This book describes how a network of interpersonal influence can operate to form agreements among persons who occupy different positions in a group or organization. It presents an account of consensus formation that is unique in its integration of work from the fields of social psychology and sociology concerned with group dynamics and social structures.
This book addresses a phenomenon that has been much studied in anthropology, sociology and administrative science - the social structural foundations of coordinated activity and consensus in complexly differentiated communities and organizations. Such foundations are important because social differentiation makes coordination and agreement especially hard to achieve and maintain. Friedkin focuses on the process of social influence, and on how this process, when it is played out in a network of interpersonal influence, may result in interpersonal agreements among actors who are located in different parts of a complexly differentiated organization. This work builds on structural role analysis which provides a description of the pattern of social differentiation in a population. Interpretation of the revealed social structures has long been a problem. The steps for structural analysis that are proposed in this book are addressed to the above problem. To explain the coordination of social positions, the author pursues the development of a structural social psychology that attends to both social structure and process.
Volume 32 of Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management (RPHRM) contains seven papers on important issues in the field of human resources management. The subject matter in this volume covers myriad areas: compensation, performance evaluation, reputation, employee furloughs, and research methodology.
Understand How You Approach the World While your Day Master shows you who you are, your Structure tells you about your behaviour and attitude in relation to the world. Each book in this series focuses on one specific Structure, and provides ideal careers, job roles, and wealth paths for the Structure. In other words, these 5 guides will provide the blueprint to knowing why some people are the way they are, and what to do to help you deal with the varied and colourful characters in your life.
This collection of essays featuring contributions from eminent Swedish and American Strindberg scholars addresses the question of how Strindberg's art collides and colludes, ideologically and aesthetically, with the literary doyens of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in both the Scandinavian and the larger Western cultural context.
Structural mechanics is the study of the effects that forces of different physical origin (mechanical, thermal, magnetic and so on) produce on elements of structures such as cables, pillars, beams, plates and shells. This text represents the first ever attempt to include in a book format a number of standard problems from structural mechanics, which are treated by means of a single mathematical approach that is novel in the field. The influence (Green's) function method constitutes the basis for this approach. The material in this volume is based on the implementation of two important notions taken from different sciences. One of them (the influence function of a point concentrated force) is brought from structural mechanics, while the other (the Green’s function of a boundary-value problem) is taken from mathematics. They are closely related to each other, and their relation represents the keystone in this text. Bringing these notions together allows us to create a single methodological approach to a variety of problems in structural mechanics, makes their analysis easier and builds up a solid foundation for some further developments in the field. In presenting the material in this text, it was presumed that the reader's background is equally solid in undergraduate mathematics and mechanics. The reader is assumed to be relatively fluent in differential and integral calculus and to possess, at the same time, workable knowledge of the fundamental principles of statics and dynamics. Each chapter contains extensive ‘end chapter exercises’ specifically developed for each chapter, with answers and comments available in the Appendix.
There are hidden laws at work in every aspect of your business. Understand them, and you can create extraordinary growth. Ignore them, and you run the risk of becoming another statistic. It's become almost cliche: 8 out of every 10 new ventures fail. Of the ones that succeed, how many truly thrive-for the long run? And of those that thrive, how many continually overcome their growth hurdles ... and ultimately scale, with meaning, purpose, and profitability? The answer, sadly, is not many. Author Lex Sisney is on a mission to change that picture. After more than a decade spent leading and coaching high-growth technology companies, Lex discovered that the companies that thrive do so in accordance with 6 Laws - universal principles that govern the success or failure of every individual, team, and organization.
In government, influence denotes one's ability to get others to act, think, or feel as one intends. A mayor who persuades voters to approve a bond issue exercises influence. A businessman whose promises of support induce a mayor to take action exercises influence. In Political Influence, Edward C. Banfield examines the structures and dynamics of influence in determining who actually makes the decisions on vital issues in a large metropolitan area. This edition includes an introduction by James Q. Wilson, who provides an intellectual profile of Banfield and a review of his life and work. Banfield locates his analysis in Chicago, focusing on a broad range of representative urban issues. An introductory chapter defines Banfield's method through four leading questions: Who has influence and who is subject to it? How does influence work? What are the terms upon which influence is expended? How is action concerted by influence? Banfield's conceptual scheme is applied at three levels. He offers six case studies of political influence, showing in considerable detail how influence was used in certain civic controversies. Then Banfield interprets these case studies, drawing from them a set of low-level empirical generalizations. At the third and highest level of generality, he explores the logical structure of significant aspects of influence and recasts the empirical findings in analytical terms, developing theories that apply generally to situations involving political influence. He also defines the key roles played by officeholders, the newspapers, business interests, the city council and minority groups. Political Influence is notable for its depth and sophistication. This rare combination of good reporting and insightful analysis is essential reading for political scientists, urban affairs specialists, policymakers, and sociologists.
Social influence network theory presents a mathematical formalization of the social process of attitude changes that unfolds in a social network of interpersonal influences. This book brings the theory to bear on lines of research in the domain of small group dynamics concerned with changes of group members' positions on an issue, including the formation of consensus and of settled disagreement, via endogenous interpersonal influences, in which group members are responding to the displayed positions of the members of the group. Social influence network theory advances a dynamic social cognition mechanism, in which individuals are weighing and combining their own and others' positions on an issue in the revision of their own positions. The influence network construct of the theory is the social structure of the endogenous interpersonal influences that are involved in this mechanism. With this theory, the authors seek to lay the foundation for a better formal integration of classical and current lines of work on small groups in psychological and sociological social psychology.
