Foundation For New Theory Research Articles

Emotion, Persuasion, and Team Adaptation: Advancing Theory Through Cinema

Contemporary models of team adaptation are highly cognitive in nature and operate under the assumption that teams possess the capacity to adapt. However, teams also face contingencies that erode their adaptability, threatening to stall or undermine the adaptation process. Anecdote points to the ability of some teams to employ affective communication to adapt in the face of these internal or external contingencies. Drawing from cinematic examples, we consider how pathos appeals influence team adaptation. Specifically, we examine three cinematic stories in which pathos appeals were used to leverage emotion by adapting teams. These stories enhance our understanding of team adaptation in the face of difficult and often unforeseen challenges, laying the foundation for new theory and an expanded understanding of how emotion and persuasion affect team change. We discuss these implications and propose new directions for future research.

A Generic Competency Framework for Labour Relations Practitioners in the South African Public Service

This article reports on the findings of a qualitative content analysis study that explored the generic competencies required of labour relations practitioners in the South African public service with a view to developing a generic competency framework for these practitioners. Data were gathered through conducting semi-structured interviews with 17 labour relations experts from different institutions. The data were coded and categorised, and themes were identified that characterised the participants’ experiences, perceptions and views, providing evidence about the competencies of labour relations practitioners. From the data, 44 competencies were identified that could be regarded as essential to labour relations practitioners’ successful and efficient fulfilment of their role, and these competencies were grouped into nine themes. A generic competency framework for labour relations practitioners was developed based on the results obtained. The findings of this study could potentially form the foundation of new theory for the advancement, training and development of labour relations practitioners.

A Generic Competency Framework for Labour Relations Practitioners in the South African Public Service

This article reports on the findings of a qualitative content analysis study that explored the generic competencies required of labour relations practitioners in the South African public service with a view to developing a generic competency framework for these practitioners. Data were gathered through conducting semi-structured interviews with 17 labour relations experts from different institutions. The data were coded and categorised, and themes were identified that characterised the participants’ experiences, perceptions and views, providing evidence about the competencies of labour relations practitioners. From the data, 44 competencies were identified that could be regarded as essential to labour relations practitioners’ successful and efficient fulfilment of their role, and these competencies were grouped into nine themes. A generic competency framework for labour relations practitioners was developed based on the results obtained. The findings of this study could potentially form the foundation of new theory for the advancement, training and development of labour relations practitioners.

Defining the Scope of Aid Reduction and Its Challenges for Civil Society Organizations: Laying the Foundation for New Theory

Much of the literature on local civil society organizations and foreign aid focuses on the short-term consequences of funding cycles and contract conditions, but treats foreign aid at the macrolevel like a largely stable condition, as though countries receiving foreign aid will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Empirical evidence of aid reduction, however, suggests that this approach neglects long-term phenomena. This article examines aid patterns on a global scale and explores their potential consequences for civil society organizations. Working from World Bank data, we identify general patterns in country-level aid reduction. We examine the frequency of country-level aid reduction, the magnitude of reduction, its duration, and whether aid reduction tends to be rapid or gradual. Mapping these patterns establishes that country-level reductions in aid are a regularly occurring, global phenomenon. Moreover, even as global ODA levels increase, instances of country-level aid reduction are also increasing. Our findings lay the foundation for building new, generalizable theory about aid reduction and allow us to identify pressing questions about the consequences for civil society organizations in need of further research.

Transition within transition: How young people learn to leave behind institutional care whilst their carers are stuck in neutral

This paper discusses findings from a qualitative longitudinal study which explored the process of leaving long-stay institutional state care in Romania during 2002–4, a period at the heart of accelerated EU-enforced childcare reform. 28 young people were interviewed before leaving care and 17 were tracked up to 8 months after discharge. 18 practitioners were also interviewed. The findings confirmed Pinkerton's (2006) emphasis on the impact of global and national factors on the individual experience of leaving care. This study took place in a country undergoing widespread change. The care leavers' irreversible transition took place within the simultaneous professional transition of their carers and that of the community with which they needed to integrate. This insight is widely relevant in the current context of public funding cuts and changes in welfare policy in many countries, including the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Bridges (2009) was used to understand the experiences of care leavers and their carers. Bridges stresses the role of the leader in creating protective conditions for traversing three unavoidable transition stages: 1. ending old identity/behaviour; 2. a neutral zone of deconstruction and transformation; and 3. a new beginning. Preparation for leaving care can be viewed as learning to end care, followed by the neutral zone which begins at discharge. When lacking family support, formal carers are the young people's main transition guides. However, their professional transition also needs management. Because of top-down, accelerated childcare reforms, the Romanian carers' transitions appeared stuck in the neutral zone, affecting preparation for leaving care. Yet, the availability of learning opportunities after discharge changed the nature of the neutral zone for most of the sample who did better than expected at follow-up. This, supported by Bridges' proposal that learning during transition influences future coping, offers a foundation for new theory.

Race and Democratic Contestation

As the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) passes its fortieth anniversary and soon faces constitutional challenges to its recent renewal, a growing number of liberals and conservatives once united in their unqualified support now share deep reservations about it. In this Article, I argue that the growing skepticism about the VRA and majority-minority districting is misguided by a simplistic and impoverished sensibility about the value of electoral competition in American politics. Electoral competition should be judged with reference to ultimate end states it is intended to produce - more democratic debate, greater civic engagement and participation, and richer political discourse - all of which are generated by a deeper first-order competition among political leaders that I describe as 'democratic contestation.' In the Article, I offer democratic contestation, in place of electoral competition, as a basic value to be pursued in the law of democracy and as foundation for new theory that helps reconcile approaches to race, representation, and political competition. A theory of democratic contestation shifts the normative focus from the pluralist absorption about which groups get what from politics, to a new focus on the tenor and quality of democratic contestation among leaders. When viewed through a theory of democratic contestation, the VRA is crucially pro-competitive in the broader sense of democratic contestation. By carving out safe majority-minority districts, the VRA breaks the discursive stasis of racial polarization in which politics by definition revolve around the single axis of race. A theory of democratic contestation reveals how majority-minority districts energize the process of democratic contestation and enable an internal discourse of ideas that moves beyond the racially polarized divide, otherwise impossible in the face of racial polarized opposition. A theory of democratic contestation thus demands a thorough re-evaluation of the Supreme Court's recent decision in LULAC v. Perry and provides a new understanding of the renewed VRA going forward in the modern political world of national partisan competition.

A Preliminary Investigation of Two Variations of the Grand Battement Devant

Twentieth century technology has given rise to new and exciting methods for the analysis of human motion. With the aid of the motion picture camera a dancer's kick can be frozen and details invisible in normal viewing can be isolated and analyzed. Electrical detecting devices can uncover secrets about the inner workings of the body, its nerves and muscles. Platforms sensitive to the changing dynamics of a movement can tell us how the body generates force, how it locomotes itself and creates artistic effects and qualities which were previously thought of as “mystical” and “denying natural laws”. Numerous ballet technique manuals offer explanations as to the correct execution of dance movements. Although these descriptions are largely in agreement with one another, they are often in conflict with kinesiological information about the general functioning of the human body. Little research exists in the specific area of kinesiology and dance.It is therefore the goal of the present research to clinically examine one selected dance movement, the grand battement devant, in order to form a kinesiological model of its skeletal and muscular components. This information may help provide a means of assessing the great heritage of traditional ballet theory based largely on personal experience and trial and error, and form a foundation for new theory based on objective analysis. The problem was to discover skeletal and muscular patterns when the grand battement is performed with both legs parallel (patellae facing anteriorly), and with both legs “turned out” (femurs laterally rotated as much as possible at the hip joints).