The Evolutionary Role of Interorganizational Communication: Modeling Social Capital in Disaster Contexts

Employing a community ecology perspective, this study examines how interorganizational (IO) communication and social capital (SC) facilitated organizational recovery after Hurricane Katrina. In‐depth interviews with 56 New Orleans organizations enabled longitudinal analysis and a grounded theory model that illustrates how communication differentiated four phases of recovery: personal emergency, professional emergency, transition, rebuilding. Communicative action taking place across phases corresponds with the evolutionary mechanisms. Most organizations did not turn to interorganizational relationships (IORs) until the transitional phase, during which indirect ties were critical and incoming versus outgoing communication was substantively different. Organizations did not consistently use IO SC until the last phase. This study underlines the fact that organizations and their systems are fundamentally human and (re)constructed through communicative action.     

When and why does sense of power hinder self-reported helping behavior? Testing a moderated mediation model in Chinese undergraduates

Many studies on power and its influence on pro-social behavior have been conducted with Western samples. Little is known about whether the relevant research findings can be extended to other cultural settings. This study investigates the relationship between sense of power and self-reported helping behavior in Chinese culture. Using a sample of 388 undergraduate students, this study examines a moderated mediation model in which moral identity serves as a moderator and perspective taking serves as a mediator. The results show that sense of power is negatively associated with helping behavior, and this association is mediated by perspective taking. That is, sense of power exerts a negative effect on perspective taking, thereby decreasing people's tendency to help others. In addition, moral identity moderates the direct and indirect effect from sense of power to helping behavior. Specifically, when moral identity is low, sense of power exerts negative effects on perspective taking and helping behavior, but these effects become non-significant when moral identity is high. This study sheds new light on the understanding of sense of power by examining its profound role in influencing pro-social engagement in Eastern cultures. Our findings suggest that powerful people with lower levels of moral identity may be less willing to consider others' thoughts and feelings, and act less helping behavior. While high moral identity may buffer the negative effect of sense of power and enable powerful people to better play a role in promoting social harmony.     

Values,abilities and behavior

The values of life, freedom and solidarity are the base on which we can build behaviors and abilities. Schools must be flexible, they must allow the young to explore and to express all their potential abilities. We must create a new balance, just as we must give the young a new sense of responsibility in the pursuit of their studies.