The case: a story found and lost

This first case in our series presents an elderly patient's encounters with the medical system as chronicled in her medical records.     

Comment on organizing in the crowd

This short article comments on Bennet's and Segerberg's work on connecting action. After singling out some conditions which, according to social movement studies, would make an aggregating logic and personalized messages very important for mobilization, the author calls for further research (including through qualitative methods) on the complex dynamics related to the contemporary use of various formats of communication by social movement activists.     

Organizational Commitment in the Nonprofit Sector and the Underlying Impact of Stakeholders and Organizational Support

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This study addresses a major challenge the nonprofit sector is facing: low organizational commitment from employees. In...     

Salat-al-Juma: organizing the public in Tahrir Square

What were the sources of solidarity that bound anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square? This article complicates Judith Butler’s claim that this solidarity originated in shared vulnerability to police violence and the practices of mutual care that were necessary to sustain bodies in the square. I draw on existing scholarship that suggests that passive knowledge of this shared vulnerability was already present among Egyptians, especially those working in the informal economy and living more of their lives – eating, chatting, praying, selling, etc. – on the streets of Egypt’s cities and thereby drawn into increasing contact with state police forces. Given that aggressive policing and intimidation had generated a sense of passive solidarity among Egyptians, I ask how this solidarity was transformed into animated opposition to the regime. My answer is that the Islamic congregational prayers as well as the Sunday Masses held during the revolution were spectacles of interfaith cooperation that inspired courage and trust across sectarian and religious/secular communities. These prayers were rational rituals that generated trust among diverse Egyptians that Mubarak had sown suspicion among and played against one another to stay in power. These were embodied rituals that lent moral support to more the mundane aspects of occupying Tahrir Square, which was symbolically and strategically important in bringing down the regime.     

Migrant domestic workers and shifting strategies in organizing

The mobilization of domestic workers in the United States has strengthened and grown nationally in the last 15 years, and scholars have been paying particular attention to the ways their organizing has undertaken innovative strategies to address social, cultural, and legal exclusions specific to migrant domestic workers. Research has focused on historicizing the entrenched colonial legacy of servitude and domesticity, but more recently studies have concentrated on documenting the challenges and victories domestic workers have achieved as a result of their legislative state campaigns for a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights. This article reviews recent research that analyzes the complex strategies employed in organizing, and the role that migrant domestic workers play in challenging the boundaries of citizenship and integrating a transnational dimension to domestic worker organizing. Although research shows that enforcement continues to be a central issue in states where a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights has been enacted, migrant domestic workers continue to strengthen the coalitional power that has shown to transform new directions in organizing that demand alternate ways of contemplating workers experiences as generating different principles of justice.     

Organizational Hope: Reaffirming the Constructive Task of Social and Organizational Inquiry

This paper develops the construct oforganizational hope as a methodological imperative forstudying and strengthening organizations. It calls onorganizational scholars and practitioners to move beyond the critical impulse by advancing texturedvocabularies of hope that affirm the best and mostpromising dimensions of social and organizational lifeand provide a moral image of the future to guidecollective action. This can be accomplished by defininghopeful research agendas and choosing methods of inquirythat explore and illuminate the hopes and aspirations ofa broad range of organizational members. After clarifying the concept of textured vocabulariesof hope, this paper undertakes a thorough analysis ofhope by tracing the construct throughout the Westernintellectual tradition, highlighting four of hope'senduring qualities, and offering a set of propositionsthat extends the implications of organizational hope toour task as scholars and practitioners.     

The last of the Li: ritual texts and shifting ethnicities in Hainan

On Hainan, it is commonly believed that people who identify themselves as Han employ ritual masters (commonly known as daogong 道公) who use texts, while those who view themselves as Li employ the service of geba (no applicable Chinese characters) who do not. This paper argues that the use of Chinese ritual texts implies that the specialist possessing them belongs to a larger religious movement, while those specialists without texts emphasize their own powers as well as those of the masters who instructed them. At the same time, however, my historical and field research indicates that the use of texts has been spreading throughout the Five Finger Mountain region throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, thereby prompting significant changes towards hybrid rituals and the denial of any Li connection. While the ethnic differentiation (minzu shibie 民族識別) campaigns beginning in the 1950s have promoted a sense of ethnic identity, the growing use of written texts indicates that Li ritual practices have been converging with those of the Han.     

Sociological literature in an age of computerized texts

Although scholars have quickly adopted computers for word processing, new forms of interactive electronic texts pose important questions for the nature of scholarly literature in the social sciences. The social relationships constructed by interactive electronic texts devalue the authority of the writer and empower the reader. This is due in part to the phenomenology of electronic texts; in part to the social contexts governing the use of textual artifacts; and in part to the origin of electronic texts in the reading culture of computer technologists. Although narrative reading cultures empower the writer (as “author”) over readers, technical reading strategies construct the text as information which is given form by the reader. New information technologies thus challenge the scholarly concept of authorship, the status of scholarly writing as a “literature,” and the notion of copyright of texts.     

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.     

Communication strategies of family supervisors and clients in organizing participation

This paper investigates participation in communication processes between Dutch family supervisors and parents whose child is placed under supervision by the juvenile court. Although parental authority is legally restricted by the family supervision order, parental participation is an important condition for a successful execution of the order. This paper analyses the strategies and technique child welfare workers use to achieve parental participation. Three levels of participation are discussed. It concludes that the higher the level of parental participation in the interactions with the family supervisor, the intervention maybe anticipated as being more effective. In diesem Aufsatz wird die Partizipation an Kommunikationsprozessen zwischen niederländischen Familienbetreuern (family supervisors) und Eltern untersucht, deren Kind unter die Aufischt des Jugendgerichtes gestellt worden ist. Obwohl die elterliche Gewalt durch die Anordnung der Unteraufsichhtstellung rechtlich eingeschränkt worden ist, ist die Partizipation der Eltern eine wesentliche Bedingung für eine erfolgreiche Durchführung der Anordnung. Der vorliegende Aufsatz untersucht die von den Sozialarbeitern eingesetzten Strategien und Techniken, um Eltern zur Partizipation zu bewegen. Dabei werden drei Ebenen von Partizipation unterschieden. Aus der Untersuchung kann der Schluß gezogen werden, daß voraussichtlich die Intervention umso effektiver ist, je höher die Ebene der elterlichen Partizipation in den Interaktionen mit dem Sozialarbeiter ist. Este artículo investiga la participación en los procesos de comunicación entre los superviosores familiares holandeses y los padres a los que el tribunal juvenil les ha puesto a los hijos bajo supervisión. Aunque la autoridad familiar está legalmente restringida por la orden de supervisión familiar, la participación familiar es una condición decisiva para una ejecución adecuada de la orden. El artículo analiza las técnicas y estrategias que los trabajadores utilizan en el campo de la infancia para conseguir la participación de los padres, que queda diferenciada en tres niveles. Se concluye que como mayor sea la participación de los padres en las interacciones con el supervisor familiar, más efectiva será la prevención de la intervención. Les auteurs enquêtent sur la participation survenant au cours des processus de communication entre les tuteurs familiaux hollandais et les parents dont l'enfant est placé sous tutelle. Bien que l'autorité parentale soit légalement limitée par l'injonction de tutelle familiale, la participation parentale est une condition importante du succès de son applicaiton. Dans cet article sont analysèes les stratégies et les techniques utilisées par les travailleurs sociaux pour obtenir cette participation parentale. On distingue trois niveaux de participation; et plus le niveau de participation parentale est important dans les interactions avec le tuteur familial, plus l'intervention a des chances d'ê'tre efficace.     

Representing enterprise: The texts of recruitment and change in the UK banking sector

Particularly from the early 1990s onwards, the UK banking sector has seen dramatic and rapid transformation. The logic of enterprise (Du Gay, 1996) with all its various contradictory connotations—the drive for more entrepreneurial forms of work performance particularly from managers, the valorisation of the market leading to tighter cost control, job loss—captures much of the logic of what has been taking place. Work influenced by the thought of Michel Foucault has helped to shed fresh light on recent changes in the management of the employment relationship. A particular achievement has been to highlight and to call into question, as techniques of power (Townley, 1994), an array of everyday human resource practices—from the selection interview to the performance review—and to demonstrate the part these play in sustaining the rationalities or regimes of truth which have come to underpin the organisation of work. To date, little consideration has been given to the role of recruitment practices in this connection and the aim of the paper is to begin to address this gap. Paraphrasing Foucault, the discussion elaborates an expertise of the sign associated with recruitment, further exploring the possibilities of variants of post‐structuralist thought for the analysis of a particular aspect of HRM.     

Soft cultures: the symbolism of cross-border organizing 1

It is not always true that the concept of culture implies a convergence on one meaning, one set of values, one pattern of behaviour. This paper develops the notion of soft culture. Cultures are soft in the sense that multiple renderings of reality are accepted and legitimized. Soft culture is studied in the context of cross-national technology development projects. Such projects are loosely structured communities, as organizational actors are separated in time and space. The paper demonstrates how symbols work among those actors. In addition to the traditional uses of symbolic categorizing, in soft culture the symbols also play an important role in attracting more networks to the action and licensing a wide variety of exploratory activities. These equivocal characteristics of symbols should be considered a strength in face of overwhelming uncertainty since they allow actors to construct multiple futures and pursue them.     

Testing psychological forward induction and the updating of beliefs in the lost wallet game

This paper studies psychological forward induction and the updating of beliefs in the lost wallet game (Dufwenberg & Gneezy, 2000), which is required to derive a prediction for guilt averse agents. Our experiment tests whether the second movers psychologically induct forward and update their beliefs after observing their paired first mover's decision by eliciting beliefs with different second mover knowledge of first mover decision, depending on treatment. We find that second movers do update their beliefs conditional on receiving information on the first mover’s action, supporting psychological forward induction.     

Outsiders in the union: organizing,consent, and union recognition campaigns

Although outsiders have played an important role in social protest in the U.S., outsiders’ role in the U.S. labor movement has been the focus of spirited debate. Debate about outsider organizers, in particular, reached a fevered pitch in the late 1990s, and continues today. This paper scrutinizes two of the core assumptions of this debate: that insider and outsider organizers operate differently on union recognition campaigns, and that workers respond to them differently in these settings. We analyzed 153 in-depth interviews with workers and organizers conducted at the height of the debate, in order to answer two questions: What is the role of outsider organizers during private sector union recognition campaigns, and how do outsider organizers secure workers’ consent in these settings? All of the organizers in our data-set were graduates of the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Institute, and 64 of them were outsiders. The outsider organizers in our data-set confronted barriers that insider organizers did not, including workers’ concerns about their youth, inexperience and lack of professionalism, and their own inability to relate to workers. While many critics of outsider organizers claim that these barriers are insurmountable, we found the opposite to be true. The vast majority of outsider organizers in our data-set successfully secured workers’ consent by demonstrating commitment, building relationships, and being honest and forthright. After proposing changes in organizer training and leadership development in response to these findings, we conclude with a brief discussion of the enduring debate about outsiders’ role in social protest in the U.S.     

Rural grass-roots organizing in eastern Europe: the experience from Lithuania

This article examines rural grass-roots organizing in Lithuania.A conceptual scheme is proposed to differentiate among threetypes of activities prevalent in rural community building: theinitiation, voluntary communal activities, and not-for-profitcommunal activities. The model is applied to examine the establishmentof one of the most successful rural non-governmental organizations(NGOs) in Eastern Lithuania – the Community Centre ofBalninkai village (population 496). The strategies that wereused to initiate the Balninkai organization and to engage involuntary communal and not-for-profit activities are identified.Internal and external factors influencing successful organizingare addressed as well as the potential impact of European Unionmembership. While there are numerous obstacles facing ruralactivists in post-socialist Lithuania, there are also significantopportunities for community organizations to contribute to sustainedrural development in Lithuania.     

The role of management attorneys in union organizing campaigns

We examine the role and effect of management attorneys in union organizing campaigns by conducting in-depth interviews with a number of management and union attorneys, union organizers, and NLRB administrators. Hypotheses are developed for future empirical testing.