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During the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic lockdowns, stay at home or work from home, many have argued that the westernised non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) do not provide remedial in low-income countries like Nigeria, where informal job seekers, street traders, informal labourers and artisans depend mainly on the informal economy. By applying social solidarity (SS) and community-based approach (CBA), the authors evaluate individual acts (trust, altruism and reciprocity) during the lockdown and how these practices evolve from individual approaches to collective actions.

This study reflects on pragmatism research paradigm that enables researchers to maintain both subjectivity in their reflections and objectivity in data collection and analysis. The authors adopt a qualitative method through purposeful and convenience sampling procedure. Data were analysed thematically to identify elements of SS, individual acts, collective or community actions and perceptions.

The findings reveal that COVID-19 had a disproportionate impact (lack of food and a fall in daily income) on workers, informal job seekers, informal businesses operators and the poor households. As such, the study developed a reflective model of solidarity exhibited by individual acts and collective acts (practices of resource pooling, information sharing, women empowerment, distribution of palliatives and donations) within trusted circles that helped people cope with the lockdown experiences.

Solidarity represents beliefs, practices of values and norms. The SS exhibited by people through NPI would have implications on planning and monitoring the effectiveness of public health programmes during a pandemic in the future.

The findings of citizens and community actions have implications related to the process of building communities – coming together – and solidarity that enhances social development with implications on community health policy agenda during disasters, emergencies and health pandemic.

This is one of the first studies to analyse the relationship between trust, altruism, reciprocity, SS and CBA during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, it seems reasonable to clarify the concept of SS given the lack of clarity about the definitions from previous studies.

This chapter describes a case study of a social change project in medical education (primary care), in which the critical interpretive evaluation methodology I sought to use came up against the “positivist” approach preferred by senior figures in the medical school who commissioned the evaluation.

I describe the background to the study and justify the evaluation approach and methods employed in the case study – drawing on interviews, document analysis, survey research, participant observation, literature reviews, and critical incidents – one of which was the decision by the medical school hierarchy to restrict my contact with the lay community in my official evaluation duties. The use of critical ethnography also embraced wider questions about circuits of power and the social and political contexts within which the “social change” effort occurred.

Central to my analysis is John Gaventa’s theory of power as “the internalization of values that inhibit consciousness and participation while encouraging powerlessness and dependency.” Gaventa argued, essentially, that the evocation of power has as much to do with preventing decisions as with bringing them about. My chosen case illustrated all three dimensions of power that Gaventa originally uncovered in his portrait of self-interested Appalachian coal mine owners: (1) communities were largely excluded from decision making power; (2) issues were avoided or suppressed; and (3) the interests of the oppressed went largely unrecognized.

The account is auto-ethnographic, hence the study is limited by my abilities, biases, and subject positions. I reflect on these in the chapter.

The study not only illustrates the unique contribution of case study as a research methodology but also its low status in the positivist paradigm adhered to by many doctors. Indeed, the tension between the potential of case study to illuminate the complexities of community engagement through thick description and the rejection of this very method as inherently “flawed” suggests that medical education may be doomed to its neoliberal fate for some time to come.

The Presidential Address to the Liverpool Engineering Society by Mr. Farthing (the salient points of which are reproduced in this issue) has particular bearing upon lubrication and especially on young lubrication engineers. Mr. Farthing stressed the very wide field open to young engineers and the difficulties associated with training in order to cover as wide a field as may be necessary. It is usually so important to gain a wide knowledge before one can specialise and this is certainly the case with lubrication engineers. One cannot begin to fully appreciate the intricacies of a lubrication system with all its accessory components lubricating and guarding, for example, a large motive power plant or rolling mill, until one has more than a mere working knowledge of the plant itself, the duties it must perform, how it performs them and the snags that arise which might be overcome by correct lubrication. In view of the fact that lubrication systems are just as important in a textile mill as in a power station or a large brick works, the almost impossible‐to‐achieve‐range of knowledge that would simplify the work of a lubrication engineer is very obvious. Fortunately, lubricating principles apply to most cases and knowing how to apply one's knowledge from basic principles is the key to success in this difficult profession.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.

The purpose of this study was to examine the distribution channel interface between manufacturers of nationally branded canned food products and food brokers. In addition to the generation of descriptive information about the food broker—food manufacturer channel dyad, hypotheses were tested concerning the degree of consensus between food broker and food manufacturer perceptions of (a) the reasons food manufacturers use food brokers to distribute nationally branded canned food products and (b) their respective roles in the marketing of nationally branded canned food products.

Paul D. Bliese is currently the commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Unit – Europe. He received his Ph.D. in Applied Social Psychology from Texas Tech University. His research interests include multilevel methodology, leadership, and occupational stress. He is a consulting editor for the Journal of Applied Psychology, and also serves on the editorial boards of Leadership Quarterly and Organizational Research Methods. His work has appeared in the Human Performance, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Organizational Research Methods.Kristina A. Bourne is a doctoral candidate in Organization Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she also obtained a M.B.A. and a Women’s Studies Graduate Certificate. Her academic interests include gender and organization as well as family-friendly policies and benefits. She is currently working on her dissertation in the area of women business owners, and on a collaborative research project focusing on part-time work arrangements.Gilad Chen is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from George Mason University. His research focuses on work motivation, teams, and leadership, with particular interests in modeling motivation and performance in work team contexts and the examination of multilevel organizational phenomena. His work has appeared in the Academy of Management Journal, Human Performance, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Organizational Research Methods.Jae Uk Chun is a doctoral student in Organizational Behavior in the School of Management at the State University of New York at Binghamton, where he is also research assistant of the Center for Leadership Studies. His major research interests include leadership, group dynamics and group decision-making, and multiple levels of analysis issues.Vinit M. Desai is a doctoral student and researcher in Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations at the Walter A. Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. His research interests include organizational learning, sensemaking, and error cognition in high reliability organizations.Shelley D. Dionne is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior and Leadership in the School of Management at Binghamton University, and a fellow in the Center for Leadership Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Binghamton University. Her research interests include leadership and creativity, levels of analysis issues, and team development and training.Daniel G. Gallagher (Ph.D. – University of Illinois), is the CSX Corporation Professor of Management at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Management, and Industrial Relations (Berkeley). His current research interests include the multi-disciplinary study of contingent employment and other forms of work outside of the traditional employer – employee relationship.David A. Hofmann (Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University) is currently Associate Professor of Management at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests include safety issues in organizations, multi-level analysis, organizational climate/culture and leadership, content specific citizenship behavior, and the proliferation of errors in organizations. In 1992, he was awarded the Yoder-Heneman Personnel Research award by the Society for Human Resource Management. His research appears in a number of journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Process, and Personnel Psychology. He has also co-authored several book chapters, edited a book (Safety and Health in Organizations: A Multi-level Perspective), and presented papers/workshops at a number of professional conferences.James G. (Jerry) Hunt (Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is the Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Management, Trinity Company Professor in Leadership and Director of the Institute for Leadership Research at Texas Tech University. He is the former editor of the Journal of Management and current Senior Editor of The Leadership Quarterly. He founded and edited the eight volume leadership symposia series, and has authored or edited some 200 book and journal publications. His current research interests include processual approaches to leadership and organizational phenomena and the philosophy of the science of management.Kimberly S. Jaussi is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior and Leadership in the School of Management at Binghamton University and a fellow in the Center for Leadership Studies. She received her doctorate from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include unconventional leader behavior, creativity and leadership, identity issues in diverse groups, and organizational commitment.Lisa M. Jones is a doctoral candidate in Organizational Behavior at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and her M.B.A. and M.A. from Brigham Young University. Her research interests include leadership, collective personality, and innovation implementation.Kyoungsu Kim is Associate Professor of Organization in the College of Business Administration, Chonnam National University. His major fields of interest are culture and leadership at multiple levels of analysis. His research focuses on charismatic leadership, organizational structure, roles, culture, and multiple levels of analysis.Barbara S. Lawrence is Professor of Human Resources and Organizational Behavior at the UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management. She received her Ph.D. from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Dr. Lawrence’s current research examines organizational reference groups, the evolution of organizational norms, internal labor markets and their effects on employees’ expectations and implicit work contracts, and the impact of population age change on occupations.Craig C. Lundberg is the Blanchard Professor of Human Resource Management at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. He works with organizations facilitating organizational and personal development and publishes extensively (over 200 articles and chapters, five co-authored books). His current scholarship focuses on organizational change and culture, consultancy, alternative inquiry strategies, and sensemaking and emotions in work settings.Kenneth D. Mackenzie is the Edmund P. Learned Distinguished Professor in the School of Business at the University of Kansas. He is also the President of a pair of consulting companies which support and enrich his research. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He serves on various editorial boards and has published numerous books and articles. He received a B.A. in Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley. He has spent his career trying to overcome the handicap of “excessive theoretical education.”Peter Madsen is a doctoral student at the Walter A. Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. His thesis work examines the processes by which organizations attempt to learn from past failures and the organizational actions and characteristics that facilitate such learning. His other interests include organizational reliability, strategic management, the work-life interface, and ethics.John E. Mathieu is the Northeast Utilities and Ackerman Scholar Professor of Management at the University of Connecticut. He received a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Old Dominion University in 1985. He has published over 50 articles and chapters on a variety of topics, mostly in the areas of micro- and meso-organizational behavior. He is a member of the Academy of Management, a Fellow of the Society of Industrial Organizational Psychology, and the American Psychological Association. His current research interests include models of training effectiveness, team and multi-team processes, and cross-level models of organizational behavior.Sara Ann McComb is an Assistant Professor of Operations Management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She obtained her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering at Purdue University. Her research interests include alternative work arrangements and project teams. Currently, she is examining mutually beneficial links between organizations and part-time workers, particularly in the service sector. She is also studying the way in which project teams share information, a project for which she was award the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award.Jone L. Pearce is Professor of Organization and Strategy in the Graduate School of Management, University of California, Irvine. She conducts research on workplace interpersonal processes, such as trust, and how these processes may be affected by political structures, economic conditions and organizational policies and practices. Her work has appeared in over seventy scholarly articles and her most recent book is Organization and Management in the Embrace of Government (Erlbaum, 2001). She is a Fellow of the Academy of Management and served as the Academy’s President in 2002–2003.Amy E. Randel is an Assistant Professor and the Coca-Cola Fellow in the Calloway School of Business & Accountancy at Wake Forest University. She received her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Irvine. Her research interests include identity in organizations, diverse group dynamics, group efficacy, cross-cultural management, and social capital.Richard Reeves-Ellington is currently Professor Emeritus in the School of Management at Binghamton University and an Associate Dean at Excelsior College. He taught at the American University in Bulgaria and Sofia University in Bulgaria as a Fulbright Senior Scholar. His fields of interest revolve around cross-cultural aspects of global organization, marketing, and business strategy. He also served on the Fulbright Selection Committee for SE Europe, the Muskie Foundation for students from the CIS, and the Fulbright Senior Scholars Program. His initial 33-year career in the pharmaceutical industry included 19 years of living in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.Christine M. Riordan is a faculty member in the Department of Management and also the Director of the Institute for Leadership Advancement in the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia. Chris’ current research, which includes the study of labor force and cross-cultural diversity, has been published in journals such as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Organizational Research Methods, and Research in Personnel and Human Resource Management.Karlene H. Roberts is a Professor of Business Administration at the Walter A. Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. She has been on the review boards of many major journals in her field. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society and the Academy of Management. Her current research interests are in the design and management of organizations in which errors can have catastrophic outcomes. In this area she explores cross-level issues.Denise M. Rousseau is the H. J. Heinz II Professor of Organizational Behavior and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. An organizational psychologist, her research focuses on worker-employer relationships and multi-level processes in organizational change. She is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Organizational Behavior, and in 2003–2004, President of the Academy of Management.Melissa Woodard Barringer is an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She obtained her Ph.D. in Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. Her research interests are in the areas of total compensation and alternative work arrangements. She is currently studying part-time work in the service industry, and contingent work in the accounting and academic professions.