Managing organizational change—A strategic approach

Developing the competence, commitment and capacity for change of people is a vital element in the creation and maintenance of competitive advantage and should be an integral part of the strategic equations and business plans of any firm. This theme, examples of ‘good’ practice, and strategies to implement a strategic approach to people have been explained and developed in a brief case ‘action pack’ produce by the authors of this article for the MSC and NEDO. Key factors identified in the development of the three ‘C’s are effective leadership, involvement and good employee communications, stress on performance management, appropriate reward systems and training and development.     

Consensual partnering in the more developed countries

An especially spectacular demographic trend in the more developed countries since the mid-1960s has been the increasing frequency with which couples have cohabited without being formally married. This paper summarizes evidence that exists for the emergence of this phenomenon in different countries, and reviews the substantial literature it has generated. The latter part of the paper is organized under the following headings: ‘The international nature of the phenomenon’; ‘Reasons for the rise in consensual partnering’; ‘Who cohabits?’; ‘‘The nature of consensual unions’; ‘Union conversion to marriage and dissolution’; ‘The rise of consensual partnering and the retreat from marriage’; ‘The impact of premarital cohabitation on marital stability’; ‘Childbearing in consensual unions’; and ‘Consensual partnering following marital breakdown’. The view is expressed that research to date often has avoided confronting the diversity of meanings consensual unions have for those who live in them.     

EN-COUNTERING THE OTHER DISCOURSE OF CHICANO-MEXICANO DIFFERENCE

In this period in which Mexicans in the borderlands are being constructed as aliens and sources of cheap deportable labour (not makes of intellectual traditions which encourage transnational area studies and theoretical reflections in the US), it is important to remember that not only people but also ideas cross Mexican–American borders. It is doubly important to scrutinize those intellectual movements that cross state-sanctioned borders while restricting social possibilities and movements.

In this article I consciously assume this charge by focusing critical attention on an influential venue of transnational(ist) travel (On the road to Octavio Paz/On the Road to Chicano) within cultural productions that laid the foundation for an ‘alternative’ Chicano studies epistemology and tradition in the early 1970s. Drawing on disparate cultural studies traditions and the deconstructive insights of Chicana feminists and activists, I encounter the patriarchal dynamics, conceptual idioms, political investments (nationalism/familism) and essentialist difference that undergirded this intellectual formation and its construction of Chicana/o identity. In the process I argue that this formation not only rendered the desired form of political exceptionalism, but also served to distance Chicanas/os from the political and intellectual claims of Chicanas, Chicana feminists and other women and people of colour. However, as my concluding section demonstrates, this circulation of theories was – to use the language of Clifford – ‘cut across’, interrupted and contested by other theories in circulation during the same period that offered different claims to representation, different forms of transnational travel, and other possibilities for imagining social political and intellectual relations.     

Sexual perceptions and practices of young people in Northern Thailand

This study draws together survey and qualitative data on sexual practices among more than 1,750 young Northern Thai people aged 17-20 years. The survey data indicate that sexually active young people frequently engage in, or are subjected to, risk-taking behaviours that may expose them to sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies. These include having multiple sexual partners and quite frequent partner turnover. High percentages also engage in unprotected sexual intercourse with various types of sexual partner (steady, casual and paid), and young women especially had often experienced sexual coercion. Qualitative data revealed a mixture of perceptions and practices affecting sexual intercourse among the young, such as having unplanned sex, engaging in sexual relations to display love or cement committed relationships, and having serial relationships, both monogamous and non-monogamous. We conclude that condom use should be a central focus of activities aimed at preventing adverse sexual health outcomes, but that new intervention approaches to encourage use of other contraceptives are also needed. Changes in sexual norms among young people also need to be acknowledged and accepted by older Thai generations in order for programs and interventions to combat negative sexual and reproductive health consequences to be more effective.     

Toward integrating research on parent–child emotion talk and linguistic theory: A spotlight on parents’ (in)direct communication

Parent–child discussions about emotion are a key socialization influence on children’s socio‐emotional development. Extant research on parent–child discussions about emotion largely focuses on three main types of discourse content: parental elaboration, parental use of emotion labels and explanations, and parental emotion coaching. A new direction involves distinguishing between parents’ direct and indirect communication of discourse content. This distinction may be vital when considering the role of children’s communicative competence in their developing socio‐emotional competence. We integrate literature on (in)direct communication, a concept prominent in linguistics, and emotion socialization. We argue that parental indirect communication can teach children communicative competence in the context of emotion talk. We discuss literature from the developmental and linguistic fields on parents’ teaching of communicative skills, as well as potential cognitive, relational, and emotional functions of indirectness, with communication and its socialization embedded within cultural context. Finally, we suggest new research directions examining the role of parental indirect communication in children’s socio‐emotional development. By integrating developmental and linguistic literatures, we provide a novel approach to the study of parental emotion socialization through parent–child discourse.     

Consensual partnering in Australia: A review and 1991 census profile

This paper is the second in a two-part examination of consensual partnering in Australia. The first part reviewed relevant literature and the deficiencies of census data for capturing the cohabiting population, and presented the basic demography of that population. This part extends the 1991 Census profile of the phenomenon. It traverses socio-demographic (religion and ethnicity), socio-economic (housing, labour force status, occupation and education) and geographic (residential mobility and residential location) attributes of those in consensual unions. It also briefly compares never-married and ever-married cohabitors as two distinct subgroups of the cohabiting population.     

From Caregivers to Caretakers: The Impact of Family Roles on Ethnicity Among Children of Korean and Chinese Immigrant Families

Scholars have long examined the effects of family and community on ethnicity, but they have less to say on why some children may be more receptive to the positive influences of ethnic communities than siblings within the same family. As more immigrants struggle to adapt to the needs and demands of the new global economy, many families are turning to alternative caregiving arrangements that significantly impact the long-term ethnic identities of the second generation. The article considers how adult-age children of immigrants negotiate the emotional disconnects created by these varying contexts of care depending on their individual role within the family and how it shapes their views on ethnicity and culture in their own adult lives. The study focuses in-depth on fourteen semi-structured, in-person interviews with adult-age children of Asian immigrant families in the NY-NJ metropolitan area. Depending on their social status, children of immigrants are integrated into their families: as cultural brokers expected to mediate and care for their family members, as familial dependents who rely on their parents for traditional caregiving functions, or as autonomous caretakers who grow up detached from their parents. I argue that because of their intense engagement with family, cultural brokers describe their ethnic-centered experiences as evoking feelings of reciprocated empathy, whereas on the other end, autonomous caretakers associate their parents’ ancestral culture with ethnocentric exclusion. Depending on how they are able to negotiate the cultural divide, familial dependents generally view their parents’ culture and immigrant experiences through the hierarchical lens of emulation.     

Walk the Walk but Don't Talk the Talk: The Strategic Use of Color‐Blind Ideology in an Interracial Social Movement Organization

In this study, I examine the strategies interracial organizations use in the twenty‐first century, where color‐blind ideology dominates. Much theoretical work on racism examines how it has evolved during different historical periods, but this work does not address how these changing forms of racism affect social movement organizations, particularly those on the left. While the literature on color‐blind ideology has examined how it is expressed by African Americans and European Americans separately, my work investigates how color‐blind ideology operates when European Americans and people of color are working together in the same organizational setting. Studies of social movements have examined how organizational culture affects strategies but have neglected how external racist culture and color‐blind ideology impacts organizational strategies. Findings from 3 years of ethnographic data collected on an interracial social movement organization and its corresponding coalition suggest that activists in interracial organizations use racism evasiveness strategically to maintain solidarity. I conceptualize racism evasiveness as the action resulting from color‐blind ideology within a larger system of racism. While activists perceive advantages to these strategies, there are also long‐term negative consequences. Without explicitly naming and addressing racism, progressive organizations may be limited in their ability to challenge systemic racism.     

Education,Civic Patriotism,and Democratic Citizenship: Unpacking the Education Effect on Political Involvement1

Previous research argues that political involvement not only reflects instrumental concern with political outcomes, but also involves normative motivations such as commitment to collective ideals. Consistent with this view, Americans with a strong sense of “patriotism” have been found to exhibit higher rates of participation than those with weaker attachment to their country ( Huddy and Khatib, 2007 ). However, citizens with high levels of formal education seem to be an exception. Despite scoring lower on conventional measures of “patriotism,” well‐educated Americans are among the most politically active segments of the population. In this article, it is hypothesized that formal education fosters an alternative, civic form of patriotism that conventional measures are unlikely to capture. Rather than reflecting attachment to a particular nation, civic patriotism is rooted in values and beliefs associated with democratic citizenship. Using data from the 2004 General Social Survey, it is found that civic patriotism helps mediate the education effect on two types of political engagement: grass‐roots activism and voting in elections.