Convergences Between Symbolic Interactionism and Systems Theory1,2

This paper explores certain theoretical convergences between symbolic interactionism and systems theory. Important similarities between these two perspectives with respect to their basic ontological and epistemological assumptions are pointed out and discussed. The systems theory concepts of feedback and redundancy are seen to have important counterparts in symbolic interactionism. Finally, the parallel concerns of symbolic interactionism and systems theory with emergence is discussed in terms of the concepts of hierarchical structure and the law of requisite variety.     

Disrespect,Tension, and Togetherness-Apartness in Marriage*

For a study of marital togetherness and apartness, the partners in 136 couples completed questionnaires. The role of disrespect, a factor that might serve as an abrasive in marriage, was investigated. Couples above average on disrespect spent more time apart on days when there had been a big fight, considerable annoyance, or anger; couples below average on disrespect spent more time together on days when there had been a big fight, considerable annoyance, or anger. This finding suggests that therapy for couples with a presenting problem of insufficient contact may first have to deal with abrasive factors.     

Patterns of union membership and relative wages

This paper, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, examines the effects of union membership on the wages of white males. The empirical relationship between current wage and union status is estimated controlling for union status in years before and after the current year. The resulting status profiles are four years long in contrast to one or two years used previously. Results indicate that wage changes experienced when workers join or leave unions vary significantly and systematically across these profiles. For example, a status change that appears to be long-term is associated with larger absolute wage changes than short-term changes in status. The authors thank Jeff Moore for comments and suggestions on an early draft of this paper and express special appreciation to John Raisian for his painstaking and valuable review of a recent draft. We are, of course, responsible for remaining errors.     

CHOICE DILEMMA AS A PREDICTOR OF GROUP RISK BEHAVIOR1

Interest in the Choice Dilemma Questionnaire (CDQ) has centered around the risk shift paradigm rather than around using the CDQ as a measure of an individual's risk preferences. Using 45 lower and middle management bankers as subjects in a computer-based simulation game, the authors found a significant relationship (p < .05) between risk propensity of group members and an independent measure of group risk behavior. Thus, the CDQ may be a more general measure of risk preference than is commonly assumed.     

American Family Building Strategies in 1900: Stopping or Spacing

Contemporary populations frequently space the births of children, and also attempt to stop childbearing after achieving a desired family size. While stopping behavior was evident in European populations in the late nineteenth century, little is known about the degree to which they attempted to space their children at specific interval lengths. This paper compares spacing patterns among various groups of white U.S. women in 1900, who were distinguished by varying family sizes and levels of fertility control. On the whole, there is little evidence of childspacing differences among native white populations, except for some very low parity women. The findings support the continued analysis of age patterns of fertility as the major means for determining the onset of conscious family limitation.     

What is the KKK a Case Of? Extreme Cases as Analytic Device

Social scientists frequently deploy extreme or rare cases as analytic devices to produce insight into broader social processes. Such a move requires that analysts understand what their object of inquiry is in fact “a case of.” Focusing on the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) as one emblematic instance of an extreme case, this article considers the stakes associated with casing decisions around rare and extreme phenomena. Interrogating how the KKK has been understood as both an object of inquiry (i.e. a case) and a signal of broader social processes (i.e. a variable), the discussion emphasizes how to view the associated literature to more reflexively examine the KKK, as well as gain more global insight into the value and cautions associated with using extreme cases to produce generalizable conclusions.     

Service quality in the legal profession: a review

Research into the management of professional service quality, other than in health care, has been very limited, despite being particularly problematical. This paper focuses on the interactive, highly customized and labour-intensive service offered by solicitors to their commercial and corporate clients. The intangible nature of legal services, the natures of the professionals themselves and the firms within which they operate, and the perceptions of risk brought to the service by the client create additional difficulties in managing the service and measuring client perceptions of it. Yet solicitors must understand the requirements of the group of clients they seek to serve in order to design their service to match those needs. Clients have to assume the technical competence of their solicitor. Moreover, they seek confidence when buying legal services. Our research, therefore, sought to gain an understanding of the process used by commercial and corporate clients when evaluating legal service, and of the factors that are key drivers in the creation of confidence.     

Management paradigms for the new millennium

A proliferation of paradigms is occurring in management thought and practice, defining paradigms as means of understanding the world and a basis for informing action. Frequent paradigm shifts are essential for survival in a business context of constant innovation. While the idea of paradigms has been widely received in management, it has been so more as a contested than a settled domain. Management paradigms are far more numerous than those of the natural sciences that Kuhn studied. Kuhn expected the long periods of normality to be marked by an absence of paradigmatic questioning and strife. In management, at any time, there are a number of competing paradigms available. Kuhn was concerned to chart how changing realities of investigation were tied up with changing perceptions. In business the focus has been much more on the changing realities rather than changing perspectives. In any system that is ecologically interdependent, if you change any paradigmatic part then you change the whole. When there is sufficient change and fluidity in a system then we can speak of a ‘paradigm shift’: that period when a shift occurs from one paradigm set to another, the transition from one wave to the next. In these conditions uncertainty and ambiguity will apply. Discontinuous change is a step shift in the rate of change that invalidates existing assumptions and begins to transform the rules of competition.     

原住民运动 ———历史、发展、现状及未来

在中国,原住民泛指居住在边疆地区被称为“少数民族”的群体,虽然有东突厥等民族(原住民)问题时而显露,但在社会主义“多元一体化”的格局中,开始于20世纪60年代,到20世纪80年代发展成为世界规模的原住民运动在我们眼中可被视为他者的话语。文章缜密论述了谁是原住民,较为全面地网罗了各国原住民运动的历史、现状,展望了不容乐观的未来。并就此评判自身所处的日本文化人类学界佯装“客观”进行所谓“非政治”研究,指出文化人类学应该追究研究的意义和结果,尽到学术的道义责任,避免应用人类学御用于同化政策的倾向。显而易见,文章试图从人类学的角度阐释世界范围内存在的原住民政治地位问题。     

Tensions between (Post)Bureaucratic and Neo-normative Demands: Investigating Employees’ Subjective Positions at EurAirport

The introduction of a neo-normative discourse in a (post)bureaucratic organization can result in tensions between the neo-normative injunction to be authentic and exhortations to fit with the ideal (post)bureaucratic organizational subject. Focusing on how shopfloor workers subjectively experience the tensions between neo-normative and (post)bureaucratic demands, this empirical investigation yielded three major contributions. First, it pinpointed and addressed significant gaps in existing studies of normative and neo-normative discourse. Second, the study better distinguished normative and neo-normative control on the basis of two tensions: (1) authenticity versus conformity; and (2) conflation versus differentiation between life and work. Third, the study identified four distinct subject positions that demonstrated how organizational participants creatively appropriate and strive to resolve these two tensions in a work setting that mixes normative and neo-normative control.