The influence of organizational social responsibility on involvement behavior in community sport membership associations

Membership‐based associations are critical to their local communities and the overall social impact of the nonprofit sector. This study examines how organizational social responsibility within nonprofit membership associations influences positive member involvement behaviors, including volunteering, speaking positively about the club, and member loyalty. Self‐administered online questionnaires were completed by 735 members within seven grassroots membership associations in Ontario, Canada offering community‐based sport programs. Results show that members are somewhat aware of and felt positively about their organization's socially responsible efforts. Awareness of these efforts had a positive direct effect on the involvement behaviors of members, including intention to stay involved with their club and speaking positively about their club to others (i.e., word of mouth). Members' level of social consciousness was found to have a positive direct effect on word of mouth. Furthermore, members' positive evaluation of sport clubs' socially responsible initiatives was found to partially mediate the positive relationship between social consciousness and involvement behavior, as well as partially mediate the positive relationship between awareness of those efforts and involvement behavior. Results of this research provide grassroots membership associations with an in‐depth understanding of how their organization's efforts toward social responsibility influence member perceptions and behaviors, which may help them focus their efforts and more effectively manage their social change agenda moving forward.     

Study Abroad,Global Citizenship,and the Study of Nongovernmental Organizations

Nonprofit education and management programs often recognize the efficacy of including experiential learning opportunities such as study abroad in their curricula. In addition, higher education institutions increasingly prioritize global citizenship as a learning outcome. However, challenges abound for educators who want to evaluate study abroad courses that expect students to acquire or deepen their levels of global citizenship. This study seeks to evaluate the impact of a short-course study abroad program on students’ global citizenship orientation. Our qualitative findings suggest that students indeed grapple with the notion of global citizenship in various ways while immersed in such a course. They can also express conflicting views, further confounding scholarly understanding of how to best measure global citizenship. We discuss implications for students expressing more of an observational role than an inclination to act on global issues.     

Critical Global Competence and the C3 in Social Studies Education

Research in global education has turned toward global citizenship education and the fostering of a more critical reading of the tenets of “soft” global education laid out over four decades ago in Hanvey's (1976) “An Attainable Global Perspective.” Interested in skill building and informed application of concepts forwarded within critical approaches to global education, this article brings the NCSS C3 inquiry arc together with standards for Global Competence Education within social studies education. Using food insecurity as an example, the conceptualization provided demonstrates how coupling the C3 with the Global Competence standards creates a framework that social studies educators can use to prepare students to participate as informed, responsible, and critically minded change agents within complex and unequal global systems.     

Qualitative accounts of young-people,parents and staff involved with a purpose-designed,pilot short-break service for 18–24 year olds with life-limiting conditions

PurposeTransition to adult health and social-care services is a time of great uncertainty for young adults with life-limiting conditions; due to improved management, many who would have previously died before they were 18 years old are now surviving into early adulthood. Nevertheless, few services exist to meet their specific needs for specialist short breaks away from home. The purpose of this research was to determine the views and perspectives of young adults' parents/carers and staff engaged with a purpose-designed, pilot short-break service for 18–24 year olds with life-limiting conditions. Data were gathered through qualitative individual or focus group interviews involving two young adults, four mothers and fifteen health or social-care staff associated with the service. Data were analysed using Framework Analysis.Principal resultsEmergent themes: (i) The need for a specialist short-break service; (ii) Decision making when using or delivering the service; (iii) Challenges of staffing and financing the service (iv) Meeting young adults' complex needs and preferences (v) Suggestions for how to improve the service.The young adults described how they benefitted from access to specialist, age-appropriate, on-site clinical skills facilities and opportunities to socialise with peers. Mothers said they benefitted from time alone or with other family members in the knowledge that the specialist short break service met the needs and preferences of their child as they made the transition to adult services. However, all participating mothers and staff expressed concern about the future well-being of young adults when they left the service at 24 years old.Major conclusionsThis study provides new information to inform ongoing development of short-break services for the increasing number of young adults with life-limiting conditions who are surviving longer than they would previously have done. This will help to ensure that UK services are responsive to users' needs and preferences.     

Academic Civic Mindedness and Model Citizenship in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme

This study uses interview and survey methods to describe the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme's (DP) development of students' “academic civic mindedness” and “model citizenship” at four public schools in California. Results indicate that the DP pedagogy enables students to develop many of the skills that are necessary for civic advocacy and that the DP places a strong emphasis on students' knowledge of issues related to public policy. The DP develops students' citizenship through promoting their awareness of political and social issues and required active engagement with a local or global issue. Most IB students and teachers feel that the DP develops students' academic civic mindedness and model citizenship to a considerably greater extent than other curricular alternatives. Finally, teachers feel that the strongest limitation to their prioritization of students' citizenship development is their lack of clarity on how to frame the civic implications of what they teach.     

New roles for families in child welfare: Strategies for expanding family involvement beyond the case level

This paper examines the strategies and approaches child welfare agencies used to integrate meaningful family involvement into their service delivery systems, under the Children's Bureau Improving Child Welfare Outcomes Through Systems of Care demonstration initiative. Through a series of retrospective interviews with child welfare agency staff, systems of care project staff, family members actively involved in implementing the systems of care initiative, and local program evaluators, researchers investigated the family involvement planning and capacity building activities of child welfare agencies during the initiative's implementation. Findings indicate that child welfare agencies' capacity building efforts primarily centered on human resource development, focusing on three areas: program staffing, family engagement, and agency buy-in. These findings illustrate the importance of developing the capacity of child welfare agency staff and family members before fully implementing family involvement programs and activities. Although more research is needed to document the impact of family involvement, the lessons learned from these grant communities' experiences provide critical information and can inform development of policies and practices to help child welfare and other child- and family-serving systems promote and implement meaningful and sustainable family involvement.     

Contested Cosmopolitanisms: Global Meetings and Local Mobilizations

This article analyzes the ways that Pittsburgh anarchist activists, politicians, and journalists framed the 2009 G‐20 meetings and protests through a content analysis of newspaper articles and activist documents. Our analysis found that cosmopolitanism was a central discourse, but it was also contested. Pittsburgh anarchists introduced an open‐community cosmopolitanism that prioritizes the local over the global as a site of struggle and also embraces expansion of rights and commitment to diversity and inclusivity. Somewhat unexpectedly, this open‐community cosmopolitanism was successfully transmitted beyond activist discourse into the public and the local media. The anarchist activist open‐community framing challenged Pittsburgh residents to question whether increased global corporate investments were best for Pittsburgh and, in doing so, fostered connections between local anarchist activists, local journalists, and local Pittsburgh residents. To reflect on the ways that activists contribute to ideas of cosmopolitanism, this article presents a theoretical model that incorporates individual and collective dispositions and multiple ideological standpoints. We also show how movement groups may strategically draw on these shared cosmopolitan dispositions to expand their movement base, communicate their messages, and challenge the hegemony of global capitalism.     

Global Civil Society and the Question of Global Citizenship

For many recent commentators, the association of citizenship with the nation-state is under siege, as transnational and even global forms of citizenship begin to emerge. The nascent phenomenon of global citizenship in particular is characterized by three components: the global discourse on human rights; a global account of citizenly responsibilities; and finally “global civil society.” This last component is supposed to give a new global citizenship its “political” character, and for many represents the most likely vehicle for the emergence of a global, democratic citizen politics. This paper critically examines this view, asking whether a global form of citizenship is indeed emerging, and if so whether “global civil society” is well-equipped to stand in as its political dimension. The paper examines two opposed narratives on the potential of global civil society to form a political arm of global citizenship, before returning by way of conclusion to the vexed notion of global citizenship itself.This paper draws from the final chapter of Rethinking Equality: the Challenge of Equal Citizenship, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2006.     

Global Governance and Universities: The Power of Ideas and Knowledge

Abstract

So as to advance understanding of global governance, one can pick up on Robert Cox's critical formulations. Best known for his insights on the interplay of material conditions, institutions, and ideas, he later developed his framework by giving greater weight to the ideational dimensions of intersubjectivity. Yet it is usually deployed with regard to the former phase of his work while the latter phase goes unnoticed or is neglected. Cox's more recent conceptualization may serve as a springboard for thinking afresh about global knowledge production and dissemination. His approach can be stretched by exploring specific spheres of authority at particular sites. Focusing on universities as one of them, this article suggests a research itinerary that maps clusters of agents and guides empirical digging into how these structures operate. A complex of actors and processes, detailed in the findings, is redesigning global knowledge governance. The connective tissue in a cross-continental web of educational restructuring is gradually spreading. Cox's theorization may be fruitfully expanded to analyze this dynamic.     

Associations, Modernity and the Insider-citizens of a Victorian Highwheel Bicycle Club

Abstract  The creation of a club, the recruitment of new members, and the subsequent pursuit of an association's goals by its members present a succession of constitutive acts designed to advance a particular vision of citizenship. That vision may sometimes sit comfortably within the established state order, but quite often the activities of clubs are viewed by the state with suspicion, and may even be deemed subversive. The rights and obligations of an association's members serve as a blueprint for the form of citizenship pursued, and they participate in the genealogy of citizenship through their efforts to construct particular forms of civic society. By requiring a formal act of membership, all associations are to a degree exclusionary, thus bestowing power and influence on club members. Non-members are normally viewed as outsiders or as others , and members who fail to respect a club's constitution may be dropped from the insider-citizenship it represents. The Montreal Bicycle Club (MBC), formed in 1878, presents an illuminating example of how associations engage in acts of citizenship with its codes of conduct and hierarchies. Its members practiced a version of technological citizenship. MBC members asserted rights of use of the road in fierce competition with other road users, exerted political power through the elite Anglo circles of Montreal, and advocated the virtues of modern technology. Their highwheel bicycles were among the most visible modern artifacts on the streets. They were the first citizens to "go out for a spin", and there was a distinctive spatiality to many of their riding activities. They present a category of modern citizens whose purpose was to construct a technologically advanced, but highly structured society according to their masculinist vision.     

Global cities in Global Commodity Chains: exploring the role of Mexico City in the geography of global economic governance

In this article I assert that global cities are critical nodes in Global Commodity Chains because it is from them that producer services are provided. I explore forward linkages of producer service firms in Mexico City, showing that there are important service flows to companies responsible for the globalization of the 'Mexican' economy. Based on this finding I also indicate reasons why Mexico City is 'on the map' of global cities and of Global Commodity Chains. I argue that both access to local knowledge and close contact to clients are key factors. A third issue dealt with is the position of Mexico City in the geography of governance of commodity chains. The analysis suggests that it is useful to break up global city functions into the management of the world economy and into its command and control, because Mexico City is certainly a place for the former, while the scope of influence exercised from the city is rather limited.     

Gender and Citizenship in a Global Context: The Struggle for Maquila Workers' Rights in Nicaragua

This article analyzes the strategic deployment of rights and citizenship discourses by a Nicaraguan women's organization (MEC) and the struggle that this group has faced in reconciling the use of these discourses with its aim of bringing about changes in the conditions faced by women workers in the Free Trade Zone (FTZ). Contestations regarding notions of citizenship are explored, and I discuss Nicaraguan state agents' and (to a lesser degree) maquila factory owners' use of notions of citizenship, and how they both coincide and conflict with neoliberal social and economic projects. The case of this Nicaraguan organization's discursive engagement with state actors sheds light on the question: How do ideologies linked to transnational social movements filter into regional and national discourses and become transformed by local actors? In addition, this case has important implications for the larger issue of changing state sovereignty within a global context. A contextualized approach to the strategic use of (human) rights and citizenship calls attention to the complex and situationally specific dilemmas and opportunities involved in adapting this "frame" to work for oppositional objectives. Furthermore, viewing rights and citizenship as always situational calls us to move away from narrow conceptualizations of structural transformation to a more complex and nuanced vision.     

Trails of involvement: Evidence for local games

Game theory seeks solutions that would eliminate the need to actually play games and hence cannot explain why some games are played out, often with skills that are widely admired and emulated. This paper makes the conditions required to play (rather than solve) a game its starting point and focuses on the local skills that underlie the ensuing involvement. Data from tournament chess reveals that highly-skilled players are the best at sustaining involvement, yet also the best at terminating the game when the outcome becomes apparent, suggesting that involvement should stand alongside rationality as divergent ideals in social action. This bifurcation in skill can produce cooperation in the midst of conflict, or vice versa, and hence send local actions in the opposite direction of stated global goals.     

PREDICTORS OF PATERNAL INVOLVEMENT POSTDIVORCE

Recent research on the effects of divorce on children indicates the relationship of the noncustodial father both to the former spouse and to the child are critical factors affecting the child's adjustment. Guided by a family systems perspective, this study examined the relationship between paternal involvement postdivorce, the divorced coparental relationship and feelings of the former spouses' toward each other. Data were obtained from intensive interviews with 54 pairs of ex-spouses one year after divorce. Comparative analyses of mothers and fathers revealed different perceptions of fathers' involvement. Regression analysis showed that the coparental relationship and selected individual variables were significant predictors of both mothers' and fathers' perceptions of his involvement in child-rearing after divorce.     

Citizenship on the margins: Citizenship,social work and social action

Drawing on a critical synthesis of the two main citizenship traditions, so as to construct citizenship as both a status and a practice, linked through the notion of human agency, the article explores citizenship's exclusionary and inclusionary sides within both a national and international framework. Within a national framework, the implications of citizenship's ‘false universalism’ are explored as the basis for a recasting of citizenship in a way that addresses the tension between universalism and particularity or difference. Within an international framework, a human rights perspective is introduced as a means of challenging citizenship's exclusion of nation state outsiders, most notably immigrants and asylum-seekers. This approach draws upon a multi-tiered conceptualisation of citizenship stretching from the local through to the global.

Some implications for social work practice and policy are then discussed in relation to support for active citizenship in deprived communities and anti-poverty action in which poor people themselves have a voice. This includes a brief consideration of political exclusion; the potential of self-help groups and community social work and development work; and user-involvement. The article concludes that citizenship offers social work a framework that embraces anti-poverty work, principles of partnership and anti-discriminatory practice and an inclusionary stance.     

International women's magazines in China: Global and local perspectives

Unlike other global media products that are imported from overseas, international women's magazines in China are published via licensing agreements or joint ventures with local companies. These ownership patterns allow local editions of international women's magazines to negotiate the tensions and contradictions between the global players and local publishers. Given the influence of cultural and commercial forces in different economic environments, international women's magazines provide a challenging platform for exploring the interaction between global and local forces. Through a theoretical framework of hybridity theory and in-depth interviews with editorial personnel from the magazine industry, this study explores the global and local forces that have contributed to the production process of international women's magazines in China. The findings reveal that these magazines are a result of a multi-level convergence of local realities and global influences. Although there are factors of control and dependence in many areas such as the publishing ideas, editorial policies, the training of personnel, and the quality of production, both Western-style and Japanese-style women's magazines tend to appropriate and rework global cultures to satisfy local readers' needs, albeit in different ways. As a result, local and transnational influences are inextricably interwoven in the production process of international women's magazines in China. The study provides an extensive understanding of the global processes, the consumers, and the cultural forces that are shaping the media, particularly magazines in China.     

Service user involvement in Swedish mental health and social care: an analysis of ideological dilemmas and subject positions in a collaboration context

Service user involvement is steadily on the rise, bringing questions of tokenism and power imbalance. This article studies service user organisation representatives (URs) and human service organisation representatives (HSORs) in mental health and social care strategic collaboration councils through qualitative interviews and participant observations. Talk on service user involvement through UR is studied through the discourse analytical concepts of ideological dilemmas and subject positions. The participants' constructions, actions, and rhetoric therein are considered. Findings show participants' oscillation between standpoints within two main themes: the ideal vs. the inadequate UR and balancing power positions. The first theme discusses the missing perspective brought by UR narrations in terms of expected conduct and awareness of organisational conditions. This also concerns service users' positions as being simultaneously dependent and independent. The second theme concerns the implicit UR influence and the explicit HSOR influence. User involvement through URs is construed as a needed narration told by citizens with rights and responsibilities, while conditioned, as the UR is a layperson with mental health problems. The actions accompanying such constructions cause HSORs to balance between paternalism and professionalism and URs between adaptation and using their voice. In this, the URs have a stronger influence than acknowledged.     

Winners and Losers: Segmenting a Casino Loyalty Programme

Abstract

As the competition within the gaming industry continues to grow exponentially, casinos are using players club programmes as a key component of their marketing and loyalty programmes. This study investigates the relationships between casino players’ club programmes and its members. Through the use of data collected from a mail survey of 3,000 players’ club members, analyses were conducted to explore the impacts of these programmes on the creation of behavioural and attitudinal loyalty. The findings suggest fnr a number of loyalty programme members, these programmes have little impact on creating loyalty and their subsequent gaming behaviour.     

Are cosmopolitan dispositions learned at home,at school,or through contact with others? Evidence from young people in Europe

There has been a resurgence of interest in cosmopolitan theories of citizenship over the past two decades, as academics and policy-makers have sought to understand and conceptualise citizenship affiliations that transcend the nation-state. As part of these debates, a number of theories have been developed to try to explain the emergence of cosmopolitan dispositions, and in particular, why some citizens develop these dispositions and others do not. This article seeks to refine these theories by testing their assumptions on a youth sample, by drawing on the findings of the wider youth socialisation literature, and by comparing the relative merits of different ‘sources’ of cosmopolitanism (namely cognitive engagement; contact with cultural Others; learning a foreign language; and exposure to discussions about international issues in the public and the private sphere). To do so, the analysis draws on data from the 2009 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) and its survey of young people aged 14. Using these data, this article will show that each of these theories are positively associated with cosmopolitan sources, but that the strength of these relationships is variable and that not all sources of cosmopolitan dispositions are equal. Based on these findings, this article will argue that schools can play an important role in cultivating cosmopolitan dispositions at this particular life stage.