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This article examines the use of team‐based discipline in performance management, with a view toward incorporating literature on punishment and discipline in the context of team dynamics. Using the Arvey and Jones four‐stage model of discipline as the starting point, the article develops a set of propositions regarding differences between discipline in traditional work designs and team‐based discipline. Stage one involves member observation of the rule infraction. Stage two is team determination – whether to ignore or to punish the transgression. Stage three is the choice of discipline method, and stage four involves the employee's perception of the disciplinary action (as well as the perceptions of teammates). Finally, the article concludes with some suggestions for the effective use of team‐based discipline.

Women working in public relations (PR) in the 1990s developed the power of metamodern pragmatism to avoid being constrained in this decade of contradictions.

This was a time of promise for female empowerment and careers. The PR industry in Britain had quadrupled in size, yet increased feminisation and professionalisation did not resolve gender inequity. Indeed, alongside the existence of ‘old boys clubs’ and hedonistic macho agencies in the industry, the 1990s offered a lad's mag culture and an AbFab image of PR.

An original collaborative historical ‘Café Delphi’ method was developed using three themes (sex, sexuality and sexism) to explore women's careers and contributions in the expanding and increasingly powerful field of PR in the United Kingdom during the 1990s. It built on feminist critique of the industry and paradoxical portrayals of women resulting from significant changes in media, popular culture and a pluralistic marketplace.

Individual and collective experiences of women working in PR at the time reveal the power of attitudes to affect their ability to achieve equality and empowerment. Women navigated tensions between the benefits of accelerated pluralism and the patriarchal resistance in the workplace through performative choices and a deep sense of pragmatism.

Popular accounts of the labor movement suggest that unions have become weak organizations. There are, however, trends that indicate laborʼs political power has not waned in recent years. Using data from multiple sources, the results in this study indicate: (1) despite declines in union density, the percentage of union households has remained steady for two decades; (2) unions continue to produce a strong Democratic vote from its membership, even from its white male members; (3) unions are among the top campaign contributors and spenders in American elections; (4) unions hold significant influence among congressional Democrats and have made gains at the state and local level; and (5) public opinion of labor unions has remained consistently positive for several decades.

This study takes the position that the concept of fraud is socially constructed. Moreover, it asks why and how different understandings of fraud have emerged. Insights from the work of Lakoff and Johnson (1999, 2003; Lakoff, 2002, 2004, 2009) are used to analyze language revealing dominant worldviews and metaphors regarding fraud. The research method is a case study (Yin, 2014), and the analytical approach used parallels the one described in O’Dwyer (2004). The research setting is a report issued by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which provides a context to study different understandings of fraud due to the report’s divided nature. The analysis reveals three alternative worldviews, representing different assumptions about reality, that are at the root of the different understandings of fraud. These worldviews also lead to the usage of different conceptual metaphors which allow the commissioners to interpret facts in a manner that supports each worldview’s assumptions. The paper also concludes by providing a nuanced and critical examination of the results of the commission concerning its understanding of fraud.

This chapter explores the symbolic connections between coming of age liminality and identity-oriented consumption practices in postmodern American culture, specifically among adolescent girls.

Forty-two female participants (ages 20–23) participants were asked to answer the general question of “Who am I?” through creating identity collages and writing accompanying narrative summaries for each of three discrete life stages: early adolescence (past-self), late adolescence (present-self), and adulthood (future-self). Data were analyzed using a hermeneutical approach.

Coming of age in postmodern American consumer culture involves negotiating paradoxical identity tensions through consumption-oriented benchmarks, termed “market-mediated milestones.” Market-mediated milestones represent achievable criteria by which adolescents solidify their uncertain liminal self-concepts.

In contrast to the traditional Van Gennepian conceptualization of rites of passage, market-mediated milestones do not necessarily mark a major transition from one social status to another, nor do they follow clearly defined stages. Market-mediated milestones help adolescents navigate liminality through an organic, nonlinear, and incremental coming of age process.

Rather than traditional cultural institutions (e.g., church, family), the marketplace is becoming the central cultural institution around which adolescent coming of age identity is constructed. As such, organizations have the power to create market-mediated milestones for young people. In doing so, organizations should be mindful of adolescent well-being.

This research marks a turning point in understanding traditional rites of passage in light of postmodern degradation of cultural institutions. The institutions upon which traditional rites of passage are based have changed; therefore, our conceptions of what rites of passage are today should change as well.

This chapter tackles the tension between equity and excellence that critics often highlight in opposition of diversity initiatives and efforts in the higher education employment setting. We present several arguments that respond to the assumptions undergirding these criticisms, by drawing on prior research to emphasize that equity and excellence are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, we present new evidence from a national sample of Black and Hispanic Engineering Faculty (BHEF) (n = 68) to argue that their racialized work experiences promote exclusive environments that serve to sustain their underrepresentation and marginalize their performance contributions. We conclude with a new direction for how to cultivate inclusive work environments in higher education.

Despite the appeal of studying successful organizations, valuable tools have also been developed by social scientists for understanding organizations that fail. This study applies one such tool − a model of stages of decline − to the case of the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations), an organization that has arguably been in decline for decades. The AFL-CIO is an interesting case due to the lack of agreement among key constituencies about the appropriate criteria for measuring organizational performance. Reformers and conservatives have struggled over this issue, each viewing the conflict over performance criteria as crucial in determining who will ultimately control the organization. As the AFL-CIO has moved through successive stages of decline, struggle over the organizational mission has grown increasingly intense, finally leading to the exit of major constituencies. This study confirms the value of the concept of stages of decline, and underscores the role of internal politics, especially in a non-profit organization, in setting the criteria for evaluating performance.

This historical analysis investigates treatment of the important discipline of internal communication in a number of globally influential public relations education frameworks over time. The purpose of this paper is to develop insight with the potential to inform future education and professional development programmes.

The conceptual framework for the study is set via discussion of the historical approach, internal communication, professionalization, and knowledge. The historical critical analysis research methodology is used to study data sources including professional body reports and archival documentation. Deductive and inductive coding is combined with template analysis to ensure rigorous qualitative data analysis.

The study finds inconsistent treatment of the internal communication discipline in public relations education frameworks over time. Distinct inclusion was found in early frameworks, clear recognition of the growing importance of internal communication was evident in later guidelines, but the study discovers that the discipline has been excluded from recent frameworks.

While the study draws on relevant data sources credited with international influence, it is limited to sources published in English.

Practical educational and methodological implications of the research are discussed along with avenues for further research including surveys or qualitative research to investigate contemporary views held by practitioners and educators on internal communication curricula.

Social and management implications are discussed including a call for the reinstatement of internal communication in globally influential public relations education frameworks.

The discipline of internal communication is still understudied which is surprising given its impact on organisational effectiveness. Furthermore, little previous attention has been paid to the history of internal communication education. This paper tackles that void, finds inconsistent treatment of the discipline in education frameworks over time, and contributes discussion on why these inconsistencies have occurred.

To some persons, private gardens, public parks, and farms appear to offer a safe way to preserve all of the plants and animals the environment needs. To people who ignore the need for conservation, the idea of paving and pruning and artificially laying out our land from coast to coast seems welcome. Wiser persons perceive that the destruction so imposed on nature would ultimately endanger our existence. The wilderness, with its wealth of animals and plants, holds a treasure from which we already extract the chemicals and genes we need for agricultural breeding, for industrial products, and for healing drugs. What to the layman may look like a disorderly swamp, or a dark forest, or an uninteresting prairie, actually encompasses complicated communities of vegetation and animals of all classes, communities that are held together in a stable balance by their interdependent components. Ecologists are identifying the key principles at work in these ecosystems of wetlands and drylands, forests and prairies. In their search for understanding of how life on our planet functions, they have called attention to the overriding need to preserve and protect the biological diversity that characterizes ecosystems. They have found instances in which short‐sighted human tampering has played havoc with subtle ecological balances. Too frequently entire species have vanished under man's onslaught. Sometimes such a disappearance is an indication that an entire ecosystem is out of balance.