“IF YOU SIT AND CRY NO ONE WILL HELP YOU”: Understanding Perceptions of Worthiness and Social Support Relations among Low‐Income Women under a Neoliberal Discourse

Drawing on Wax's concept of “condition reciprocity,” this study draws on data from 35 in‐depth interviews to examine how low‐income women in Israel frame their reliance on personal networks for survival. Findings reveal that women used a similar rationale focusing on productivity with respect to their interpersonal relations. Consistent with the neoliberal principle of market citizenship, most women perceived themselves as worthy of support from personal networks based on their work commitment. By contrast, women who could not rely on a current, past, or future definition of productivity did not consider themselves as deserving support and experienced extreme social isolation.     

Enhancing community capacity: Roles of perceived bonding and bridging social capital and public relations in community building

This study examined whether two types of perceived social capital – bonding and bridging – can affect individuals’ belief in community capacity in the context of a corporate community relations program to develop rural areas in South Korea. The results of the study's Web survey showed that perceived community capacity to resolve problems was significantly affected by their perception of both bonding and bridging social capital. The findings suggest that social capital serves as a mechanism that can foster community capacity through norms of interaction, reciprocity, and trust as aspects of civil society.     

REPRESENTATIVE TRUST AND RECIPROCITY: PREVALENCE AND DETERMINANTS

This paper provides evidence about the determinants of trust and reciprocal inclinations, that is, a tendency for people to respond in kind to hostile or kind actions, in a representative setting. We investigate the prevalence of reciprocity in the population, the correlation between trust and positive and negative reciprocal inclinations within person, the individual determinants of reciprocity, and the relationship with psychological measures of personality. We find that most people state reciprocal inclinations, in particular in terms of positive reciprocity, as well as substantial heterogeneity in the degree of trust and reciprocity. Trust and positive reciprocity are only weakly correlated, while trust and negative reciprocity exhibit a negative correlation. In terms of determinants, being female and increasing age are associated with stronger positive and weaker negative reciprocal tendencies. Taller people are more positively reciprocal, but height has no impact on negative reciprocity. Psychological traits also affect trust and reciprocity. ( JEL D63, J3, J6)     

The belonging model of trust

Although we know that high‐quality employee–organization relationships are beneficial, these relationships are complex and not fully understood, especially among employees of nonprofit organizations. In particular, we know little about how these employees perceive trust, which may overlook an important contributor to effective management. We begin to address this issue by testing a new theoretical model that conceptualizes perceived insider status, psychological ownership, and organizational identification as foundations for the perception of justice and subsequent trust. Our results indicate that psychological ownership and perceived insider status relate to trust through procedural and interpersonal justice. These results contrast those typically found in for‐profit contexts in that organizational identification did not predict justice and that distributive and informational justice did not predict trust.     

Working For Tips: an Examination of Trust and Reciprocity in A Secondary Relationship of the Restaurant Organization*

This study reports on the operation of trust and reciprocity in a secondary relationship of the restaurant organization. Working for tips rather than contract wages, the waitress is required to trust the customer and depend on the rule of reciprocity for her wages. Each restaurant customer is extended credit or trust during the service interaction. The restaurant worker develops a disposition or attitude towards this act of credit. The question for investigation is which conditions, structural or interactional, exert the greatest influence on the credit attitude expressed by the waitress? The table service staff of eight restaurants serve as the sample. When both models are tested, only the structural conditions exert a significant influence on the credit attitude. Findings suggest that acts of trust and reciprocity are influenced more by the climate or orientation of the employing organization than by conditions of work interaction.     

More than the Sum of Its Parts: Cooperation and Mutual Commitment in Multi‐Issue Congregation‐Based Community Organizing

Congregation‐based community organizing (CBCO) federations play an important role in uniting a diverse array of religious congregations and community‐based organizations in movements for social justice at the neighborhood, regional, state, and national levels. Metropolitan‐level CBCO federations provide a novel and noteworthy example of meso‐mobilization contexts as described in the social movement literature in that many such federations engage in multiple concurrent issue campaigns. This study examines collaboration among organizational members of Communities Creating Opportunity, a CBCO federation based in Kansas City, Missouri. Qualitative interviews with organizers, clergy, and lay‐leaders, together with an analysis of organizational records, reveal a cooperative structure of interorganizational relations built upon specific organizing activities, roles, and relations. These activities, roles, and relations are in turn conditioned on each member organization's own level of connection to a particular organizing issue. Findings suggest that this innovative form of cooperative relational structure affords multi‐issue federations an enhanced capacity to mobilize voluntary labor resources and turn‐out at public events relative to single issue organizing.     

Trust and reciprocity among international groups: Experimental evidence from Austria and Japan

This paper explores national identity in trust and reciprocity at the intra- and international levels by adopting a modified trust game played among groups from Austria and Japan, wherein subjects play the roles of trustor and trustee consecutively without any information feedback. Although the intranational trust levels in both countries are identical, the international trust for Japanese groups is less than that of Austrian groups. On the other hand, the international reciprocity for Japanese groups is greater than that of Austrian groups. Additionally, the Japanese reciprocation level toward Austrians is higher than that toward Japanese.     

Institutional Sexism in the Underworld: A View From the Inside

In this report we examine the views of male thieves toward women as potential accomplices or partners in crime. Our interviews revealed, in general, that females are perceived as lacking the qualities for being good thieves (e.g., heart, trust), exhibit specific deficiencies which limit their actual or perceived ability to perpetrate crimes, and tend to be relegated to subservient roles if and when they are involved in mixed-sex crime activities unless special opportunities or circumstances exist in which a female partner is distinctly an advantage to the male for pulling off the crime. This institutionalized sexism in the underworld narrowly restricts the illegitimate opportunities available to females and helps explain why females are seldom involved in lucrative criminal enterprise. We conclude by suggesting: that the study of female criminality has been retarded by an inaccurate conception of crime as an isolated act committed by a person, without regard to that person's relationships with other people, groups, and organizations.     

Univariate and multivariate models of positive and negative networks: Liking,disliking, and bully–victim relationships

Three relations between elementary school children were investigated: networks of general dislike and bullying were related to networks of general like. These were modeled using multivariate cross-sectional (statistical) network models. Exponential random graph models for a sample of 18 classrooms, numbering 393 students, were summarized using meta-analyses. Results showed (balanced) network structures with positive ties between those who were structurally equivalent in the negative network. Moreover, essential structural parameters for the univariate network structure of positive (general like) and negative (general dislike and bullying) tie networks were identified. Different structures emerged in positive and negative networks. The results provide a starting point for further theoretical and (multiplex) empirical research about negative ties and their interplay with positive ties.     

Public relations by newly privatized businesses in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Public relations as a communication function is emerging as an important organizational process in many parts of the world. This paper examines the development of public relations in a transitional economy: Bosnia-Herzegovina. Data from 38 newly privatized organizations show the perceived potential for public relations as these organizations attempt to communicate with new publics and gain market share in a difficult business environment. The results suggest that Bosnian public relations managers understand public relations as a relationship building function but are constrained from fulfilling this function by the realities of a transitional economy.     

In search of disability rights: citizenship and Turkish disability organizations

Criticizing modern citizenship’s emphasis on the ‘nation’ as a homogeneous body of citizens, recent citizenship conceptions draw attention to diverse group identities and their differentiated rights‐claims. By way of scrutinizing different disability organizations, this paper analyzes the struggles by people with disabilities in Turkey and examines whether these could be perceived as claims to new forms of citizenship. It argues that due to the institutional, political, cultural and historical specificities of Turkey, most non‐governmental organizations maintain relations of patronage with state actors. Far from initiating a rights‐based discourse, their activities cannot be perceived within recent citizenship frameworks. Yet, parallel to Turkey’s accession process to the EU and technological developments, alternative forms of organizing started emerging at the virtual level. These are the harbingers of a relatively more rights‐based discourse.     

How European PR practitioners handle digital and social media

The European Communication Monitor (ECM) 2010 showed that digital communication and social media have grown in importance in the media mix of European organizations. Both new media types are positively correlated to the perceived impact of public relations (PR) in the organization. Specifically social networks and online videos are considered the most important social media tools. Also European practitioners expect that the content of communication will become more important as and when the use of social media further increases. The consequence that everyone within the organization is able to spread information is perceived as the most problematic aspect of social media. A potential problem is that only about one third of the European organizations have implemented social media policies with communication consultancies leading the way. Communication consultants consider social media significantly more important than practitioners working in organizations.     

Does players’ identification affect trust and reciprocity in the lab?

Reputation mechanisms are mainly based on information sharing by traders about private trading experience. Each trader can therefore rely on his own past experience as a trader and on other traders’ past experience. The former is the direct component of the reputation mechanism and the latter the indirect component ( [Bolton et al., 2004a] and [Bolton et al., 2004b]). We design an experiment for isolating the direct component of the reputation system and studying its effect on the level of trust and reciprocity in a population where agents play both roles (trustor and trustee). Our experiment consists on three treatments of a finitely repeated investment game (Berg, Dickhaut, & McCabe, 1995). In the reference treatment there is no reputation mechanism at all, in treatment 1 trustees can build up a direct reputation, and in treatment two players can build up a direct reputation for both roles. We find that trustees’ direct reputation has a positive effect on reciprocity, but does not affect the average trust in the population. Trust is significantly higher only when players can build up a reputation in both roles. We show that the increase in trust is mainly linked to the formation of mutual trust-reciprocity relations.     

Vying for the Urban Poor: Charitable Organizations, Faith-Based Social Capital, and Racial Reconciliation in a Deep South City

In this article the mobilization of social capital is examined as it relates to the formation of collaborative partnerships among charitable organizations. It is argued that social capital, expressed through social ties and mutual trust, forms the foundation for such partnerships. Specifically, collaborative activities built upon religiously based social capital mobilized among charitable organizations are focused upon in this study. The extensive role of such social capital, combined with the historical context of the research setting, overshadows alternative forms of social capital that might be accessed for neighborhood revitalization, particularly social capital based on race. Consequently, this article's findings suggest that a color-blind approach to racial reconciliation has emerged among charitable organizations in conjunction with the hegemonic role of religiously based social capital in this local context. The unique nature of this outcome is significant because it emphasizes the impact of local context on the manner in which social capital is mobilized within localized networks.     

Individual Stress,Collective Trauma,and Social Capital in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill*

This article examines persistent social impacts of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS) by focusing on the relationship between social capital and chronic individual stress and collective trauma, using Hobfoll’s (1988) conservation of resources model of stress as an organizing framework. Data are based on in‐depth personal interviews conducted 14 years after the disaster. Analyses focus on the ways in which stress‐related behaviors associated with loss and threat of loss of various forms of resources have affected social capital in the renewable resource community of Cordova, Alaska. Findings reveal lower levels of trust, disruptions in associations, weakened social connections and networks, altered social discourses, diminished feelings of good will, and violations of norms of reciprocity. Behaviors associated with long‐term stress related to the EVOS and to the associated protracted litigation are indicative of diminished social capital. This research highlights the critical importance of social capital as a collective resource and illustrates the ways in which decreased social capital can exacerbate individual stress and collective trauma.     

The civility of social capital: Public relations in the public sphere,civil society,and democracy

Scholars have analyzed public relations’ role in democracy via proxy concepts like the public sphere and civil society. However, some have critiqued the public sphere on grounds of equal access and portrayed civil society as a guise for first-world imperialism. These critiques have implications for the role of public relations in the public sphere and civil society. This article suggests the normative role of public relations in democracy is best perceived as creating the social capital that facilitates access to spheres of public discussion and in maintaining relationships among those organizations that check state power. To that end, the paper argues that social capital does much to advance public relations theory and prescribe the role of public relations in democracy. Several implications for public relations from a social capital perspective are offered, including the creation of generalized societal trust, the building of cross-cutting or “weak” ties, the engagement of media on behalf of subaltern counterpublics, and the (re)creation of community or a fully functioning society.     

Do PR Practitioners Have a PR Problem?: The Effect of Associating a Source With Public Relations and Client-Negative News on Audience Perception of Credibility

Through a 2 × 2 factorial experiment (N = 141), information source type (public relations spokesperson or generic spokesperson) and message topic (client-neutral and client-negative) were varied to determine whether they affect audience perception of source credibility. Results suggest public relations professionals and the organizations they represent are perceived as less credible than unidentified sources and their employers. Also, sources and their sponsors communicating organization-negative news are perceived as less credible than those communicating client-neutral information.     

The structure of guanxi: Resolving problems of network assurance

Two widespread assumptions concerning networks, including guanxi networks, are that they function in terms of trust relations and that their structure is dyadic. This article subjects both assumptions to critical assessment and proposes alternative formulations. When the distinctions between trust and trustworthiness and between trust and assurance are made, then broader understandings of guanxi relationships emerge. The article shows that the assurance mechanism of guanxi is public exposure of transgressions against network norms, leading to the transgressor’s loss of face (mianzi). The necessity of third-party intervention of this type, typically but not exclusively through gossip, indicates the triadic rather than dyadic structure of guanxi relationships when sanction of reputation is included in the conceptualization of guanxi. Changes in guanxi during economic transition in China, from strong-to weaker-tie associations, require careful consideration of the changing nature of the mechanisms of face-loss.     

Managerial Hostility and Attitudes Towards Unions: A Canada-US Comparison

We use a cross-country survey of attitudes toward work and unions, which includes a sample of managers in both the US and Canada, to explore whether there is greater attitudinal hostility to unions in the U.S. Our estimates indicate that American manager’s attitudes towards unions are, perhaps surprisingly, less hostile than those of Canadian managers. We explain this first finding by the differential effect of perceived union power, which is greater in Canada than the US and which is correlated negatively with union approval. We also find that US managers are less likely to use extreme methods to oppose union organizing drives, implying that the lower union rates in the US as compared to Canada are not likely the result of greater negativity towards unions themselves but rather some other factor or combination of factors. The implication is that if Canadian managers faced the same labor relations playing field as their US counterparts, they would likely find it easier to thwart union certification drives as well. Alternatively stated, Canadian-style labor relations reforms (such as card-check systems or quicker certification votes) could perhaps tip the balance in favor of unions when organizing in the US.     

Transnational marriages in Yiwu,China: tensions over money

In this article, I explore the role of transnational marriages in the activities and strategies of trading networks, through the lens of money and uncertainty in marriage. I argue that uncertainty in spousal relations challenges the durability of such unions and hence the effectiveness of their role in trading activities. These uncertainties are shaped by intertwined factors, including especially the embedded relationship between commercial and social networks (for example, business partners, kinship, friendship) and spousal relations, the differing cultural values and practices of the partners to such unions, stereotypes, varying forms and degrees of trust and mistrust, and the dynamics of global markets and state policy. Uncertainties driven by these factors exacerbate mistrust in both marriages and trading relations; they also shape shifting orientations toward future life. Therefore, I argue that the role of marriage in trading activities should be neither simplified nor romanticized.