from its expected returns. A non-parametric bootstrap technique simulates Saputo's stock returns and examines its behavior around the acquisition date. The empirical results are consistent with a number of hypotheses, including the pro-competitive role that co-operatives are believed to have in the economy. The essay also includes a comprehensive discussion regarding the greater financial value that co-ops have for IOFs.</p>
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Terror and Evil in Iraq : A Study of Political DiscourseDekavalla, Georgia January 2009 (has links)
<p>Abstract</p><p>This paper aims to determine the validity of the hypothesis that the effective and eloquent use of language can result in shaping beliefs and altering people’s perception of certain phenomena. In order to explore this hypothesis, a speech given by George W. Bush concerning the Iraq war is examined, followed by a brief study of two corpora, the Time Magazine Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English, where the collocationpatterns of the words Iraq, evil and terror are examined. The paper starts by presenting the main concepts upon which this study is based, i.e. mental frames, the co-operative principle and conversational maxims and finally, various rhetoric devices. An analysis section follows, where George Bush’s speech is examined with the help of the concepts mentioned above and the analysis continues with the corpora-study. One of the conclusions drawn in this study is that, indeed, it is possible that language can be successfully used in order to achieve political means, and that there seems to be a shift in the American public’s perception of concepts such as Iraq and terror, visible in the use of language. However, it cannot be said with certainty whether the Bush Administration has managed to dominate public discourse, through a study as minor as this one.</p>
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Processos cognitivos que operam na configura??o de narrativas: uma pesquisa explorat?ria dos fen?menos que subjazem ? compreens?o de textosOliveira, Giezi Alves de 30 November 2012 (has links)
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Previous issue date: 2012-11-30 / This paper investigates the cognitive processes that operate in understanding narratives in this
case, the novel Macuna?ma, by M?rio de Andrade. Our work belongs to the field of
Embodied-based Cognitive Linguistics and, due to its interdisciplinary nature, it dialogues
with theoretical and methodological frameworks of Psycholinguistics, Cognitive Psychology
and Neurosciences. Therefore, we adopt an exploratory research design, recall and cloze tests,
adapted, with postgraduation students, all native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. The choice
of Macuna?ma as the novel and initial motivation for this proposal is due to the fact it is a
fantastic narrative, which consists of events, circumstances and characters that are clearly
distant types from what is experienced in everyday life. Thus, the novel provides adequate
data to investigate the configuration of meaning, within an understanding-based model. We,
therefore, seek, to answer questions that are still, generally, scarcely explored in the field of
Cognitive Linguistics, such as to what extent is the activation of mental models (schemas and
frames) related to the process of understanding narratives? How are we able to build sense
even when words or phrases are not part of our linguistic repertoire? Why do we get
emotionally involved when reading a text, even though it is fiction? To answer them, we
assume the theoretical stance that meaning is not in the text, it is constructed through
language, conceived as a result of the integration between the biological (which results in
creating abstract imagery schemes) and the sociocultural (resulting in creating frames)
apparatus. In this sense, perception, cognitive processing, reception and transmission of the
information described are directly related to how language comprehension occurs. We believe
that the results found in our study may contribute to the cognitive studies of language and to
the development of language learning and teaching methodologies / Este trabalho investiga os processos cognitivos que operam na compreens?o de narrativas, a
partir do romance Macuna?ma, de M?rio de Andrade. Insere-se no campo da Lingu?stica
Cognitiva de base Corporificada e, devido ? sua natureza interdisciplinar, dialoga com alguns
referenciais te?ricos e metodol?gicos da Psicolingu?stica, da Psicologia Cognitiva e das
Neuroci?ncias. Nesse sentido, adotamos a pesquisa do tipo explorat?ria, realizando testes do
tipo recall e cloze, adaptados, com estudantes de n?vel superior, todos falantes nativos. A
escolha do romance Macuna?ma como motiva??o inicial da proposta deu-se por se tratar de
uma narrativa fant?stica, cuja principal caracter?stica est? no fato de o romance apresentar
eventos, circunst?ncias e personagens que, de forma n?tida, se distanciam dos tipos
experienciados no cotidiano, o que constitui dados adequados a uma an?lise que pretende
investigar a configura??o do sentido, num modelo baseado-em-compreens?o. Buscamos,
assim, responder a quest?es que ainda s?o, de maneira geral, pouco exploradas no campo da
Lingu?stica Cognitiva, tais como: em que medida o acionamento de modelos mentais
(Esquemas e Frames) est? relacionado ao processo de compreens?o de narrativas? Como
constru?mos o sentido, mesmo diante de termos ou express?es que n?o integram o nosso
repert?rio lingu?stico? Por que nos envolvemos emocionalmente durante a leitura de um
determinado texto, mesmo sabendo que se trata de obra de fic??o? Para respond?-las,
partimos do pressuposto te?rico de que o significado n?o est? no texto, ele ? constru?do por
meio da linguagem, concebida como resultado da integra??o entre o aparato biol?gico (que
resulta na cria??o de Esquemas Imag?ticos abstratos) e sociocultural (resultando na cria??o de
frames). Nesse sentido, a percep??o, o processamento cognitivo, a recep??o e a retransmiss?o
das informa??es descritas est?o diretamente relacionadas ao modo como ocorre a
compreens?o da linguagem. Acreditamos que os resultados encontrados em nossa pesquisa
possam contribuir para os estudos cognitivos da linguagem e para o desenvolvimento de
metodologia de ensino-aprendizagem de l?nguas
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Terror and Evil in Iraq : A Study of Political DiscourseDekavalla, Georgia January 2009 (has links)
Abstract This paper aims to determine the validity of the hypothesis that the effective and eloquent use of language can result in shaping beliefs and altering people’s perception of certain phenomena. In order to explore this hypothesis, a speech given by George W. Bush concerning the Iraq war is examined, followed by a brief study of two corpora, the Time Magazine Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English, where the collocationpatterns of the words Iraq, evil and terror are examined. The paper starts by presenting the main concepts upon which this study is based, i.e. mental frames, the co-operative principle and conversational maxims and finally, various rhetoric devices. An analysis section follows, where George Bush’s speech is examined with the help of the concepts mentioned above and the analysis continues with the corpora-study. One of the conclusions drawn in this study is that, indeed, it is possible that language can be successfully used in order to achieve political means, and that there seems to be a shift in the American public’s perception of concepts such as Iraq and terror, visible in the use of language. However, it cannot be said with certainty whether the Bush Administration has managed to dominate public discourse, through a study as minor as this one.
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