Neil M. Boyd

Sense of Community Responsibility in Community Collaboratives: Advancing a Theory of Community as Resource and Responsibility

This paper contributes to the growing body of scholarship aimed at advancing our understanding of the experience of community by empirically investigating sense of community responsibility (SOC-R) in relation to traditional measures of sense of community (SOC) and indices of satisfaction, engagement, and leadership in interorganizational collaborative settings. Findings support the proposition that, although both are related to the experience of community, SOC and SOC-R emphasize different aspects of that experience and operate under different theoretical mechanisms of influence. SOC emphasizes community as a resource which was found to be a more salient aspect in differentiating those who will be more or less satisfied with their experience. In addition, SOC was found to predict general participation in a community collaborative. SOC-R emphasizes the experience of community as a responsibility which appears to be a stronger predictor in explaining higher order engagement requiring greater investment of time and resources. Even more importantly, this study indicates that SOC-R is uniquely equipped to help us advance models of community leadership. As such, it represents an important contribution to expanding our understanding of the factors that drive members’ willingness to give of themselves toward collective aims.

Psychological sense of community: A new construct for the field of management

This article introduces a new construct to the field of management called Psychological Sense of Community (PSOC). This is important because management scholars are calling for the creation of communities in organizations in an environment that lacks appropriate construct development. The aims of this article are threefold: (a) develop a working definition of PSOC via a review of the extant literature on PSOC from other disciplines with the goal of translating it into the domain of management, (b) synthesize findings from parallel literatures on the outcomes of PSOC with an eye toward exploring the relevance of such outcomes in management contexts, and (c) assess the value of PSOC as it relates to its uniqueness in relation to other prominent management constructs and its scope of applicability in a variety of management inquiry areas.

Sense of Community, Sense of Community Responsibility, and Public Service Motivation as Predictors of Employee Well-Being and Engagement in Public Service Organizations:

Public management scholars have suggested that employee motivation can be accentuated by organizational cultures and contexts. One of the most researched topics in this regard is the concept of public service motivation (PSM). Research shows that PSM works to direct applicants toward public service careers and, once hired, can be linked to motivated activity within public-sector organizations. Similarly, like PSM, a sense of community (SOC) and a sense of community responsibility (SOC-R) have also been posited to act as powerful predictors of employee well-being and engagement. The present study demonstrates that SOC-R is a more powerful predictor of employee engagement compared with PSM and SOC. Concurrently, SOC more strongly predicts employee well-being compared with PSM and SOC-R. The findings bring additional light and clarification to the predictive power of PSM on employee perceptions and behavior, and they demonstrate that community experiences have utility in public service settings.

Context and Pedagogy: A Quarter-Century of Change in an Introductory Management Course

Twenty-five years after John A. Miller described his seminal experiential Introduction to Organization and Management course in JME, MGMT 101 (formerly MG 101) continues to be the foundation of management education at Bucknell University. In this article, the current MGMT 101 faculty members provide their perspective on contextual and operational changes in the course by providing an overview of MGMT 101’s foundations, nuts-and-bolts elements of the course that have remained consistent and those that have evolved, and key elements that have either been affected by or have led to changes in the course. In all, this is the story of our ongoing efforts to assure that student learning is deep, meaningful, and responsive to the uncertain, daunting, provocative, and intriguing circumstances faced by organizations today.

Community at Work: Sensing Community Through Needs Fulfillment and Responsibility

Scholars have recently been increasing attention to the topic of developing communities in organizational settings, however there has been a lack of theoretical grounding and empirical science demonstrating the importance of community experiences at work. This began to change when Nowell and Boyd (2010) developed the Community Experience Framework, which proposes that the experience of community can take two conceptually distinct forms: (1) the experience of a community as a resource and (2) the experience of community as a responsibility. This chapter will highlight the recent progression of scholarship on community at work, detail our empirical knowledge on the subject to date, and offer insights into the importance of developing communities in organizational settings.

Students Implement the Affordable Care Act: A Model for Undergraduate Teaching and Research in Community Health and Sociology

Abstract The implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) provides an opportunity for undergraduate students to observe and experience first-hand changing social policies and their impacts for individuals and communities. This article overviews an action research and teaching project developed at an undergraduate liberal arts university and focused on providing ACA enrollment assistance as a way to support student engagement with community health. The project was oriented around education, enrollment and evaluation activities in the community, and students and faculty together reflected on and analyzed the experiences that came from the research and outreach project. Student learning centered around applying concepts of diversity and political agency to health policy and community health systems. Students reported and faculty observed an unexpected empowerment for students who were able to use their university-learned critical thinking skills to explain complex systems to a wide range of audiences. In addition, because the project was centered at a university with no health professions programs, the project provided students interested in community and public health with the opportunity to reflect on how health and access to health care is conditioned by social context. The structure and pedagogical approaches and implications of the action research and teaching project is presented here as a case study for how to engage undergraduates in questions of community and public health through the lens of health policy and community engagement.