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This paper aims to empirically establish necessity conditions within a relational context. The formulated necessary condition-based hypotheses are drawn from and are anchored in extant relational and psychology literature. The authors focus on three relational dimensions that have attracted considerable attention – relational culture, relational decency (RD) and relational readiness, as well as on workplace social inclusion. The three relational dimensions serve as the study’s independent variables as the authors explore their necessity for workplace social inclusion.

This study seeks to explore the civility dimensions of RD, culture and readiness, as defined by the workplace relational civility index and examine just how necessary they are for workplace social inclusion. Drawing on a sample of 160 employees from various industries, and using necessary condition analysis (NCA) to revisit key relational dimensions and the extent to which they are necessary for heightened social inclusion. Because NCA is fundamentally a bivariate analysis method, with only one X and Y being analyzed at a time, the method generates unique quantified parameters that allow for the selection of only those variables that meet necessity conditions for a desired level of an outcome.

Drawing on a sample of 160 employees from various industries, and using NCA, the authors find support for two out of three hypotheses. Specifically, a high level of RD and readiness emerge as statistically significant conditions that are necessary for a high level of social inclusion in today’s workplace. Relational culture emerged as an insignificant condition and thus appears to be unnecessary for ensuring high level of social inclusion.

This study was limited to self-report measures, which are subject to recall and response bias. In addition, the sample size (n = 160), while robust, cannot be reliably used to make inferences about the greater population.

These results have practical implications for leaders, who are faced with managing a post-pandemic workforce that has presented some serious organization-level challenges. Workers who are in demand to fill new and existing jobs are leaving their current jobs in unprecedented numbers, making it necessary to consider new ways to attract and retain them. This research points to the importance of individual-level civility as a foundation for fostering an organizational culture of inclusion, employee job satisfaction and retention.

In the sample of professional workers, capitalizing on behaviors that reinforce and promote decency and readiness may appear sufficient for social inclusion, yet they ought to be complemented by further nurturing, training and crafting of policies that safeguard inclusion. Both decency and readiness related behaviors emerge as priorities for in-house training and coaching that managers across industries cannot, and should not, ignore.

Workplace social inclusion as an outcome, is the study’s dependent variable. Although these capabilities are conceptually and empirically studied by several works, as the authors discuss next, most reported findings have been correlational in nature. Namely, they explored the average effect of a single variable, or the average effect of a combination of relational variables, on different outcomes. Yet, our review of the literature suggests that no empirical study has employed NCA as a research method, making our current effort a modest attempt to apply NCA to the relational field.

The emergence of climate science denialism in the United States provides a challenge to STS theories of the relationship between scientific expertise and public policy because a situation of epistemic rift occurs: the capacity of scientific consensus to establish the grounds of political debate is broken, and the standard circulation of expertise from the scientists and funding from the state is interrupted. Three mechanisms for the containment of scientific expertise are studied: direct intellectual suppression of climate scientists, industry support of contrarian scientists and policymakers, and cutbacks on government research programs that support climate change. This situation politicizes climate scientists, who are drawn into the public sphere as a counterpublic to the effort to contain the circulation of their knowledge in the political field. Although the strategy of contained expertise has been effective in blocking climate legislation at the federal government level in the United States, it may be losing effectiveness, and an emergent alternative strategy based on adaptation may be coming to replace it. Factors that affect the reduction in the capacity to contain the circulation of scientific expertise are also analyzed.

“Rational planning models” emerged in the early 1970's as a means by which to plan more effectively and efficiently in educational organizations. One of the most well known and widely distributed of these models was developed by Phi Delta Kappa, the educational fraternity. This paper describes a field study conducted in five Vermont schools that were “early users” of the Phi Delta Kappa material. The outcomes reveal many discrepancies between the theory and the reality of planning in public schools. In addition to the Vermont research, other research is cited that supports many of the findings and relates them to planning in schools in general. The article concludes by linking the study outcomes to recent works by other authors on the emerging concepts of loosely coupled systems, garbage can organizations, and organized anarchies and implications these concepts hold for alternative approaches to planning in educational settings.

In this paper, which was presented at a Conference for Lecturers in Educational Administration held in Melbourne in August 1981, the author expands upon past criticisms of the phenomenological and Marxist perspectives, provides an extensive analysis of the concept of loose coupling and puts forward a philosophical alternative to the phenomenological and positivistic positions. The interplay of philosophical viewpoints with issues in theory, research and preparation in educational administration is emphasized.

Purpose – The chapter studies gender occupational segregation of rural-urban migrant workers in China based on 2006 survey data from five Chinese cities.

Methodology – The multinomial logit (MNL) model is used to analyze migrant workers' occupational attainment by gender. The Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition method is employed to analyze factors affecting gender occupational segregation, which can be classified into observed factors and unobserved factors, including gender discrimination.

Findings – The index of dissimilarity based on the data shows that gender occupational segregation for migrant workers exists. The result of Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition shows that the unobserved effects account for more than three-fourths of the total gender occupational segregation.

Research limitations – The “index problem” and the assumption of the same occupational preference between men and women of the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition need to be addressed further.

Social implications – The existing gender equality policies and social protection confined to urban workers should be extended to migrant workers. Increasing training investment in migrant workers is also recommended.

The study examines the impact of presence, synchronicity of exposure and other variables on allocative decisions reached following a participatory budgeting event.

The study analyzes the distributive decisions reached following a participatory budgeting event, which took place in an academic institution, and students were asked to determine the distribution of a portion of the student union budget. Some students viewed the event live (physically or remotely), while others watched it in delay.

The main variable affecting allocative decisions was whether decision-makers were exposed to the event physically or remotely. There was a significant and large difference between allocation decisions of participants who were physically present at the event and those who were exposed to it remotely.

The discussion elaborates on the implications of the findings for the importance of presence and media selection in public engagement events.

Public engagement events are becoming widespread, with the Internet being a major tool in their administration. This study demonstrates that using the Internet to make such events accessible to the non-physically present can create significant changes in decisions reached by participants.