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This chapter presents research and analysis on the Institute for Economics and Peace’s (IEP’s) index in the Ecological Threat Report (ETR). In the analysis, 178 countries are examined at the sub-national level, accounting for 99.9% of the global population. The estimate consists of five indicators that aggregate to yield an index of ecological threats. These five indicators are water risk, the prevalence of stunting, the impact of natural disasters, projected population growth and projected temperature rise. The ETR is a tool that can be used to identify the countries that are at the highest risk of ecological threats. The index identifies that 30 countries facing the highest level of ecological threats as well as low levels of resilience are home to 1.26 billion people. At the end of 2020, in these 30 countries, 68% of the total people were forcibly displaced beyond their borders. As these 30 countries suffer collectively from the highest ecological threats and without the reversal of ecological degradation, displacement is very likely to continue. Without urgent development, ecological threats will continue to create humanitarian emergencies and will likely increase without a sustained effort to reverse the current trend.

Managers’ boundary spanning role is critical to the effectiveness of groups, teams and organizations. We explore the identity predicament of boundary spanning managers, who must create synergies across multiple identities. In the context of identity threat, formerly synergistic identities may be brought into conflict – a phenomenon we label identity splintering. Our theory and empirical results suggest that identity splintering creates a discrepancy between the identities that boundary spanning managers claim and those they enact.

We examine collective responses to identity threats in organizations, conceptualizing these responses as identity contests in which members of opposing groups share an identity and strive to protect the social psychological rewards derived from that identity.

We present an argument for the importance of identity as a basis for motivation, suggesting that the desires to obtain and protect identity rewards underlie much behavior in organizations. We also present two case studies from which we derive further theoretical implications about identity contests as drivers of organizational change.

Our case studies show how organizational subgroups perceived identity threats arising from actual or proposed changes in policies and practices, mobilized to resist these threats, and negotiated further changes in organizational structure, policies, and practices.

Applying this analysis, social psychologists who study identity threats can see how responses to such threats are not solely individual and cognitive but sometimes collective and behavioral, leading to changes in organizations and in the surrounding culture.

Our analysis of how identity contests arise and unfold can enrich understandings of how self-definition and mental well-being are shaped by organizational life.

By focusing on collective responses to identity threats, we offer a new way of seeing how intra-organizational identity struggles are implicated in social change.

Disasters and other emergencies are increasing, with millions of people affected by events like earthquakes, fires and flooding. The use of mobile emergency alert systems (MEAS) can improve people’s responses by providing targeted alerts based on location and other personal details. This study aims to understand the factors that influence people’s willingness to share the personal information that is needed to provide context-specific messaging about a threat and protective actions.

Drawing on protection motivation theory (PMT), this study proposes and tests a model of willingness to use personalised MEAS that incorporates key factors related to an individual’s appraisal of a potential threat (i.e. perceived vulnerability and severity) and coping capacity (i.e. response efficacy and self-efficacy), with deterrents like response cost and privacy concern. This study uses survey data from 226 respondents in New Zealand and SmartPLS to assess the model.

The results show how willingness to use MEAS is influenced by people’s appraisal of an emergency threat and their perception of how using MEAS would help them to cope effectively. Fear and perceived severity are significant motivators of MEAS use, along with coping appraisal. However, when the negative influences of privacy concern and response cost are strong enough, they can dissuade use, despite knowing the risks.

The study addresses a gap in research on the use of alert systems like MEAS, which require sharing of personal information and continuous engagement such as the real-time disclosure of one’s location. It confirms the significance of factors not studied in prior research, such as privacy concerns, that can dissuade use. This study also extends the application of the PMT in the context of emergency management.

Purpose – Negotiations can be stressful, yet are unavoidable in many organizations. Members of organizational workgroups for instance need to negotiate about issues such as task division and different ideas on how to complete a project. Until recently little research effort has been directed to understanding negotiators' stress responses. Similarly, little is known about the consequences that these stress responses may have on negotiation outcomes. In this chapter we argue that group members' physiological stress responses are a key determinant of the outcomes of intragroup negotiations.

Design/Methodology/Approach – We focus on two distinct physiological responses (i.e., threat and challenge) and argue that relative to threat responses, challenge responses will be related to superior information sharing, information processing, and decision-making quality. Moving beyond a uniform relationship between physiological reactions and negotiators' behaviors and outcomes, we also focus on two moderating characteristics: the relative power of group members, and whether the negotiation is purely task related, or co-occurs with relationship issues. We discuss effects on both the individual and the group level, extend our ideas to other forms of negotiations, and end with practical and theoretical implications.

Originality/Value – A better understanding of psychophysiological processes during intragroup negotiations may help to explain when intragroup disagreements help or hinder group outcomes and, therefore, may help to solve the paradox of intragroup conflict.

The sudden rise of the socio-political importance of security that has marked the twenty-first century entails a commensurate empowerment of the intelligence apparatus. This chapter takes the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 as a vantage point from where to address the political significance of this development. It provides an account of the powers the Act grants intelligence agencies, concluding that it effectively legalizes their operational paradigm. Further, the socio-legal dynamics that informed the Act lead the chapter to conclude that Intelligence has become a dominant apparatus within the state. This chapter pivots at this point. It seeks to identify, first, the reasons of this empowerment; and, second, its effects on liberal-democratic forms, including the rule of law. The key reason for intelligence empowerment is the adoption of a pre-emptive security strategy, geared toward neutralizing threats that are yet unformed. Regarding its effects on liberal democracy, the chapter notes the incompatibility of the logic of intelligence with the rule of law. It further argues that the empowerment of intelligence pertains to the rise of a new threat-based governmental logic. It outlines the core premises of this logic to argue that they strengthen the anti-democratic elements in liberalism, but in a manner that liberalism is overcome.

The authors content analyze 76 empirical Strategic Management Journal articles to determine how studies control for threats to internal validity, a common source of flaws in research designs. Results indicate that most studies fail to control for one or more threats to internal validity. In particular, selection effects were the most frequently appearing threat, followed by history effects, ambiguity about the direction of causal inference, changing data sources and subject mortality. In general, the results suggest that strategy researchers need to more carefully account for threats to the internal validity of their research designs. Suggestions for addressing these problems are provided.

Drawing on 61 interviews with Mexican immigrants and ethnographic participant observation conducted over three years, I compare social movement organizing in two cities in one California County: one more progressive and the other more repressive. I profile two campaigns waged by Mexican immigrants and their allies in response to two threats posed by police: (1) car impoundments of undocumented, unlicensed drivers’ vehicles and (2) police killings. As political process theory was extended to authoritarian settings, scholars have demonstrated that both growing political opportunity and threat stimulate mobilization. Building on this trend in the literature, this study’s contribution lies in its specification of the relationship among political opportunities, threat, and mobilization tactics. I argue increasing local political opportunity gives rise to more collaborative protest tactics, while relatively more threatening environments yield more confrontational tactics. Because opportunity and threat are not objectively assessed, nor do they automatically inspire protest, I also consider the role of state targets, formalized SMOs, and the influence of coalition partners on tactics. Ethnographic methods are particularly useful for understanding the way organizers and activists, from within organizations that favor distinct tactical repertoires, perceive and attribute threat and opportunity, shedding light on the micro- and meso-level dynamics that shape the social form of mobilization.

Technology-facilitated abuse, so-called “tech abuse,” through phones, trackers, and other emerging innovations, has a substantial impact on the nature of intimate partner violence (IPV). The current chapter examines the risks and harms posed to IPV victims/survivors from the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT) environment. IoT systems are understood as “smart” devices such as conventional household appliances that are connected to the internet. Interdependencies between different products together with the devices' enhanced functionalities offer opportunities for coercion and control. Across the chapter, we use the example of IoT to showcase how and why tech abuse is a socio-technological issue and requires not only human-centered (i.e., societal) but also cybersecurity (i.e., technical) responses. We apply the method of “threat modeling,” which is a process used to investigate potential cybersecurity attacks, to shift the conventional technical focus from the risks to systems toward risks to people. Through the analysis of a smart lock, we highlight insufficiently designed IoT privacy and security features and uncover how seemingly neutral design decisions can constrain, shape, and facilitate coercive and controlling behaviors.