Purpose – This paper aims to develop a new socio-cognitive theory of the normative personality of a plural agency like, for instance, an organisation or a political system. This cybernetic agency theory is connected to Bandura’s theory of psychosocial function. The agency is adaptive and has a normative personality that operates through three formative personality traits, the function of which ...

The authors synthesize existing climate research and climate instruments, as well as introduce several frameworks to help educators understand how institutions and researchers have assessed diversity in the college environment. Over 90 instruments were reviewed and examined for their attention to multiple dimensions of the campus climate, diversity initiatives, and outcomes measures that captur...

The paper discusses the differences between intracultural communication and intercultural communication froma socio-cognitive perspective that treats this relationship as a continuum rather than a dichotomy.Movement on the continuum, anddifferences between the two phenomena are affected by different factors that will be discussed in the paper. The hypothetical left end of the continuum is intra...

Within the socio-cognitive framework of sense-making, this paper explicates the term ‘mental model’ and its associated concepts, analyzes the controversies and connections pertaining to mental model research in information studies, and reports the findings of an exploratory study of the mental models of an academic information system. As one aspect of the process of making sense out of their ex...

Muslims have never before occupied such a central position in the British media, given their general absence from more ‘normalised’ representational positions such as in popular soaps, literature and reality television. Recent studies reveal the primarily negative ‘hypervisibility’ of Muslims across the media, which has encouraged negative social representations. Drawing upon relevant concepts ...

This introductory paper explores how the use of information affects the effectiveness of early warning systems. By effectiveness, we refer to the capacity of the system to detect and decide on the existence of a threat. There are two aspects to effectiveness: being able to see the evidence that is indicative of a threat; and making the decision, based on the weight of the evidence, to warn that...

Information Systems (IS) security management has gained renewed importance for the past few years resulting from the rising numbers of security incidences and compliance pressure. While majority of IS security research has been focusing on the technical value and the effectiveness of IS security implementation, studies on the organizational process of implementation is rather limited. This pape...

Despite the increasing diffusion of the Internet technology, TV remains the principal medium of communication. People’s perceptions, knowledge, beliefs and opinions about matter of facts get (in)formed through the information reported on by the mass-media. However, a single source of information (and consensus) could be a potential cause of anomalies in the structure and evolution of a society....

Prior research on technological frames indicates that many of the difficulties associated with systems implementation stem from differences in the meanings users, managers, and system developers attribute to automation projects. Although the concept of technological frames has been used to explore the bases for intergroup conflict during implementation, it is also a useful device for probing mo...

This study explores four-year elementary education students’ understanding of how children learn mathematics through the use of concept maps. Thirteen Canadian and 9 students from Lebanon participated in the study. Over a two-week period students were asked to reflect on how children learn mathematics. The Lebanese students were prone to produce conceptual structures that were more teacher-cent...