Relational Development as Negotiated Order in Hostage Negotiation

This article applies negotiated order theory to explore how disputants negotiate relational limits in 10 actual hostage negotiations. Four relational limits are defined through the intersection of affiliation (the degree of liking, trust, and acceptance) and interdependence (the strength of parties’rights and obligations to one another): moving toward the other (high affiliation, high interdependence), moving with the other (high affiliation, low interdependence), moving away from the other (low affiliation and low interdependence), and moving against the other person (low affiliation, high interdependence). Spatial and implicit verbal immediacy language cues were used to operationalize affiliation and interdependence in each utterance across the 10 hostage negotiations. The results indicated that when parties created a “moving against” and “moving away” relational pattern, they experienced more difficulty building a relational consensus during the negotiations. When parties rotated between “moving toward” and “moving with” relational phases, they were more successful in building relational consensus. The results also revealed that disputants in hostage negotiations develop relational rhythms by moving within fairly stable cooperative or competitive relational patterns.     

WHAT IS THE SELF? IMITATION AND SUBJECTIVITY IN BLAISE PASCAL'S PENSÉES

I aim to develop a fully theological, yet still Pascalian account of human subjectivity. Exegetically, I argue that the Pensées themselves present two such accounts. The first account is a portrait of fallen subjectivity, selfhood under the reign of sin. The second account is a portrait of authentic subjectivity. This latter account is explicitly Christological and even Trinitarian. Constructively, I argue that Pascal's two accounts show that our subjectivity is performative and imitative: whether under sin or under grace, to be a self is to imitate God.     

Employment Security in the Year 2084

For social and cultural survival, political stability, and preserving capitalistic systems of worker motivation, access to the work force will have to be radically changed before the end of the next century.     

Preparing German Employment Counselors for Teaching Career Orientation

To prepare employment counselors for teaching career orientation to all students in the schools, an Inductive Training Style (ITS) has been developed in Mannheim, Germany.