Privatizing health care in times of new public management: Investigating the role of psychological empowerment using cluster analysis.

Although privatization within health care is usually justified using arguments based on efficiency and productivity, the empirical investigations underpinning such arguments are few and ambiguous in their results. Presenting a new theoretical and analytical approach to this research field, we argue that psychological empowerment, reflecting individuals' intrinsic change motivation state, is a crucial prerequisite for the transformation of a nonprofit health care organization to a for-profit one. The general aims of this study were to explore empowerment cognitions during a privatization, to relate these to a selection of key work-related outcome variables, and to identify the effects of privatization in terms of individual level changes in empowerment after privatization.

Development of a new Clarity of Auditory Imagery Scale.

In the psychological study of auditory imagery, instruments for measuring vividness or clarity have existed for some time. The present article argues that existing scales are ambiguous, in that clarity and vividness of auditory imagery are addressed simultaneously, and that empirical validations of those scales suffer from inadequate methods. The aim of the present study was to develop a new psychometric scale, the Clarity of Auditory Imagery Scale, measuring individual differences in clarity of auditory imagery.