Organizational Change as a Paradigm Shift*

Organizational change may be considered as analogous to scientific change. Kuhn's analysis of scientific activities as paradigm guided is applied to an organizational framework to suggest that organizational activities may be understood in the same fashion. This perspective is briefly applied to the current controversy in health care. Research attention is directed toward the use of knowledge in organizational activities and in health care in particular.     

Organizational Constraints and Individual Mobility: Ability Group Formation and Maintenance*

While assignment to ability groups and curriculum tracks is ostensibly based on students' aptitude for learning, previous research has found that student aptitude explains only a small portion of the variance in curriculum placement. Likewise, while ability grouping has been described as very flexible, studies have found that little movement between groups actually occurs. This study examines ability grouping in a first-grade classroom in order to increase our understanding of the factors which influence ability group formation and maintenance. This investigation found that time and management constraints influenced the number and size of groups formed, independently of the range of aptitude in the classroom. Since these factors remained constant throughout the year, they also limited the amount of movement that occurred between groups. When across-classroom grouping is used, other, more stringent constraints are likely to affect allocation decisions. It will be argued that these constraints represent a problem which exists whenever there is an attempt to match individuals with positions in society.     

Behavioral Approaches to Marital Discord and Conflict*

This paper reviews the empirical research in behavioral approaches to marital therapy. The level of product of current research designs has not yet advanced significantly beyond the non-factorial single-group design, and the breadth of treatment populations employed thus far has been restricted. The power of the behavioral method is found in its theoretical base, observational and treatment-relevant assessment, procedural specificity, and quantification of outcome. The outcomes of treatment, though relatively small in number, thus far, have been almost universally positive and encouraging.     

Ideational Origins of Modern Theories of Ethnicity: Individual Freedom vs Organizational Growth*

It is argued that sociological theories of ethnicity can be subsumed under two basic paradigms. One assumes modernity means increasing individual freedom (an assumption derived from classical liberalism) and then emphasizes the effect of that freedom on ethnicity. The other equates modernity with organizational growth, and emphasizes the effect of that growth on ethnicity in modern society. A discussion of assimilationism, pluralism, ethnic conflict theory, and ethnic mobilization theory is provided in this context.     

Organizational Adaptations to Changing Cultural Contingencies*

An integrated conceptual framework acceptable across different disciplines and theoretical perspectives is presented. The scheme promotes one aspect of organizational environments, the cultural context, as crucial to explaining organizational structure or behavior. By crosstabulating member consensus and community consensus consistent predictions regarding survival, “character,” and goal behavior are achieved for a diverse range of case studies. It is suggested, therefore, that community consensus be treated as a common denominator in future attempts to ferret out the necessary and sufficient conditions associated with particular organizational structures and behaviors.     

Organizational Responses to Imputations of Deviance*

This paper proposes that the study of deviance be expanded to include organizations as actors to which deviance may be imputed. In contrast to traditional empirical studies which tend to emphasize powerless persons who passively accept attributions of deviance, this study focuses on powerful actors who actively defend themselves. Attention is focused on the types of accounts offered by one organization, the Central Intelligence Agency, in reaction to imputations of deviance to it at key times since its founding in the late 1940s. The various accounts have been aided by powerful third parties willing to use their resources in support of justifying and excusing claims by the CIA. As a result, the agency has escaped virtually unscathed from attempts to label it as deviant.     

Organizational and Leadership Status*

Sociological research on voluntary associations seldom has dealt with the characteristics of these organizations as emergent properties. Generally associational elements are conceived of as mere configurations of aggregate member qualities. Thus, the status accorded voluntary groups at any given time is thought to be the sum total of member and leader prestige. Although a high correlation exists between organizational rank and leader-member status, the relationship remains unexplained. Focusing on three organizational properties as determinants of associational rank, a tentative explanation is offered. It is maintained that as organizations mature their emergent properties become crucial considerations in the selection of their leaders, one consideration being who will best symbolize the organizations' rank in the community.     

Leadership Style in Relation to Organizational Change and Organizational Creativity: Perceptions from Nonprofit Organizational Members

As the environment within which organizations act continues to change and becomes increasingly competitive, maintaining an organizational climate that supports change and encourages creativity is a key objective for organizational leaders. This article examines the relationship between leadership style (transformational, transactional, laissez‐faire) and members' perceptions of the psychological climate for organizational change readiness and psychological climate for organizational creativity. Results indicate that transformational leaders have a direct positive relationship with psychological climate for organizational change readiness and organizational creativity, while laissez‐faire leaders have a negative relationship.     

A Marital Conflict Resolution Model: Redefining Conflict to Achieve Intimacy*

The approach to conflict resolution used in this model is to redefine conflict as alternative choices. Six assumptions about conflict are reviewed, suggesting it is the way conflicts are processed, not the conflict per se, which affects the relationship. The model is built on skills: Listening, speaking, deciphering basic needs, unlocking alternative choices, and introspection about the process. Some perspectives and principles provide a conceptual framework for use of the seven sequential procedures. Effectively processed conflicts result in greater personal and relationship understanding and potential for growth.     

Theory to Guide Organizational Training in Schools*

We do not believe that the T-group is a vital tool for refurbishing organizational life. We present theoretical reasons for believing that organizational training to improve organizational functioning must help participants to function more effectively as components of working bodies carrying out specific tasks in a particular job-setting. We present a sequence of three steps useful in interventions, drawing upon actual examples of interventions in schools.     

From Conflict Theory to Conflict Methodology: An Emerging Paradigm for Sociology*

A brief paradigmatic history of American sociology is presented. Conflict methodology is defined and exemplified. It is held to be an essential adjunct to a complete conflict paradigm. A conflict paradigm is relevant to sociological analyses in Eastern and Western Countries in view of the proliferation and power and of the large scale organization.     

Adult Unfolding and Marital Conflict*

This paper incorporates relevant knowledge about adult development into an understanding of marital conflict, suggests hypotheses to be explored in the marital evaluation and subsequent therapy, and illustrates the concepts presented with case material.     

Unshared Loss and Marital Conflict*

The authors have noted in marital therapy a pattern wherein a variety of losses are not mourned and are not shared between partners; instead one spouse uses the other for externalization of internal conflict regarding the losses. Loss is neither acknowledged nor mourned, but tends to be experienced as disenchantment with and anger at the spouse. Therapy should entail the sorting out of projections so that the person can resume the ownership of his or her problems. The conjoint format is helpful for dealing adequately with projective distortions; more importantly, it can facilitate mourning and the sharing of losses.     

Organizational Capital and Joining-up: Linking the Individual to the Organization and to Society

Do employees ever make efforts on behalf oftheir employing organization's interests or fellowemployees' interests when it is not in their directself-interest to do so? By drawing on organizationalbehavior literature relating to the joining-up process,organizational commitment, and organizationalcitizenship behavior, and integrating these insightswith economic theory, this article provides a newexplanation of why employees' efforts are typicallysuboptimal and what organizational activities canresolve this problem. The key variable explainingwhether organization members behave responsibly or notis the presence of organizational capital formedeither during the joining-up process or in preparationfor it.     

Innovation and Crisis in Organizational Analysis*

The study of organizations has been guided by a paradigm consisting of interrelated theoretical, methodological, and practical commitments. Theoretically, a problematic of rational structuring has dominated the field. This has been coupled with positivist methodology and a practical commitment to administrative problem-solving. The paradigm has fallen into crisis as a consequence of work on several analytical problems—action, power, levels, and process. Work on the action problem emphasizes the grounding of organizational patterns in the interactions and practices of people. Patterns are also seen in recent work as the expression of power relationships. The levels problem involves the analysis of interpenetration and interdependence between distinct sectors or layers of social structure. The concern with process involves the continuous transformation of organizational patterns. The central issue growing out of the work on these analytical problems is how to handle theoretically the production and reproduction of organizational patterns.     

Observed Infant Reactions During Live Interparental Conflict

Associations between interparental conflict and infant reactions were examined. Infants' history of exposure to interparental conflict and infant reactive temperament were examined as moderators. A community sample of 74 infants, aged 6–14 months, participated with their parents. Behavioral observations were made of parents' marital conflict and their infants' reactions. Parents reported on their emotional states during conflict, infants' history of exposure to interparental conflict, and infant temperament. Multilevel modeling indicated that infants showed differential responses to marital conflict; destructive and depressive conflict were associated with increased infant discussion attending and negative reactions, whereas constructive conflict was associated with decreased discussion attending and negative reactions. Infants' history of exposure to marital conflict and infant reactive temperament emerged as moderators.     

文化自觉和个体认同——多元文化冲突下的大学生思想教育

文化生态学认为，不同种类的文化之间必定会存在差异，这是无庸置疑的，否则文化本身将失去存在的基础和价值。文化差异的存在一方面使文化主体之间的互动避免出现刻板印象和偏见：另一方面也使得文化受众在文化认同上出现种种障碍和冲突。而这些冲突对于大学生的价值观、理想信念甚至校园文化建设都会产生不可估量的影响。笔者认为．应该遵循建构校园文化自觉、大学生个体的文化认同和大学生思想教育方式转变来促进当下大学生的思想教育效果．     

The Rhetoric of Organizational Change

This study is a discussion of change strategies:the contextual aspects of change and the rhetoric ofchange. Change is analyzed along two dimensions: (1) thecontext of the change initiative in the organization, (2) the relations of the change project to theinstitutional environment. Four cases are used asexamples of inducing change in municipal services. Thefour cases are part of a national reform project. In Norway, municipalities are importantinstitutions both as arenas for political decisions butalso as decentralized instruments for distributing localservices. The main purpose of the reform project was to achieve better adjusted services throughmore interdisciplinary work and local responsibility.Change efforts may be forced on the organization, e.g.,by laws, instructions, and frame budgets or they may be triggered by different voluntarymechanisms. The idea of isomorphismdescribes a passive or incremental adaptation tosignals and from structure imposed by theenvironment. The idea of eruptive change implies enactmentand entrepreneurship in relation to the environmentbased on signals from within. The contexts for change atdifferent levels in the municipality are associated with different rhetorics. Context variablesdescribe the situation or background on which the changeinitiatives are interpreted by the institutional actors.The rhetoric of change is the symbolic expression which defines the change process.