Implications For Social Relations Research Articles

Tensions as a framework for managing work in collaborative workplaces: A review of the empirical studies

AbstractCompanies are increasingly implementing collaborative workplaces (CWs) to promote office collaboration and flexibility. Despite the rapid diffusion of CWs across industries and organizations, research findings suggest that their benefits often fail to materialize due to the existence of tensions and contradictions that develop through the daily actions and interactions of workplace users. This literature review sheds some light on the development of tensions and contradictions in CWs by focusing on their implications for social relations at work. This review identifies the oppositional tensions that surface in CW research findings:flexibility vs structure,fluidity vs stabilityandexposure vs privacy. In disclosing the underlying mechanisms, this study connects these tensions and their management to the autonomy–control paradox that emerges in CWs. It concludes by suggesting some approaches that are available to managers to assist them in dealing with tensions and unleashing creativity, participation and adaptability.

Tensions as a Frame for Managing Work in Collaborative Workplaces: A Literature Review

Companies are increasingly implementing Collaborative Workplaces (CWs) to promote office collaboration and flexibility. Despite the rapid diffusion of CWs across industries and organizations, research findings suggest that their benefits often fail to materialize, due to the existence of tensions and contradictions that develop through the daily actions and interactions of workplace users. This literature review sheds some light on the development of tensions and contradictions in CWs by focusing on their implications for social relations at work. This review identifies the oppositional tensions that surface in CW research findings: flexibility vs. structure, fluidity vs. stability, and accessibility vs. privacy. In disclosing the underlying mechanisms, this study tied these tensions and their management to the autonomy-control paradox that emerges in CWs. It concludes by suggesting some approaches that are available to managers to deal with tensions and avoid inconsistencies.

Understanding marital violence: a study in grounded theory.

Objective:to understand the phenomenon of marital violence based on the experience of women in judicial process and network professionals.Method:a qualitative study, with theoretical-methodological support in grounded theory. Data collection took place in two regional Courts for Peace in the Home in a municipality of the Brazilian Northeast. Interviews were conducted with 38 participants, who composed two sample groups: women in situations of violence and network professionals.Results:the understanding of marital violence emerged for the phenomenon “Experiencing marital violence as a progressive and cyclical process, with repercussions for health and implications for social relations”.Conclusion:in recognizing marital violence as a recurring problem in the life of women, with implications for their own health and that of their children, the study points to the relevance of coping strategies based on institutional and social support.

A Contested Inheritance: The Family and the Law from the Enlightenment to the French Revolution

This article examines a particularly interesting inheritance case from late-eighteenth-century France to study the intersection of legal practices and Enlightenment ideas at the end of the Old Regime. The case, involving dispute around the estate of a deceased tax farmer, addresses family relations broadly within the specific context of inheritance and spousal assets. The five briefs produced on appeal to the Parlement of Paris show particular engagement with Enlightenment themes of reason, nature, and sentiment. The family was a locus of particular interest in eighteenth-century France because of its implications for social relations and its connection, through inheritance, to royal sovereignty. However, family law has been primarily studied from the perspective of practices, whereas the present article focuses on ideals. The article argues that the courtroom was an important site where the diverse implications of Enlightenment thought on family law were worked out. The argument that family law was a site for integrating ideals into practices has implications for how we think about the relationship between law and social change, as well as, in particular, the relationship between Enlightenment and Revolution.

Extended Writing Demands – A Tool for ‘Academic Drift’ and the Professionalisation of Early Childhood Profession?

ABSTRACTThis study explores the extended demands for writing in the Swedish public service sector of early childhood and how academic writing in the higher education programmes aimed at professional work in that sector is perceived to be of value for early childhood practice among practitioners. Empirical data was collected in individual interviews and focus groups among 65 early childhood staff in two different communities. The study points to an overall focus on assessments and evaluation in professional writing which tends to challenge everyday communication, i.e. everyday discourse for an internal audience (staff, parents and children). The study further indicates that professional writing holds implications for social relations and contributes to strengthened hierarchies among early childhood staff; younger generations more trained in academic writing tend to be ‘ranked’ higher than staff more experienced in practice. Whether the twin demands for ‘professional’ and ‘academic’ writing will contribute to a ‘professional’ early childhood staff community, as suggested in policy and teacher union rhetoric, remains an open question.

Intimate encounters: the negotiation of difference within the family and its implications for social relations in public space

This paper focuses on the neglected issue of encounters with difference within the context of family life at a moment in time when families are increasingly characterised by dissimilarity as a product of mobility and individualisation. The study upon which this paper is based involved both a survey of social attitudes (survey n = 3021) and qualitative multi‐stage research (n = 60). The evidence of the findings is that intra‐familial diversity does produce more positive attitudes in public life towards the specific social group that an individual family member is perceived to represent. However, such positive attitudes are not translated beyond this specific ‘difference’ to challenge wider prejudices towards other groups. As such, this research contributes to literatures on geographies of encounter and the geographies of family life by exposing the limits of intimate contact with difference in changing the way social relationships are lived in the wider world.

Envy in the process of development: Implications for Social Relations and Conflict

This article examines envy as an important cultural link between inequality, institutions, development, and conflict. It argues that envy can be either a source of strife and stagnation or an engine for peaceful competition and growth. The fundamental conditions that activate the constructive side of envy and shut down its destructive side are access to productive investment opportunities, equality, security of property rights, and mild social comparisons. The dominant role of envy in society gives rise to a set of related cultural norms and beliefs that affect economic performance and social relations. While constructive envy is manifested in emulation or even envy-provocation -standard features of a consumer society- destructive envy produces a fear-of-envy culture that hampers economic incentives and creates an environment of suspicion and conflict.

Do friends always help your studies? Mediating processes between social relations and academic motivation

Previous studies suggest that social relations can increase one’s motivation to learn in school. However, other evidence showed that having more friends may also distract from one’s academic involvement. To understand the mechanisms behind this apparent contradiction, this study identified and tested the effects of a potentially important positive and negative mediator between social relations and academic motivation. A total of 226 university students were used to test the hypothesized path model. Results showed that the impact of social relations on students’ academic motivation was negatively mediated by alcohol use, but positively mediated by their place attachment to the university, although the model fit differed for women and men. Implications for social relations, school policy and freshman orientation programs are discussed.

Globalizing Trends or Identities through Time? The longue durée in Karamojong1 Ethnography

Using a range of oral and documentary sources, this article presents a detailed account of how Karamojong traditions have varied over time according to historical contingencies, while retaining a strong commitment to communal will even when this runs counter to perceived global trends. The very dominance of the global discourses surrounding issues of development in the Karamojong country may sometimes drown out local voices and can seem to relegate African agency to a matter of little importance. Despite this appearance of globalizing trends, African agency in Karamojong does in fact remain robustly active in a variety of important social contracts. In marriage, for instance, while the girl's freedom of choice has in some senses reduced, in others it can recently be shown to have increased; similarly, the quantity of bridewealth paid or pledged upon marriage has undergone fluctuations in the recent past, with implications for social relations. In warriorhood, too, new weapons have been acquired in recent times but the gun has long been part of the pastoralist arsenal for Karamojong. It is shown here that the aim and rôle of raiding have changed little over time, and the associated rituals have not atrophied with any secularisation due to the possession of Western technology. The power of Karamojong elders has been challenged by that of government administration and by the cyclical disequilibria of the age-class system, but traditional politics remain more sovereign than the state. African institutions have their history, too, and while it is a history of change it is not necessarily a history of decline.

The production of private space and its implications for urban social relations

Abstract The paper focuses on what has been termed the privatization of urban public space and the negative consequences attributed to this transformation. The first part examines this dichotomy between public and private space and finds it to be more apparent than real, insofar as it is difficult to claim a sharp conceptual distinction between the two; moreover, the social benefits of public space are shown to be overdrawn, while those of private space are shown to be commonly overlooked. Having begun to dismantle the dichotomy, the second part of the paper discusses the public–private spaces in a rapidly growing metropolitan area in the Southwestern US and explores their implications for social relations. Given that these newer spaces are less different than is sometimes claimed, it is not surprising that they display some familiar forms of social interaction.

The Gender Stereotyping of Emotions

Three studies documented the gender stereotypes of emotions and the relationship between gender stereotypes and the interpretation of emotionally expressive behavior. Participants believed women experienced and expressed the majority of the 19 emotions studied (e.g., sadness, fear, sympathy) more often than men. Exceptions included anger and pride, which were thought to be experienced and expressed more often by men. In Study 2, participants interpreted photographs of adults' ambiguous anger/sadness facial expressions in a stereotype-consistent manner, such that women were rated as sadder and less angry than men. Even unambiguous anger poses by women were rated as a mixture of anger and sadness. Study 3 revealed that when expectant parents interpreted an infant's ambiguous anger/sadness expression presented on videotape only high-stereotyped men interpreted the expression in a stereotype-consistent manner. Discussion focuses on the role of gender stereotypes in adults' interpretations of emotional expressions and the implications for social relations and the socialization of emotion.

Juthaa in Trinidad: food, pollution, and hierarchy in a Caribbean diaspora community

Focusing on the Hindi term juthaa—food and drink that have become “polluted” by being partially consumed—this article explores pollution ideology and its implications for social relations and the construction of identity among Hindu and Muslim East Indians in Trinidad. It suggests that in this overseas community the salience of the concept of juthaa, though caste derived, is indicative of an egalitarian morality at work in concert with hierarchical principles. This, in turn, has implications for the way we understand cultural reproduction and change, ritual, and stratification among diaspora populations. [pollution ideology, social stratification, South Asian diaspora, transnational identities, Trinidad]

By the hunter, for the gatherer: Art, social relations and subsistence change in the prehistoric Great Basin

Abstract The western Great Basin witnessed a transition from generalized hunting and gathering to a strategy emphasizing seed gathering at c. AD 1200. This was matched by accelerated production of ritual art: rock engravings, depicting big game and hunters. To explain this paradox, seed gatherers creating hunters’ art, I examine directly relevant ethnography to show that the art concerns an application of a shaman's power: killing a mountain sheep was a metaphor for making rain. This was increasingly important with a seed‐oriented economy but, since subsistence is more than diet, involving things like the sexual division of labour, it has implications for social relations. An examination of these shows two systems of inequality: men over women, and shamans over non‐shaman males. The increase in male‐oriented ritual art with subsistence change can then be understood in terms of ideological efforts to maintain gender asymmetries, and the growing forms of incipient political organization present in this region.

Rite and Rights for Women – Galatians 3.28

Galatians 3. 28 illustrates the fact that all too often meaning is in the eye of the beholder and that without proper care and attention to the context, text becomes pretext. We are told by some commentators that Gal. 3. 28 is the ‘Magna Carta of Humanity’, and especially the ‘Emancipation Proclamation for Women’. Others insist just as strongly that this text is dealing with one's position Coram Deo and has no implications for social relations within the Body of Christ. One scholar has even suggested that Paul's male–female terminology and his mentioning of baptism means that Paul is arguing for infant, as well as adult, baptism. In light of the present confusion concerning this text, it will perhaps be best to attempt to set this verse in its historical and literary context before proceeding to examine the exegetical intricacies involved.