Technocratic Teamwork: Mitigating Polarization and Cultural Marginalization in an Engineering Firm

Many corporations attempt to establish a unified corporate culture as a way of orienting employees toward corporate goals and objectives. However, a technocratic organizational structure has been found to exist in many high-tech corporations, which divides employees into an expert and non-expert sector based on differences in credentials and technical expertise. Because of this division, employees working within these two sectors experience differences in corporate rewards, worker autonomy, and creative freedoms. These factors have been found to lead to a polarized, divided, and discontented workforce. To understand how a technocratic structure influences and affects a dominant corporate culture and organizational efficacy, we conducted a qualitative study of a high-tech corporation named SYS, located in the Southwestern United States. We chose three occupational groups to participate in this study: engineers, technicians, and administrative assistants. The intent of this study was to determine how employees from these three occupational groups, who differ according to gender, education, and technical expertise, see and interpret the dominant culture within a technocratic organizational structure. The data from this study suggest that a strong and vibrant team-based organizational structure appears to mitigate the polarization that has been found to exist within many technocracies. The results obtained from this case study also suggest that despite differences between these occupational groups, a teaming environment appears to bridge significant differences between these occupational groups and to create a cohesive workforce

Individual, Neighborhood, and Situational Factors Associated with Violent Victimization and Offending

The criminological literature presents substantial evidence that victims and offenders in violent crimes share demographic characteristics, engage in similar lifestyles and activities, and reside in socially disorganized neighborhoods. However, research has examined these relationships separately using either victimization or offending data, and prior studies have not examined these relationships by comparing victims and offenders within the same incidents. This limits the effect of examining whether these factors are associated with victimization and offending in similar or distinct ways. Using a law enforcement database of victims (n = 1,248) and offenders (n = 1,735) involved within the same aggravated battery incidents (n = 1,015) in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, this research explores whether victims and offenders involved in non-lethal violence share certain individual, neighborhood and situational characteristics. Results suggest that victims and offenders live in socially disorganized neighborhoods and engage in risky lifestyles and violent offending behaviors in similar proportions. These findings highlight the overlapping factors associated with victimization and offending in non-lethal violent personal crimes. The implications of these findings are discussed

Exploring Demographic, Structural, and Behavioral Overlap Among Homicide Offenders and Victims

Criminologists tend to focus their attention on the dynamics of offending, paying limited theoretical and empirical attention to the well-established relation between offending and victimization. However, a number of criminological theories predict similarities in the correlates and etiology of victimization and offending, suggesting substantial overlap across offender and victim populations. Empirical research confirms this overlap across offender and victim populations, at least among those involved in nonlethal incidents. This research explores whether similarities between offender and victim populations extends to homicide, using criminal justice, health care, and U.S. Census data linked to homicide offenders and victims in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, between 1996 and 2001. Findings indicate substantial overlap in the social contexts and risk behaviors of homicide offenders and victims. However, results also side with more recent suggestions that although many victims overlap with offender populations, there is also a group of victims that appears to be distinguishable from offender groups. These findings have important implications for both theory and intervention

Institutional-Anomie, Political Corruption, and Homicide Rates

Messner and Rosenfeld’s institutional-anomie theory (IAT) has advanced our understanding of cross-national variation in homicide rates. Empirical tests of IAT have primarily examined how non-economic institutions alleviate or mitigate the mal-effects of economic inequality and economic deprivation. As economic institutions gain strength and dominance, non-economic institutions tend to weaken and are forced to accommodate the market. This creates an elevated state of institutional anomie that is conducive to higher violent crime rates. Most cross-national quantitative tests of IAT have examined the comparative strength of economic and social support institutions (especially social welfare) and find support for the theory. However, prior research has not examined other anomic institutional configurations that could increase violent crime rates within nation-states. For example, global economic forces coupled with an anemic nation-state government possessing high levels of corruption, patronage, and clientalism, all of which are evidence of market forces penetrating the polity, could theoretically represent an institutional-imbalance promoting higher violent crime rates. Our cross-national quantitative study is an attempt to fill this gap in the literature by offering a measure of political corruption. Our models reexamine the effects of the economy on homicide rates while controlling for various measures of social support and political corruption. The theoretical and empirical implications are discussed

The Influence of Risk Perception, Vulnerability and Community Level Processes on Human-Wildlife Conflict in Southeastern Kenya

The prior literature on the sociology of disasters has primarily examined community responses to large-scale episodic disasters, such as in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. However, the study of persistent and chronic disasters in developing countries represents an area that has largely been ignored in prior studies. Flint and Luloff’s (2005) Inter-actional theory as a framework, our research examines the influence of perceived risk, vulnerability and community characteristics on human-wildlife conflict among 275 subsistence-based farmers living in four small villages in Southeastern Kenya. These farmers rely on a horticultural and pastoral economy for survival and reside in four villages located between two of Kenya’s largest national parks. These parks are unfenced, and the consumption or hunting of wildlife represents a criminal act in Kenya. Conflict with wildlife represents a chronic and persistent risk that can be disastrous when their crops and livestock are destroyed

Emergency department utilization among victims and offenders involved in non-lethal violence

The medical literature has focused on violent victimization as a public health concern, examining its correlates and evaluating intervention models. However, the emphasis on victimization in this literature overlooks the strong ties between victimization and offending risks outlined in the criminological literature, which may unnecessarily limit the scope of public health efforts to influence violence in our communities. This study examines whether the similarities observed in the criminological literature are evident in a health care setting. More specifically, do victims and offenders exhibit similar health care utilization patterns? We address this question by comparing the emergency department utilization records, criminal histories, and demographic characteristics of a sample of victims and offenders involved in non-lethal violence in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, USA in 2001. Our results suggest that victims and offenders have similar emergency department utilization patterns, with most visits being for injury. Moreover, most victims seen in the emergency department have criminal records that, in many ways, mirror those of offenders. The results suggest that violence intervention programs in public health settings should target both victims and offenders and capitalize on the overlap across these populations in outlining the long term risks of criminal involvement and motivating individual level change.Violence Offending Victimization Emergency department Health care Intervention USA