The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

This study examined the union activities and attitudes of 359 East European immigrants to Israel and compared them to those of 362 native-born Israelis. Two forms of union participation (formal and informal activities) and two attitudes (union commitment and union militancy) were examined. These variables were not only compared across the two subsamples, but three explanatory models of the variables were tested as well: the personal, the economic, and the socialization models. The findings showed immigrants to be more active than native-born Israelis in both formal and informal types of activities and more committed to the union. The three models explained more variance in the attitudes and behaviors of native-born Israelis and revealed some differences in the effects of various factors across the two subsamples. Implications for future research and possible strategies that unions could undertake to gain the support of minority workers were discussed

Social service practitioners are challenged by serving target populations that are increasingly diverse ethnically. The challenge is compounded by budget and program cuts that limit resources for multicultural staff and training. This case study of a perinatal outreach and education program targeting low-income women from diverse ethnic backgrounds speaks to program planners and practitioners faced with these issues. The study invites a critical assessment of how "empowerment" is conceptualized and operationalized in program objectives. The impact of the social organization of an agency-driven program on the interaction between the educator and the client is examined. An alternative approach, decentralized in the diverse target communities, is suggested for future projects. This perspective requires critical consciousness on the part of planners and change agents as mediators of an empowerment process.

The research reported in this article uses a clinical methodology to explore the complex process of organizational exits from the perspective of both voluntary and involuntary exiters. In particular, it focuses on the ambivalence manifested by all exiters in regard to three emotional themes that shaped the exit experience: termination, separation, and change. The article also reflects on the way in which the researcher's group membership influenced the choice of a research topic and the research itself. Implications for research and practice are discussed

Organizational centrality, the extent to which an employee is integrated into the network of interpersonal relationships within the work system, has rarely been examined empirically. A survey measuring centrality as well as career attitudes and expectations was completed by 392 full-time employees of a county government. Superiors also rated respondents on three components of centrality. Both self-report and supervisory measures of centrality were related to hierarchical level, career satisfaction, and intention to turnover Organizational centrality holds promise for increasing understanding of employees' intraorganizational careers.

This article addresses advantages of performing transformations that eliminate interactions in both moderated regression and analysis of variance models, when these transformations also result in homoscedasticity, and when the transformed scores attain at least the same level of measurement as the raw scores. It is shown that these transformations are in fact what have been called subgroup variance equating transformations (SVET), though equality of subgroup variances is a side effect of eliminating interactions and heteroscedasticity. Moderated regression analyses of these transformed data have the following advantages over comparable analyses of raw data: (a) greater tenability of the assumptions of analysis of variance (and moderated regression) models, (b) potentially much greater sensitivity of main effects significance tests, and (c) simpler (more parsimonious) interpretations.

The present meta-analysis revisits issues from previous reviews on the relationship between participative decision making (PDM) and performance. Based on a two-phased process model in which attitudes mediate between PDM and performance, several conditions that enhance the PDM-performance relationship are proposed. These are a group (nonleadership) rather than leadership setting, a "tell " rather than "tell and sell " persuasion strategy, and subjective rather than objective measures of participation. Additionally, it is proposed that confounding other intervention methods with PDM or organizational outcomes with performance influences the PDM-performance relationship. Using the dual test of differentiating among effect sizes and reducing variance, a moderator analysis of 70 field and laboratory samples provided support for the propositions. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

The integration of change over time is one of the ongoing challenges in a firm's life. Organizations seem to develop unique mechanisms that help them facilitate the integration of changes throughout and across organizational units. Information technologies based on electronic data processing are having a widespread impact on information flow within and between firms, on the structural configurations of the firm, and on management's ability to integrate change. This article proposes sociotechnical systems as a framework for examining the organizational implications of new information technology systems and as a tool for guiding the integration of change. The implications of the implementation of a local area network and its concomitant impact in a software development firm are examined over a 4-year period. The sociotechnical systems approach suggests that the same new information technology is likely to have different implications in various companies in terms of system integration, work design, and organization structure. These implications are likely to necessitate a realignment of the entire organization. The article concludes with the identification and discussion of some theoretical issues.