title: Psychological collectivism and its effects on group member job performance and taking charge behaviour

authors: Belfield, William John

subjects: collectivism

abstract: The nature of work in contemporary organisations has become increasingly group orientated. Several studies have linked psychological collectivism with important outcomes for individuals working in groups. The present research sought to build upon existing research, via examining the performance benefits of psychological collectivism within the New Zealand context. This study had two main aims: to examine whether employees within New Zealand who are more collectivistic are better performing group members, and engage in increased taking charge behaviours; and to investigate the possible moderating role of TMX, or the quality of co-worker relationships, in these relationships. Participants in this study were employees from various businesses throughout New Zealand, representing a wide range of industries, who completed an online questionnaire. The questionnaire measured psychological collectivism, four dimensions of group member job performance (task performance, citizenship behaviour, counterproductive behaviour, and withdrawal behaviour), taking charge, and TMX-quality. To test the proposed hypotheses, correlation, regression, and moderation analyses were conducted in SPSS. Several of the proposed hypotheses received support: psychological collectivism positively predicted group member citizenship behaviour and taking charge behaviour, and negatively predicted group member counterproductive behaviour and group member withdrawal behaviour. TMX- quality significantly moderated the relationship between psychological collectivism and group member withdrawal behaviour. However, several of the proposed hypotheses did not receive support: psychological collectivism did not positively predict group member task performance, and TMX-quality did not significantly moderate the relationships between psychological collectivism and the other variables. Possible reasons why these hypotheses were unsupported are outlined. Additionally, significant non-hypothesized relationships were also obtained, which are discussed in detail. Concerning practical implications, organisations should aim to maximise psychological collectivism when necessary, via selection and placement or employee training and development programs. Moreover organisations should focus on improving the quality of co-worker relationships (i.e., TMX-quality). With respect to future research, research is needed which explicitly examines whether psychological collectivism can be developed in individuals. Taken together, the findings from this study highlight the far-reaching performance benefits of psychological collectivism and high-quality TMX in the workplace.

text: Psychological collectivism and its effects on group member job performance and taking charge behaviour The nature of work in contemporary organisations has become increasingly group orientated. Several studies have linked psychological collectivism with important outcomes for individuals working in groups. The present research sought to build upon existing research, via examining the performance benefits of psychological collectivism within the New Zealand context. This study had two main aims: to examine whether employees within New Zealand who are more collectivistic are better performing group members, and engage in increased taking charge behaviours; and to investigate the possible moderating role of TMX, or the quality of co-worker relationships, in these relationships. Participants in this study were employees from various businesses throughout New Zealand, representing a wide range of industries, who completed an online questionnaire. The questionnaire measured psychological collectivism, four dimensions of group member job performance (task performance, citizenship behaviour, counterproductive behaviour, and withdrawal behaviour), taking charge, and TMX-quality. To test the proposed hypotheses, correlation, regression, and moderation analyses were conducted in SPSS. Several of the proposed hypotheses received support: psychological collectivism positively predicted group member citizenship behaviour and taking charge behaviour, and negatively predicted group member counterproductive behaviour and group member withdrawal behaviour. TMX- quality significantly moderated the relationship between psychological collectivism and group member withdrawal behaviour. However, several of the proposed hypotheses did not receive support: psychological collectivism did not positively predict group member task performance, and TMX-quality did not significantly moderate the relationships between psychological collectivism and the other variables. Possible reasons why these hypotheses were unsupported are outlined. Additionally, significant non-hypothesized relationships were also obtained, which are discussed in detail. Concerning practical implications, organisations should aim to maximise psychological collectivism when necessary, via selection and placement or employee training and development programs. Moreover organisations should focus on improving the quality of co-worker relationships (i.e., TMX-quality). With respect to future research, research is needed which explicitly examines whether psychological collectivism can be developed in individuals. Taken together, the findings from this study highlight the far-reaching performance benefits of psychological collectivism and high-quality TMX in the workplace.

year: 2019

title: Those who heard it first: The political implications of the sermon on the mount to Jesus’ Jewish audience

authors: Roger Ewald, Lang Jr

subjects: Sermon on Mount

abstract: This dissertation examines the Sermon on the Mount (in the Gospel of Matthew) from the perspective of politics and peace. It investigates not what Jesus meant, but what his audience heard and were likely to have understood. It does this in order to ascertain the novelty or otherwise of Jesus’ teachings on peace with regard to Jewish thought and political understandings of his time. His audience was primarily Jewish, and the political implications they drew from Jesus’ teachings would have been influenced by established Jewish thought on ethics and governance. This dissertation researches specifically this: how would Jesus’ Jewish listeners have interpreted the peace sayings of the Sermon on the Mount? This dissertation finds that the Jewish intellectual framework within which Jesus’ first audience heard the Sermon on the Mount contained many specific sayings found in Pirkei Avot, and also a history of practice of non-violent action found in Jewish tradition, and that the oral law and the Sermon on the Mount both reflect Jewish ethical ideologies of non-violent resistance.

This dissertation argues that, in the Sermon on the Mount, a very Jewish Jesus – a man true to the religio-political views of his day – reaffirms a Jewish ethical form of non-violent resistance. The most important evidence available is the Gospel of Matthew itself, Jewish ethical writings such as Pirkei Avot, other Mishna writings, and writings on the lex talionis. The evidence points to an audience that would have perceived Jesus as teaching non-violence in a context of resistance rather than completely passive submission. The overall finding of this dissertation will be that the writer of Matthew depicts a Jesus who, in style, form, and content, builds on a Jewish ethical foundation to promote non-violent assertion of equality and human dignity in the widely known and oft-cited Sermon on the Mount.

text: Those who heard it first: The political implications of the sermon on the mount to Jesus’ Jewish audience This dissertation examines the Sermon on the Mount (in the Gospel of Matthew) from the perspective of politics and peace. It investigates not what Jesus meant, but what his audience heard and were likely to have understood. It does this in order to ascertain the novelty or otherwise of Jesus’ teachings on peace with regard to Jewish thought and political understandings of his time. His audience was primarily Jewish, and the political implications they drew from Jesus’ teachings would have been influenced by established Jewish thought on ethics and governance. This dissertation researches specifically this: how would Jesus’ Jewish listeners have interpreted the peace sayings of the Sermon on the Mount? This dissertation finds that the Jewish intellectual framework within which Jesus’ first audience heard the Sermon on the Mount contained many specific sayings found in Pirkei Avot, and also a history of practice of non-violent action found in Jewish tradition, and that the oral law and the Sermon on the Mount both reflect Jewish ethical ideologies of non-violent resistance.

This dissertation argues that, in the Sermon on the Mount, a very Jewish Jesus – a man true to the religio-political views of his day – reaffirms a Jewish ethical form of non-violent resistance. The most important evidence available is the Gospel of Matthew itself, Jewish ethical writings such as Pirkei Avot, other Mishna writings, and writings on the lex talionis. The evidence points to an audience that would have perceived Jesus as teaching non-violence in a context of resistance rather than completely passive submission. The overall finding of this dissertation will be that the writer of Matthew depicts a Jesus who, in style, form, and content, builds on a Jewish ethical foundation to promote non-violent assertion of equality and human dignity in the widely known and oft-cited Sermon on the Mount.

year: 2013

title: Processes of Pakeha change in response to the Treaty of Waitangi

authors: Huygens, Ingrid Louise Maria

subjects: Pakeha change

abstract: The sense of crisis that marks our times may be seen as a crisis for dominant groups whose once-secure hegemony is being challenged by marginalised others. It is in theorising the reply from the dominant group to the voices of the oppressed that existing Western conceptions of social change fall silent. The dominant Pakeha group in Aotearoa New Zealand has used discourses of benign colonisation and harmonious race relations to resist 165 years of communication from indigenous Māori about their oppression and a dishonoured treaty for settlement. My research documents the appearance of the Treaty of Waitangi into the Pakeha consciousness, and the now 30 year-long response by a Pakeha antiracism movement to educate their own cultural group about its agreements. Targeting government, community and social services organisations, activist educators used Freire's (1975) approach of conscientising dialogue to present a more critical view of colonisation, and to encourage participants to consider the complicity of their organisations in ongoing structural and cultural racism.

Based on my membership of local and national networks of activist educators, I was able to organise and facilitate data gathering from three sources to investigate processes of Pakeha change in: (i) unpublished material describing the antiracism and Treaty movement's historical theorising and strategies over 30 years, (ii) a country-wide process of co-theorising among contemporary Treaty educator groups about their work and perceived influence, and (iii) a collection of organisational accounts of Treaty-focused change. The collected records confirmed that a coherent anti-colonial discourse, which I have termed 'Pakeha honouring the Treaty', was in use to construct institutional and constitutional changes in non-government organisations. My interpretation of key elements in a local theory of transforming action included emotional responses to counter-cultural information, collective work for cultural and institutional change and practising a mutually agreed relationship with Māori. I concluded that these emotional, collective and relationship processes in dominant group change were crucial in helping to construct the new conceptual resources of 'affirming Māori authority' and 'striving towards a right relationship with Māori'. These counter-colonial constructions allowed Pakeha a non-resistant and facilitative response to Māori challenge, and enabled a dialogue with Māori about decolonisation. 

By examining in one research programme the genealogy and interdependencies of a new discourse, my research contributes to theorising about the production of new, counter-hegemonic discourses, and confirms the crucial part played by social movements in developing new, liberatory constructions of the social order.

My research calls for further theory-building on (i) emotional and spiritual aspects of transformational learning, (ii) processes involved in consciously-undertaken cultural change by dominant/coloniser groups, and (iii) practising of mutually agreed relationships with indigenous peoples by dominant/coloniser groups. 

My research has implications for theorising how coloniser and dominant groups generally may participate in liberatory social change and decolonisation work, and  the part played by the Western states in the global struggles by indigenous people for recognition of their world-views and aspirations.  

It remains to be seen whether counter-colonial discourses and organisational changes aimed at 'honouring the Treaty' with indigenous peoples will be sufficiently widely adopted to help transform Western dominating cultures and colonial projects. In the meantime, acknowledging and documenting these counter-colonial discourses and their constructions opens up increasing possibilities for constructing, from a history of colonisation, a different future.

text: Processes of Pakeha change in response to the Treaty of Waitangi The sense of crisis that marks our times may be seen as a crisis for dominant groups whose once-secure hegemony is being challenged by marginalised others. It is in theorising the reply from the dominant group to the voices of the oppressed that existing Western conceptions of social change fall silent. The dominant Pakeha group in Aotearoa New Zealand has used discourses of benign colonisation and harmonious race relations to resist 165 years of communication from indigenous Māori about their oppression and a dishonoured treaty for settlement. My research documents the appearance of the Treaty of Waitangi into the Pakeha consciousness, and the now 30 year-long response by a Pakeha antiracism movement to educate their own cultural group about its agreements. Targeting government, community and social services organisations, activist educators used Freire's (1975) approach of conscientising dialogue to present a more critical view of colonisation, and to encourage participants to consider the complicity of their organisations in ongoing structural and cultural racism.

Based on my membership of local and national networks of activist educators, I was able to organise and facilitate data gathering from three sources to investigate processes of Pakeha change in: (i) unpublished material describing the antiracism and Treaty movement's historical theorising and strategies over 30 years, (ii) a country-wide process of co-theorising among contemporary Treaty educator groups about their work and perceived influence, and (iii) a collection of organisational accounts of Treaty-focused change. The collected records confirmed that a coherent anti-colonial discourse, which I have termed 'Pakeha honouring the Treaty', was in use to construct institutional and constitutional changes in non-government organisations. My interpretation of key elements in a local theory of transforming action included emotional responses to counter-cultural information, collective work for cultural and institutional change and practising a mutually agreed relationship with Māori. I concluded that these emotional, collective and relationship processes in dominant group change were crucial in helping to construct the new conceptual resources of 'affirming Māori authority' and 'striving towards a right relationship with Māori'. These counter-colonial constructions allowed Pakeha a non-resistant and facilitative response to Māori challenge, and enabled a dialogue with Māori about decolonisation. 

By examining in one research programme the genealogy and interdependencies of a new discourse, my research contributes to theorising about the production of new, counter-hegemonic discourses, and confirms the crucial part played by social movements in developing new, liberatory constructions of the social order.

My research calls for further theory-building on (i) emotional and spiritual aspects of transformational learning, (ii) processes involved in consciously-undertaken cultural change by dominant/coloniser groups, and (iii) practising of mutually agreed relationships with indigenous peoples by dominant/coloniser groups. 

My research has implications for theorising how coloniser and dominant groups generally may participate in liberatory social change and decolonisation work, and  the part played by the Western states in the global struggles by indigenous people for recognition of their world-views and aspirations.  

It remains to be seen whether counter-colonial discourses and organisational changes aimed at 'honouring the Treaty' with indigenous peoples will be sufficiently widely adopted to help transform Western dominating cultures and colonial projects. In the meantime, acknowledging and documenting these counter-colonial discourses and their constructions opens up increasing possibilities for constructing, from a history of colonisation, a different future.

year: 2007