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The purpose of this study was to describe any patterns of distinctive sociocultural adaptation in the form of exchanges of time and money between American households, and to determine whether any observed racial or ethnic differences remain after controlling for social background characteristics. We tested one dimension of the sociocultural adaptation hypothesis — Through processes of distinctive sociocultural adaptation, minority group members learn to survive by adjusting behaviors, values, and informal organization in response to demands and stressors in their social environment. The focal adaptation in our study involved instrumental and expressive exchanges between households. The findings showed that minority groups on average were less likely to participate in instrumental and expressive exchanges between households as compared to the majority group. The study involved a secondary analysis of data collected in 1987–1988 as part of the National Survey of Families and Households (N= 13,017). Logistic regression was used to test for racial and ethnic variations in a multivariate context.

This conceptual chapter addresses identification, development, and application of change management competencies directed at creating more collaborative work systems through transformation of existing businesses. The chapter draws on, and assesses, selected key ideas and works in the available literatures on change management and collaboration (applied both internally and externally), including reported cases of revealing successful and failed change efforts. Improved collaboration is posited to be desirable and feasible, in certain circumstances. Change management and organizational transformation are big and broad topics, with large conceptual and empirical literatures, as is the topic of collaborative work systems. There is here a deliberate narrowing of focus on how to obtain more collaboration in and between existing organizations, where desirable but not occurring naturally. Attention is explicitly directed to transformation of existing businesses as distinct from the relative managerial freedom afforded in startup situations and the almost natural change processes inherent in successful innovation firms. Any shift from conventional to collaborative work approaches is a transformational problem drawing on change management competencies. A fundamental difficulty is the absence of empirically verified theories immediately relevant to management practice. Useful knowledge on these important matters has been built up piecemeal and experientially.