The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

The field of Western human development owes a huge debt to the large number of scholar-practitioners who devoted their working lives to increasing the understanding of the individual and the individual in relation to others. Many pioneers of the field are celebrated in the literature through both their own published work and the acknowledgements of other scholars and scholar-practitioners. Largely unrecognized in the literature is the work of John and Joyce Weir. The Weirs' innovative and hugely popular self-differentiation laboratories, with John's percept orientation as the theoretical framework and his and Joyce's percept language as its self-empowering reporting accompaniment, attracted more than 8,000 participants between 1964 and 2000. Their work has impacted countless personal and professional lives. In this article, attention is called to the Weirs' monumental legacy of five unique and unheralded contributions to the field of Western human development.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, affected the U.S. airline industry more than almost any other industry. Certain airlines emerged successful and demonstrated remarkable resilience while others languished. This investigation identifies reasons why some airline companies recovered successfully after the attacks while others struggled. Evidence is provided that layoffs after the crisis, although intended to foster recovery, instead inhibited recovery throughout the 4 years after the crisis. But, layoffs after the crisis were strongly correlated with lack of financial reserves and lack of a viable business model prior to the crisis. Digging deeper, the authors find that having a viable business model itself depended on the development and preservation of relational reserves over time. Our model shows that the maintenance of adequate financial reserves enables the preservation of relational reserves and vice versa, contributing to organizational resilience in times of crisis.

Recent world events have brought the need to better understand how to work and live in a heterogeneous world into relief. The origins of group dynamics and development theory are reviewed, arguing that although traditional group theory has proven useful in homogeneous groups, applying these theories to the heterogeneous groups common to organizations today counters efforts to honor and promote multiculturalism. The ways in which traditional theory, due to its epistemological origins in organicism, tacitly undermines efforts to promote the inclusion of multiple voices in groups is described. The authors demonstrate how a paradigmatic shift from organicism to contextualism provides a framework for generating more useful theories and practices of group dynamics and development that include heterogeneity and pluralism and acknowledge the role of power and privilege. Principles for a contextualist theory of group dynamics and process are developed, stressing the pragmatic values of utility and action.

Recent scholarship has shown that, despite the broad representation of women in the workplace, gender inequities in organizations remain widespread. Because gender schemas—embedded ways of thinking about men and women—contribute to this phenomenon, addressing such mental models should be a part of gender equity initiatives. This article provides data that suggest that some individuals hold within themselves quite contradictory schemas of men and of women. It then illustrates how individuals can use these internal inconsistencies to push through superficial understandings of gender to more complex ones. By facilitating this learning process in training and other kinds of organizational events, change agents can strengthen organizational efforts to achieve gender equity.

The beliefs and practices of indigenous groups are increasingly recognized as being of value for resource management. But engagement in comanagement has proved problematic for indigenous communities. The authors argue that this results from different interpretations of what is meant by comanagement. Three interpretations are proffered, presenting different perspectives on the state-community duality: cooperative management, collaboration in management, and management by community. Referring to a New Zealand study of the potential for joint management of freshwater resources, the authors argue collaboration between state and indigenous people (and mutual engagement of their knowledges) promises to maximize indigenous input into resource management decision making. Negotiation of such collaborative arrangements is made difficult however by the need for the state to (a) differentiate between traditional resource management knowledge and nonindigenous community-based knowledge and (b) incorporate the latter within a state perspective on resource management while specifically identifying and engaging with the former.