Integrating new knowledge about group dynamics, this text provides conceptual and experiential frameworks for instructors, trainers and consultants who work with groups, as well as for group members themselves.

Using an approach that blends theory and applications, the authors of this group communications text continue to emphasize the importance of evaluating group dynamics in their varied contexts. The importance of the ethical responsibilities of a group are emphasized, and the analysis of small group decision-making processes, both as a non-participant and as an active member of the group using the participant-analyst model and more formal instruments, is encouraged. There is also comprehensive coverage of conflict management, showing the sources, functional benefits, and means to control conflict (ch. 10). The use of real life examples of group communication throughout the text helps students easily transfer principles and concepts to their own situations. In the third edition, adopters will find expanded coverage of group culture and group norms, as well as listening as it relates to group success and leadership; up-to-date information on focus groups and teleconferencing; and expanded advice on conducting library research.

The study of group communication has never been more critical, as recent national and international events point to the fragility of group life. An emerging perspective, the bona fide group perspective, offers hope for improving group communication, for it recognizes that any group--a family, community group, expedition team, social support group, organizational work group, interorganizational collaboration, or international team--must be studied and understood within the multiple contexts in which it is embedded and that significantly affects who is considered to be part of a group, what occurs within that group, and how that group interacts with other groups. In the second edition of his award-winning volume, editor Lawrence R. Frey showcases original research studies conducted on and about communication in bona fide groups, demonstrating the conceptual promise of the bona fide group perspective as realized in research practice. Divided into six sections, the chapters cover a wide range of new or relatively understudied groups--including youth community groups, Internet support groups, climbing expedition groups, families, neighborhoods, and school boards--and demonstrate the wealth of methodological approaches that can be used to study bona fide group communication--including survey methods, interviews, textual analysis, content analysis, participant observation, and discourse analysis. Group Communication in Context: Studies of Bona Fide Groups, Second Edition shows that the bona fide group perspective has the power to transform our thinking about groups and group communication and, in time, the practices in which groups and group members engage. The volume is intended for use in group communication courses, as well as a reference for group scholars. It is also appropriate for classes in psychology, social work, counseling, sociology, anthropology, and related disciplines.

In the past decade community groups have been portrayed as the solution to many social problems. Yet the role of ‘below the regulatory radar’ community action has received little research attention and thus is poorly understood in terms of both policy and practice. Focusing on self-organised community activity, this book offers the first collection of papers developing theoretical and empirically grounded knowledge of the informal, unregistered, yet largest, part of the voluntary sector. The collection includes work from leading academics, activists, policy makers and practitioners offering a new and coherent understanding of community action ‘below the radar’. The book is part of the Third Sector Research Series which is informed by research undertaken at the Third Sector Research Centre, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and Barrow Cadbury Trust.

Comprises the work of scholars who gathered in May, 1998, at a conference held at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business Administration. This title includes articles that address particular macro aspects of team context and their influences on team process and effectiveness and ultimately their effectiveness as performing units.

Introduction to concepts of category theory — categories, functors, natural transformations, the Yoneda lemma, limits and colimits, adjunctions, monads — revisits a broad range of mathematical examples from the categorical perspective. 2016 edition.

This two-volume set LNCS 5331/5332 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the five confederated international conferences on Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS 2008), Distributed Objects and Applications (DOA 2008), Grid computing, high performAnce and Distributed Applications (GADA 2008), Information Security (IS 2008), and Ontologies, Databases and Applications of Semantics (ODBASE 2008), held as OTM 2008 in Monterrey, Mexico, in November 2008. The 86 revised full and 9 revised short papers presented together with 5 invited papers and 4 keynote talks were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 292 submissions. Corresponding to the five OTM 2008 main conferences CoopIS, DOA, GADA, IS, and ODBASE the papers are organized in topical sections on Web service, business process technology, E-service management, distributed process management, schema matching, business process tracing, workflow and business applications, designing distributed systems, context in distributed systems, high availability, adaptive distributed systems, scheduling allocation, databases in grids, grid applications, data management and storage, new tendencies and approaches, intrusion detection, information hiding, data and risk management, access control, evaluation and implementation, semantic matching and similarity measuring, semantic searching, ontology development, ontology maintanence and evaluation, ontology applications, and semantic query processing.

Packed with case studies all based on original research, this volume investigates how various organizations exploit experience and knowledge to change their activities and understanding of the world. The volume addresses a variety of issue areas such as the US embargo against Cuba, food security, Colombian drug trafficking, terrorist groups, the Catholic Church, and foreign aid agencies.