Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This article analyzes the effect of two social advice networks——technical and organizational— on the success of R&D projects. Qualitative and social network analyses are employed to investigate how centrality affects the outcomes of six technologically innovative projects in a R&D laboratory of a Fortune 500 Company. The results demonstrate that centrality in the two social advice networks, constructed to reflect the content of communication flow and information exchange specific to the R&D environment, is critical in shaping the projects’ outcomes. In particular, technical success is achieved by weaving the advice networks and the social capital they create into the projects’ formal structures. In addition to providing one of the few empirical accounts of the effects of social networks on the performance of R&D projects, the study challenges the prevailing views with regard to the relationship between formal and informal structures; it demonstrates that the two shape the outcomes not separately but in interaction.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study starts with a simple question: “Everything else being equal, will people who exert more cognitive effort produce better messages?” To test this idea, we set up a high and a low personal relevance condition in order to influence people’s motivation to think more or less effortfully in an upward influence situation. Results revealed that individuals in the high personal relevance, compared in the low relevance condition, reported a higher degree of problem-solving goal importance and a higher level of cognitive effort. Their messages also tend to contain more reasons and more diverse of reasoning angles. Second, among the five distinct goals relevant to advice giving situations, problem-solving goal importance is found to be a significant predictor of message reasoning, such that the more individuals emphasize problem-solving goals, the more likely that their messages will demonstrate a higher level of reasoning. Third, while goal assessment initiates a message production process, cognitive effort to implement goals play an important mediation role in connecting goals and message features.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Broad changes in the global economy have been accompanied by experiments in workplace organizational structure. By comparing two large (100+) and enduring worker-owned cooperatives in the natural food business, this paper demonstrates that neither diffuse, participatory “worker control” nor bureaucratic, hierarchical “managerial control” are tied to particular demographic needs or market forces, but result from specific organizational histories. However, while neither outcome is inevitable or more or less economically viable, I argue that each form of control differently affects the (re)production of inequalities within the similarly diverse memberships. Focus on control where ownership is held constant helps to elucidate benefits of decision-making structures for a wide variety of workplaces and alternative organizations, and is one key to understanding the changes in new economic arrangements.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Friendship and peer relationships provide a social safety net for girls’ social survival. Within this safety net, specific social aggressive tactics are used to manage power. The purpose of this study is to understand how girls use social aggressive behavior to manage social power in peer circles. Social aggression refers to the manipulation of social environments to hurt the target psychologically, emotionally, socially, and/or physically. This paper will bring forth girls’ experiences with social aggression within their friendship and peer social circles as victims, perpetrators, and witnesses. Through in-depth and open-ended interviews, thirty-four girls, eight to ten years old, (17 African Americans, 12 Chicana/Latinas, 4 White/Caucasians, and 1 racially mixed), from a poor/working-class socio-economic background, reveal their secrets, providing us with a better understanding of their use social aggressive behavior to manage social power in peer circles.