Toward a Theory of Worker Participation

This paper proposes that the emergence of shop-floor worker participation projects in many of the largest corporations in the United States has major theoretical interest because it points to a shift in the structure of American management from Taylorist forms of organization toward "post-Taylorist" systems based on "relative worker autonomy" and limited democratic organization on the shop floor. The postulated shift toward "relative worker autonomy" is explored, first, in terms of the contradictions and failures of Taylorism-specifically its failure to integrate workers or bind them effectively, either psychologically or ideologically, to their jobs and firms. While the costs of worker dis-integration have led management to initiate post-Taylorist labor control systems, an analysis of participative experiments suggests that these new systems produce new contradictions engendering worker expectations and entitlements for democracy in the workplace. The analysis suggests the need for a reformulation of current theories of the capitalist labor process that can explain both the emergence of "integrative" labor systems based on participation and democratic legitimations and also the new forms of contestation they produce.     

青年志愿者心理资本对志愿行为影响的分析研究

志愿者心理资本包括感恩感戴、责任使命、乐观希望、坚强韧性和自我效能5个维度,且各维度正向影响志愿行为。在对18名青年志愿者研究基础上,构建了志愿者心理资本影响志愿行为的机制模型,即社会支持和志愿动机在心理资本与志愿行为关系中起链式中介效应,角色认同在其关系中起调节效应。为促进志愿行为可持续发展,就要培育志愿者为国谋发展、为民造福祉的价值理念,赋予其更加崇高美丽的价值形象;培育志愿者理性强烈的需要动机,促使其坚守自利利他,法皆具足的初心和使命;培育志愿者积极乐观的心理预期和理性的归因方式,涵养强大的心理复原力;构建完备、体贴、温馨的社会支持系统,形成志愿行为产生、稳定和可持续发展的合力。     

Organizational Contradictions in Public Bureaucracies: Toward a Marxian Theory of Organizations*

An alternative approach to organizational theory is outlined, based on Marxian categories and propositions. The concepts of “productive force” and “social relations of production” are specified in terms of various organizational phenomena such as organizing activity vs. organization; historical contradictions between organizational control structures and new forms of organizing work activity (e.g., occupational and professional status groups vs. administrative rationalization and bureaucratization; bureaucratic and technocratic administration vs. self-organization of labor and workers' control); the contradictions between such organizational dimensions as labor-power and its manifestations in terms of skills and knowledge, the object of labor (complexity of task structure), the means of labor (technology), the division of labor, the control of labor (cost-accounting and hierarchical authority relations), and the organization of labor (e.g., either in terms of occupations and professions or unions, corporate management, state bureaucracies, or self-organization and workers' control). Organizational contradictions between functional as well as historical phases of the work process are described for work organizations, in general, and for public service bureaucracies and courts of law, in particular. For example, administrative and technical innovations designed to increase productivity tend to come into contradiction with strategies of established authority structures (e.g., of the professional judicial elite) designed to expand domain, thus impeding or nullifying various organizational reform efforts. The paper concludes with a more general discussion of Marxian method.     

Toward a carnivalesque analysis of hacking: A qualitative study of Iranian hackers

This study sought to analyze Iranian hackers’ lived experiences based on the concept of the carnival of crime in cultural criminology. Fifty-four in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with young hackers. Moreover, their behaviors were observed along with those of other hackers. The data were coded through a thematic analysis using MAXQDA software. The study's findings indicated that cyberspace had created a carnivalesque utopia that allowed the young Iranian hackers to experience the pleasure of crime. By trespassing the rational frameworks of the modern world and altering the trends of knowledge creation as a means for subjugation, Iranian hackers contribute to the meaning-construction policies of those in power and challenge authoritarian aesthetics by invading their electronic domain. It was also found that the carnivalesque lives of hackers provided them with a variety of opportunities for disrupting the rhythms of production and creating an underground carnivalesque economy based on their level of knowledge.     

Determinants of Employee Creativity: A Survey of Lithuanian Nonprofit Organizations

Building on the current creativity literature, the authors developed and tested a model of employee creativity in a sample of Lithuanian nonprofit organizations. It was hypothesized that individual cognitive style, intrinsic motivation, leadership behaviors, job design, cultural norms of diversity, and work group relations would be related to employee creativity. Sixty nonprofit organizations were randomly sampled from the Database of Lithuanian Nonprofit Organizations and packets containing questionnaires were mailed to the organizations that agreed to participate. One hundred and twenty two questionnaires were returned out of 180 total (67.8% response rate). Results showed that innovative cognitive style, intrinsic motivation, and cultural norms for diversity were the most important predictors, explaining 41.5% of variance in employee creativity. Suggestions for hiring and staff development practices are provided along with implications for future research.     

Religious Involvement and Participation in Volunteering: Types,Domains and Aggregate

Prior research on investigating the religion–volunteering relationship has tended to commonly treat religious involvement as single-item measures, e.g., frequency of church attendance, and has defined volunteering as a simple dummy variable (1 = volunteers, 0 = otherwise). The present study attempted to look at the above relationship by measuring religious involvement as a multifaceted and multi-item measure and volunteering as engaging in different types of voluntary activity, and specific domains and overall aggregate of volunteering. The results based on a statewide representative sample from the Survey of Texas Adults 2004 showed that religious involvement was generally and significantly related to higher volunteering across voluntary types, domains, and aggregate count of volunteering, but varied in magnitude contingent on the types and domains being examined. In addition, the religious effects were held even adjusting for a variety of pertinent socio-demographic and denominational characteristics, in which these background characteristics are more dynamic in relation to volunteering than we knew. Implications of the findings related to social services and policy making are discussed.     

大学生志愿者志愿行为可持续性研究

近年来,学者从志愿动机角度探究了影响志愿行为可持续性的因素,从物质和精神两方面构建了大学生志愿者的激励机制,但所取得的效果并不理想。运用经典扎根理论,针对大学生志愿者志愿动机、志愿行为以及志愿服务结束后的后续行为的访谈发现,志愿动机不一定产生志愿行为,志愿者的内心定额、志愿经历储备对于志愿行为的反向作用。     

Participation in LGBTQ Organizations in Colombia: Motivations and Impacts

Studies on sexual minorities have shown the positive impact of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or queer (LGBTQ) community on the well-being of individuals. Few studies, however, have been interested in the role that LGBTQ organizations specifically play. Using a qualitative approach, this article examines individuals’ motivations to participate in LGBTQ organizations and how they think such participation impacts their lives. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 self-identified LGBTQ adults living in the Andean region of Colombia. Thematic analysis with inductive coding was used, and six themes were identified. Within these, two findings are particularly relevant to the existing literature. First, organizations play an important role as educational spaces where individuals can learn about their sexual identity. Second, organizations can also impact families of origin by promoting a better understanding and acceptance of participants’ sexual identity, and by promoting solidarity with LGBTQ community members.     

Covenant Attachment: A Constructivist Grounded Theory of Christian Couples and God

The purpose of this constructivist grounded theory study was to develop a deeper understanding of the relational system of married couples and God. We interviewed nine marital couples from Christian denominations that reported having a strong relationship with each other and with God together. We used constructivist grounded theory techniques presented by Charmaz (2006) and analyzed emergent categories of behaviors, emotions, and cognitions to construct a theory and model of Christian marital couples and their shared relationship with God. We then compared and contrasted the results and theory to existing literature on attachment theory and theorized a shared attachment to God. We applied the theological concept of kinship covenant to the results in order to organize and situate the theory into a Christian framework. Finally, we discuss clinical, pastoral, and future research implications.     

Implicit Theories of Marital Relationships: A Grounded Theory of Socialization Influences

A qualitative study was conducted in an Eastern European university, involving 16 participants from functional and dysfunctional families who participated in semistructured interviews about the development of their implicit theories of a happy marital relationship. The students shared their ideas of a happy marriage, their parents’ marriage, including the level of happiness, conflict and other issues, what they thought were major influences on the formation of their ideas of marriage including exploration of the role of fiction media. The following major socialization influences emerged as themes: parental relationship, individual parental characteristics, observation of other relationships, gender role ideology, education, media, and experiences of own relationships.     

Elders' Decisions To Enter Assisted Living Facilities: A Grounded Theory Study

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this qualitative study was to develop a substantive theory of elders' decision-making process to relocate to an assisted living facility. The researchers interviewed a purposive sample of 28 elders who resided in assisted living facilities. The theory of elders' decisions to relocate to an assisted living facility is a story about elders weighing and balancing gains and losses to go to where the help is. Decision makers weigh and balance gains and losses before, during, and after relocating to an assisted living facility. Elders stay at their current residence if gains outweigh losses and they relocate if losses outweigh gains. Understanding the process of decision-making in this segment of the population may lead to the development of interventions that can promote positive relocation experiences among elders and increase the effectiveness of their decision-making behaviors.     

Building Bridges into the Community: Social Capital in a Volunteering Project for Care Leavers

Volunteering to address poor life outcomes often experienced by care leavers is emphasised in UK policy. Although volunteering is credited with the ability to generate social capital, there is limited research on the impact of volunteering on the social capital of care leavers. This article re‐examines data from an evaluation of a volunteering project for care leavers. It explores in what ways young people's participation in the project constitutes social capital. The findings support the importance of regular face‐to‐face contact and co‐production for young people to become creators of their own social capital.     

Employee absence incentives in the welfare state: Toward explaining cross-national differences

The model developed in this article, which investigates the economic incentives created by the institutions through which capitalist welfare states administer sickness absence benefits, implies that absence rates are increased by a sickness benefit subsidy to the firm, that increases with reduced liability of the firm for the sickness benefits received by its employees and the with generosity of sickness benefit payments. Cross-national comparisons show that aggregate absence rates tend to be highest in countries that prefer to award social benefits largely independently of the recipient's value as a labor commodity. The model is extended to show that such social values strengthen absence incentives in two ways: through a sickness absence subsidy effect that provides larger subsidies for firms, and through a social support effect according to which the employee's utility of time absent from work is increased.     

Toward a Theory of Law in Society

Abstract

Interest group conflict, power, and values have been prominent in recent attempts to analyze law as social control. The role of fact beliefs in creating, interpreting and administering legal norms has been relatively neglected, especially in the few efforts toward theories of law in society. Both fact beliefs and value beliefs are here related to legal norms, and also to group interests, power and conflict. Law is conceived of as the formal social control of the political state, a definition that does not at all require acceptance of Austin's view of law as commands of the sovereign. The forced choice between power elite and structural-functional theories is avoided, since law operates in a wide variety of power situations. The subjective meanings of interest group actions directed toward legal norms are seen as consisting of value and fact beliefs, an approach of particular promise in analyzing law and social change.