“Koe wai hoki koe?!”, or “Who are you?!”: Issues of trust in cross‐cultural collaborative research

Abstract

Cross‐cultural research designs are increasingly employed in the New Zealand context to investigate a range of complex social and environmental issues. However, there is little guidance for researchers who work for mainstream organisations and hapū (subtribe(s)) and iwi (tribe(s)) on how to undertake cross‐cultural collaborative research. Trust is a key issue that makes cross‐cultural research possible and it is surprising that issues relating to trust have not featured widely in the literature. In this paper, we reflect on our experiences working cross‐culturally and collaboratively with a hapū in Northland, New Zealand. We discuss how a mainstream research organisation worked with a community health trust and developed a working relationship with a hapū, forming the basis of a community‐driven collaborative evaluation of a central government‐funded project. Key findings were the establishment of a tuākana‐tēina relationship (where teacher and learner are interchangeable) between the members of the collaborative research team and the employment of appropriate research methods to develop a research agenda that ensured everyone would benefit from the research.     

Testing citizen identities: Australian migrants and the Australian values debate

In this paper I explore how recent public debates about Australian values impact on the everyday lives of migrants preparing to become naturalised Australian citizens. Framed through the perspective of governmentality, I combine textual analyses of government documents relating to the Australian citizenship test with ethnographies of recently-arrived migrants in order to demonstrate how political practices related to the conferral of Australian citizenship link and interconnect with the production of migrant subjectivities. In this way, I explore what aspiring citizens think about Australian values and how they contest, accept and negotiate these demands on them to adopt the Australian way of life. The analysis suggests that migrants in this study presented multiple and complex ways of being model Australian citizens. They drew on popular national myths about Australianness promoted in citizenship test resources but they also produced alternative subjectivities that promoted identification with everyday multiculturalism as central to living a happy and prosperous life in Australia.     

The return to the sacred path: Healing the historical trauma and historical unresolved grief response among the lakota through a psychoeducational group intervention

Abstract

This article, based on research conducted with Lakota human service providers, concludes that the Lakota (Teton Sioux) suffer from impaired grief of an enduring and pervasive quality. Impaired grief results from massive cumulative trauma associated with such cataclysmic events as the assassination of Sitting Bull, the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the forced removal of Lakota children to boarding schools.

The research studied a culturally syntonic four‐day psychoeducational intervention designed to initiate a grief resolution process for a group of 45 Lakota human service providers. The methodology included assessment at three intervals: (a)apre‐ and post‐test, utilizing a Lakota Grief Experience Questionnaire andthe semantic differential, (b) a self report evaluation instrument at the end of the intervention, and (c) a six‐week follow‐up questionnaire.

The results confirmed the hypotheses that: (a) education about historical trauma would lead to increased awareness of the impact and associated grief related affects of the traumatic Lakota history, (b) sharing these affects with other Lakota in a traditional context would provide cathartic relief, and (c) grief resolution would be initiated, including a reduction in grief affects, more positive identity, and a commitment to individual and community healing.     

Informal Referrals,Employment, and Wages: Seeking Causal Relationships

Employers and job seekers rely extensively on informal referrals to fill vacancies or to find a job. The widespread use of job contacts has been largely associated with labor outcomes, such as finding a job or even affecting wages. This paper explores whether the use of informal referrals on the job search process affects labor market outcomes of Colombian urban workers. Results indicate that informal referrals are slightly more successful than other job search strategies in term of job seeker's placement. However, referred workers earn in average less than their non‐referred counterparts. Yet, this is only true in formal‐sector positions.     

Selection of Business Practices in the Midst of Evolving Complexity

I admire leaders who, with little experience and training, create organizations that make major contributions in their industries, especially given that a great number of businesses fail. Some fail spectacularly, in headline-grabbing fashion, but most failed businesses implode quietly. In the United States alone, half of small businesses do not survive beyond 5 years; each year more than 1 million file for bankruptcy, and another 1.5 million-plus await bankruptcy resolution. For an organization to survive, the recurring and nonrecurring interlocking behavior of the organization members must ultimately adapt to the complex and dynamic demands of the organization’s external environments. Based on an understanding of behavioral dynamics, this article offers a perspective on how leaders can identify realistic improvements inside their organizations and orchestrate their implementation to better adapt to the requirements of the external environment.     

Managerial sensemaking of interaction within business relationships: A cultural perspective

In this study, we take the perspective of the individual manager in order to understand the role of culture in managerial sensemaking on interaction within business relationships. Extant literature has found business-to-business relationships and interaction between managers to be an essential part of conducting business. However, it has mostly ignored the role of culture in the process. This has not accounted for the possibility that managers with different cultural backgrounds may differently make sense about business interactions.