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Religious institutions can affect organizational practices when employees bring their religious commitments and practices into the workplace. But those religious commitments function in the midst of other organizational factors that influence the working out of employees’ religious commitments. This process can generate varying outcomes in organizational contexts, ranging from a heightened effect of religious commitment on employee behavior to a negligible or nonexistent influence of religion on employee behavior. Relying on social identity theory and schematic social cognition as unifying frameworks for the study of religious behavior, we develop a theoretically informed approach to understanding how and why the religious beliefs, commitments and practices employees bring to work have varying behavioral impacts.

The impact that workplace aggression has on organizations and its members has become a focal point for organizational research. To date, studies have primarily examined the perpetrator of workplace aggression, specifically their personality traits. In this chapter, we draw on Institutional Theory to better understand a specific form of workplace aggression, indirect (covert) aggression. We specifically present a model that shows how the normative pressures and social roles within an institution influence the aggressive actions by employees as well as the scripts employees utilize in response to indirect aggression. We assert that an examination of how scripts are used to respond to indirect aggression will be especially helpful in understanding how institutional pressures influence this type of workplace aggression within organizations.

In the last decade, much has been debated about the topic of BDSM in various scientific fields. With the slow and steady blending of BDSM with mainstream culture, which escalated rapidly with the appearance and extreme popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey, BDSM has become a current topic of discussion in a broad variety of contexts. Moreover, with the recent change in medical classification of BDSM practices in ICD-11 (World Health Organization, 2018), which strictly clinically separated the sexological diagnosis of nonconsensual sadism from consensual SM practices, BDSM has also become a hot issue in the community of diagnostic experts. This chapter explores three aspects of the evolution of BDSM subculture in the postcommunist Czech Republic in the context of the continuous worldwide development of BDSM subculture – (1) role-play, (2) unification, and (3) commodification in the BDSM subculture – situating them within the broader context of the development of society in the postcommunist environment and the development of the BDSM scene worldwide.

Marion has just taken on the directorship of a joint university/public library. You, as her protégé, are interested in observing how she approaches the new venture. You are curious about what information she will gather, whose advice she will seek, how she will figure out the expectations others have of her and the library, how she will prioritize the many challenges before her, and how she will negotiate her leadership role with the staff. In other words, you want to study Marion's organizational sensemaking.

Older adults’ sexual health is becoming an increasingly important component of healthy aging in the wake of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and rising infection rates among this age cohort. The increase in HIV/AIDS diagnoses in the older adult population ignites the need to understand the reasons why older adults are omitted from HIV/AIDS prevention education policy.

This chapter examines the social forces that influence HIV/AIDS policy at the state and community levels. Through qualitative methodology and analysis, including interviews with state policymakers and managers of AIDS service organizations in four Midwestern states (n=31), I look for trends and patterns as to whether or not older adults are considered as an “at-risk” group for HIV infection.

Findings reveal that HIV/AIDS policy may be impacted by enduring sexual scripts about older adults. To some extent both state policymakers and AIDS service organization personnel adhere to stereotypes about older adults’ sexuality and sexual activity, which is then implemented in their health promotion activities. The result is that gaps exist in HIV/AIDS prevention education for older adults, despite the fact that current trends show an increase in new HIV infections and AIDS diagnoses among people over the age of 50.

While this is an exploratory study of the available HIV/AIDS prevention education and health promotion activities for older adults, as well as the viewpoints of state policymakers and AIDS service organization personnel, the findings do indicate the need for additional research on the potentially dangerous sexual behaviors – lack of HIV testing, low condom usage, multiple partners – exhibited by older adults. Future research involving interviews with older adults, physicians, and medical personnel may add new perspectives to the current research.

As the baby boomers continue to age and challenge cultural stereotypes of sexual behaviors among older adults, research in the area of sexual health and HIV/AIDS prevention education will remain an important component of healthy aging. This research begins what will ultimately be a necessary conversation.

Service work is often differentiated from manufacturing by the interactive labor workers perform as they come into direct contact with customers. Service organizations are particularly interested in regulating these interactions because they are a key opportunity for developing quality customer service, customer retention, and ultimately generation of sales revenue. An important stream of sociological literature focuses on managerial attempts to exert control over interactions through various techniques including routinization, standardization, and surveillance. Scripting is a common method of directing workers’ behavior, yet studies show that workers are extremely reluctant to administer scripts, judging them to be inappropriate to particular interactions or because they undermine their own sense of self. This paper examines a panoptic method of regulating service workers, embodied in undercover corporate agents who patrol employee’s adherence to scripts. How do workers required to recite scripts for customers respond to undercover control? What does it reveal about the nature of interactive labor? In-depth interviews with interactive workers in a range of retail contexts reveal that they mobilize their own interactional competence to challenge the effects of the panoptic, as they utilize strategies to identify and adapt to these “mystery shoppers,” all the while maintaining their cover. The paper shows the limits on control of interactive workers, as they maintain their own socialized sense of civility and preserve a limited realm of autonomy in their work.

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) who display aggression necessitate effective interventions for reducing highly disruptive behavior, while keeping learning environments safe and secure for all students and staff. In this chapter, we describe the merits of cognitive-behavioral interventions (CBIs) in school settings to reduce student aggression and other destructive and maladaptive behavior and to promote student success and lifelong learning. To that end, we first explore three theoretical frameworks for aggression: the general aggression model, social learning theory, and social information processing, each of which examines the role of environment, cognition, and behavior as foundational to the occurrence of aggression. Synthesizing these theories assists in the development and implementation of CBIs in classroom settings. We then describe the CBI approach to teaching students cognitive and behavioral strategies to reduce problematic behaviors and increase the use of more pro-social alternatives, and ultimately generalize learned skills to a variety of social situations. A brief history of CBIs is explored, followed by a discussion of several meta-analyses establishing CBI's effectiveness in decreasing aggression across a variety of venues and populations. We then focus on social problem solving as an example of a cognitive-behavioral approach and describe the Tools for Getting Along curriculum as an example of a school-based CBI. At the end of the chapter, we explain some limitations of CBIs in schools and delineate future research needs.

Routines are the very material of human organization. But there is little guarantee that routines will be enacted flexibly enough to ensure that organization survives. Mindfulness has been offered as a guarantor of sorts, but it remains unclear exactly what people mean by mindfulness and how mindfulness might relate to routines. This chapter reviews evolving conceptions of mindfulness and routines—from Langer’s early work to routine dynamics to Levinthal and Rerup’s seminal debate with Weick and Sutcliffe. It puts forth the argument that the recent theory of mindfulness as metacognitive practice retains important insights from throughout this conceptual evolution, while resolving ambiguity and debate about the relation between mindfulness and routines in at least four critical areas related to agency, duality, flexibility, and social organization. This resolution, in turn, opens up further avenues to understand the social processes by which people come to understand their minds—and how this understanding embeds within organization itself.

Interactions between customers and service providers are ubiquitous. Some of these encounters are routine, but many are characterized by conflict and intense emotions. This chapter introduces a new theory, service encounter needs theory (SENT) that aims to elucidate the mechanisms through which service encounter behaviors affect outcomes for customers and employees. Evidence is presented for the preeminence within these encounters of eight psychosocial needs, and propositions are advanced regarding likely antecedents to fulfillment and violation of these needs. Emotional experiences and displays are viewed as important consequences of need fulfillment and violation, as are numerous cognitive, behavioral, and health-related outcomes.