In his classic World Risk Society (1999) Ulrich Beck emphasised modernisation entails a relentless wave of human-made disasters—toxic spills, industrial accidents, transportation…
Abstract
In his classic World Risk Society (1999) Ulrich Beck emphasised modernisation entails a relentless wave of human-made disasters—toxic spills, industrial accidents, transportation stoppages, and power outages, for example. Simultaneously these modern ‘risk societies’ must also withstand natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes. Building on Beck’s principle that disaster risks accumulate as societies advance technologically, we explore the necessity of public health and political leadership to win over support of the traditional ethnic Black community to implement effectively COVID-19 pandemic policies. The term Black community used in this chapter has been used only for representation and must be interpreted broadly beyond ethnic and discriminatory limitations.
This chapter will show that, to reach their COVID-19 pandemic control objectives, US public health and political officials had to incorporate the longstanding ethnic and racial identity of Black communities. These authorities did this by utilising traditional cultural resources of Black communities such as churches and popular cultural figures. Political, corporate, and public health leadership was also heavily influenced by the Black protests in the months following the George Floyd police murder. Medical policy authorities publicly endorsed and advocated the health and social justice grievances of Black communities while the George Floyd riots raged. This US case study illustrates the power of the ethnic dimension and ideological anti-racism in society’s response to the increasingly complex web of disasters including the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Janina Seutter, Michelle Müller, Stefanie Müller and Dennis Kundisch
Whenever social injustice tackled by social movements receives heightened media attention, charitable crowdfunding platforms offer an opportunity to proactively advocate for…
Abstract
Purpose
Whenever social injustice tackled by social movements receives heightened media attention, charitable crowdfunding platforms offer an opportunity to proactively advocate for equality by donating money to affected people. This research examines how the Black Lives Matter movement and the associated social protest cycle after the death of George Floyd have influenced donation behavior for campaigns with a personal goal and those with a societal goal supporting the black community.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper follows a quantitative research approach by applying a quasi-experimental research design on a GoFundMe dataset. In total, 67,905 campaigns and 1,362,499 individual donations were analyzed.
Findings
We uncover a rise in donations for campaigns supporting the black community, which lasts substantially longer for campaigns with a societal than with a personal funding goal. Informed by construal level theory, we attribute this heterogeneity to changes in the level of abstractness of the problems that social movements aim to tackle.
Originality/value
This research advances the knowledge of individual donation behavior in charitable crowdfunding. Our results highlight the important role that charitable crowdfunding campaigns play in promoting social justice and anti-discrimination as part of social protest cycles.
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Dana V. Lema, Bethany Bones, Alexandra Franz-Harder, Robyn Huff-Eibl, Nisha Mody, Gerald J. Perry and Megan Senseney
The University of Arizona Libraries (UAL) has engaged in learning and applying trauma-informed concepts since 2020. These efforts followed conversations about how to…
Abstract
The University of Arizona Libraries (UAL) has engaged in learning and applying trauma-informed concepts since 2020. These efforts followed conversations about how to compassionately uphold the libraries' Code of Conduct (CoC). Conversations occurred against the backdrop of the global COVID-19 pandemic, a national racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd and a series of local incidents including border control, racial aggression, insecure access to basic needs and mental health services, and the recent on-campus homicide of a faculty member. In response, the library's Diversity, Social Justice, and Equity Council (DSJEC) began working to identify resources for trauma-informed services and leadership. UAL has interrogated the ways in which the CoC serves both as a response to expressions of trauma and a potential perpetuating source of trauma for patrons and staff. Moreover, many staff members have experienced trauma that occurred either within or outside the workplace that affects their work experience. UAL contracted with relational healing and life coach Nisha Mody to deliver a series of webinars introducing trauma-informed concepts and connecting them to academic library work.
A result of trauma-informed training was a deeper knowledge of trauma-informed principles and their connection to systemic inequity and power. For this reason, UAL and other academic libraries may encounter challenges when applying trauma-informed practices within the administrative and cultural context of higher education.
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The combination of previously unassociated terms in a metaphor can helpfully illustrate particular characteristics of a person, phenomenon or practice. However, it can also…
Abstract
The combination of previously unassociated terms in a metaphor can helpfully illustrate particular characteristics of a person, phenomenon or practice. However, it can also obfuscate because the focus on some elements may come at the expense of others. The metaphor of the landscape is somewhat ubiquitous in academic literature, and this paper is specifically interested in the ‘higher education landscape’, which is widely used in scholarly – as well as media and policy – writing. By applying thematic analysis to a sample of publications which invoke the term, this paper comprises what Haslanger calls a descriptive and ameliorative approach to investigate both how and why this metaphor is used. By considering these publications cumulatively, we can identify that the higher education landscape enables scholars to simultaneously acknowledge higher education's temporal, social and political positioning, its state of what can feel like permanent and wide-ranging flux, and its diverse cast of interrelated actors. In this way, it serves as a useful and evocative container metaphor for higher education's activities and constituents and the interrelationships and tensions between them. At the same time, its somewhat indiscriminate and indeterminate use can conflate and mask the detail and nature of these dynamics, and it is possible to discern in its application a collective sense of nervousness and uncertainty about higher education more generally.
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David Wasieleski, Nuno Guimarães da Costa and Olga Ivanova Ruffo
This conceptual paper aims to present a new, integrated model for change readiness that focuses on affective sensemaking among intra-organizational members. Change processes are…
Abstract
Purpose
This conceptual paper aims to present a new, integrated model for change readiness that focuses on affective sensemaking among intra-organizational members. Change processes are often hindered by lack of preparedness, which can be justified by organizational members' emotional resistance to change and divergent understandings of its meaning. Our paper proposes a normative model depicting the interactive process between middle-managers and employees until convergence of meaning is achieved and the organization is ready to change.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors offer a conceptual process model that describes how employees prepare for organizational change. The model illustrates how emotionally laden narratives enable employees to make sense of organizational change communicated by middle managers.
Findings
The sensemaking process is initiated by the negative emotions employees often experience when organizational change is first presented. Then middle managers must transform the negative felt emotions into positive valence via the strategic use of narratives that contain an affective component. This is done to increase the likelihood that convergent sensemaking takes place. Until this stage, intra-organizational members holding different perspectives about the need to change, engage in discussions in which the conflicting views are supported by the instrumental and systematic use of emotional tools with different valence.
Research limitations/implications
First, we contribute to the change readiness literature by offering a detailed process for managers to influence individual readiness for change in their organizations. Our paper proposes a normative model depicting the interactive process between middle-managers and employees until convergence of meaning is achieved and the organization is ready to change. Future work needs to empirically test our model.
Practical implications
We contribute to the sensemaking literature by integrating positive and negative valence into the process for understanding organizational change. Finally, we contribute to our practical understanding of convergent sensemaking processes through the strategic use of narratives in organizations.
Social implications
Our paper proposes a normative model depicting the interactive process between middle-managers and employees until convergence of meaning is achieved and the organization is ready to organizational and social change.
Originality/value
Our main contributions are three-fold. First, we contribute to the change readiness literature by offering a detailed process for managers to influence individual readiness for change in their organizations. Secondly, we contribute to the sensemaking literature by integrating positive and negative valence into the process for understanding organizational change. Finally, we contribute to our understanding of convergent sensemaking processes through the strategic use of narratives.
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Gaea Morales, Anthony Tirado Chase, Michelle E. Anderson and Sofia Gruskin
What does the relationship between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and human rights look like in practice at the local level? With Los Angeles as a case study, we focus…
Abstract
What does the relationship between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and human rights look like in practice at the local level? With Los Angeles as a case study, we focus on the partnership between universities and the Mayor’s Office in the localization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The co-creation of student “Task Forces” with city officials and the evolution of the use of the Goals in planning over time demonstrate how localization created opportunities to identify and act on human rights issues through SDG implementation at the city level.
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Ida Ayu Kartika Maharani, Badri Munir Sukoco, David Ahlstrom and Indrianawati Usman
This study aims to explore how manufacturing firms in emerging economies can effectively adjust the rhythm and shift frequency between exploitation and exploration renewal. The…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how manufacturing firms in emerging economies can effectively adjust the rhythm and shift frequency between exploitation and exploration renewal. The authors also examine how these strategic adjustments can significantly boost firm performance, offering insights into the dynamic process of strategic renewal.
Design/methodology/approach
This study analyzes annual reports of 127 Indonesian manufacturing firms from 2014 to 2019, applying both linear and curvilinear regression models to examine the hypotheses. Data on exploration and exploitation renewal were meticulously gathered using computer-aided text analysis, using targeted keywords to identify strategic renewal efforts.
Findings
The study shows that a rather irregular balance rhythm between exploitation and exploration renewal surprisingly enhances firm performance. A curvilinear relationship emerges as performance peaks when the shift frequency of renewal occurs about three times. This relationship optimizes the strategic renewal processes, emphasizing that firms need to remain agile and adaptable in today’s dynamic market environment.
Originality/value
This study leverages organizational learning to assess how the paradoxical dimensions of exploration and exploitation renewal impact firm performance. By focusing on the temporal transition of these tensions, it provides insights into optimizing the rhythm and shift frequency of renewal, transitioning from a static to a dynamic accord.
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Rhiannon Roberts, Isabella E. Castillo, David R. White and Joseph Schafer
The level of cynicism officers experience can directly impact their day-to-day decisions, especially in policing’s currently strained climate. This paper provides an updated…
Abstract
Purpose
The level of cynicism officers experience can directly impact their day-to-day decisions, especially in policing’s currently strained climate. This paper provides an updated systematic review of the predictors, outcomes and conceptualizations of police cynicism within the relevant literature.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic review was conducted utilizing the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach. Results from the 56 articles published after Langworthy’s 1987 systematic review are included. It was hypothesized that due to the current climate, police cynicism may be more discussed within the literature, especially when examined with the “Ferguson Effect.”
Findings
Researchers conceptualize police cynicism in various ways outside the traditional measures. Officers who were more cynical were more likely to maintain tougher law enforcement orientations and may have been more likely to engage in problem behaviors. Lack of internal support was related to organizational cynicism. Support for the Ferguson effect and demographic-related variables (tenure, racial identity and gender) on police cynicism yielded mixed findings despite the field’s inclination of their augmenting impact.
Research limitations/implications
More research needs to be conducted on operationalizing and conceptualizing police cynicism. Researchers should establish standardized measures of police cynicism to help disaggregate results, as well as recruit from multiple agencies to increase generalizability.
Originality/value
This review is the first literature review conducted on police cynicism since Langworthy’s 1987 review. Exploring data post-1987 illustrates contemporary conceptualizations of police cynicism and related significant findings.