Journal of Group Dynamics
Online ISSN : 2187-2872
ISSN-L : 2187-2872
Volume 29
Displaying 1-7 of 7 articles from this issue
Editorial board and editorial policy
English papers with Japanese abstract
  • A field study in Daleman, Java, Indonesia
    Cahya Widiyanto
    2012Volume 29 Pages 3-25
    Published: December 28, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: February 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
       The penetration of the free market in Indonesian agriculture has caused complex problems for agricultural actors, i. e. social, economic and cultural disorganization, which has led to Indonesian farmers' marginalization. This paper is an ethnographic study on the collaborative practice that was carried out jointly by a group of villagers and the author for the two years from 2008 to 2010, to initiate revitalizing an agricultural community in Daleman, Java, Indonesia. This study started at the time when the author met with a group of farmers in Daleman in 2008, and continued as he became deeply involved in their community. During the two years, they developed a vision of organic farming as a major pillar of their activities by his leadership. An Indonesian language version of this ethnography will be provided to them as basic material by which they can reflect their activities in the past and elaborate a plan for the future.
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Japanese papers with English abstract
  • A case of Bainuul village in Inner Mongolia
    Sumiya
    2012Volume 29 Pages 26-45
    Published: December 28, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: February 04, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
       When the ecological migration policy of 2001 was initiated in Inner Mongolia by the national government of China, villagers were forced to abandon and move out of their pasture land and relocate to live in an immigration community in a city. The policy aimed to prevent desertification by prohibiting herds to graze in pastures and coercively move villagers to another place, where they would be able to gain an economically better life after the migration. However, the villagers were faced with severe poverty and a decline of solidarity among community members. The author was born and raised in Bainuul village where the policy was implemented in 2002 and his family members are still living in one of these immigrant communities.
       This paper reported my experiences from 2005 to 2008 during the community revitalization movement that was initiated my strong desire to improve economic and social situations in the immigration community. A small group of young villagers became inspired to join me in my efforts to assist this community. All villagers in Bainuul were forced to move to an urban area 30 kilometers away and live together. They had to change their occupation from the pastoral herding of dozens of Mongolian cows to raising several Holstein cows in an animal housing. It was a huge economic burden to pay for the maintenance of expensive Holstein cows. Everyday life became impossible without money: even milk which had been used for domestic consumption became a commercial product and had to be purchased rather than obtained from their own animals. Original autonomous households were destroyed because all villagers were forced to live collectively in a common housing complex. This added to the loss of social structure and solidarity of the community.
       Initially, I introduced the active movement in one of the other immigration villages called Orikke village. With several young villagers who were motivated by the information in the introduction, we established a milk processing factory to break down the monopoly of the company that had been authorized by the government. We also disseminated our movement by appearing on television and in radio programs and by inviting university students to receive practical training in our community. Our community slowly regained solidarity by implementing these activities.
       At the end of this paper, I analyzed our movement depending on Osawa's theory of social norm. Specifically, I argued that transmission of the norm sustaining active movement from the outside into the inside and from the inside into the outside was critical to revitalize a community.
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  • The case of Bainuul village, Inner Mongolia, China
    Sumiya
    2012Volume 29 Pages 46-70
    Published: December 28, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: February 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
       When the ecological migration policy of 2001 was initiated in Inner Mongolia by the national government of China, villagers were forced to abandon and move out of their pasture land and relocate to live in a distant immigrant community. The villagers suffered both economically and socially, faced with severe poverty and a decline of solidarity among community members. Bainuul village, where the author was born and raised and has family members still living, is one of such communities.
       I started a community revitalization movement with a small group of young village residents in 2004 and observed that proactive attitudes grew gradually among the general population. But, they were faced with another hardship in 2008, because the government unexpectedly forced them to migrate again from this immigration village. As the central city expanded, it encroached on the immigrant community that had been raising dairy cattle and created problems for the farmers. The villagers were faced with three options, i.e., moving to a new location established by the government, remaining in the city or moving individually to a place where relatives live.
       One of the young group members and I visited many villagers living separately and found that they shared a strong wish to regain the solidarity they once had in their home village prior to the first migration. The wish was expressed with the use of a Mongolian word, ‘o'voljoo.' O'voljoo refers to the place where villagers historically spent winters after nomadic seasons from spring through autumn until several decades ago. At that time, their home village, Bainuul, was o'voljoo.
       We established an organization to support and protect the villagers' social structure and livelihood. The organization contributed to securing housing for villagers who remained in the city and also to relief activities for those who suffered heavy losses from the previous snowfall disaster. Moreover, the organization developed a new management system of farming in Bainuul, which was also called o'voljoo by the villagers, in collaboration with neighboring communities and the local government.
       This process was discussed as a process of norm transmission where the word, o'voljoo, played an important role.
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  • Hirokazu Fukui
    2012Volume 29 Pages 71-88
    Published: December 28, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: February 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
       A safety climate is an organizational environment that leads members of an organization to give consideration to safety or take safety actions. To further secure the safety of nuclear power plants, it is of the utmost importance that people holding managerial positions in an organization have a good understanding of the characteristics of the safety climate of the organization and implement safety promotion activities effectively.
       In the current study, we analyzed the structure of safety climate rating scales and the characteristics of rating values by duty position using four questionnaire surveys that were consecutively conducted targeting technical engineers of section chief level and lower working at three nuclear power plants.
       In studying the rating scales, we extracted six factors by conducting a factor analysis on the study data in fiscal 2003, and selected five items each that are closely related to each of the six factors. The six factors were named “safety attitude of organization," “attitude of immediate superior," “safety education in workplace," “actions of safety consideration," “morals," and “confidence in knowledge and skills."
       The result of the four surveys revealed the following consistent tendency: 1) In comparing rating values of employees in managerial positions and regular employees, the rating values of employees in managerial positions were higher than those of regular employees for all rating scales; and 2) In comparing the rating values of regular employees after they were divided into four age groups: 29 and under, 30s, 40s and 50 and older, for five rating scales other than “confidence in knowledge and skills," the older they were, the lower the rating values were. For “confidence in knowledge and skills," the older they were, the higher the rating values were.
       To study the criterion-related validity as a rating scale of the safety climate, we analyzed correlation with the number of problems as an external criterion. Since the rating values differed depending on the duty position, we studied correlation with the number of problems after the objects were divided into two groups: regular employees and employees in managerial positions. As a result, for the rating values of five factors, namely, “safety attitude of organization," “attitude of immediate superior," “safety education in workplace," “actions of safety consideration" and “morals," there was negative correlation with the number of problems in both duty positions. Only the correlation with the rating values of “safety attitude of organization" was statistically significant for the rating values of regular employees, while for employees in managerial positions, the correlation with all the rating values of the five factors was statistically significant. On the other hand, the correlation between the number of problems and the rating values of “confidence in knowledge and skills" was not statistically significant for either regular employees or employees in managerial positions.
       As described, five of the six factors other than “confidence in knowledge and skills, namely, “safety attitude of organization," “attitude of immediate superior," “safety education in workplace," “actions of safety consideration" and “morals," are sub-factors of the safety climate. Furthermore, through these analyses, it is clear that the safety climate is an organizational environment that is perceived by the interaction of organizational and individual characteristics.
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  • A short report based on participant observation
    Shino Koda
    2012Volume 29 Pages 89-105
    Published: December 28, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: February 10, 2013
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
       Growing environmental awareness in recent years has led to an increase in demand for environmentally friendly management by companies, and convenience stores are no exception. Waste generated by convenience stores, for example, is becoming a target for criticism. For this reason, convenience stores have begun making environmentally friendly efforts in order to rectify this situation. This is because customers have begun to show increasing support for companies that are tackling environmental issues.This paper examines convenience at convenience stores structurally causes wastefulness, and it considers and analyzes the process of these structural problems through thorough participant observation.
       As a result of participant observation conducted at a convenience store in Kyoto, Japan, it was found that two relationships underlie wastefulness at convenience stores. These are: 1) the relationship between the franchisee and customers, and 2) the relationship between the franchisee and the franchiser. These relationships include the situations as follows: 1) the franchisee seeks to meet convenience-oriented customers' needs; 2) the franchiser supposedly exhibits environmental concern by recommending that its franchisees conduct environmentally-oriented activities but actually pursues more profits, while the franchisee causes wastefulness because of trepidation about opportunity loss.
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