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Purpose: This study examines the affective dimension of racial threat. Most modern studies of threat are framed through Blumer's group position theory and measure threat as increases in levels of traditional racism or perceptions of competition. These measurements neglect to operationalize Blumer's affective conceptualizations of threat.

Methodology/Approach: Building on Blumer's theoretical framework, we outline threat's affective dimension through a presentation of new survey items designed to capture what threat feels like.

Findings: Using factor and regression analyses, we demonstrate how affect is distinct from perceived competition, and how it is positively associated with Blumer's theoretically predicted outcome of racial prejudice, in the form of increased levels of racial resentment.

Practical Implications: Future research by sociologists and other social and behavioral scientists should explicitly consider threat's affective dimension in order to provide a more robust picture of racial prejudice in the United States.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the importance of group position and consciousness in predicting people’s perceptions of police fairness in China.

This study used survey data collected from 1,095 respondents in Shanghai. Multivariate regression was used to analyze the effects of group positions and group consciousness variables on perceived police fairness, controlling for personal, experiential and neighborhood factors.

Regardless of their own hukou status, individuals who live in high migrant areas expressed less favorable attitudes toward police fairness. Meanwhile, people who displayed greater degrees of sensitivity to bias in law rated police fairness less favorably, whereas people who expressed higher levels of moral alignment with the law and belief in no choice but to obey the police rated police fairness more favorably. Lower levels of neighborhood disorder and higher degrees of cohesion were also associated with more positive evaluations of police fairness.

The authors’ measure of migrant concentration was constructed based on respondents’ own assessments of this neighborhood feature. Future studies should consider using objective measures to supplement the construction of migrant concentration variables. The authors’ group consciousness variables are limited as they are general, non-residential status specific and only capture part of the traditionally conceptualized variable of group consciousness. Future study should employ better-worded items that can tap precisely into people’s various dimensions of social consciousness based on their group status.

Training officers has to give a high priority to the principles of both procedural and distributive justice, and implement performance and evaluation policies that support fair and responsive police behavior, particularly during situations where citizens report crime to and seek help from the police.

Despite their high relevance, variables reflecting group position have received marginal attention in previous research on public evaluations of the police in China. This study represents a first attempt to examine how the interactions between residence status and the level of neighborhood migrant concentration influence Chinese attitudes toward police fairness.

Strategic group has been intensively studied since this term emerged in 1970s, but previous studies have been limited to the comparisons between groups such as performance comparison. The purpose of this paper is to explore the internal structure of strategic groups by examining the effect of strategic distance from a firm to the center of its strategic group on firm performance.

The research is based on data acquired from the annual reports of listed companies and some Chinese domestic databases, including CSMAR Solution, WIND financial database, and China Core Newspapers Full-text Database. After grouping listed pharmaceutical companies in China over the period 2010-2011, the authors test three hypotheses by using fixed effect regressions.

The paper finds that the strategic distance from a firm to the center of its strategic group has a significant negative effect on the firm's financial performance. Two factors are discovered to influence that effect: corporate diversification strengthens the negative effect of strategic distance on performance, while firm's media visibility weakens that negative effect.

The findings reveal the relationship between intra-group strategic positioning and firm performance, and specify how firms can gain competitive advantage through positioning choices and strategic actions. This study promotes the establishment of a more comprehensive strategic group theory by revealing the structure within strategic groups.

The relationship between intergroup conflict and intragroup cohesion is a longstanding concern in sociology and related disciplines. Past work suggests that intergroup conflict shapes emotional bonds between group members, promotes in-group and out-group stereotyping, encourages self-sacrifice for the group, and changes the social structure of groups. Conflict thus plays an important structural role in organizing social interaction. Although sociologists contributed much to the beginnings of this research tradition, sociological attention to the conflict–cohesion link has waned in recent decades. We contend that despite advances in our understanding of the conflict–cohesion hypothesis, more remains to be done, and sociologists are especially equipped to tackle these unanswered questions. As such, we encourage sociologists to revisit the study of intergroup conflict and intragroup cohesion and offer some possibilities for furthering our understanding of this phenomenon. After reviewing and evaluating the relevant literatures on the conflict–cohesion hypothesis, we consider ways in which a broad range of current theories from the group process tradition – including theories of status, exchange, justice, identity, and emotion – could contribute to understanding the conflict–cohesion hypothesis and how those theories could benefit from considering the conflict–cohesion hypothesis. In doing so, we make a case for the continuing importance of sociology in explaining the link between intergroup conflict and intragroup cohesion.

Constructing a theory of the legitimacy of groups, especially groups that mobilize the resources of their own members and provide pure or impure public goods such as collective action, raises some questions not encountered by theories of the legitimacy of acts, persons, or positions. Among these are: First, groups are typically nested in other groups. Groups nested in other groups may differ from each other both in their situations of action and in the larger social framework of norms, values, beliefs, practices, and procedures that guide action in them; or, in other words, in the two chief sources of their legitimacy. Does this pose a problem for the legitimacy of groups? If it does, with what consequences and under what conditions? Second, groups that mobilize the resources of their members for the purpose of providing them with pure or impure public goods have problems of both agency and collective action. Problems of agency and collective action make compliance with the claims made by the group on the resources of its members problematic. Even those willing to comply with them may be deterred by fear of the opportunism of others. Under what conditions do those who would be willing to comply were it not for fear of opportunism by others actually comply? Third, legitimacy is in some sense a resource. It is a characteristic instrumental to the mobilization of resources by a group. But is it a resource like any other? Absent land, labor, capital, technology or organization, does it matter how much legitimacy a group has? If not, what is the relation between legitimacy and resources?

This chapter has two central goals: (1) to present a foundational argument for status dissonance theory and (2) to apply its central propositions to understanding why some White Americans perceive anti-White bias. Building upon status construction theory, status dissonance theory generally posits that one’s overall status value determined by their combined status characteristics influences the degree they internalize normative referential structures. The salience of normative referential structures frames one’s justice perceptions, which creates status dissonance that manifests as a positional lens through which individuals perceive and interact with the social world. In an application of this framework, it is hypothesized that among Whites, one’s gender and class will impact one’s perceptions of resource reallocation (i.e., racial equality), which in turn impacts the likelihood one perceives anti-White bias generally and personally.

Using the Pew Research Center’s Racial Attitudes in America III Survey, this study employs logistic and ordered probit regressions on a nationally representative sample of White Americans to assess the above propositions.

Among Whites, males, those whom self-identified as lower class, and the least educated have the highest odds of perceiving resource re-allocation, and in turn all of these factors increased the odds of perceiving anti-White bias generally in society as well as perceiving personal encounters of “reverse” discrimination.

The findings and theoretical propositions provide a foundation for additional investigations into understanding the causes and consequences of within and between group variation in perceptions and responses to social inequality as well as mechanisms to counter status hierarchies.

The purpose of this paper is to bring international marketing and consumer research attention to multicultural marketplaces as a new focal research lens. It develops a conceptualisation of multicultural marketplaces, demonstrating why they constitute new conceptual territory, before specifying five key areas for research development.

The paper draws from seminal international marketing literature and other fields to propose perspective shifts, and suggest theories and frameworks of potential usefulness to the five research areas.

The paper conceptualises multicultural marketplaces as place-centred environments (physical or virtual) where the marketers, consumers, brands, ideologies and institutions of multiple cultures converge at one point of concurrent interaction, while also being potentially connected to multiple cultures in other localities. Five key areas for research development are specified, each with a different conceptual focus: increasing complexity of cultural identities (identity), differentiation of national political contexts (national integration policies), intergroup conviviality practices and conflictual relationships (intergroup relations), interconnectedness of transnational networks (networks), and cultural dynamics requiring multicultural adaptiveness (competences).

For each research area, a number of research avenues and theories and frameworks of potential interest are proposed.

The paper demonstrates why multicultural marketplaces constitute new conceptual territory for international marketing and consumer research; it provides a conceptualisation of these marketplaces and a comprehensive research agenda.

We propose an elaboration of the social structure and personality framework from sociological social psychology that is intended to promote integration across social psychological traditions and between social psychology and sociology, using the study of inequality as an example.

We develop a conceptualization of “generic” proximate processes that produce and reproduce inequality in face-to-face interaction: status, identity, and justice.

The elaborated framework suggests fundamental questions that analysts can pose about the macro-micro dynamics of inequality. These questions direct attention to the “how” and “why” of macro-micro relations by connecting structural and cultural systems, local contexts, and the lives of individual persons; highlighting implicit processes; making meaning central; and directing our attention to how people act efficaciously in the face of constraint.

Applying this framework, scholars can use existing theories and generate new ones, and can do so inductively or deductively.

Research on inequality is enriched by social psychological analyses that draw on the full complement of relevant methods and theories.

We make visible the social psychological underpinnings of sociological research on inequality and provide a template for macro-micro analyses that emphasizes the centrality of social psychological processes.

This paper demonstrates how the positioning of self and others affects change in higher education.

The discourse of various educators was collected during various interviews and discussion groups. A positioning theory framework was used to analyse the data and derive conclusions.

It is shown that if individuals are understood in terms of their agendas in relation to the organisational context that they can be better led.

The quantity and quality of data available has limited the integrity of conclusions drawn from this paper. Further research is proposed that will provide a more robust understanding.

An approach to understand how to deal with various stakeholders is presented for leaders. There is a need to deal with each person as an individual depending on how their personal agendas influence their priorities.

This paper introduces a social constructionist perspective to leading academics.

Maintaining relationships may be difficult in conflict because strong influence attempts can communicate disrespect, especially among Chinese people. The theory of cooperation and competition was used to investigate the effects of persuasion and control influence attempts and social context in conflict. Results from an experimental study support the reasoning that persuasion communicates respect and develops a cooperative relationship. In contrast, coercion communicates disrespect, develops competitive relationships, and results in rejection of the opposing view and negotiator. Consistent with North American research, cooperative compared to competitive context was found to lead to more openness toward the opposing position and negotiator. These results were interpreted as suggesting that persuasion, communication of respect, and a cooperative context facilitate productive conflict management between Chinese people.