Published at virtually the same time, these two books have often been reviewed together so that the reviewer could take advantage of the expected tensions between the views of Jencks, a liberal, and Mead, a conservative, on poverty, race, and social welfare policy. Although, as expected, there are differences, there is convergence, too, and this is as significant for the national debate on welfare policy as are the differences.The central argument of Mead's The New Politics of Poverty is that the existence of a relatively small (he estimates 2 to 8 million people) and concentrated number of "dysfunctional people" immobilized by a defeatist psychology is "able to dominate our common life" (p. 24) and has thereby transformed American politics. Their passive refusal to work despite ample opportunities to do so, especially on the part of blacks congregated in the nation's inner city ghettos, has undermined the traditional liberal belief that citizens are fundamentally competent and motivated to be self-reliant and that poverty is an undeserved misfortune. Thus, instead of focusing on the traditional progressive themes of economic advancement and equality of opportunity, new dependency politics is increasingly about the incompetence of the under-

Even though user participation in information system development has long been considered to be a critical factor in achieving system success, research has failed to clearly demonstrate its benefits. This paper proposes user involvement as an intervening variable between user participation and system use. Embedding the constructs of participation and involvement into the theoretical framework of Fishbein and Ajzen, a model is developed and tested in a field study of information system projects. Several key findings emerge from the study. User participation and user involvement represent two distinct constructs, with participation leading to involvement, and involvement mediating the relationship between participation and system use. The critical dimension of user participation is overall responsibility. The role of user participation and involvement is different, depending upon whether system use is mandatory or voluntary.information systems, user involvement, user participation, implementation

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De nombreux chercheurs oeuvrant dans différents domaines de la gestion jugent que les conflits forment un aspect important de la vie organisationnelle et qu'il est important de les étudier. Malgré ce fait, les conflits interpersonnels demeurent très peu étudiés dans le développement des systèmes d'information. En s'inspirant des caractéristiques identifiées en management et en comportement organisationnel, l'étude décrite dans ce rapport présente et teste un modèle de conflit interpersonnel et son influence sur le succès des projets d'informatisation. Les données de l'étude ont été recueillies par l'entremise des questionnaires auprès de 265 analystes (l'échantillon principal) et 272 utilisateurs (l'échantillon confirmatif) ayant participé à l'implantation de 162 projets d'informatisation. Les résultats obtenus indiquent que le conflit interpersonnel est composé de trois dimensions : désagrément, interférence et émotion négative. Par ailleurs, même si le style de gestion des conflits a un effet positif sur certaines variables de succès, il ne diminue pas l'impact négatif du conflit interpersonnel sur ces variables de succès. En d'autres mots, peu importe la façon dont il est géré ou résolu, le conflit interpersonnel est perçu comme ayant un impact négatif.

The lack of a clear conceptualization and operationalization of the construct of interpersonal conflict makes it difficult to compare the results of different studies and hinders the accumulation of knowledge in the conflict domain. Defining interpersonal conflict as a dynamic process that occurs between interdependent parties as they experience negative emotional reactions to perceived disagreements and interference with the attainment of their goals, the present paper presents a two‐dimensional framework and a typology of interpersonal conflict that incorporates previous conceptualizations of the construct. The first dimension of the framework identifies three properties generally associated with conflict situations: disagreement, negative emotion, and interference. The framework's second dimension identifies two targets of interpersonal conflict encountered in organizational settings: task and interpersonal relationship. Based on this framework, the paper highlights several shortcomings of current conceptualizations and operationalizations of interpersonal conflict in the organizational literature, and provides suggestions for their remedy.