Social Defenses Against Organizational Learning

It is argued that for organizational learning to occur maladaptive social defenses within the organization have to be altered. The origins of the concept of social defenses are traced through the work of Jaques and Menzies. A new concept of system domain, and related concepts of system domain fabric, and system domain defenses, are proposed in order to account for the difficulties in sustaining organizational change in organizations that share a similar primary task. Organizational learning is defined as occurring when there is co-evolution of organizational container and contained. The article distills variables from three successful consultancy/action research projects which are characteristic of organizations that are learning, and it is hypothesized that the creation of organizational awareness is necessary for organizational learning to occur.     

Psychosemantics of “One-China” Conception: Fourth-Dimensional Resolution of Taiwan–Mainland Political Deadlock

The political conflicts between Taiwan and the Mainland have progressed, for over 50 years, from the historical hot civil war for the exclusive ownership of one China's territorial sovereignty to the contemporary cold rhetoric circularity around the geopolitical symbolism of the one-China principle. In the process, the United States has been intimately entangled in the disputes in terms of 3 alignment stages--from an unambiguous pro-Taiwan before the 1970s, the ambiguous neutrality in the early 1970s, to the contemporary pro-Mainland China. Despite the fact that during the past 3 decades the United States honored the arms sales and the Taiwan Relations Act commitments in Taiwan's favor, and simultaneously conferred the 3 Nos and 3 communiqués in Mainland China's favor, the cross-Strait tensions have persisted without the prospect of a definitive foreseeable resolution. Further, because of the lack of explicit conception of one China, the United States has to constantly resist the opposing persuasions of the 2 sides, and therefore must continue to rely on the ambiguous dual deterrence strategy for maintaining the dynamics balance over the Taiwan Strait. For such endeavors, the Clinton 4 frameworks and the Bush 5 Taiwan policies have proven to be very effective, but mostly to the extent of assuming a passive role in preventing military confrontations.     

Touristic authenticity,touristic angst,and modern reality

The tourist has become the symbol of a peculiarly modern type of inauthenticity. This paper explores the criticisms that have been directed at the reality experiences of the tourist. In so doing, the following inexhaustive typology of touristic realities is developed: 1) the first-order or true tourist, 2) the second-order or Angst-ridden tourist, 3( the third-order or anthropological tourist, and 4) the fourth-order or spiritual tourist. Each of these types represents a progressively more intense search for reality through travel. Each is, however, criticized for participating in its own form of inauthenticity.After exploring the reality experiences and criticisms of each of these travellers, the paper turns the tables on the cultured despisers of tourism to argue that perhaps the lowly first-order tourist is not so inauthentic after all. True, this traveller may not be having a real heroic adventure, but such is not the goal. Rather, the reality experienced by the first-order tourist is a pleasurable liberation from the normal concerns of everyday life which simultaneously reaffirms commitment to that reality. Quite frequently the first-order tourist is less concerned about having a real experience in the visited place than in experiencing family and friendship relationships-relationships completely ignored by the anti-touristic tourists in their search for authenticity in someone else's reality.The author would like to thank Peter L. Berger, Harry C. Bredemeier, Warren I. Susman, and M. Kathy Kenyon for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. This research was supported in part by NIMH grant no. 5 T32 NH14660.     

The communal construction of the “outsider” in a Quaker community in Costa Rica

This paper attempts to capture the process of exclusion in a Quaker, rural farming community in the rain forest mountains of Costa Rica. The outsider is defined as a member of a close community, whose voice is not part of the communal dialogue. The silenced voice is investigated through the lives of four members — an authoritarian founding father in a community of the fraternal, an entrepreneur and his wife among the uncommercial, and an inarticulate man among the persuasive.     

“Racism” and Colonialism: Meanings of Difference and Ruling Practices in America's Pacific Empire

This article examines the meanings of race and difference in the first years of American colonialism in the Philippines, Guam, and Samoa. Moving beyond existing sociological studies of race and colonial discourse, I demonstrate that the meanings of racial difference in the U.S. Pacific empire were contemporaneously polyvalent, constituting an overarching field of multiple rather than uniform classifications. The different meanings formed the basis for intra-imperial debate among colonizing agents. They also contributed to notable variations in forms of colonial governance and policy across the empire. The implication for future study is that race should best be apprehended as a code that takes on specific meanings and obtains its social force only in particular contexts of use and utterance.     

Emotional Climate in a European Problem Area: East Berlin and West Berlin Three Years After Reunification

In autumn of 1992, three years after the unification of Germany, during a period of violent attacks against foreigners, 120 students from East Berlin and West Berlin and 20 foreign students living in West Berlin answered the Emotional Climate Questionnaire developed by de Rivera and Fernandez-Dols. Foreign respondents expressed a positive attitude toward their government/state and believed in prosocial behavior to a greater extent than respondents from East Berlin and West Berlin. Whereas East Berlin students disagreed only somewhat with statements in favor of selfishness and egoism, West Berlin students strongly disagreed with them. We attribute the differences that were found in the answers of the foreign students to their national values. In addition, we regard the differences between the emotional climates of East Berlin and West Berlin as reflecting a climate of instability among East Berliners. We interpreted selfishness as a kind of polarized behavior indicating a climate of instability. A factor analysis revealed 5 factors of an emotional climate: Nation's Future, Just World, Reactive Egoism, Scepticism, and Basic Egoism. The concept of emotional climate is discussed on the basis of the current data.     

The partisanship of silence: Symbolic politics of school desegration in Boston

This article analyzes the symbolic aspects of the school desegration controversy using disputes in Boston as a case in point. The symbolic communication between actors in the public forum contains implicit views of the rights and obligations of different participants in the controversy, and the role of various individuals and collectives in the history of the controversy. These views also provide a framework for understanding the position of specific actors, which may constrain their ability to participate effectively in the controversy. This article analyzes these constraints with respect to those actors who attempted to establish a mediator role between pro-integration and anti-busing forces.Prepared under grants from the National Institute of Education (NIE-6-00-3-0187, NIE-6-76-0038), National Institute of Mental Health, (R01-MH-27618) and the Carnegie Corporation.     

The Practice of Multimodal Approaches, the Challenge of Cross-Cultural Communication, and the Search for Responses

The development of multimodal approachespresents an opportunity for human beings to increasetheir competence in managing complexity, while at thesame time brings a challenge of cross-culturalcommunication. Some claim that two approaches have beenproposed for tackling this challenge: an approach offrameworks and an approach ofdiscourse. Some go further to contenddropping frameworks and taking up discourse. This paper argues that, if it istrue that there exist these two approaches, neither theframeworks nor the discourseapproach alone is sufficient. It is suggested thatresearchers and practitioners may be better equipped byparticipating in discourses with and among frameworks.Employing three metaphors, this paper proposes that, inthe way force-fields andconstellations require and imply each other, both frameworks anddiscourse are necessary for human beings to act as aPeircian fiber-cable in socialproblem-solving.Requests for reprints should be addressed to Zhichang Zhu, Department of Information Systems, Lincoln School of Management, Lincoln LN6 7TS, United Kingdom.     

Viewing Telephone Therapy Through the Lens of Attachment Theory and Infant Research

This article discusses the use of the telephone for psychotherapy and applies basic tenets of attachment theory and research on infant development to understand the therapy process. Clinical case examples of four models of attachment (secure, insecure ambivalent, insecure avoidant, disorganized) illustrate diverse patient capacities to use the telephone during a planned 10-week break from ongoing, in-person treatment. It is suggested that telephone therapy may be variously effective based on the attachment system that becomes activated due to the separation, and patients with insecure avoidant or disorganized attachment patterns may have more difficulty managing the alternative treatment modality.     

“FOB” and “Whitewashed”: Identity and Internalized Racism Among Second Generation Asian Americans

An analysis of 184 in-depth interviews with grown children of Korean and Vietnamese immigrants finds that the racial beliefs, meanings, and stereotypes of the mainstream society shape how they think about coethnics, generate local identities, and deflect stigma from themselves. We examine the terms FOB (Fresh Off the Boat) and whitewashed that were commonly deployed to denigrate coethnic others as too ethnic or too assimilated while casting those at the bicultural middle as the normals. We describe how this system of intraethnic othering serves as a basis for sub-ethnic identities, intraethnic social boundaries, and the monitoring and control of social behavior. We draw on the concept of internalized racial oppression in framing our findings.     

When All That Is Solid Melts Into Language: Judith Butler and the Question of Matter

Judith Butler's analysis of corporeal matters offers an exemplary account of the hidden political agenda within the very grain of representation and discourse. This essay, however, argues that language and its political implications are even more complex and curious than Butler concedes. The author contests the conflation of writing with Culture, as if Culture is the constitutive and enclosed space of productivity and transformation. She argues that the question of Nature has not been provoked in Butler's analysis but answered and dismissed much too quickly. The author extends the problematic of writing to biology and suggests that Nature is literate.     

Gender and Networks in a Local Voluntary-Sector Elite

Focusing on gender inequality in a local community elite, we investigate the role of gender in access to and participation in networks of nonprofit trustees in Louisville, Kentucky. We examine two types of network relations: participation in the network of overlapping board memberships (the structural network) and interpersonal ties of collegiality and friendship (the social network). Asking whether the gender hierarchy found in most private and public sector organizations is mirrored in this inner circle of trustees, with men occupying the most influential positions in the structural and social networks, we find some male advantage in the structural network. Men predominate in holding most board seats, occupying multiple board seats, and in having slightly greater network centrality. By contrast, women hold the edge in the social network, with slightly greater centrality and higher levels of social integration. Women's disadvantage in the structural network is at least partly counterbalanced by their prominence in the social network of trustees in Louisville. Results indicate that the local nonprofit sector includes a small number of women (but no people of color) in leadership roles.     

The Ethnographic Turn: Fact,Fashion, or Fiction?

Commentators have suggested that a qualitative turn occurred in the social sciences in the last couple of decades of the twentieth century. We examine evidence on publication patterns, finding that the ethnographic turn consisted more of a proliferation of specialty journals than increased publication in mainstream sociology journals. This difference is important because it moves methodological debate inside the community of qualitative scholars, changing the focus from a contrast between qualitative and quantitative methods to questions about the relative merits of different styles of ethnographic work. Thus far, our data suggest, the main effect of the ethnographic turn may have been to institutionalize a set of labels rather than a set of practices.     

Foundations and Their Institutional Context: Cross-Evaluating Evidence from Germany and the United States

According to the relevant literature, the relationship between government and the private foundation sector in Germany is marked by a paradigm of conflict very similar to the one that has often dominated the U.S. discussion of government/nonprofit relationships in the past. More specifically, scholars often hold that the development of foundations in Germany is largely hampered by an administrative and regulatory climate that weakens rather than strengthens the foundation community. Two main arguments are brought forth in this context: First, the expansion of the state bureaucracy into traditional activity fields of foundations crowds out the foundation sector; second, the structure of tax regulations is detrimental to a sound development of foundations. However, while these arguments figure prominently in the policy debate, they have neither empirically nor analytically been substantiated as of yet. Borrowing from organizational theory, this article critically evaluates the arguments in the light of available evidence in an effort to contribute to a better understanding of foundations in an international context.     

Why China failed to create an endogenous industrial capitalism

Conclusion Weber almost anticipated the idea of the high-level equilibrium trap. Speaking about bureaucracy, he observed that as always in the area of'techniques' ... advance proceeded most slowly wherever older structural forms were in their own way technically highly developed and functionally particularly well-developed to the requirements at hand. It is a pity that he did not utilize this insight to analyze what he called the increasing stability of the economic situation under conditions of the economically self-sufficient and socially homogenously composed world-empire of China. Instead he pursued the idea that the absence of self-generated capitalism in China was due basically to the lack of a particular mentality. This inappropriate mentality had several aspects. One was the personalist principle. Others are listed in a catalog of alleged traits of personality taken largely from Arthur Smith's Chinese Characteristics. They include stolidity, patience, dislike of novelty, absence of curiosity, credulity, and a general distrust of and dishonesty towards all. Having acknowledged China's considerable technical endowments and inventions (Weber's own quotation marks), he argued that the magic stereotyping of technology and economics... completely precluded the advent of indigenous modern enterprises in communication and industry. The Chinese world, in a famous phrase, was a magic garden in which the ethical rationality of the miracle [was] out of the question. Certain points of detail may be disputed. Thus the miracles attributed to the piety of sons and the fidelity of widows were entirely ethically rational. But the crucial fact is that this conception of the problem led Weber in practice to place an excessive faith in the explanatory power of an analysis of ideas considered in relative isolation from their socioeconomic context. It probably also weakened his sense of the need to sort out more systematically the somewhat internally contradictory opinions that he held on the more specifically economic aspects of Chinese society.

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Lying about running: The functions of talk in a scene

The running scene rests upon a system of beliefs (a code) about the qualities of running performances. Membership in the scene entails the interrelated use of conversational forms and the presentation of a team identity. The forms consist of nomic talk, ritualized lying and code truth telling. Within each form, the runner may lie about or manage information regarding running performances in order to construct, maintain or attack the system of beliefs. The lie, then, plays a major role in the scene as a device of social interaction.     

Structure and process in interpersonal “distancing”

The present paper focuses on awho-why-where-when-how-what-whom structural model of interpersonal distancing. The term distancing denotes either approach or avoidance movement along an intimacy-immediacy dimension. This dimension itself is defined as an integration across proxemic, kinesic, paralinguistic, and linguistic interpersonal modalities. Parallels are drawn between the concepts of intimacy disequilibrium and cognitive dissonance; the latter deals with attitude-behavior discrepancies and the former with attraction-approach discrepancies. A compensatory model is expanded acrosswho's partners as well as across his sensory modalities, and the concept of intimacy overload is offered as a clarifying tool for the social refractoriness and information overload explanations appearing in various aspects of the literature.Paper presented at the Symposium on Some New Approaches for Studying and Measuring Interpersonal Communication, 82d Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans, September 1974.The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Department 1229, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, in the writing of this paper. Much of the work was supported by NSF Grant 2852A at Wayne State University.     

La Terza Via

Conclusion From these critical contributions, it is clear that there exists, among secondary commentators, extensive support for Carl Boggs's claim that the strategy of the Southern European communist parties, and the PCI in particular, represents not an optimistic third path but a return to the original path of Bernsteinian social democracy. There is also evident a widespread, if not universal, belief that orthodox leninism does not offer a satisfactory alternative. But while the standing of the PCPs Terza Via as an alternative to either social democracy or leninism is thus repeatedly questioned, counterposed authentically distinctive and radical accounts of the third way are, at best, rudimentary. Though not wholly unsupported, the advocacy of anti-passive revolution or sweeping transformation of the state gives very little indication of what an alternative third way would entail in practice in, for example, the Italian context. This is clearly one source of the PCI's impatience with its overly theoretical critics.If the suggestions of Buci-Glucksmann, Poulantzas, and others are too general and programmatic, it is possible that a practical alternative to the established party interpretation of the Terza Via might be sought among differing positions within the PCI. If we take the PCI's most recent strategy - the pursuit of the Democratic Alternative - it is indeed possible to identify significant divergences between right and left. As presented by Berlinguer, the strategy of Democratic Alternative was seen to consummate a breach with the Historic Compromise - a move away from Christian Democracy in favor of a left alternative, a move away from an exclusive reliance upon parliamentary alliance in favor of a mobilisation of social forces and movements. But he continued to emphasize that the party's electoral strength... is still the decisive factor in changing the balance of forces in favor of the alternative, while Napolitano, speaking for the right of the party, has tended to view the Democratic Alternative as a strategy for party and parliamentary alliance with the PSI, as the basis of a government able to pursue a policy for the relaunching of (economic) development in such a way as to avoid fuelling inflation. By contrast, Pietro Ingrao, spokesperson of the left of the party, has insisted that the alternative is not simply a proposal for central government and he has given much more weight to the promotion of a more general radical social movement organized around the pursuit of radical social alliances, built upon greater local autonomy and in-party democracy.But it is not clear that (even) this left variant of the Democratic Alternative has defined the grounds upon which a more radical Tefza Via could be constructed. Indeed, the experience of the PCI strategists themselves lends considerable support to the belief that there are chronic difficulties in overcoming the social democracy-leninism divide from within even a broadly conceived Marxian framework. For example, the experience of the new social movements - to which all sides of the PCI express themselves to be open - illustrates the considerable difficulties of comprehending the diversity of contemporary emancipatory struggles with the tools of conventional Marxian class analysis. Similarly, the ambivalence of state action - neatly captured in Offe's claim that socialism in industrially advanced societies cannot be built without state power and it cannot be built upon state power - is illcomprehended by classical Marxist accounts of the capitalist state and its withering away. In short, the evidence of the Italian experience suggests both that an emancipatory politics is perhaps not best understood as the pursuit of a third road to socialism and that, in fact, such a politics can no longer be exclusively based upon Marxian premises. Contemporary circumstances suggest the need for a new evaluation of the nature of state and civil society and a view of democracy and pluralism quite at variance with the rudimentary positions of both social democracy and leninism.If the capacity of the left wing of the PCI to respond to this challenge is doubtful, the prospects of the mainstream PCI meeting it are minimal. For they are resolutely committed to a reformist interpretation of the Terza Via in which a deeply entrenched commitment to Marxism as an objectivistic theory of social development seems to legitimate, as it did for the Second International, a largely reformist practice. But, at the same time, it should be clear that this is a commitment that arises less from doctrinal preferences than from the institutional and practical dilemmas experienced by any socialist party seeking mass electoral support. It is a difficulty starkly posed by Przeworski: Participation in electoral politics is necessary if the movement for socialism is to find mass support among workers, yet this participation seems to obstruct the attainment of final goals. Under the peculiar exclusionary circumstances of Italian politics, this problem is especially pronounced. In the election of 1983, under the new strategy, the Communist vote held up quite well, (down 0.5% at 29.9%), while the DC tumbled from 38.3% to 32.9%. In the European elections of 1984, the PCI even crept ahead of the DC. But despite these historical reversals for Christian Democracy, Italy continued to be governed by a DC-PSI coalition, under the premiership of the PSI leader Bettino Craxi. Committed to an electoral strategy, the Italian communists - powerful in the unions, strongly embedded in civil society, experienced and widespread in local government, consistently able to secure around a third of the popular vote - still found themselves excluded from governmental power.The irony of the PCI's position is neatly caught by Middlemas: the PCI has come closer than any other CP to bridging the ancient gap between the Second and Third Internationals, yet the only fruit appears to be that it has inherited what in the halcyon mid-70s it used to call the crisis of social democracy. While elements of a radical third way may indeed be found in the experience of Italian Marxism, the PCI repeatedly finds its options foreclosed, on the one hand, by the limitations of social democracy and, on the other, by the unacceptability of leninism. Indeed, its continuing difficulties, in the face of its very considerable strengths, lend further support to the claim that even a quite radically reconstructed Marxism is inadequate to the task of defining a satisfactory basis for a democratic socialist politics. This is evident in the circumlocutions in which the PCI has found itself involved in reconciling its day-to-day political practice to the broadest parameters of Marxian analysis. From this, it seems clear that if a radical Terza Via is indeed to emerge, it is unlikely to arise from within the mainstream of Italian Communism.

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La Terza Via

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The context of correctness: A comment on rushton

According to Philippe Rushton, the equalitarian fiction, a scientific hoax that races are genetically equal in cognitive ability, underlies the politically correct objections to his research on racial differences. He maintains that there is a taboo against race unequaled by the Inquisition. I show that while Rushton has been publicly harassed, he has had continuous opportunities to present his findings in diverse, widely available, respectable journals, and no general suppression within academic psychology is evident. Similarly, Henry Garrett and his associates in the LAAEE, dedicated to preserving segregation and preventing race suicide, disseminated their ideas widely, although Garrett complained of the equalitarian fiction in 1961. Examination of the intertwined history ofMankind Quarterly, German Rassenhygiene, far right politics, and the work of Roger Pearson suggests that some cries of political correctness must be viewed with great caution.Preparation of this paper was not supported by any grant, foundation, political, or religious organization.specializing in the history of psychology and psychological aesthetics.     

The “Homo Sapien Genetic Survival Trait”

An explanation was sought for the reason that minorities immigrating to the USA have difficulty getting along with each other or with the majority. Worldwide an explanation was sought for the reason that nations that break up, break up along ethnic group or cultural lines. The answer for both questions appears to be an assumed survival mutation early in the development of Homo sapien to create a Genetic Survival Trait. This requires most Tribal members, as defined here, to give their primary allegiance to their Tribe and not to the USA, and to support a drive for Tribal independence. Recommendations are made for developing improved training methods in the USA to reduce this problem.