Models Of Cultural Change Research Articles

Still Bay and Howiesons Poort Foraging Strategies: Recent Research and Models of Culture Change

The Still Bay (SB) and Howiesons Poort (HP) industries, endemic to southern Africa and dating to approximately 72–59 ka, have received a great deal of archaeological attention by virtue of their striking patterns of technology and their close association with some of the earliest unambiguously symbolic objects found in southern Africa. This paper reviews recent literature concerning SB and HP lithic assemblages, faunal remains, paleoenvironmental contexts, and chronological information. It argues that SB biface-dominated technology was designed to be multifunctional and to economize lithic raw material, a strategy well-suited to foragers moving frequently across a wide range of ecological zones in which access to resources and prey encounters were unpredictable. In contrast, HP blade-based tools, using backed blades as modular components in compound weapons, were efficient and reliable hunting weapons designed for specific tasks. More costly and difficult to maintain, HP technology resulted from the targeting of known, localized, and seasonal resources through planned logistical forays. We argue that these complicated patterns of innovation represent separate cultural responses to environmental instability during Marine Isotope Stage 4 and demographic pressures in southern Africa at this time. Against the backdrop of environmental and demographic shifts, the emergence of these innovative tools and associated symbolic objects reflects distinct but quintessentially modern cultural behaviors ethnographically associated with risk reduction, reciprocity, and information sharing.

Cyclical Cultural Trajectories

In this study, models of cultural evolution are used to examine one of most intensively studied archaeological areas in world: the central Mesa Verde region of southern Colorado (USA). I work back and forth between models in this case study to tease out new insights into culture change in the Mesa Verde region and to suggest ways that models of culture change can be improved. The results of a new research program, the Village Ecodynamics Project, are presented here and provide the most recent and refined account of settlement in the central Mesa Verde region. The study concludes that many factors contributed to culture change in the region, and it suggests that one factor has been overlooked in previous studies: the development of incipient social hierarchy. This study argues that the development of social inequality needs to be added to the mix of factors that produced culture change, especially immigration from the region during the tenth and thirteenth centuries. This study suggests that evolutionary models emphasizing cyclical change are more appropriate than unilinear models. A model of cyclical change that highlights the dimensions of demographic scale and the emergence of hierarchical social organization best describes the cultural trajectory of the Mesa Verde region.

The Pre‐Natufian Epipaleolithic: Long‐term Behavioral Trends in the Levant

Few cultural developments have taken on as much archeological significance as when people began living in villages and producing their own food. The economic, social, technological, and ideological transformations immediately preceding and following these changes were profound. Early models of culture change associated with pre-agricultural societies of the Levant focused on the sudden, late origin of settled farming villages triggered by climate change. Accompanying this new economic and living situation was durable stone-built architecture; intensified plant and animal use; a flourishing of art and decoration; new mortuary traditions, including marked graves and cemeteries; elaborate ritual and symbolic behavior-a new way of life. This new life style arguably had a slow start, but really took off during the Epipaleolithic period (EP), spanning more than 10,000 years of Levantine prehistory from c. 23,000-11,500 cal BP. The last EP phase, immediately preceding the Neolithic, is by far the best-studied in terms of its cultural and economic contributions to questions on the origins of agriculture.1-4 Recently, archeologists have considered the earlier parts of the EP to be more culturally dynamic and similar to the later phase (Natufian) than was previously thought.3-10 The earlier EP is increasingly seen as demonstrating the behavioral variability and innovations that help us to understand the economic, technological, and social changes associated with complex hunter-gatherers of the Natufian and farmers of the Neolithic. This paper traces the cultural and biological developments of the EP period leading up to the Natufian and considers the long-term trajectory of culture change, social complexity, and village life in the Near East.

A culture change in aged care: The Eden Alternative

Objective: The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the values that The Eden AlternativeTM represents. The benefits, challenges and potential risks, associated with implementing this model for culture change will also be discussed. Setting: Currently, 36 residential aged care facilities in Australia and New Zealand have implemented The Eden AlternativeTM. Alzheimer’s Australia has recently adopted The Eden AlternativeTM in two Western Australia respite centres to advance care practices. Primary argument: The Eden AlternativeTM is a model for culture change in aged care that aims to enrich the lives of all who live and work in residential aged care facilities. Children, animals and plants enliven the environment and create an atmosphere reminiscent of home. The Eden AlternativeTM promotes human growth in aged care environments and strives to empower and enable older people to fulfil their right to construct and pursue meaningful lives. Conclusions: In the United States of America (USA), The Eden AlternativeTM is associated with numerous benefits, including reductions in the total number and type of medications used by residents, (i.e. a decline in mind and mood‑altering drugs); reduced infection rates among residents; improved levels of sociability among residents; reduced levels of boredom and feelings of helplessness among residents, and improved staff retention rates. However, these findings need to be interpreted cautiously due to lack of information about, and limitations in, study designs. Further research is needed in Australia to establish the impact of this model for culture change on residents and nurses who live and work in these facilities.

Continuity or Change? The Strategic Culture of Australia

Important puzzles remain in security policy literature, including whether strategic culture can change over time, and if so, under what conditions. This study proposes a model of strategic cultural change that identifies key actors and conditions at work in the process. The article then applies the model to chart the evolution of Australian security policy in the past two decades. We find that structural changes, including geostrategic situation and new security threats, coupled with elite interpretation and discourse, have produced a new “regional defense plus” strategic cultural frame for Australia. This, in turn, has led to measureable changes in defense policy. This work concludes with insights on the implications of change for the broader literature on strategic culture and constructivist security studies.

Changing the rules of the game

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to explore how neuro‐linguistic programming (NLP) can help organizations achieve dramatic culture shifts in a short space of time.Design/methodology/approachBased on the author's 17 years of experience in helping organizations change, the paper puts forward a theory that it is the unconscious rules within an organization's culture that prevent change strategies from succeeding. The paper proposes strategies based on NLP for more effective change, supported by case studies demonstrating how the theory can be applied.FindingsNLP‐based strategies help to uncover the unconscious rules and break them down to identifiable pieces on which to base strategies that will lead to real change.Originality/valueThe author shares a strategy and practical model for culture change that have been developed after many years of working with clients to deliver sustainable culture change initiatives that result in long‐term change.

Site visibility and the interpretation of Mimbres Mogollon demography in the U.S. Southwest

Models of Pithouse period cultural change in the Mimbres Mogollon region of southwestern New Mexico rely on a combination of surface and excavation data. Recent fieldwork at La Gila Encantada, a Late Pithouse (A.D. 550–1000) period site in the uplands west of the Mimbres River Valley, showed that surface data significantly under-represented earlier, less visible occupations at the site; the same was true at other Pithouse period sites. Investigations at La Gila Encantada and elsewhere demonstrate that the appearance of "villages" late in the Pithouse period represents a culmination of long-term land-use strategies and the stable use of particular sites over many generations. The observed changes in occupational intensity reflect a general pattern of demographic change tied to increasing population size and sedentism.

The European Integration as Maker or Breaker of the Democratic Political Culture in the Post-Communist Context: The Cases of Bulgaria and of Macedonia

This paper is about some counterintuitive effects on the political culture that become possible as a result of an external, for the political system, impact following asymmetrical power relations. The dominant side does not impose directly its will, but change the way the subordinated side sees itself; this change in identity in the latter brings the possibility of behavioral changes that affect the functioning of the subordinated side’s political system. This process is different either from the institutional learning or from the strategic-based interests of both parties. This paper, part of a doctoral research, using original data, traces the different cultural trajectories that become possible as a result of such asymmetrical power relations. They either confirm or reject different elements within the main existing models of political culture change, institutional and strategic. It also draws the borderlines of such internationally based change.

Liminality as Cultural Process for Cultural Change

This paper offers a revised understanding of intentional cultural change. In contrast to prevailing accounts, we suggest that such change can take place in the absence of initiating jolts, may be infused in everyday organizational life, and led by insiders who need not hold hierarchical power. Drawing on data from field studies and in-depth interviews, we develop a model of cultural change in which everyday occurrences such as meetings or workshops are constructed symbolically as “liminal” phenomena, bracketed from yet connected to everyday action in the organization. The construction of these occurrences as liminal illuminates the symbolic realm, creating possibilities for people to experiment with new cultural resources and invite different interpretations that hold potential for altering the cultural order. Our analyses contribute to the literature on culture by developing liminality, a process that brings forward the symbolic and invites recombination, as a cultural explanation of cultural change, to complement prevailing political or social structural explanations. We discuss implications and boundary conditions for this type of intentional cultural change.

The influence of social niche on cultural niche construction: modelling changes in belief about marriage form in Taiwan

With introduction of social niche effects into a model of cultural change, the frequency of a practice cannot predict the frequency of its underlying belief. The combination of a general model with empirical data from a specific case illustrates the importance of collaboration between modellers and field researchers, and identifies the type of quantitative data necessary for analysing case studies. Demographic data from colonial-period household registers in Taiwan document a shift in marriage form within 40 years, from a mixture of uxorilocal marriages and virilocal marriages to the latter's dominance. Ethnographic data indicate marriage-related beliefs, costs, ethnic effects and colonial policies as well as the importance of horizontal cultural transmission. We present a formal model for the effects of moral beliefs about marriage and a population economic index on the decline of uxorilocal marriage. We integrate empirical marriage rates and an estimated economic index to produce five projections of the historical frequencies of one belief. These projections demonstrate how economic development may affect a cultural niche. They also indicate the need for future research on the relationship between wealth and cultural variability, the motivational force of cultural versus social factors, and the process of cultural niche construction.

Person-Centered Care

Many long-term care facilities are making the transition from an institutional medical model to a person-centered care model and becoming culture change facilities. The heart of person-centered care is the relationship between the resident and the frontline staff who care for the resident daily. The life of the resident is enriched when his or her desires are honored each and every day. Several different culture change models that embrace person-centered care are available. The transformation of each facility can be accomplished using the Holistic Approach to Transformational Change (HATCh) model.

A lasting legacy from Tony Blair? NHS culture change.

He appeared to be talking off the cuff, but ever since he uttered the words, philosophers have been debating whether his language refers to some sort of deeper epistemological truth, a kind of new philosophy for the age. In other areas of life, serendipity appears everywhere: celebrated examples are Fleming’s discovery of Penicillium notatum on an overnight petri dish, and Penzias and Wilson’s accidental detection of the cosmic microwave background radiation from the noise emanating from their radiometer’s antennae. Tony Blair has done something similar in his new autobiography Tony Blair: a journey. Most of the 718-page monolith is relatively easily disposed of: it is his version of events during his prime ministership, 1997–2007, a lot of which we knew. Yet in an intriguing way it is compulsory reading as it gets into the mind of a key decisionmaker as he made the choices we agreed with or disputed, but regardless followed so closely. It is not nearly as self-serving, indulgent or religious as it could have been, or some have made out. That said, it has one section, buried in chapter 6, ‘Peace in Northern Ireland’, which may prove useful for improving the National Health Service (NHS) – or any large health organization. Following Blair’s account of the negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement by which the warring loyalist and republican parties, along with the British and Irish governments, came together to discuss the end of hostilities lies more than the germ of an idea about how to alter complex organizations. Blair presents 10 reasons why the agreement was successful, despite numerous setbacks and blind alleys. These principles are useful not only, as Blair intended, to be applied to other sticky political negotiations by those brokering peace among truculent, bellicose parties, but for longer-term cultural and organizational transformation. This type of change is badly needed in the NHS in substitution of, or as a replacement for, the structural change which is being sponsored by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition. Table 1 summarizes this proposal. Culture change involves concerted effort, usually over lengthy periods, to influence and shape behaviours and practices on the one hand, and attitudes and values on the other. It is readily conceptualized as an iceberg, with the visible portion, the organizational and clinical activities, above the waterline, and the invisible collective mental constructs, below. The idea is that both need re-orientation to render cultural renewal (Figure 1). Did Blair realize he had developed a yet-to-be tested but nevertheless promising new model for culture change across large complex systems? From a close reading of his book, it does not appear so. This is an unknown unknown: Blair did not say, and we are unable to confirm this. He looks to be genuine in his desire to leave recommendations for DECLARATIONS

Culture Change Models and Resident Health Outcomes in Long‐Term Care

To examine the scientific evidence for the effect of comprehensive culture change model implementation on resident health outcomes in long-term care. In this integrated review, an electronic literature search was conducted for studies that examined the effect of comprehensive culture change models on long-term care residents' physical and psychosocial health. Eleven articles were thoroughly reviewed for outcomes related to resident health, and findings were integrated across models. Each study was assigned a level of evidence rating using the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network guidelines and an overall recommendation grade was determined. Evaluation of the literature indicates that results are conflicting, although potential resident benefits as a result of model implementation may exist, particularly in regard to psychosocial health outcomes. Evidence regarding long-term care residents' health outcomes after comprehensive culture change model implementation is inconsistent, and the grade of the evidence makes practice recommendations difficult at this time. However, integrated findings across studies demonstrate potential psychosocial benefits to long-term care residents. Nurses working in long-term care play a crucial role in the success of culture change initiatives as well as the health outcomes of residents. Empirical evidence for the effect of comprehensive culture change models on resident health outcomes supports reasonable expectations of their implementation and indicates areas for future research and translation into practice.

Measurement of Workplace Empowerment Across Caregivers

Culture change models (CCM) developed to improve the provision of individualized care in long-term care (LTC) facilities often include initiatives that are thought to empower care staff. Therefore, the ability to measure empowerment accurately across all levels of care staff is necessary. The objective of this study was to examine the structure of responses by registered nurses (RNs), licensed practical nurses (LPNs), and care aides to 3 instruments measuring workplace empowerment: the Conditions of Work Effectiveness Questionnaire, Job Activities Scale, and Organizational Relationships Scale. Despite considerable differences in education and job function, both caregiver groups appear to interpret and respond to 38 of 40 empowerment items in a similar manner. Therefore, our findings support the inclusion of all care staff when using these instruments to measure work place empowerment in LTC settings.

A model for cultural change

When change is required in an organisation, perhaps due to a business purchase, the award of a contract or the recognition that current business performance must improve, the management team may decide that they need to change the behaviour of the employees to generate the success and returns for the business envisaged. This change of behaviour can be difficult to create. In this paper, the author describes some of the reasons for the difficulties experienced, and introduces an eight-step process, which played a significant role in generating commitment in different organisations with measured changes in organisational behaviour. Analytical methods were used to identify issues and track changes, but the changes themselves occurred through the trust generated by the process and from the bonding within the management team as difficulties were overcome and progress made. This paper shares the value of change through traditional project management and non-traditional emotional management.

A conceptual model of cultural change for African indigenous organisations

Scholars of organisational behaviour have opined that the culture of a work organisation is nothing but a mere derivative or microcosm of the wider national culture. Nevertheless, in this present article, an anti-thesis of the current thinking has been provided by the development of a conceptual model of cultural change for African indigenous organisations. Based on the application of the modernisation theory of cultural change; the model presented a justification for the import of the current spate of globalisation which necessitates that for indigenous work organisations (especially business enterprises) resident in Africa to become globally competitive they must disengage from traditional beliefs and values that are inimical to business performance. This revolutionary shift would help them proactively evoke cultures that are completely different from those of the nations in which they are domestically domiciled; and possibly change the beliefs and values of organisational workers from those that constitute the various cultures of their respective African states. Consequently, a displacement of the existing paradigm in the literature of organisational/national culture interface which refutes the possibility of organisational culture transcending the boundaries of national culture becomes inevitable.

Intercultural Dialogue: Cultural Dialogues of Equals or Cultural Dialogues of Unequals?

This article has two aims. The first aim of the article is to show some emerging problems and questions facing intercultural dialogue. This involves a critique of intercultural dialogue by situating it within emerging models of cultural change. The second aim of the article is to show alternative approaches to cultural dialogues. This involves the description of some of the factors that might be useful to equal and dignified cultural dialogues.

The Impact of Positive Practices on Nurse Work Environments: Emerging Applications of Positive Organizational Scholarship

The overall purpose of improving work environments in health care is to enhance patient care delivery and improve the retention of nurses by engaging nurses in a model of cultural change that enhances communication and collaboration and actively involves nurses in organizational and clinical decision making. This article reports the findings from a 5-year study that describes an educational intervention for nurse leaders and a unit-based educational intervention for nursing staff, based on the application of Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) and its impact on nursing work environments.

Ethos of independence across regions in the United States: The production-adoption model of cultural change.

Contemporary U.S. culture has a highly individualistic ethos. Nevertheless, exactly how this ethos was historically fostered remains unanalyzed. A new model of dynamic cultural change maintains that sparsely populated, novel environments that impose major threats to survival, such as the Western frontier in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries, breed strong values of independence, which in turn guide the production of new practices that encourage self-promotion and focused, competitive work. Faced with few significant threats to survival, residents in traditional areas are likely to seek social prestige by adopting existing practices of other, higher status groups. Because of both the massive economic success of the frontier and the official endorsement of the frontier by the federal government, eastern residents of the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries may have actively adopted the frontier practices of independence, thus incorporating the frontier ethos of independence to form the contemporary U.S. national culture. Available evidence is reviewed, and implications for further research on cultural change are suggested.

Grounded Globalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World by James L. Peacock

354 Mississippi Quarterly of Boone’s humanity. The result is a book that occasionally mischaracterizes even as it illuminates important aspects of an iconic American and his world. Goucher College MATTHEW RAINBOW HALE Grounded Globalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World, by James L. Peacock. The New Southern Studies Series. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007. 311 pp. $26.95 cloth. “WE WILL NEVER NAIL THE SOUTH DOWN LIKE A BUTTERFLY COLLECTED, but must pursue it as a butterfly in flight—so much the better, for the thing is alive!” This sentence from James Peacock’s GroundedGlobalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World illuminates one of the book’s most important themes: identity, grounded within a specific locale, changes, grows, and transforms depending upon the forces with which it interacts.GroundedGlobalismis an examination of the transformation of Southern identity as the region and its peoples interact with the forces of globalization. In contrast to C. Vann Woodward’s earlier characterization of the South as “burdened” by its past, Peacock’s study instead demonstrates how an identity that was shaped within a national context—in opposition to the North—is now being reformed within a global context. Peacock argues that this paradigm shift results in possibilities for transcendence of dualism and oppositionality for the US South; he also cites individuals and groups who have been able to maintain a regional identity within a global framework. Grounded Globalism cycles around a seven-step model of cultural change. The model begins with regional identity; in the next step, regional identity opposes national identity, leading to rebellion, step three. Following rebellion is defeat; resentment and oppression constitute step five. The final two steps are the transmutation by global identity and the grounding of that global identity within a regional identity. Peacock’s book outlines and references the first five steps, but focuses on the last two. The model is not specific to the US South, but Peacock argues that the South has something particular to offer to help us understand the current climate of globalization. 355 Book Reviews Peacock notes the importance of Southern history, including slavery and segregation, in the creation of identity, but he makes clear that the study’s focus is on space rather than on race. The concept of space is crucial to his thesis and what makes it distinctive. Many scholars think of globalization as freeing peoples from the restraints of particular places, but Peacock argues that only when globalism is “grounded” within regions does it allow for useful interactions between people and organizations. Though he cites contemporary literary criticism that examines “postsouthernness,” discussing the works of Martyn Bone and Scott Romine, he ultimately rejects any reading that claims the South becomes illusory when we deconstruct the idea of place: “That notion essentializes the South, as though the region disappears when one loses some older construction of it. A more productive strategy is to acknowledge the forces constructing place, as in the instance of the South, in order to understand and shape them” (227). For Peacock, place is not a fixed thing, but rather a process that changes as forces interact with it. One of the more appealing qualities of GroundedGlobalismis the vast number of “forces” examined in the text. Subjects as varied and seemingly unrelated as Alan Jackson’s song “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” Martin Luther King, Jr.’s admiration of Ghandi, and a Pakistani effigy-burning of Colonel Sanders are connected and cogently analyzed in terms of the larger thesis. Particularly compelling are Peacock’s investigations of the effect of globalization on religion and politics in the South. Religion is presented in the chapter “Meaning: Religion in the Global South” as both regionally diverse and as a space of intellectualism. Southerners have not only reached out to the world through mission work but have also forged international connections with followers of similar faiths regardless of national background. This depiction can be contrasted with stereotypical portrayals of evangelical fundamentalist Southern religion. Peacock’s most complex analysis comes in the chapter “Politics: Is Globalism Liberal? Is a Local Focus Conservative?” the title of which suggests commonly held ideas about liberalism and conservatism in...