abstract: Accounting estimates are developed in a bottom-up fashion; subordinates generate estimates that are reviewed by managers. The anchoring heuristic suggests managers may be highly influenced by subordinates’ initial estimates. However, motivated reasoning theory predicts that reporting incentives will bias managers’ review in favor of estimates that are incentive consistent, and managers will selectively attend to information that supports their preferred conclusion, including their perceptions of the subordinate. Using experimental methods I manipulate the consistency of the subordinate estimate with management reporting incentives, and the narcissistic description of the subordinate. Consistent with motivated reasoning theory, I find that managers anchor on incentive consistent subordinate estimates, regardless of subordinate narcissism, but anchor less on incentive inconsistent subordinate estimates, especially when the estimate comes from a narcissistic subordinate. I also find evidence that managers believe narcissistic subordinates act strategically in their own self-interest, and selectively attend to this belief to adjust away from incentive inconsistent subordinate estimates, but not incentive consistent subordinate estimate. My results reveal two potential weaknesses in the management review process: susceptibility to subordinate anchors, and bias created by reporting incentives. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Accountancy 2016

In the present article, the authors evaluate the psychological effects of the “illicit test”. To do this, they start delimiting their concept, and then analyze if it has any influence on the judge when resolving a case. Based on psychological considerations, in particular, the so-called “motivated reasoning” theory and the “motivated justice hypothesis”, they evaluate by an empirical study if the judges take this test into account when deciding, despite being legally bound to Not do it. In addition, they propose some mechanisms that could be used, both by litigants and by legal systems, to mitigate the effects of illicit veidence. / En el presente artículo, los autores evalúan los efectos psicológicos de la “prueba ilícita”. Para ello, parten de delimitar su concepto, para luego analizar si esta tiene alguna influencia en el juez al momento de resolver un caso. Partiendo de consideraciones psicológicas, en concreto, la llamada teoría del “razonamiento motivado” y la “hipótesis de la justicia motivada”, evalúan mediante un estudio empírico si los jueces toman en cuenta dicha prueba al momento de decidir, pese a estar obligados legalmente a no hacerlo. Adicionalmente, proponen algunos mecanismos que podrían ser empleados, tanto por los litigantes como por los sistemas jurídicos, para mitigar los efectos de la prueba ilícita.

Traditional economic theory assumes that individuals are self-interested. They only care about their own well-being and disregard the impact of their actions on the others. However, the assumption of selfish individuals is unable to explain a number of important phenomena and puzzles. Individuals frequently engage in actions that are costly to themselves with no<p>apparent reward. Behavioural economics provides plausible explanations for these actions.<p>Individuals can be “boundedly rational" (Simon, 1955, and Kahneman et al. 1982) and/or can be driven by altruistic, equity and reciprocity considerations (see for an overview Fehr<p>and Schmidt, 2006). Over the past decade, researchers have applied behavioural economics<p>models to the study of organisations and how contracts should be designed in the presence<p>of non-standard preferences and asymmetric information or incomplete contracts (see for<p>an overview of the literature Köszegi, 2014).<p>In my current research, I try to be at the forefront of these new behavioural economics<p>applications into traditional industrial organisation and contract theory themes. The usual prescriptions of standard models can be misleading if potential differences in the agents' preferences are overlooked. Behavioural economics can make great progress if it takes into proper accountmarket and organisational features. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Abstract In order to respond to the challenges posed by technological development, new interdisciplinary concepts and methods in the fields of research and design of information and communication technology are required. The researchers in this fields have been trying to solve design problems by, for example, concentrating on designing for the user experience (UX). Nevertheless, the concept of UX has been widely disseminated and rapidly adapted in many areas of design without it being clearly defined or deeply understood. Not only theoretical study of the phenomenon is needed but also analytical tools to more comprehensively analyse and understand UX. Such an important tool would be a concept that can be used to study practical phenomena in a comprehensive manner. The theoretical objective of this thesis was to formulate a new, “expanded” concept of UX that can be used to describe human experience with technology so that both short-term and longer-term aspects of this experience can be taken into account. Based on the review of the literature, it seemed that Dewey’s concept of aesthetic experience could provide a theoretical frame of reference for an approach aiming at understanding UX in a more comprehensive manner. A broad theoretical concept, such as Dewey’s concept of aesthetic experience, is not directly applicable to empirical research, however. The practical objective of the thesis was to outline a method or a set of methods how the concept can be operationalised. A comprehensive and operational concept of UX is generated based on Dewey’s concept of aesthetic experience that is divided into two levels utilising Leontjev’s activity theory. As a result of the research, the concept of expanded user experience (eUX) and the reflective research method for studying it has been created. This research has shown that by studying longer-term UX in addition to temporal UX and by focusing on analysing the user’s activity it is possible to see a larger and more meaningful view on UX. The reflective research method is particularly beneficial as a long-term research method focusing on the everyday environments of users. / Tiivistelmä Teknologian kehityksen asettamiin haasteisiin vastaaminen edellyttää uusia tieteen rajat ylittäviä käsitteitä ja menettelytapoja informaatio- ja kommunikaatioteknologian alan tutkimuksessa ja suunnittelussa. Alan tutkijat ovat alkaneet etsiä ratkaisuja suunnittelun ongelmiin mm. keskittymällä käyttäjäkokemuksen suunnitteluun. Käyttäjäkokemus käsitteen käyttö on yleistynyt ja se on omaksuttu nopeasti monilla suunnittelun alueilla huolimatta siitä, että käsitettä ei ole selkeästi määritelty tai syvällisesti ymmärretty. Käyttäjäkokemuksen tutkimuksessa tarvitaan paitsi tutkittavan ilmiön teoreettista tarkastelua, myös analyyttisiä välineitä käyttäjäkokemuksen kokonaisvaltaisempaan analysoimiseen ja ymmärtämiseen. Keskeinen väline on käyttäjäkokemuksen kokonaisvaltaista, moniulotteista ja reflektiivistä luonnetta kuvaava käsite, jonka avulla käytännön ilmiöitä voidaan tarkastella kokonaisvaltaisesti. Tämän tutkimuksen teoreettinen tavoite oli kehittää uusi ”laajennettu” käyttäjäkokemuksen käsite, jolla voidaan kuvata käyttäjäkokemusta ottamalla huomioon inhimillisen kokemuksen muodostumiseen vaikuttavia lyhyt- ja pitkäkestoisia aspekteja. Kirjallisuuskatsauksen perusteella vaikutti siltä, että Dewey’n esteettisen kokemuksen käsite voisi ratkaista useita aikaisemman käyttäjäkokemuksen tutkimuksessa ilmenneitä puutteellisuuksia tarjoamalla teoreettisen viitekehyksen lähestymistavalle, jonka tavoitteena on ymmärtää käyttäjäkokemusta aikaisempaa kokonaisvaltaisemmin. Laaja teoreettinen käsite, kuten Dewey’n esteettisen kokemuksen käsite, ei kuitenkaan ole suoraan sovellettavissa empiiriseen tutkimukseen. Näin ollen tutkimuksen käytännöllinen tavoite oli hahmotella menetelmä tai joukko menetelmiä, joiden avulla Dewey’n esteettisen kokemuksen käsite voidaan operationalisoida. Tutkimuksessa kehitetty, aikaisempaa kokonaisvaltaisempi ja operationaalinen käyttäjäkokemuksen käsite perustuu Dewey’n esteettisen kokemuksen käsitteeseen, joka on operationalisoitu jakamalla se kahteen tasoon Leontjev’n toiminnan teorian avulla. Tutkimuksen tuloksena syntyi laajennettu käyttäjäkokemuksen käsite (the expanded user experience), ja sen tutkimiseen tarkoitettu reflektiivinen käyttäjätutkimusmenetelmä (the reflective research method). Tässä tutkimuksessa havaittiin, että keskittymällä pidempikestoisen käyttäjäkokemuksen tutkimiseen hetkellisesti muodostuvan käyttäjäkokemuksen rinnalla sekä analysoimalla käyttäjän toimintaa, voidaan käyttäjäkokemus nähdä aikaisempaa laajempana ja merkityksellisempänä ilmiönä. Reflektiivinen tutkimusmenetelmä soveltuu erityisesti käyttäjien jokapäiväisessä arjessa tapahtuvaan pitempiaikaiseen käyttäjätutkimukseen.

In this thesis, the author explores the main factors that may have contributed to the development of human trafficking in terms of sexual exploitation in Sweden. The aim is to identify the background of the main women and young girls exposed to human trafficking and to identify the factors that could potentially decrease the development of human trafficking. The theoretical underpinnings, which incorporated the push and pull model, the postcolonial feminist theory and the routine activity theory, as well as the information provided by the seven semi-structured interviews, provided a necessary framework to analyze and discuss the findings. The knowledgeable and experienced informants of this qualitative thesis consist of relevant authorities and organizations in the field of human trafficking. The findings of this thesis suggested that human trafficking in women and your girls for sexual exploitation is driven by poverty, the experience of war, lack of opportunities, the trafficker’s greed for profit and the demand for prostitution from countries such as Sweden. The findings moreover presented that the women and young girls that generally are exposed to human trafficking in terms of sexual exploitation, usually originate from third world countries and through circular migration within Europe. The results of this thesis furthermore presented various aspects and areas of improvement that are needed for relevant actors, in order for them to jointly work towards their common goal; to combat human trafficking cases in Sweden.

<p><b>Background/ Objective:</b> In our current healthcare system, information seekers have a bulk of the responsibility to initiate conversations about medications. Although older adults report the need for more information about their medications, many do not accept offers to receive more information from pharmacists during the dispensing of prescription medications. Very little previous work focuses on how older adults make decisions about seeking and avoiding information about medicines, or how these decisions impact medication outcomes. Therefore, the specific aims of this study were to: 1) describe older adults’ attitudes about medication information seeking and the relationships between those attitudes and medication information management behaviors and 2) characterize the relationship between medication information management behaviors (MIMB), medication knowledge, medication beliefs, and attitudes towards medication information seeking. </p><p><b>Methods:</b> Older adults prescribed a new, chronic medication were recruited from a specialty geriatric clinic to participate in interviews that occurred either in-person or over the phone. Participates were randomized 1:1 to usual care or to patient-prompted medication counseling (PPMC). Participants in the PPMC group agreed to ask a pharmacist questions about their new medication at their next medication refill and received a brief education. A survey instrument based on the Theory of Motivated Information Management (TMIM) was adapted from past studies to assess participants’ attitudes about information seeking. Participants were asked to report their information seeking and avoidance over the previous six-months prior to the study and at baseline and month one. Open-ended questions from a national medication safety campaign were utilized to assess medication knowledge. A rubric was developed to score participants’ answers as incorrect knowledge, no knowledge, incomplete knowledge, or complete knowledge and used by two community pharmacists to determine patient medication knowledge (PMK) scores. Structural equation modeling was utilized to identify predictors of MIMB, and hierarchical and logistic regression were used to determine the relationship between MIMB and medication outcomes. </p><p><b>Results: </b>A total of 132 participants completed baseline surveys, and 126 participants completed the month one surveys. Overall, a structural model based on the TMIM met the a priori criteria for good fit (Bollen-Stine bootstrap=0.269). Participants’ positive outcomes assessments, negative outcomes assessments were direct, positive predictors of information seeking and direct, negative predictors of information avoidance. After controlling for baseline medication knowledge, the effect of the intervention, and information seeking there were statistically significant differences in medication knowledge between those participants that sought information from a pharmacist during refill dispensing and those who did not (B=0.259, p<0.001). Of those that sought information from a pharmacist, 70% gained information from baseline to month one, while 36.9% of those that did not seek information from a pharmacist gained information baseline to month. There were no differences in medication beliefs between those that sought information from a pharmacist and those that did not.</p><p><b>Discussion/ Conclusion:</b> Patient knowledge deficits continue well beyond the initial dispensing of a medication, and older adults are also at risk for knowledge loss over the course of prescription use. Receiving additional information from a pharmacist at the time of medication refill may be protective against this information loss, and even increase the change of gaining medication knowledge over time. However, medication counseling in its current form is likely not sufficient to alter older adults’ beliefs about medications. Only one pharmacist initiated a conversation with a participant at medication refill indicating that those participants who want additional information about their medications after the initial dispensing may have to initiate the conversation with a pharmacist.</p>

The purpose of the current study was to learn how gender and learning method affect motivation and learning strategies in psychology, counseling, and social work graduate students. The variables of gender, learning method, motivation, and learning strategies are used by the self-regulation model to learning and the theory of independent learning to measure a student's academic success. Increasing the knowledge of these variables will be of interest to academic institutions and to the field of educational psychology because little is known about their interaction. The study's design was factorial quasi-experimental; it used a cross sectional survey consisting of a 2 x 2 factorial design. Multivariate analyses of covariance (MANCOVA) were used to evaluate the variables. Gender and method of instruction (distance/traditional) served as the independent variables; the dependent variables were comprised of 6 motivation variables and 9 learning variables, as measured by the Motivated Strategies of Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). Age/ethnicity served as covariates. A sample of 86 psychology, counseling, and social work learners who were in a master's or doctoral program was used. The results showed significant differences in learning strategies and motivation of graduate learner's between gender. Men were significantly higher than women in control belief (p = .02) and extrinsic goal orientation (p = .01); they were also higher in rehearsal (p = .03), peer learning (p < .01), and help seeking (p = .03). These findings suggest that learning strategies and motivation were not influenced by learning method, but learning strategies and motivation were influenced by gender. These findings could be used to enhance retention and graduation rates as well stimulate future research on the topic.

Vehicle platooning has been heavily studied the last decade. A transportation system formed by electric vehicles driven by control systems with the help of on-board sensors, wireless inter-vehicle communication, and wireless recharge capability has been shown to increase highway capacity, transportation safety, reduce travel time, save energy, and release human drivers from stress. Two layers of control are required to automate a platoon, the low-level vehicle control, and the upper-level platoon control which seeks to maintain the constant spacing of the platoon, and avoid collisions. In order to have a robust platoon, the vehicle control system needs to be robust to gain variations. Simulations were run in Matlab's Simulink to compare how well a vehicle control system would behave in the presences of nonlinearities and disturbances. The integer order and fractional order controllers were designed with the same specications. Fractional order controllers present better performance with no overshoot for the speed servo, and faster response for the steering system. For platoon control, the necessity is to achieve string stability. The bi-directional and leader-follower architectures have been shown to achieve string stability. Still, what happens to all the benets of platooning when a malicious vehicle (attacker) attempts to perturb the system? This malicious attack could be the result of a company trying to sabotage the operation of another's in order to make it spend more energy than required, and thus raise its transportation costs. By using Matlab, a simulation platform was designed. It was used to simulate the response of a robust platoon to an optimal attack prole, generated by Matlab's genetic algorithm. To calculate the energy expenditure a model for a 1995 Honda Accord LX from cappielo's analysis is used. Two scenarios are considered: 1) the attacker intends to make the whole platoon spend extra energy, and 2) the attacker focuses on affecting only one victim. The greatest amount of extra energy expenditure for the rst scenario was obtained with the bi-directional architecture and a size 3 platoon (140%). The leader-follower architecture limited this peak value to 94% for a size 8 platoon. In order to really prot from the benets of platooning, a platoon size 8 or more is recommended. In this desirable range, the bi-directional control law manages to limit the extra energy expenditure to 80% (size 8) to only 35% (size 20). For the leader-follower and a size 20 platoon, the optimal attack produced an extra 65% expenditure. For the second scenario, with the bi-directional architecture the attacker could make the victim spend up to 122% (size 10). Still, this depends on both the attacker's and the victim's position. For instance, with the attacker in position 2, only 8% extra energy was observed. The leader-follower architecture allowed between 80% to 110% in any position for the attacker while in front of the victim (the attacker cannot affect the victim from behind). Regenerative braking in all cases saved between 35% to 50% of the energy that would be otherwise lost by the use of dissipative brakes. In order to create an operational platoon system, that is as robust as possible to the attack, the recommended platoon size is 12 or more. The use of regenerative braking capable vehicles is a must. The control system should be the fastest possible, and make use of the bi-directional architecture to limit energy expenditure. The implementation of an attacker or defective vehicle detection system is recommend, taking the measure of making the attacker=defective vehicle reposition to the last in the platoon.

Recently, investors have asserted that firms' loss contingency disclosures are not adequate to allow them to assess the likelihood of material losses due to litigation (i.e., litigation risk), and a debate has developed over whether the threshold for disclosure should be lowered to provide investors with more information relating to litigation. Using an experiment, I investigate two unintended consequences of lowering a disclosure threshold, as the FASB has recently proposed. First, I find that adding low probability lawsuits to the disclosure of reasonably possible lawsuits lowers prospective investors' perceptions of litigation risk relating to the disclosure, even though more lawsuits are disclosed. Second, lowering the threshold allows firms to portray the entire disclosure opportunistically, diverting attention from higher probability to lower probability lawsuits. I find evidence that firms can use such an opportunistic presentation under a lower threshold to their advantage. Specifically, prospective investors' and even short investors' perceptions were just as favorable to the firm as long investors' when the disclosure threshold was lower and firms adopted an opportunistic disclosure strategy. Thus, my findings suggest that the FASB's proposal to require disclosure of lower probability loss contingencies may have unintended consequences for investors' perceptions of firms' loss exposure.

Most research that has examined the variation in homicide levels has examined their correlation with socioeconomic structural variables. In Latin America however, economic and social development has occurred, but high homicide levels remain, suggesting the involvement of other influencing factors. Recent research has established causal relationships between the role of state institutions and the numbers of homicides. I hypothesize that the perception of corruption may contribute in explaining the variation in homicide levels, and in particular in the Latin America region, because of grievance motivated violence. This hypothesis is tested through a quantitative method that includes more specifically linear regression analysis. My results show that there is no clear relationship between the perception of corruption and homicides on the global level. Nevertheless, the results show that the perception of corruption of the military influences homicides which highlights the importance of supporting the military in improving for example their transparency and accountability so that reductions in homicide can be achieved. The results in Latin America show that there is a negative strong relationship, suggesting that the lower the perception of corruption is, the higher the amount of homicides. This could be a result due to a lot of different reasons that get analyzed in this paper. More research, particularly in Latin America, is needed before drawing conclusions.