This study examined the effects of entrepreneurship level and legal regulatory environment on environmental scanning in one component of the health services industry, private practice physical therapy. Two aspects of scanning served as dependent variables: (1) extent to which firms scrutinized six environmental sectors (competitor, customer, technological, regulatory, economic, social-political) and (2) frequency of information source use (human vs. written). Availability of information was a covariate for frequency of source use. Three levels of entrepreneurship were determined by scores on the Covin and Slevin (1986) entrepreneurship scale. Firms were placed in one of three legal regulatory categories according to the state in which the firm delivered services. A structured questionnaire was sent to 450 randomly selected members of the American Physical Therapy Association's Private Practice Section. Respondents were major decision makers, e.g., owners, chief executive officers. The sample was stratified according to three types of regulatory environment. A response rate of 75% was achieved (n = 318) with equal representation from each stratum. All questionnaire subscales exhibited high internal reliability and validity. The study used a 3x3 factorial design to analyze the data. Two multivariate analyses were conducted, one for each dependent variable set. Results indicated that "high" entrepreneurial level …

The personality characteristic locus of control internality is widely-accepted as a trait possessed by women entrepreneurs. Recent research also suggests the presence of a coexisting attribute of similar strength, characterized as influence of a significant other. The presence of one personality characteristic implying perception of self-directed capability, together with indication of need for external assistance, poses a theoretical paradox. The study's purpose was to determine the nature and extent of direct and interactive effects which these and related variables had on entrepreneur return on investment. It was hypothesized that dimensions of significant other, as operationalized for this research, would support internality of locus of control and also modify constraining effects of educational and experiential disadvantage which the literature cites as pertinent to women entrepreneurs. This was nonexperimental, exploratory research of correlational cross-sectional design which examined hypothesized variable linkages. A convenience sample from a women's entrepreneur networking group was surveyed. Significant other elements were derived from factor analysis, resulting in four common dimensions. These factors, together with Rotter's Locus of Control instrument scores, reports on levels of education and experience, and hypothesized interactions, were independent variables. Hierarchial multiple regression was used to test a proposed path model. Two interpretable four-factor solutions …

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between position-related sources of power and person-related sources of power in organizations. The subject is the power of an organizational sub-unit compared to other units. Theory on the structural sources of power is well established in the literature. The question in this study is whether the individual manager, the person, is another major source of power for the organizational unit. A major objective of the study is to fill this gap in the literature on power in organizations. A secondary objective of this study is to see if one can rank the individual position-related sources of power and person-related sources of power, identified through a literature review, within each group in terms of their relative importance. The type of this study is exploratory. It is a descriptive study explaining the "what is" about the relationship between position and person sources of power in a manufacturing company. Results indicate that there is a two-way relationship between manager power and department power, and that one can rank order the sources of power in terms of their contribution to a department's or manager's power. Power is defined in this study as the ability …

Technologists predict that electronic information dissemination will create a paperless work environment. In spite of such predictions, paper-based internal communication will remain the primary medium for disseminating information in organizations for decades to come. However, electronic technology will have an impact on paper information production that may be more profound than changes following word processing's introduction. Previously unavailable for everyday production to enhance word meaning, certain graphic techniques now can be used to access readers' preconditioned symbol meanings to increase comprehension of routine correspondence and information internalization. This quasi-experimental field study examines interactions among laser-printer graphic treatment and communication variables as contributors to explaining variance in comprehension. Set Multiple Regression/Correlation analysis identifies significant variance explained by conditional relationships between near-typeset quality text and readers' self-interest and between near-typeset quality text and text's readability. The conditional relationship of near-typeset quality and self-interest shows increase in reader comprehension at a greater rate than the comprehension increase rate attributed to the reader's self-interest increase alone. This suggests that conditional relationships may be accessing an internal judgment process interpreting greater self-interest in near-typeset printed text. The conditional relationship between near-typeset quality and readability reveals that at more difficult reading levels comprehension is greater for …