Curando La Comunidad [Healing the Community]: Community-Centered STEM Identity

This article highlights the role of community among Latina/o/x students pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at 2- and 4-year Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI). Community-based perspectives are often missing from traditional STEM disciplinary contexts; however, our Community-Centered STEM Identity model recognizes how Latinx students develop STEM identities by grounding, engaging, and bridging community. Implications for HSIs include cultivating community-based partnerships and perspectives as these are critical for the retention of Latinx students in STEM.

Understanding Responses to an Organizational Takeover: Introducing The Social Identity Model of Organizational Change

This paper presents a Social Identity Model of Organizational Change (SIMOC) and tests this in the context of employees’ responses to a corporate takeover. This model suggests that employees will identify with the newly emerging organization and adjust to organizational change more successfully the more they are able to maintain their pre-existing social identity (an identity maintenance pathway) or to change understanding of their social identity in ways that are perceived as constituting identity gain (an identity gain pathway). We examine this model in the context of an acquisition in the pharmaceutical industry where 225 employees were surveyed before the implementation of the organizational change and then again 18 months later. In line with SIMOC, pre-change identification predicted post-change identification and a variety of beneficial adjustment outcomes for employees (including job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior, lower depression, satisfaction with life, and post-traumatic growth) to the extent that either (a) they experienced a sense of identity continuity or (b) their supervisors engaged in identity leadership that helped to build a sense that they were gaining a new positive identity. Results showed a negative impact of pre-change organizational identification on post-change identification and various adjustment outcomes if both pathways were inaccessible, thereby contributing to employees’ experience of social identity loss. Discussion focuses on the ways in which organizations and their leaders can better manage organizational change and associated identity transition.

Development of a sustainable brand identity model: fostering the implementation of SDGs in the Brazilian power sector

PurposeThis study aims to develop a sustainable brand identity model to help organizations align their managerial practices to sustainable development goals (SDGs) and examine its applicability for a Brazilian electrical sector company.Design/methodology/approachA systematic qualitative review of the literature was carried out to provide a theoretical basis for the attributes chosen to compose the sustainable brand identity management (SBIM) model. To apply the model, the authors collected the data from internal and public domain documents, semi-structured in-depth interviews and non-participant observation of the company's work environment.FindingsThe first SBIM model was developed. The Brazilian power sector company implemented sustainable actions related to most of the models' attributes, contributing to the SDGs. A research agenda was presented.Research limitations/implicationsThe theoretical contribution is provided toward brand identity and sustainability literature with the sustainable brand identity model development and the conceptual explanation regarding its attributes.Practical implicationsThe practical implications are provided from the model application to an electrical company leading to some managerial suggestions that might be used to companies willing to align their practices to sustainability.Originality/valueThe studies on SDG and brand identity models were analyzed in order to create the first SBIM model. This article extends the concept of the brand identity of marketing theory by linking its core to sustainability actions, so far not addressed in academic studies.

Factors Behind the Popularity of Protest Messages on Twitter: The Case of Venezuela Crisis

Based on the material of the political crisis in Venezuela in 2019, the paper studies factors behind the popularity of protest messages (tweets) on Twitter. Methodologically, the study develops the notion of SIMCA (Social Identity Model for Collective Action). The theory suggests that factors in the social environment may mobilize a person through such psychological antecedents as anger, belief in ability to achieve the desired goals (efficacy belief) and protest identification. The project participants created a database including over 5.7 million tweets, based on which three sets of the most popular messages (tweets) have been selected. The three sets were named according to psychological antecedents: a) anger, b) belief in success (including international support), and c) protest identification. The analysis of the tweets demonstrates that the belief in the success of the protest campaign has the greatest mobilizing force.

The work of a revolutionary: A psychobiography and careerography of Angela Y. Davis

Dr. Angela Y. Davis is a political activist, academician, and writer who has navigated and discussed issues of race, class, gender, and USA social policies across her 75 years of life. Davis’s activism established her as the icon of a larger social movement and further related to her decision-making and legacy. Using psychobiographical methods, data were gathered through publicly available sources to explore Davis’s personal, professional, and representational life, as well as understand Davis’s lived experience through a socio-cultural-historical perspective. Two established theories, Social Cognitive Career Theory and Politicized Collective Identity model, were applied to Davis’s life. Findings suggested that in addition to her unique intersectional identities, a confluence of factors including growing up in a family of activists, incarceration, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) surveillance, Communist Party involvement, marginalization within activist spaces, and practicing radical self-care impacted Davis committing to a life as an activist, academic, and the leader of a social movement.