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The purpose of this paper is to examine the applicability of Prochaska and colleagues' “stages of change model,” which has generated substantial support in the therapeutic literature as a useful framework for understanding the dynamics of motivation to change problem behaviors, in a leadership development context.

A group of over 70 supervisors/managers was studied over a period of nine months as they participated in a company‐sponsored leadership development effort.

Results provide initial evidence that the stages of change model has the potential for being reliably and validly assessed in a leadership development context. Participants' stage scores related in meaningful ways to relevant criteria such as job attitudes, perceptions of personal leadership areas needing improvement, and evaluations of actual development module content and presentation over a nine‐month period.

Participants were drawn from only one organization and this was the first major leadership development effort undertaken by this organization.

Study results provide support for the appropriateness of applying the stages of change model and its measurement in a leadership development context. Results demonstrate that the stages of change model appears to offer useful and pragmatic insight into motivation to learn and on improving the effectiveness of leadership development activities.

The present study is unique in that makes use of a stages of change model to empirically examine differential patterns of relationships between participants' stages of change and their organizational attitudes, leadership developmental needs, and longitudinal reactions to the development effort.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the interaction effects of managers' perceptions of the supporting vision clarity, appropriateness, and execution of a major organizational change on their job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, and role ambiguity.

Data were collected from upper and middle‐level managers of a Fortune 500 US manufacturer and maker of consumer goods involved in a large organizational change initiative. A survey was completed by 217 managers, for a response rate of 89 percent. Change attitudes, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, role ambiguity, and control variables were all assessed.

A three‐way interaction between change vision clarity, change appropriateness, and change execution was found to predict managers' job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and role ambiguity.

The study relied on self‐reports collected at one point in time, allowing for the possibility of common method bias. The complex, nonlinear relationships indicate that method bias cannot fully account for the reported relationships.

Study results illustrate that the individual experience of major change is multifaceted and that simultaneously considering the combined effects of individual's change attitudes including readiness (in the form of believing a change is needed and appropriate) and the perceived effectiveness of the change execution on key job‐related outcomes can help practitioners understand more fully the implications of organizational change.

The findings lend support to the notion that individual's sentiments concerning organizational change are interactive and should not be ignored.

The relevance of affective factors in the charismatic leadership process has been widely acknowledged in leadership research. Building on this notion, the present study empirically investigated the role of leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence in the development of charismatic leadership behaviors. We developed hypotheses linking these constructs and tested them in a sample of 34 leaders and their 165 direct followers from a multinational corporation. Results showed that both leaders’ positive mood and leaders’ emotional intelligence were positively related to their charismatic leadership behaviors, as rated by followers. Further, we found leaders’ emotional intelligence to moderate the relationship between leaders’ positive mood and their charismatic leadership behaviors. Emotionally intelligent leaders exhibited charismatic leadership behaviors to a high extent, largely irrespective of their degree of positive mood. In contrast, leaders low on emotional intelligence were more likely to exhibit charismatic behaviors when their positive mood was high, while they were less likely to exhibit such behaviors when their positive mood was low. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for leadership theory, research, and practice.

This paper critically analyzes the International Olympic Committee's 2000 global marketing campaign titled “Celebrate Humanity”. Released prior to the 2000 Summer Games, this campaign capitalized on recent cultural trends by focusing on multicultural inclusivity and the idea that sport could contribute to world peace. Using this campaign as our case study, we demonstrate the possibilities for both local consumption and interpretation of a global campaign within the specific cultural context of the United States.

This chapter provides readers with a summary of sport sociology in the United States. It begins with a brief overview of sport in the United States before describing the development of the sociology of sport in the United States and some of the major contemporary patterns in sport research. They key movement in US sport sociology was the critical-cultural turn that took place during the 1980s and 1990s when critical theory and feminism became dominant approaches to research. Scholarship in the 21st century has largely developed upon that turn and is generally qualitative and cultural. Contemporary US sport sociology is a critical endeavor heavily influenced by cultural studies, post-structuralism, feminism, queer theory, critical race theory, post-colonial theory, and theories of globalization. Despite a fairly consistent approach to sport research in the United States, sport sociology remains contentious and in disunity. This chapter argues that the contention and disunity results from broader structural patterns that guide sport sociologists’ social actions.

While a number of scholars have observed that the contemporary self has to negotiate a “push and pull” between autonomy and a desire for community (Austin & Gagne, 2008; Bauman, 2001a, p. 60; Coles, 2008; Giddens, 2003, p. 46, the struggle between the “self” and “others” that is at the heart of symbolic interactionist (SI) understandings of the self is often missing from sociological discussion on the “making of the self” (Coles, 2008, p. 21; Holstein & Gubrium, 2000), and the current chapter contributes to this literature.

To gain insight into “the making of the self,” in-depth life history interviews were conducted with 23 former members of new religious movements (NRMs) specific to their construction of self. Interview data was analyzed for variations in the ways in which individuals describe their construction of self. To make sense of these variations, SI understandings of the self are applied.

Analysis indicates that the extent to which individuals are informed by the social versus the personal in their self-construction is a continuum. From an SI perspective the self is conceptualized as to varying degrees informed by both the personal and the social. These two “domains” of the self are interrelated or connected through an ongoing process of reflexivity that links internal experiences and external feedback. From this perspective, “healthy” selves reflexively balance a sense of personal uniqueness against a sense of belonging and social connectedness. While a reflexive balance between the “self” and “others” is optimal, not everyone negotiates this balance successfully, and the extent to which individuals are informed by the social versus the personal in their self-construction varies and can be conceptualized as on a continuum between autonomy and social connectedness. The current findings suggest that where individuals are positioned on this continuum is dependent on the availability of cultural and personal resources from which individuals can construct selves, in particular in childhood. Those participants who described themselves as highly dependent on others report childhood histories of control, whereas those who described themselves as disconnected from others report histories of abuse and neglect.

The problems of relying on retrospective accounts of former members should be noted as such accounts are interpretive and influenced by the respondents’ present situation. However, despite their retrospective and constructionist nature, life history narratives provide meaningful insights into the actual process of self and identity construction. The analysis of retrospective accounts is a commonly recommended and chosen method for the study of the self (Davidman & Greil, 2007; Diniz-Pereira, 2008).

The current findings suggest that significant differences may exist in the way in which individuals construct and narrate their sense of self, in particular in regards to the way in which they experience and negotiate contemporary tensions between social connectedness and individuality. In particular, the findings highlight the importance of childhood environments for the construction of “healthy” selves that can negotiate contemporary demands of autonomy as well as social connectedness.

A story that Robert told in class during this research exposes the tension of simultaneously studying literacy and identity when submission and control are also processes at work in the story. There are two pieces of this story. In the first part of the story, Robert relates the narrative. The second part consists of the details of the story he told. Both pieces can be used to illustrate different elements of the tension between studying literacy and identity as a single construct labeled literate identity. In addition to suggesting a metaphor for literacy and identity, Robert's story navigates the constructs of submission and control that Wong (2008) discusses in terms of the aesthetic of motivation. The tension between submission and control when coupled with an exploration of literacy and identity has implications for the notions of resistance to literacy in the field of boys' literacy as well as the being and doing of literacy for the boys in this study.Our class began with the students congratulating Robert on his storytelling. When I inquired further, I found out that Robert had started to tell the legend of Cupid and Psyche in a previous class, but he had run out of time. The rest of the students expressed interest in hearing the story, either for the first time, or to know the end. Initially, his telling ebbed and flowed. He apologized for his lack of fluency and explained he was trying to provide us the parts of the story we would find the most interesting. Eventually he settled into a rhythm and finished 50 minutes later. (Reconstructed field note, December 2009)

The authors speculate only about relatively short-term advances in special education for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Speculation is confined to the overlapping areas of core values, technologies, neuroscience, and law/policy. In core values, the authors hope to see a resurgence of commitment to special, effective instruction and to practice aligned with scientific evidence. It is hoped that technologies will advance practices in instruction, improve the uses of artificial intelligence in teacher training and teaching, and encourage the appropriate use of artificial reproduction to avoid disorders. Neuroscience, it is hoped, will yield more reliable and helpful classification of disorders, better and more useful imaging, and more effective treatment of a variety of emotional, behavioral, and academic problems. In law and policy, the authors hope the Supreme Court's Endrew case will result in greater focus on challenging, appropriate education. Law and policy should also encourage trauma sensitivity in education, make whole-school approaches to trauma sensitivity the priority, and avoid universal trauma screening. Students' and families' legitimate interests in confidentiality and data privacy should be protected in newly constructed information-sharing infrastructures.