UB's Militant Union History: An Informed Participant and Labor Relations Specialist's Perspective

The AAUP faculty union, established in 1973 on the University of Bridgeport campus, followed a policy of maximum militancy. Typically, this strategy was met by an ad hoc and often poorly informed administrative response, and ended in the bitter two-year faculty strike of 1990–1992. The absence of a coherent union relations strategy on the administration's part and a pattern of militant confrontation wherein the union almost always prevailed virtually guaranteed such an outcome.     

Power Dynamics between Administrators and Faculty on a Unionized Campus: A Case Study

This article offers a case study of labor relations in a higher education setting. The University of Bridgeport's faculty union was certified in May 1973 and decertified in August 1992. Contract negotiation disputes centered on shared governance, managing faculty reductions during a time of inflation and declining enrollments, and determining fair wages. The private university experienced four faculty strikes, culminating in a two-year faculty strike – the longest in U.S. higher education history. The university was also the first institution of higher education in the United States to hire permanent replacement faculty during a strike. In 1990, leaders of the locked-out striking faculty unsuccessfully lobbied for a state government takeover of the nearly bankrupt university. The case study highlights a plethora of complex ethical issues faced by administrators, faculty, and unions during times of economic decline.     

From Moment to Movement: Empowerment and Resilience as a Framework for Collective Action in Hong Kong

The Transconceptual Model of Empowerment and Resilience (American Journal of Community Psychology, 52, 2013, 333) suggests that a set of resilience and empowerment resources fuel both initial and sustained participation in collective action. Using the case study of a prodemocracy movement in Hong Kong, the present study focused on the subset of those resources that are relevant in ongoing collective action: efficacy, skills, and maintenance. As individuals possess varying combinations of these resources, the present study utilized latent profile analysis to test how patterns of empowerment and resilience resources influence initial and long‐term collective action. Five groups were identified: (a) Uncommitted/Uninspired; (b) Committed to Status Quo; (c) Mainstream Populist; (d) Empowered; and (e) Ambivalent. ANOVA and ANCOVA analyses found that there are significant group differences in initial and long‐term participation. Groups with higher level of resources reported greater levels of initial participation than their counterparts; however, high resource groups did not uniformly report greater levels of intention to participate in future collective action. Of the maintenance processes tested, collective identity emerged as a particularly important predictor differentiating initial and sustained participation. Findings from the present study raise questions about how individuals with multiple identities can come together and participate in collective action.     

Out of sight,out of mind: racial retrieval cues increase the accessibility of social justice concepts

Photographs provide critical retrieval cues for personal remembering, but few studies have considered this phenomenon at the collective level. In this research, we examined the psychological consequences of visual attention to the presence (or absence) of racially charged retrieval cues within American racial segregation photographs. We hypothesised that attention to racial retrieval cues embedded in historical photographs would increase social justice concept accessibility. In Study 1, we recorded gaze patterns with an eye-tracker among participants viewing images that contained racial retrieval cues or were digitally manipulated to remove them. In Study 2, we manipulated participants’ gaze behaviour by either directing visual attention toward racial retrieval cues, away from racial retrieval cues, or directing attention within photographs where racial retrieval cues were missing. Across Studies 1 and 2, visual attention to racial retrieval cues in photographs documenting historical segregation predicted social justice concept accessibility.     

Collective efficacy and vigilant problem solving in group decision making: A non-linear model

This research explores the relationship between collective efficacy and aspects of analytic or vigilant problem solving (Janis, 1989) in the context of group decision making. We hypothesized that vigilant problem solving would be most evident under conditions of relatively moderate collective efficacy, as opposed to either very high or very low collective efficacy. We investigated this hypothesis with groups of business students who participated in a complex business strategy simulation. Results show a significant curvilinear relationship between collective efficacy and vigilant problem solving, and a significant linear relationship between vigilant problem solving and decision outcomes. There is also evidence that vigilant problem solving mediates the relationship between collective efficacy and decision outcomes. Implications for theory, managerial practice, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Collective efficacy beliefs in student work teams: Relation to self-efficacy, cohesion, and performance

A measure of collective efficacy was developed and administered to undergraduates working in project teams in engineering courses. Findings in each of two samples revealed that the measure contained a single factor and was related to ratings of team cohesion and personal efficacy. Collective efficacy was also found to relate to indicators of team performance at both individual and group levels of analysis. Consistent with social cognitive theory, collective efficacy was a stronger predictor of team performance than team members’ perceptions of their self-efficacy. We consider the implications of these findings for further research, theory, and practice on team functioning within occupational and educational settings.     

集体效能研究述评

从20世纪80年代中期开始,国外自我效能的研究表现出从个体效能向集体效能的转变,集体效能是自我效能在集体水平上的扩展。在效能内涵和效能形成上,集体效能与个体效能存在着密切的相互作用,但在效能的测量上,集体效能又有着许多不同于个体效能之处,与个体效能相比,集体效能的研究在整体上还存在着明显的不足。     

Locomotor pattern and mechanical exchanges during collective load transport

While the locomotor behavior of humans walking alone, loaded or unloaded, has been extensively studied, the locomotor behavior of humans transporting a load collectively is very poorly documented in the biomechanics literature. Yet, collective carriage is a task commonly performed in sport (CrossFit), military and health care (carriage of an injured person) activities and is a task that raises growing interest in robotics (Cobots). The primary aim of our research was to test the hypothesis that the mechanical cost of locomotion is comparable when two individuals are transporting an object collectively and when they are walking alone. To test this, the movements of ten pairs of individuals walking side by side, separately or while transporting collectively an object, were recorded with a three-dimensional motion analysis system (Vicon©). Our results show a similar pattern in the periodic displacement of the center of mass and in mechanical costs, between individuals walking alone and individuals carrying a load collectively. Moreover, a better pendulum-like behavior was found in the sagittal plane and in 3D for the pairs of individuals carrying an object, which suggests that the saving in mechanical exchanges is higher when two individuals are carrying an object collectively than when they are walking alone. The values of the parameters measured in our experiment could be used as a benchmark for the implementation of collective carriage tasks in robotics.