Transformative Needs Assessment Methodology: A Mixed Approach for Organizations Serving Marginalized Communities

Needs assessments (NAs) for marginalized communities would ideally contextualize needs in the sociocultural context, use agency-supportive methods, and result in liberatory action planning. This article develops the Transformative Needs Assessment With Marginalized Communities (TNAMC) using a mixed-methods approach that examines internal and external factors of needs for marginalized communities using liberatory methods to arrive at emancipatory action planning. This nonlinear process includes identifying concerns, checking assumptions, action committee selection, identifying need areas, situating need areas in context, identifying metrics of needs, collecting and analyzing data, prioritizing needs, creating action strategies, and developing an action plan. Each phase is discussed using the examination of anti-recidivism adolescent development needs in a predominately Black juvenile detention facility ( N = 87 juveniles) as exemplar. The development of TNAMC is designed to aid NA evaluators in designing assessments that integrate social action as a primary purpose of the NA while empowering marginalized communities throughout research processes.

Rewarded by Friends and Punished by Enemies: The CIO and the Taft-Hartley Act

The Wagner Act, passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress in 1935, provided unprecedented federal protections for American labor unions. The Taft-Hartley Act, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress just twelve years later, effectively rolled back significant parts of Wagner. Previous research on Taft-Hartley identifies three factors that led to this anti-labor backlash. First, the American public was repulsed by the large strike wave that followed the end of World War II. Second, southern Democrats were concerned that powerful labor unions would organize African Americans and upset the South's racial hierarchy. Third, the Republican Party was increasingly embracing a conservative, probusiness ideology. This article contributes a new angle to this old debate by exploring the role of the CIO, its 1943 decision to create the country's first political action committee (PAC), and the consequences of its informal alliance with the Democratic Party. Using original data on CIO density and congressional voting on the Taft-Hartley Act, we demonstrate that CIO strength polarized the parties: higher levels of CIO density led Democrats to vote in favor of organized labor but led Republicans to vote in an increasingly anti-labor manner.

Mission (Im)possible? Determining Organizational Ideology by Examining Mission Statements

This paper is part of a larger project investigating the relative roles of ideology and gender composition in determining organizational structure and behavior. The project’s genesis arose from a study by Meinhard and Foster (2003) that found that Canadian women’s voluntary organizations (WVOs) differed from gender-neutral and men’s organizations on many different measures. Women’s organizations were less likely to adopt a business orientation or pursue new revenue strategies, but were more likely to collaborate with other organizations and more likely to downsize. They also tended to be more pessimistic in their outlook and engaged in more advocacy and political action. Meinhard and Foster (2003) also found that among women’s organizations, those that were members of the Canadian National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), an umbrella organization for feminist groups, were more extreme in their differences. In other words, although both NAC and non-NAC organizations differed significantly from gender-neutral organizations, NAC organizations differed the most. Keywords: CVSS, Centre for Voluntary Sector Studies, Working Paper Series,TRSM, Ted Rogers School of Management Citation:

Persona and the Modern Republican: Constituting and Deconstituting Republican Ideals in Two Republican Political Ads

Ronald Reagan’s iconic, 1984 advertisement, “Morning in America,” has served as an ideological pole star for Republican identity for the past four decades. More recently, the political action committee, The Lincoln Project, a group of ex-Republicans, produced a number of ads highly critical of President Donald Trump’s administration. One specific ad, “Mourning in America,” uses the form of the original 1984 ad to communicate a set of radically different ideas from the original. This article fuses Black’s second persona and Wander’s third persona to Charland’s idea of constitutive rhetoric to explore how “Morning in America” constitutes a Republican identity via a matrimonial symbolism that connects candidate to a gauzy, constructed community and imagined culture. We argue that the Lincoln Project’s “Mourning in America” deconstitutes the very ideals promulgated in the original ad through a stark funereal symbolism. The implications of this symbolism on the Republican identity are discussed in the conclusion.

Candid Conversations: Black Women Political Elites and Appearances

This chapter showcases how conversations are a generative tool to assess the differences and similarities in the aesthetic experiences of Black women political elites. The authors partnered with the Black Women’s Political Action Committee of Texas to provide the first ever scholarly focus group with Black women political elites. Through an organic conversation, they found that Black women candidates and elected officials face challenges from others, including fellow Black women, about how they choose to present themselves for political office. The authors documented generational splits in how age cohorts of Black women decide to style themselves and the political implications of these choices. Most notably, Millennial Black women political elites detailed discrimination and hostilities based on their styling preferences, often at the hands of older Black women.

Monetary Expert on Monnet’s Action Committee for the United States of Europe

Robert Triffin played a key role in the debates on European monetary integration, especially as the monetary expert of Monnet’s Action Committee for the United States of Europe. He developed proposals for European monetary cooperation, especially a European Reserve Fund and a European currency unit, inspired by his experience of the European Payments Union. In his view, a European Reserve Fund could be constituted by pooling 10% to 20% of the international reserves of the member states’ central banks. A key moment was the 1969 Hague summit when Triffin, via Jean Monnet, provided the German chancellor Willy Brandt with a plan for European monetary integration. Moreover, through his activities and connections in the world of commercial banking and finance, Triffin also actively promoted the European currency unit as a parallel currency in financial transactions and markets.