Antecedents of knowledge sharing - Examining the influence of learning and performance orientation

Knowledge sharing is an important process in creating competitive advantage. Previous literature mainly identifies environmental and organizational factors that influence the effective transfer of knowledge. However, the focus shifts to the analysis of personal determinants as antecedents for the individual’s engagement in knowledge sharing activities, like personality traits. In this paper, we introduce employees’ goal orientations (i.e. learning orientation or performance orientation) to the individual antecedents of knowledge sharing behavior. It is argued that learning orientation positively influences knowledge sharing, whereas performance orientation is a negative influence factor. As goal orientations are determined by personality traits, we can also confirm existing hypotheses regarding this relationship. The theoretical model developed in this paper is empirically tested on a sample of 124 engineers of an internationally operating engineering company, and significant relationships among the constructs were found.     

Ecologically unequal exchange: A theory of global environmental injustice

In this article, we review the theory of ecologically unequal exchange and its relevance for global environmental injustice. According to this theory, global political–economic factors, especially the structure of international trade, shape the unequal distribution of environmental harms and human development; wealthier and more powerful Global North nations have disproportionate access to both natural resources and sink capacity for waste in Global South nations. We discuss how the theory has roots in multiple perspectives on development, world‐systems analysis, environmental sociology, and ecological economics. We detail research that tests hypotheses derived from ecological unequal exchange theory on several environmental harms, including deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and water pollution as well as related human well‐being outcomes. We also discuss research on social forces that counter the harmful impacts of ecologically unequal exchange, including institutions, organizations, and environmental justice movements. We suggest that ecologically unequal exchange theory provides an important global political–economic approach for research in environmental sociology and other environmental social sciences as well as for sustainability studies more broadly.     

Ideologies and Forms of Domination in the Organization of the Global Production and Consumption of Goods in the Emerging Postmodern Era: A Case Study of Nike Corporation and the Implications for Gender

This paper uses a case study of Nike Corporation to examine some of the contradictory gender-based ideologies involved in the two main processes of the production and consumption of athletic footwear: manufacturing and advertising. It uses the newly developing paradigm within world-system theory, a commodity chain analysis, to compare and contrast the social relations of gender within each of these two segments at both the micro- and macro-level. Noting the increasing importance of advertising and consumption patterns accompanying emerging post-industrial, postmodern trends, this paper highlights the need for political economy analyses to address more cautiously cultural, political and social factors involved in the production and consumption of goods. This study employs an exploratory approach, using gender as a variable to detect linkages between the economic and cultural realms at the individual and global level. Drawing on some of the post-Marxist literature, it points to new potential for alliances in forging social change. The main attempt is to expand upon development theory which tends to neglect the role of gender, while also expanding studies of gender by investigating gender issues within the framework of the global political economy.     

Promoting behavioral change towards lower energy consumption in the building sector

Climate change and environmental issues have been increasingly in the forefront of the media and government agendas. However, despite much discussion and fanfare, little has been done in the way of serious commitment and clear course of actions since the adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992 to bring carbon emissions to sustainable levels. To tackle the immensity of the climate change challenge, a paradigm shift in understanding is necessary to balance the course of global human development with energy demand and consumption patterns. Accounting for over 40% of global energy demand and more than 30% of greenhouse gas emissions, the building sector offers the greatest mitigation potential for reducing carbon emissions in both the short and long term, with positive implications for a range of associated sectors and industries. Promoting behavioral change among end-users for reduced energy consumption as well as encouraging the building industry to embrace sustainable design, low-carbon construction practices and materials, and renewable technologies, is fundamental to mitigating the impact of the built environment on planetary biospheres and preserving quality of life for generations to come. This paper starts by drawing attention to the building sector and related EU policy, outlining the challenges and opportunities for reducing energy consumption and carbon emission levels. Such policy provides the essential framework to engage stakeholders and allow supporting factors to foster progress in the sector. The paper contends that information on climate change has not led to significant improvements in meeting global targets and that what is needed is behavioral change among individuals and society as a whole. On the basis of research project experiences and literature review, it puts forth and explores five key elements contributing to behavioral change for reduced energy consumption and lower carbon emissions in the building sector, focused on: information and education; financial incentives and energy services; modern technologies and sustainable design; social and community norms; and biophilia (contact with the natural environment). The paper suggests opportunities for further research and concludes with recommendations for policy-makers and related stakeholders.     

The Urge to Merge: A Multiple‐Case Study

The authors undertook a comparative study of three recent mergers of nonprofit organizations in a Midwestern urban center, within the context of political‐economy theory. The research explored the impact of the same environmental factor, managed care, on the initial decisions by organizational leaders and the effects of these early decisions on subsequent actions taken to implement the merger. The study tested the authors' model of the motivations for merging, which proposes that the relationship between the decision‐making style of the leadership and the internal and external resources of the prospective partners determines whether the merger is driven primarily by mission, practicality, stability, or fear. Although the findings provide initial support for the hypotheses derived from the model, a demonstration of the differences in the approach to the merger by each organization indicated that other factors emerged as important driving forces during the various phases of the process.     

Processes of Internal and International Migration from Chitwan, Nepal

In this study we examine which factors predict internal and international migration from Chitwan, a flat valley located in the South-Central region of Nepal, seeking to measure the effect of theoretically specified variables such as human capital, social capital, physical capital, and neighborhood socioeconomic conditions while controlling for demographic variables. We use data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study (CVFS) to estimate a series of discrete time event history models of first and repeat migration to three competing destinations: other locations within Chitwan, other districts within Nepal, and places outside of Nepal. Results support hypotheses derived from neoclassical economics, the theory of new economics of migration, social capital theory, and cumulative causation theory. Our results underscore the need for a synthetic theoretical model that incorporates factors operating at the individual, household, and community levels. The use of multiple explanatory models yields a clearer picture of the forces driving internal and international migration from rural districts in developing nations such as Nepal.     

Couple and Familial Characteristics of Father-Child Incest Families

Couple and familial characteristics of father-child incest families are often described in the sexual abuse clinical and theoretical literature. However, few of these ideas have been tested empirically, and the limited research on the systemic functioning of incest families has resulted in contradictory findings. Results from a study describing couple and family system characteristics of 54 father-child incest families are reported. Both mothers and father perpetrators in the families were assessed. Findings from this study indicate that when compared to normative scores parents in incest families report greater than average social isolation, higher levels of family control and moral-religious emphasis, and lower emphasis on personal independence and individuation. Support was not found for an enmeshed level of family cohesion, as is often reported in the clinical literature. Nearly one-half of the couples reported clinically significant relationship distress and high levels of desired behavior change by their partner. Over one-half of the couples also reported substantial sexual discord in their relationships. The clinical and research implications of the findings are discussed.     

Investigating consumption anxiety thesis: aesthetic choice, narrativisation and social performance

Warde's (1994 ) theoretical analysis of possible anxieties provoked in the act of consumption synthesises a large body of contemporary literature on uncertainty, social change and consumption. In doing so, it offers a predominantly structural model of the anxiety provoking tensions and forces individual consumers may be exposed to. Drawing on the work of contemporary figurehead theorists of social change, and proposing his own application of Durkheim's model of suicide to the problem of consumption anxiety, Warde presents a model of how anxieties and their mitigation are embedded within configurations of contemporary consumer culture. Though Warde's analysis illustrates the structural, theoretical context of potential consumption anxieties for particular social groups, it is unable to specify how such anxieties are manifested and managed – or performed – by individuals within specific social and consumption settings. This paper takes an interpretive approach, conceptualising consumption anxiety as a discursive, narrative phenomenon likely to surface within particular social settings that are conducive to generating expressions of anxiety. The paper also considers the relation between narrativisation and objects, arguing that the cultural capacity of objects must be understood within local settings where objects are afforded a capacity to act through various discourses. The argument is drawn using selections of face-to-face interview data collected from a sample of middle-class householders on the practice of home decoration.     

Research,policy and funding – academic treadmills and the squeeze on intellectual spaces1

In recent years, there has been a great deal of collective rumination about social scientists' role in society. In the post‐1997 UK context, public policy commitments to ‘evidence‐based policy’ and ‘knowledge transfer’ have further stimulated such reflections. More recently, Michael Burawoy's 2004 address to the American Sociological Association, which called for greater engagement with ‘public sociology’ has reverberated throughout the discipline, motivating a series of debates about the purpose of sociological research. To date, most such contributions have been based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence. In contrast, this paper responds directly to Burawoy's suggestion that we should ‘apply sociology to ourselves,’ in order that we ‘become more conscious of the global forces’ driving our research ( Burawoy 2005 : 285). Drawing on an empirical research project designed to explore of the relationship between health inequalities research and policy in Scotland and England, in the period from 1997 until 2007, this paper discusses data from interviews with academic researchers. The findings suggest that the growing pressure to produce ‘policy relevant’ research is diminishing the capacity of academia to provide a space in which innovative and transformative ideas can be developed, and is instead promoting the construction of institutionalized and vehicular (chameleon‐like) ideas. Such a claim supports Edward Said's (1994 ) insistence that creative, intellectual spaces within the social sciences are increasingly being squeezed. More specifically, the paper argues we ought to pay far greater attention to how the process of seeking research funding shapes academic research and mediates the interplay between research and policy.     

The impact of globalization on social work in the UK

Since the late 1980s social work in the UK has undergone a period of unremitting change affecting its organizational structure, value-base, and service users. There has been a regrettable narrowness of scope in the social work literature on such changes, as analysis has been limited to policy and service delivery issues, which treat such changes as if they were simply new technical responses to the problems of reorganizing social services. We argue that such analyses do not engage sufficiently with the complex dynamics driving these changes and that there is a need to contextualize change in social work against the wider political and economic context. The transformative nature of the contemporary period is posited with reference to the impact of global macro-level forces and the ways that these interact with national and political variables on micro-level forms of social work practice. This paper reviews selective literature on globalization and draws linkages with changes in social services at the agency and practitioner level in the UK.     

TOURIST WORLDS: TOURIST ADVERTISING, RITUAL, AND AMERICAN CULTURE

Previous work on tourist advertising typically explains promotional imagery in terms of the economic interests of advertising or the social psychology of consumption. The symbolism and meaning of such material can also be interpreted through a cultural analysis of tourism as a secular ritual. If tourism is conceptualized as a social ritual that renews meaning and person through a structured, periodic break from everyday life, then tourist advertising becomes the cultural text that symbolically transforms ordinary places and times into extraordinary tourist worlds. In contemporary American culture, tourist advertising accomplishes this task by presenting tourist worlds as places of plentitude, nature, leisure, history, and paradise, thus transcending the earnest reality of urban, everyday life. This symbolic presentation is documented through a qualitative and quantitative analysis of verbal and visual imagery in the promotional literature of the 50 states.     

Social Isolation and Lethal Violence Across the Metro/Nonmetro Divide: The Effects of Socioeconomic Disadvantage and Poverty Concentration on Homicide*

Abstract This study extends the macro‐level criminological research tradition by examining the links between socioeconomic disadvantage, poverty concentration, and homicide in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan U.S. counties. Most research in this tradition has tested structural theories using urban areas as the unit of analysis. This “urban bias” has resulted in a limited understanding of the social forces driving violence in nonmetropolitan areas. To partially address this problem, we link the literature on the spatial and social organization of nonmetropolitan communities with the social isolation perspective from the urban poverty literature. We hypothesize that the spatial concentration of poverty drives up rates of homicide in both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas regardless of levels of socioeconomic disadvantage. Negative binomial regression for 1,746 nonmetropolitan and 778 metropolitan counties suggest that both socioeconomic disadvantage and poverty concentration elevate homicide in metropolitan areas. However, in nonmetropolitan counties only socioeconomic disadvantage has a significant impact. We conclude by discussing the implications of these differential findings for the social isolation perspective.     

Social Capital,Knowledge, and the Environment: The Effect of Interpersonal Communication on Climate Change Knowledge and Policy Preferences

Abstract

This article contributes to the literature on social capital and the environment in two ways. First, we identify a relationship between interpersonal discussion networks and assessed and perceived individual scientific knowledge. We then examine if knowledge mediates the relationship between discussion networks and policy preferences about climate change (CC). Using nationally representative survey data, we examine the extent to which an individual’s interpersonal discussion network is related to knowledge on CC and support for CC policy. We find those who discuss climate have higher levels of perceived knowledge, but discussion is not related to individuals’ levels of assessed knowledge. We also find that knowledge does not fully mediate the relationship between discussion and policy preferences, implying that interpersonal discussion may influence CC policy preferences independent of perceived and assessed knowledge. We conclude with remarks about the importance of knowledge perception as well as offer some avenues to extend this research.     

A mediating institution?: Using an historical study of advertising practice to rethink culture and economy

Abstract

This paper sets out to review the role accorded to advertising in recent critical work. This work, I suggest, has been underscored by an ‘epochalist’ concern to map distinctions in the form of the culture/ economy relationship between the contemporary era and earlier periods. Significance has been accorded to the particular transformative potential of advertising and this is often related to research which emphasises the increasingly symbolic, persuasive and pervasive nature of advertising. In what follows, I make three central propositions. Firstly, I argue that writers on advertising share a number of concerns particularly about the effect the evolving nature of advertising has on the relationship between people and objects and between culture and economy. Secondly I suggest that these writers share with certain other critical theorists a very particular approach to the definition of key entities like meaning, culture and economy. These very particular definitions are pivotal to the epochalist explanation of advertising's role in the transformation of the culture/ economy relation. Finally, I attempt to show, through a brief look at historical uses of persuasion in advertising, that the problem with epochalist theory lies in a tendency to overgeneralise a wide range of specific forces.     

Land use dynamics and ecological transition: the case of South Florida

This study examines the process of land use change in South Florida. Through this discussion, a conceptual model of ecological transition is developed and presented. The model is built on the general principles of neoclassical economic theories of land rent, behavioral models of resource use, and an historical geographic account of environmental change. Central to the paper is the specification of the theoretical link between demographics, market and service demands, land use, and ecological change. This study focuses on the nature and drivers of environmental change that has occurred in South Florida since 1900. The region studied includes the southern Florida Everglades and the surrounding area. The analysis determines that massive land useland cover has taken place in the region, particularly since the end of World War II. These landscape changes are conceptualized by a model that links regional demand for both agricultural and residential land through the agency of hierarchical forces. In this model, landscape evolution and natural areas encroachment are articulated as a dynamic process in which the regime of interaction between human systems and land use changes. Three main time periods for regional ecological transition are defined: (1) frontier closure (2) articulation of a system of cities with coupled agricultural hinterlands serving national and international markets. Differing land use change dynamics are identified as specific to each time period.     

Game theory and global environmental policy

Economists interpret global environmental quality to be a pure public good. Each country should contribute to its provision. However, this is hard to achieve because each government is tempted to take a free ride on the other governments’ efforts. Not only has this dilemma been analysed with game theoretical methods but game theory has also been used to think about how to make amends. This paper reviews the game theoretical discussion on how international policy frameworks may be designed to improve the chances for international cooperation. It is also shown that the evaluation of alternative environmental policy instruments deviates from the standard environmental economics model if applied to the international arena. For the benefit of an interdisciplinary readership, the evolution of the debate on global environmental policy is related to the recent history of economic thought. This history is taken to be materialised in the writings of economics’ Nobel Prize laureates.     

Power in Dayton: A Replication of the Bonjean Technique in a Medium Size City

Abstract

In recent years, the relationship between personal bankruptcy and stigma has generated much discussion and speculation. However, virtually no research has examined the experiences of bankrupt debtors themselves. In this paper, we provide an analysis of bankruptcy stigma based on thirty-seven in-depth interviews with 19 married couples who filed for personal bankruptcy in 1999. The data demonstrate that stigma is a pervasive feature of contemporary personal bankruptcy and that bankrupt debtors rely upon a wide range of stigma management techniques employed by other stigmatized groups. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for continued research on personal bankruptcy in the U.S. and for understanding, more broadly, the strategies and struggles for social agency among stressed and marginalized populations.     

Social reward,conflict, and commitment: A theoretical model of gambling behavior

A theoretical model of gambling behavior is introduced which examines the linkage between regular gamblers, the gambling institution, and outside society. This model is based on participant observation in an urban casino and a review of the related literature. The intention is to explore the structural and cultural factors operating both in society at large and in a gambling institution and to connect them with the personal characteristics of avid regular gamblers to explain their gambling behavior and its consequences. The main conclusion is that the gambling institution with its social rewards and the perceived threatening nature of the wider social structure are the dominant forces in attracting gamblers and in shaping their subsequent gambling entanglement.     

Reflexive Development: A Model for Helping Social Workers Contribute to a Sustainable Global Future

It is difficult for many social work students to grasp the importance they and their traditional client base play in global environmental issues. International development generally focuses on supporting human development through the development of natural resources. However, increased human consumption everywhere in the world is disrupting the global system upon which all life depends. Continued Western consumption habits are simply unsustainable. It is therefore incumbent that any increase in consumption, even in the ‘developing’ world, be considered in terms of global environmental sustainability; change must also occur within the developed world. To address this problem, reflexive processes that support transnational analysis and action must be developed. This paper suggests classroom activities that help students analyze and problem solve around this process of Reflexive Development.     

The role of positive academic self-concept in promoting school success

Identity research argues for enhancing students' current and future positive academic self-concepts to strengthen educational success. However, multiple factors from youths' home and school ecologies, as well as structural disadvantage, influence this relationship. Using the data from the Beyond High School Study (N = 9658), this analysis examines the role of academic self-concept in predicting school success over and above co-occurring contributors. The effects of positive academic self-concept on future educational aspirations, accessing educational guidance counseling, and student GPA were tested using stepped linear regression, controlling for student socio-demographics, school environment factors, and parental support. Results confirmed hypotheses for each academic indicator, with positive academic self-concept demonstrating the strongest coefficient. Implications for school-based intervention are discussed, linking to social psychological literature on future-oriented self-cognitions and strengthening motivational and regulatory function, particularly among youth facing systemic challenges.