Social Identity in Software Development

Stratification economics represents an important new approach devoted to explaining economic inequality in terms of how social groups are separated or stratified according to relative group status. This paper combines stratification economics with identity economics to address complications that the phenomenon of intersectionality—people having multiple social group identities—creates for stratification economics. It distinguishes two types of social identities recognised by social psychologists, categorical and relational social identities, and uses this distinction to explain how individuals’ personal identities, understood as ordered sets of social identities, can be seen to be both socially and self-constructed. Individuals order and rank their categorical social identities according to weights they assign to them in interactive social settings in which their role-based relational social identities combine different categorical social identities. Research in social psychology in the stigma identity-threat literature is then reviewed to distinguish two opposed ways in which individuals respond to others’ stigmatisation of their social groups in interactive settings. The paper argues that the ways in which individuals respond to stigma reflect social group power relationships and the scarcity logic of individualist social ontologies and tend to reinforce social stratification.

The negative consequences of social disconnection, including loneliness and social isolation, is receiving considerable attention from researchers and policymakers, and growing as a global public health priority. Volunteering has emerged as a promising strategy to promote social connection and combat loneliness, calling for a closer examination of its potential benefits to individual social health and community cohesion. This study explores the experiences and impact of volunteering on individuals' social health, providing insights into both the positive impacts and possible limitations of volunteering in rural communities. Twenty-two volunteers (6 males; 16 females) in one rural Northern Victoria community participated in semi-structured interviews via telephone, online or face-to-face. Thematic analysis was used to develop descriptive themes from the qualitative data. Four themes were identified: (1) creating social and community bonds, (2) giving back to the community, (3) building identity through volunteering and (4) social identity and belonging. Findings suggest that volunteering helps individuals to meet new people, increase opportunities for social interactions with others and within social groups, positively influencing their social identity and the identity of the community. Volunteers, who felt connected through their volunteering, experienced a sense of belonging. However, when feeling overburdened or undervalued, volunteers disengaged and sought new volunteering opportunities. This study demonstrates the influence of rural volunteering on volunteer's social connections, identity and social health. Creating flexible, accessible and inclusive volunteering opportunities acts as a valuable community resource for building and maintaining social health and connection and reduces social disconnection in rural populations.

Globalization and dynamic economic conditions have exponentially increased the use of virtual work in organizations. Effectiveness in software development teams, therefore, is now a relevant issue in business, psychology or other fields. Despite the uniqueness of software development teams and their work conditions, their effectiveness has not been sufficiently researched to clearly determine how it relates to personality traits, work challenges and the virtualization level. To expand the understanding of the mechanisms that influence team effectiveness in software development, an ecological framework is selected. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between personality traits, work factors and team effectiveness within the context of software development teams. Methodology: The exploratory study was conducted in international software development companies operating in Lithuania. Forty-five software development teams (N = 142) filled in the Team task performance scale, Hexaco-PI-R questionnaire and rated perceived work challenges and team virtualization level. The statistical analysis was conducted with SPSS. This survey is an initial stage of a larger project. Findings: Personality traits Conscientiousness and Extraversion relate to team effectiveness. In software development teams the most prevalent work challenges were time zone differences, lack of information when working on a project, and lack of a clear purpose. Lack of information and poor foreign language skills negatively affect team effectiveness. A higher virtualization level is associated with more frequent work challenges (culture and foreign language challenges, time zone differences) and team performance.

The social identity approach was used to explore the inter-professional relations between nurse prescribers, pharmacist prescribers and general practitioners (GPs) in primary care in the United Kingdom. We investigated their social identities as prescribers, the influence of social structure in practice settings and the implications for further development of nurse and pharmacist prescribing. Interviews were conducted with 21 GPs, nurse prescribers and pharmacist prescribers in primary care from the south of England. Five themes emerged, including the ambiguous social identity of some nurse and pharmacist prescribers (‘a no man’s land’), constraining social structures (‘the doctor is king’), the content of GPs’ social identity (‘subtle prescribing’), the content of nurse and pharmacists’ social identity (‘more than just competent’) and context (‘engaging with each other’s identities’). At some GP practices, there was a willingness to engage with the different social identities and reframe them within the organisational context of a GP surgery. At these sites, where social identities were respected and supported, the social identity approach offered insight into how the resulting teamwork could lead to a shared practice identity focused on multi-disciplinary working. This research provides evidence of how professional and organisational identities can be enhanced and supported. Further, there is the potential for an intervention using the social identity approach to improve patient care.

The effectiveness of system analysis and design methodologies plays a pivotal role in the success of software development projects. This research conducts a comparative analysis of various methodologies, including the Waterfall Model, Spiral Model, Prototyping Model, Iterative Model, Unified Process, Object-Oriented Analysis and Design, Joint Application Design, Computer Aided Software Engineering Tools, Rapid Application Development / Rapid Systems Development, Feature- Driven Development, Extreme Programming, Agile Method, and DevOps, to explore their respective strengths and considerations. The study examines key aspects such as flexibility, documentation, risk management, complexity, and suitability across these methodologies. Findings reveal that each methodology offers unique advantages and challenges, influencing their applicability in different project contexts. The research underscores the importance of aligning methodology choices with project-specific requirements, organizational culture, and environmental factors to optimize software development outcomes. Moreover, it suggests that hybrid approaches, combining elements from multiple methodologies, may offer a balanced approach to address diverse project needs and maximize effectiveness. By providing insights into the comparative effectiveness of system analysis and design methodologies, this research contributes to informed decision- making and improved project success in software development endeavors.

Software development teams communicate differently by using a variety of communication tools. Successful communication leads to competitive software based on clear and quickly delivered re-quirements, as well as smoothness in bug reporting and explanation. Agile and Waterfall software development approaches have both addressed the importance of communication for their process. However, neither Agile nor Waterfall has guaranteed communication effectiveness during their development lifecycle. In this study we highlight the main differences between Agile and Waterfall approaches in the light of Media Richness Theory (MRT). We also identify the preferred commu-nication tools during a project’s lifecycle using both Agile and Waterfall models separately. A mixed-method approach was employed in this study incorporating quantitative and qualitative data from interviews and a multilingual web-based survey. The results are presented descriptively and statistically and a rank ordering of communication tools based on our participants’ preferences leads to a better understanding of how to select the best tool in a given situation. Thus a new updated MRT ranking model tailored for software development environment was developed, as well as, we conclude that communication tools are employed differently based on project stages and team member’s role. These differences in using communication tools could be also attributed to the type of transferable information or personal preferences.

The increasing popularity of agile software development has significantly changed the way organizations plan, design, and implement software applications. However, considering the complexity involved with software development, the decision to choose an agile approach over the traditional waterfall approach is not straightforward. Organizations should carefully evaluate a variety of factors when choosing a development approach. In this teaching case study, the authors provide a discussion case to facilitate the students’ learning of using agile vs. traditional approaches in software development. This case study is developed based on experiences of multiple real-world software development projects and the literature on software development. It is designed to reflect the complexities students are likely to encounter in actual software development projects. The case can be used in undergraduate or graduate level management information systems courses that cover agile software development approaches. Students can gain an understanding of factors to consider when choosing a development approach, which tailors to the organization, the project environment, and the project team.

Agile practices have recently gained popularity among large number of companies as a mechanism for reducing cost and increasing ability to handle change in dynamic market conditions. Based on the principles of the Agile manifesto [1, 2], researchers and practitioners have proposed several software development approaches such as Extreme Programming, Scrum and Feature-Driven Development. These and other agile approaches have had significant impact on industrial software development practices. However, there is also a significant concern and perplexity about the role and importance of the issues related to a system’s software architecture, which is considered one of the most important initial design artefacts. It is argued that software architecture is an effective tool to cut development cost and time and to increase the quality of a system. Many practitioners of Agile approaches appear to view software architecture in the context of the plan-driven development paradigm [3]. For them, upfront design and evaluation of software architecture requires too much work, which may have very little value to the customers of a system. Hence, they perceive architectural work as part of high ceremony processes, which usually require large amount of documentation. We maintain that these two seemingly opposing views to software engineering can be integrated but it requires that experts from both fields work together to overcome evident challenges in bridging these two paradigms together. Indeed, software architecture researchers and practitioners appear to believe that sound architectural practices cannot be followed using Agile approaches. However, these two extreme views of Agile and architecture appear to neglect that many agile experts emphasises the importance of paying attention to good design and architecture early in the development process [4, 5]. Recently, there is growing recognition of the importance of paying more attention to architectural aspects in agile approaches [3, 6, 7]. We argue that there is a vital need for devising a research agenda for identifying and dealing with architecture-centric challenges in agile software development. Such research agenda should make it possible to guide the future research on integrating architecture-centric methods in agile approaches and give advice to the software industry on dealing with architecture related challenges. Some of the questions to stimulate discussion in the workshop are: What is the role of software architecture in Agile software development? What are the key architecture-centric challenges and potential solutions in Agile software development projects? What is the strength of the evidence that attention to architectural issues can be counterproductive in Agile development or vice versa? What are the prerequisites for integrating Architecture-Centric methods in agile development and potential implications of such integration?

This chapter sums up and addresses the implications of the study in this book for political science and American politics. It explains implications for future research on racial attitudes, framing, social context, political socialization, and social identity. It explains how the analyses in this context suggest a model of civic life that differs from the two prevailing conceptions: liberal individualism and civic republicanism. In informal talk, people are neither devoid of social attachments (instead, they rely on them) nor acting on behalf of a predetermined common good. Conceptions of “the common good” are constantly worked out as they interact together. Most important, the chapter concludes that the public's part of public discussion is consequential for citizen politics.

This article reconciles two seemingly incompatible expectations about social interaction and ideological change. One theoretical perspective predicts that an increase in interaction between two actors will promote subsequent convergence in their ideologies, while another anticipates ideological divergence. Integrating network-analytic approaches to social influence with social psychological theories of identification, we argue that interaction between actors who share a salient social identity promotes ideological convergence, while interaction between actors with contrasting social identities leads to divergence. Moreover, the consequences of social identity for influence depend on the local context of interaction. Social identity’s effects on influence are greatest in groups with a limited, rather than extensive, history of prior collaboration and with moderate, rather than low or high, levels of ideological diversity. Empirical support for these propositions comes from analyses of the U.S. Senate from 1979 to 2001. Using two distinct indicators of social identity —party affiliation and region of representation—we demonstrate that, as the level of interaction between senators changed, the ideological distance between them subsequently shifted as a function of their respective social identities and characteristics of committees they served on together. These findings contribute to research on social influence, elite integration and political polarization, and social identity.

ABSTRACTPrison officers encounter numerous contextual and relational stressors that threaten their well‐being and the effectiveness of prisons. Drawing on the belongingness hypothesis and social cure theory, this study investigates the role of colleague interactions and social identification in the well‐being of 1080 correctional officers. A mediation model assessed the links between the quantity and quality of social interactions and well‐being outcomes (psychological distress, burnout and job satisfaction) through the mediating effect of social identification. Additionally, a moderated mediation model examined how the interplay between contact quantity and quality influenced this process. Path analysis revealed that contact quantity and quality were positively associated with higher social identification, which fully mediated their positive association with well‐being. Furthermore, contact quantity and quality significantly interacted to strengthen their indirect association with well‐being, with contact quantity being effective in unlocking the benefits of social identification only for high‐quality contacts. The study contributes to the psychosocial literature by describing how group social connectedness and identity can act as protective factors for well‐being in uniquely stressful work contexts such as prisons. The findings emphasise the importance of fostering social connectedness among colleagues in order to promote prison officers' well‐being and, ultimately, the overall effectiveness of prisons.

Over the 1980s in Western societies which have used new reproductive technologies, there has been intense argumentation about connected philosophical, ethical and economic issues. This research on I.V.F. donor egg (i.e. 'non-genetic') motherhood is based on qualitative data from partial life histories of twelve women having children by this technology through a Melbourne infertility programme. Methodology, interpretation, and discussion place it within both critical social and feminist personal identity theoretical frameworks. None of the respondent women but all except one of their respective partners are the biological parents of a total of ten children already born at the data collection stage, and in three well-established pregnancies. Two-thirds of the respondents used 'unknown' donor ova. 'Known' donors were typically the recipients' sisters. Many of these Australian births represent world 'firsts' in medical technical applications. In biographical accounts, the focus was on experiences of social pressure towards parenthood, of infertility and medical treatment, and attitudes of openness or secrecy about using donated ova. While socially and technologically acquired parenthood added a highly-desired dimension to their social identities, a sense of loss appeared to persist in most of the women's personal identities. Where a policy of secrecy towards relatives and friends about use of reproductive technology and gamete donation was maintained, this loss was reinforced by a feeling of social isolation.

ABSTRACTThis study was carried out in two private commercial banks in Bangladesh. The purpose was to examine the effects of HR strength on the social identification of employees through the interactions of employees with their line managers and relationships within work groups and ultimately employee performance. Underpinned by social identity theory, we tested three hypotheses using 436 respondents. Findings confirmed our hypotheses: social identification mediated the relationship between HR strength and employee performance; social interaction with the line manager and social identification sequentially mediated the relationship between HR strength and employee performance; and the quality of relationships within the work team and social identification sequentially mediated HR strength and employee performance. We contribute to new understandings of the role of social identification processes in explaining the link between HRM and employee performance in high power distance and collectivist cultures. Implications are drawn for HR managers by demonstrating the role of HR strength and social identification in supporting employee performance.

It is difficult to find the ideal term to refer to the complex process of establishing and asserting one's identity-as an individual or as part of a group. This process, referred to by some as constructing a social reality is, indeed, personal and self-initiated but, at the same time, it is dynamic, interactive, and in part, reactive. The mirror in which an immigrant sees his or her identity is, in part defined by the community in which he or she lives and, within that community, his or her social networks. Farmworker's ambivalence as to whether their identity can really be reduced to life as braceros, working machines, or, whether there is more to life than that is inevitable. Mexican immigrants' ambivalence expressed by as to whether they should be left out of the decennial census and remain statistically invisible because they don't belong, is equally predictable. However, effective engagement implies an identity-a perspective, hopes, dreams, ideals, and a personal style. One's personal identity, or one's social identity as a member of an informal or formal group is the fulcrum for social interaction and, thus, for participation.The process of defining and asserting one's identity is a lifelong one and it is fairly obvious that for most of us it is something of a struggle, a never-ending work in progress, punctuated with fitful starts, experiments, adjustments, and modulations. As Verba, Schlozman, and Brady point out, the process of developing skills is affected both by personal experience in informal settings and by learning experiences in formal educational settings. However, the Civic Voluntarism model tacitly assumes that the social context in which all of these learning experiences take place are the same one. This is not the case when it comes to immigrants. Because immigrants find themselves transitioning from one environment to another, the basic assumptions which govern our overall model of skills development do not hold true. Past experience, knowledge of processes, styles of communication,, and understanding of how civic systems work must be adjusted to a new reality and the inferences which govern this translation involve much more than just acquiring a new skills set; they involve creating a new personal identity, a new social identity (i.e. persona), and developing a new voice, that includes personal style and modes of communication.At the level of community life, this dynamic process of re-invention is not simply a personal one but, also, one which may engage an entire family, an entire social network, or, an entire ethnic group (since ethnicity, by definition, refers to self-identification and network relationships). We focus on two particular cases, each of which exemplifies a more general challenge relating of immigrants' adaptation to California society and development of activism.My analysis highlights the experiences and reflections of two quite different immigrant activists. One is Jorge San Juan, a young Mixteco construction worker who is also the volunteer coordinator of a Mixtec cultural group Se'e'Saavi, and a member of the Board of Directors of a community-based organization, the Centra Binacional para el Desarollo Indigena Oaxaqueno (CBDIO). Jorge's story is relevant not simply to his individual development but to the more general challenge of Mixteco immigrants' re-assertion of their cultural, social, and political identity in a transnational space now referred to by some researchers as Oaxacalifornia. The second of these community activists is Raquel Velasco, a middle-aged mother of two teenager daughters and a grown son, who was, for several years, the informal but charismatic unpaid leader of a group of immigrant activists seeking to secure affordable housing in Winters. Her story, too, transcends her personal struggle, to reflect on the challenges faced by Mexican women in negotiating new gender roles in the course of their life in California Through these two activists' accounts of their experiences and perspectives, we explore both the process through which individual immigrants' re-invent their identity in the brave new world of California life and the process through which groups of immigrants engage in the process of creating or strengthening bonding social capital and deploying it within the arena of local life. …

How to create positive word of mouth (WOM) in the world of gaming? The social side of multiplayer games