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In the years following the 2009 recession, local governments in the US have struggled to adequately maintain and manage infrastructure projects. As a result, community organizations are using new tactics to increase social and financial support for specific projects in the hopes of capturing local government attention and motivating infrastructure project delivery. This chapter explores how one community organization initiated a consensus movement by using civic crowdfunding to mobilize resources for a specific infrastructure project. Based on a matched pairs case study with two protected bike lane (PBL) projects in Denver, CO, USA (one that used consensus movement tactics and one that did not), this analysis focuses on the emergence of a consensus movement and its implications for project stakeholders. As a consensus movement supporting infrastructure, I argue that the project-based nature is important in defining movement success. Additionally, I argue that the relationship between the social movement organization and the state is more important than a typical consensus movement because infrastructure delivery requires a high level of state coordination and resources. The implications of using a consensus movement to support a specific infrastructure project point to shifting roles between social movement organization and the state.

Occupy was a leaderless, resistance movement that started as Occupy Wall Street in New York City on September 17, 2011 but soon spread around the world, becoming a truly global movement. This chapter provides a detailed description and analysis of the processes of learning consensus decision-making in Occupy Dame Street in Dublin, Ireland.The analysis draws on more than five months of “militant ethnographic” and participatory action research within the Occupy movement. The chapter points to the ways in which uncertainty impacted on the processes of learning in Occupy and how it intersected with responsibility and commitment of the participants.

Most decision-making problems in construction are complex and difficult to solve, as they involve multiple criteria and multiple decision makers in addition to subjective uncertainties, imprecisions and vagueness surrounding the decision-making process. In many instances, the decision-making process is based on linguistic terms rather than numerical values. Hence, structured fuzzy consensus-reaching processes and fuzzy aggregation methods are instrumental in multi-criteria group decision-making (MCGDM) problems for capturing the point of view of a group of experts. This chapter outlines different fuzzy consensus-reaching processes and fuzzy aggregation methods. It presents the background of the basic theory and formulation of these processes and methods, as well as numerical examples that illustrate their theory and formulation. Application areas of fuzzy consensus reaching and fuzzy aggregation in the construction domain are identified, and an overview of previously developed frameworks for fuzzy consensus reaching and fuzzy aggregation is provided. Finally, areas for future work are presented that highlight emerging trends and the imminent needs of fuzzy consensus reaching and fuzzy aggregation in the construction domain.

We propose that social projection – assuming a connection between your and others’ attitudes – can promote participation in generalized exchange.

Drawing on the social projection literature, we posit that false consensus (overestimating the similarity between our attitudes and others’) can increase people’s willingness to participate in generalized exchange. In contrast, we expect that pluralistic ignorance (underestimating the similarity between our attitudes and others’) can undermine the same motivation. We propose that false consensus will not only make people more inclined to participate in generalized exchange but also lead to more successful exchanges through an advantageous self-selection process. Finally, we propose that perceived similarity will lead to false consensus, and in turn, increased participation in generalized exchange, whereas perceived dissimilarity will lead to pluralistic ignorance.

We suggest several ways to influence false consensus in order to promote a healthy pattern of generalized exchange.

We put forth a set of novel predictions concerning the relationship between social projection and social exchange. Our theorizing contributes to the existing literature on antecedents of generalized exchange.

The author introduces cultural consensus theory as a theoretical and methodological tool for examining the microfoundations of institutions by linking variance in individuals’ micro-level conditions with cross-level variance in individuals’ adoption of macro-level socially constructed knowledge. The author describes the theory and methods, which include the use of cultural and subcultural congruence as cross-level variables. The author then provides an illustrative example of the theory and methods’ application for studying institutions, incorporating primary survey data of US-based ethics and compliance officers (ECOs). Results of the survey revealed variance in ECOs’ level of congruence associated with their direct communication with executives, their experience implementing ethics practices, and their educational background. Finally, the author discusses additional ways to use this approach for researching the microfoundations of institutions.

A centuries-long history of theory and research shows that every authority system tries to cultivate a belief in its legitimacy. This paper focuses on the legitimation of regimes – social relationships and the rules that govern them. We use existing theory and research to identify a basic legitimation assumption that includes four conditions necessary to establish legitimacy. We also identify four corollaries of the assumption and use our own published and unpublished laboratory research to show (1) how successful experimental procedures satisfy the assumption’s conditions, and (2) how the failure of experimental procedures to establish legitimacy violate the assumption and its corollaries.

Research has already uncovered a great deal of evidence about the individual and organizational qualities that enhance effective teaching and the kinds of qualifications (attributes) that are associated with effective teaching and learning. From a research perspective, increased precision and specificity in the definition and refinement of specific concepts (e.g., pedagogical content knowledge) will increase academic knowledge about the relationship between teacher characteristics, working conditions, and the quality of instruction that takes place. This knowledge may have little effect on policy formation. From a policy perspective, a holistic or organic conception of teacher quality will be critical for effective policy formation and implementation. At some point, academic knowledge about different aspects of effective or “quality” teaching need to be connected to a general concept of a quality teacher in order to be effectively inserted into policy debates and the general media. Systematic use of academic knowledge is often hindered by either the narrow focus of the research, or by its limited application to actual teacher practice. In spite of these limitations in academic research, there are areas where academics, policymakers, and practitioners have achieved consensus or are converging on shared constructs of promise. In other areas, both academic and political debates seem locked into conflict over constructs related to teacher quality. Identifying these three broad categories of consensus, convergence, and conflict provides a broad framework to assess the kinds of research and the kinds of reform that need to be carried out in order to promote and sustain teachers’ development and implementation of their professional skills in the classroom.