High Threat Decisions

High-threat decision-making is intrinsic to many domains and carries an individual, organizational, and social responsibility. Tactical and incident commanders make decisions in the high-threat law enforcement context of hostage rescue, armed barricaded suspects, and armed suicidal individuals that can result in successful or catastrophic outcomes. This book describes the experiences and methods of making decisions in these types of extreme environments. The presented research addresses learning strategies that could better prepare leaders for information processing in any high-threat domain, while optimizing speed and accuracy in decision-making. This volume emphasizes the role of adaptive expertise in decision-making, and explains how mental models of recurring patterns are created and retrieved, and why they are necessary for effective situational assessments. This book is ideal for police commanders and executives, emergency response managers, first responders, and criminology researchers. It is also well-suited for professionals seeking further information about improved high-threat decision-making strategies.

Research on small groups is highly diverse because investigators who study such groups vary in their disciplinary identifications, theoretical interests, and methodological preferences. The goal of this volume is to capture that diversity, and thereby convey the breadth and excitement of small group research by acquainting students with work on five fundamental aspects of groups. The volume also includes an introductory chapter by the editors which provides an overview of the history of and current state-of-the-art in the field. Together with introductions to each section, discussion questions and suggestions for further reading, make the volume ideal reading for senior undergraduate and graduate students interested in group dynamics.

Turn cyber intelligence into meaningful business decisions and reduce losses from cyber events Cyber Intelligence-Driven Risk provides a solution to one of the most pressing issues that executives and risk managers face: How can we weave information security into our business decisions to minimize overall business risk? In today's complex digital landscape, business decisions and cyber event responses have implications for information security that high-level actors may be unable to foresee. What we need is a cybersecurity command center capable of delivering, not just data, but concise, meaningful interpretations that allow us to make informed decisions. Building, buying, or outsourcing a CI-DR™ program is the answer. In his work with executives at leading financial organizations and with the U.S. military, author Richard O. Moore III has tested and proven this next-level approach to Intelligence and Risk. This book is a guide to: Building, buying, or outsourcing a cyber intelligence–driven risk program Understanding the functional capabilities needed to sustain the program Using cyber intelligence to support Enterprise Risk Management Reducing loss from cyber events by building new organizational capacities Supporting mergers and acquisitions with predictive analytics Each function of a well-designed cyber intelligence-driven risk program can support informed business decisions in the era of increased complexity and emergent cyber threats.

Psychological Foundations of Attitudes presents various approaches and theories about attitudes. The book opens with a chapter on the development of attitude theory from 1930 to 1950. This is followed by separate chapters on the principles of the attitude-reinforcer-discriminative system; a systematic test of a learning theory analysis of interpersonal attraction; a "spread of effect" in attitude formation; Hullian learning theory; and possible origins of learned attitudinal cognitions. Subsequent chapters deal with mechanisms through which attitudes can function as both independent and dependent variables in the attitude-behavior link; and the problem of how people go about applying a summary label to their attitudes and the reciprocal effects that rating has on the content of attitude. The final chapters discuss a commodity theory that relates selective social communication to value formation; the freedoms there are in regard to attitudes; attitude change occasioned by actions which are discrepant from one's previously existing attitudes or values; and the conflict-theory approach to attitude change.

The objective of the 2014 International Conference on Computer, Network Security and Communication Engineering (CNSCE2014) is to provide a platform for all researchers in the field of Computer, Network Security and Communication Engineering to share the most advanced knowledge from both academic and industrial world, to communicate with each other about their experience and most up-to-date research achievements, and to discuss issues and future prospects in these fields. As an international conference mixed with academia and industry, CNSCE2014 provides attendees not only the free exchange of ideas and challenges faced by these two key stakeholders and encourage future collaboration between members of these groups but also a good opportunity to make friends with scholars around the word. As the first session of the international conference on CNSCE, it covers topics related to Computer, Network Security and Communication Engineering. CNSCE2014 has attracted many scholars, researchers and practitioners in these fields from various countries. They take this chance to get together, sharing their latest research achievements with each other. It has also achieved great success by its unique characteristics and strong academic atmosphere as well as its authority.

This book aims at gauging whether the nature of US foreign policy decision-making has changed after the Cold War as radically as a large body of literature seems to suggest, and develops a new framework to interpret presidential decision-making in foreign policy. It locates the study of risk in US foreign policy in a wider intellectual landscape that draws on contemporary debates in historiography, international relations and Presidential studies. Based on developments in the health and environment literature, the book identifies the President as the ultimate risk-manager, demonstrating how a President is called to perform a delicate balancing act between risks on the domestic/political side and risks on the strategic/international side. Every decision represents a ‘risk vs. risk trade-off,’ in which the management of one ‘target risk’ leads to the development ‘countervailing risks.’ The book applies this framework to the study three major crises in US foreign policy: the Cuban Missile Crisis, the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, and the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995. Each case-study results from substantial archival research and over twenty interviews with policymakers and academics, including former President Jimmy Carter and former Senator Bob Dole. This book is ideal for postgraduate researchers and academics in US foreign policy, foreign policy decision-making and the US Presidency as well as Departments and Institutes dealing with the study of risk in the social sciences. The case studies will also be of great use to undergraduate students.