Tom Henkel, Jim Marion and Debra Bourdeau
In this paper, we examined managers’leadership behavior when working on a simulated team project regarding task-oriented versus relationship-oriented leadership behavior to…
Abstract
In this paper, we examined managers’leadership behavior when working on a simulated team project regarding task-oriented versus relationship-oriented leadership behavior to effectively achieve successful project completion.Managers attending an advanced project management development program responded to the Fielder Leadership Behavior Style Self-Assessment, which is a useful framework to determine task-orientedversus relationship-oriented leadership behavioral styles.The degree oftask-oriented versus relationship- oriented leadership behavior styles was assessedto determine the approach taken by the managers forachievingsuccessfulprojectcompletion.APearson’schi-squaretestwasconductedtodeterminewhether the observed values were significantly different from an expected value of five.The findings can contribute to better understanding the leadership styles, which characterize project management accomplishment.
Robin Roberts, Valerie Denney and Jim W. Marion
Researchers have investigated best practices for forming groups capable of completing projects cohesively for years. Online group formation has increased in recent years, peaking…
Abstract
Purpose
Researchers have investigated best practices for forming groups capable of completing projects cohesively for years. Online group formation has increased in recent years, peaking scientific interest in the sentiment that characterizes group cohesion from the point when the group is established to the stage where specific outcomes are produced. This research contributes to understanding online group dynamics by analyzing the sentiment of university students completing multiple nine-week group course projects with implications for workplaces.
Design/methodology/approach
Over eight nine-week terms, sentiment analyses were conducted on students' online reflection assignments, targeting their views on group interactions during group project completion. The assignment's context was to assess individual sentiment about the group experience that could build group sentiment implications for workplaces. Adult students from diverse academic and industry disciplines at a single university were participants. Four group models were considered possible drivers of student sentiment about their group experiences.
Findings
Punctuated Equilibrium, a classic group model, defined influences like remote distances and external obligations steering student sentiment outcomes. Instructors' active facilitation of group formation and development motivated students’ positive sentiments. Findings are akin to online organizational groups’ attempts to manage remote work and other responsibilities.
Originality/value
This study reinforced the importance of leveraging online students' collective sentiment to inform group dynamics in professional settings. Few studies have focused on the latter directly and exclusively. The results highlighted the sentiment kinship of online academic and organizational groups, validating the focused investigation of this study.
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There is little further to be gained from focusing on the mere number of pupils in a class: from carrying out a crude measure of achievement, or from attempting to study in…
Abstract
There is little further to be gained from focusing on the mere number of pupils in a class: from carrying out a crude measure of achievement, or from attempting to study in isolation features of the learning environment that are meaningless torn from their context.
Larry W. Isaac, Daniel B. Cornfield, Dennis C. Dickerson, James M. Lawson and Jonathan S. Coley
While it is generally well known that nonviolent collective action was widely deployed in the US southern civil rights movement, there is still much that we do not know about how…
Abstract
While it is generally well known that nonviolent collective action was widely deployed in the US southern civil rights movement, there is still much that we do not know about how that came to be. Drawing on primary data that consist of detailed semistructured interviews with members of the Nashville nonviolent movement during the late 1950s and 1960s, we contribute unique insights about how the nonviolent repertoire was diffused into one movement current that became integral to moving the wider southern movement. Innovating with the concept of serially linked movement schools – locations where the deeply intense work took place, the didactic and dialogical labor of analyzing, experimenting, creatively translating, and resocializing human agents in preparation for dangerous performance – we follow the biographical paths of carriers of the nonviolent Gandhian repertoire as it was learned, debated, transformed, and carried from India to the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and Howard University to Nashville (TN) and then into multiple movement campaigns across the South. Members of the Nashville movement core cadre – products of the Nashville movement workshop schools – were especially important because they served as bridging leaders by serially linking schools and collective action campaigns. In this way, they played critical roles in bridging structural holes (places where the movement had yet to be successfully established) and were central to diffusing the movement throughout the South. Our theoretical and empirical approach contributes to the development of the dialogical perspective on movement diffusion generally and to knowledge about how the nonviolent repertoire became integral to the US civil rights movement in particular.
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Larry W. Isaac, Daniel B. Cornfield and Dennis C. Dickerson
Knowledge of how social movements move, diffuse, and expand collective action events is central to movement scholarship and activist practice. Our purpose is to extend…
Abstract
Knowledge of how social movements move, diffuse, and expand collective action events is central to movement scholarship and activist practice. Our purpose is to extend sociological knowledge about how movements (sometimes) diffuse and amplify insurgent actions, that is, how movements move. We extend movement diffusion theory by drawing a conceptual analogue with military theory and practice applied to the case of the organized and highly disciplined nonviolent Nashville civil rights movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s. We emphasize emplacement in a base-mission extension model whereby a movement base is built in a community establishing a social movement school for inculcating discipline and performative training in cadre who engage in insurgent operations extended from that base to outlying events and campaigns. Our data are drawn from secondary sources and semi-structured interviews conducted with participants of the Nashville civil rights movement. The analytic strategy employs a variant of the “extended case method,” where extension is constituted by movement agents following paths from base to outlying campaigns or events. Evidence shows that the Nashville movement established an exemplary local movement base that led to important changes in that city but also spawned traveling movement cadre who moved movement actions in an extensive series of pathways linking the Nashville base to events and campaigns across the southern theater of the civil rights movement. We conclude with theoretical and practical implications.
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When Jim Rettig asked me to reply to the question, “If you were stranded on a desert island and had to create a reference/information service with only ten sources, which ten…
Abstract
When Jim Rettig asked me to reply to the question, “If you were stranded on a desert island and had to create a reference/information service with only ten sources, which ten would you choose?” the reference librarian in me wanted to respond with some questions of my own. However, Jim indicated that he wished his query to be left somewhat vague, so that different people answering it would let their imaginations produce answers with variety and interest to RSR readers. So I found myself in the position of a reference librarian at systems headquarters with a mailed‐in question, having to make guesses and follow hunches about the real needs and interests of the questioner.
Cara E. Rabe-Hemp, Philip Mulvey and Morgan Foster
Issues of crime, justice, and incarceration play a crucial role in electoral politics. Recent Gallup polls reveal that nearly half of Americans view crime as an extremely serious…
Abstract
Issues of crime, justice, and incarceration play a crucial role in electoral politics. Recent Gallup polls reveal that nearly half of Americans view crime as an extremely serious or very serious problem. Such polls also reveal that Americans have little confidence in the criminal justice system. These issues have been exacerbated recently by the deaths of several young Black men including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, and Laquan McDonald in Chicago, Illinois, which brought national attention to the strained relationships between local law enforcement agencies and the communities that they are sworn to serve and protect. Ironically, this concern coincides with a U.S. crime rate that has dropped steadily for more than a decade. Why is the American public increasingly concerned with crime if crime rates are steadily dropping? This chapter explores the role of crime, politics, and media imagery in the making of criminal justice policy. We argue that crime is one of the most enduring political issues of this century and that, in turn, politicians have played a fundamental role in constructing criminal justice policies. The implications for public governance and policymaking are many, as criminal justice policies rely on the public perception of officials as legitimate and just. Scandal and corruption reduce the legitimacy of public officials and lead to public questions about the discretionary decision-making of criminal justice actors as well as the disproportionate consequences in the criminal justice system for poor and minority communities.