Political Congruence and Trade Union Renewal

451643 2012

WES26510.1177/0950017012451643Upchurch et al.Work, employment and society

Research note

Political Congruence and Trade Union Renewal

Work, employment and society 26(5) 857­–868 © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0950017012451643 wes.sagepub.com

Martin Upchurch Middlesex University, UK

Richard Croucher Middlesex University, UK

Matt Flynn

Middlesex University, UK

Abstract The concept of political congruence is introduced as predictor or explanatory factor of trade union renewal. Strategic change is more likely to succeed when political congruence exists between the values, expectations and intended outcomes of the three sub-sets of leaders, activists and members in a union. Political congruence (P/c) is defined as convergence of shared political values and vision. For P/c to occur a particular chemistry of independent factors needs to coalesce. The authors note, in particular, that there have been exceptional periods of individual union growth, measured in terms of membership, density and effectiveness. These episodes of exceptional growth need to be studied and understood, if one is to make sense of debates on union ‘renewal’.

Keywords labour movements, social movement theory, trade unions

Introduction In this article the case is presented for political congruence, and potential case study areas for future research and analysis are identified where the concept of political congruence (P/c) may prove of value. It is suggested that strategic change in UK unions is more likely to succeed when political congruence exists between the values, expectations and intended Corresponding author: Martin Upchurch, Middlesex University Business School, The Burroughs, Hendon, London, NW4 4BT, UK. Email: [email protected]

858 Shared Political Frame

Work, employment and society 26(5) Socialization

Mobilization

Political Congruence

Recruitment, Retention, Renewal

Figure 1.  Political Congruence

outcomes of the three sub-sets of leaders, activists and members in a union. For P/c to occur a chemistry of factors needs to coalesce. Borrowing primarily from social movement theory, the authors identify these independent factors as: shared political frames of reference and collective identity; participation and socialization encouraged through innovative practice, networking and education; and rank-and-file mobilization (see Figure 1). Shared political values, or ‘frames’, are time specific; they reflect particular moments in the union’s development in response to external threats from employers and/or states. There have been exceptional periods of individual union growth, measured in terms of membership, density and effectiveness, all of which must be key indicators of union ‘renewal’. By ‘effectiveness’ is meant both organizational effectiveness (the internal ‘health’ of a union) and its ‘ability to deliver’ (Bryson, 2003: 5–6). The authors argue that P/c is dependent on, and sometimes a pre-condition for, ‘effectiveness’. Periods of exceptional UK union growth have occurred ‘with the stream’, when membership of unions was increasing, or ‘against the stream’, when individual unions grew even though general union membership was in decline or growing only slowly. An example of ‘with the stream’ was the ‘Great Unrest’ in Britain between 1910 and 1914, characterized by the development of rank-and-file militancy, which clashed with union leaderships recently tied into national agreements. Such episodes of exceptional union growth within labour history, especially those which occur ‘against the stream’, need to be further studied and understood, in order to make sense of problems surrounding contemporary debates on union ‘renewal’. Three examples which the authors are currently examining in the UK are those of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) from 1935 to 1945; the technicians and white collar union ASTMS in the 1970s; and the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) in the period since 2000. All three unions exhibited growth which appeared exceptional in the historical moment. The AEU grew from 190,695 members in 1933 (Jefferys, 1970: 228) to over 900,000 in 1945 (Croucher, 1982). Membership of all unions in the UK doubled during this period, but growth in the AEU exceeded the national trend by some margin. The union changed its orientation and identity from one based on craft to one which embraced the apprentice’s revolt of the late 1930s and the entry of women into the trade as full participants. ASTMS was created through a merger of two unions in 1969. Under General Secretary Clive Jenkins, in 1970 the union claimed 65,000 members but by 1985 had almost 500,000. This was a period of growing ‘white collar’ unionism, but also

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one of longer term shrinkage of employment in the key area of manufacturing. ASTMS was clearly the ‘market leader’ in the private sector. The third case, PCS, has shown growth in the less favourable climate of Britain under neoliberalism. Its source of membership – the civil service and related agencies – has experienced job cuts and significant political hostility. Between 2003 and 2006 PCS membership grew from 293,063 (end 2003) to 313,432 (mid-2006), before falling back to 301,000 in July 2010, as cutbacks in jobs transpired. The union identifies ‘activists’ for the purposes of recruitment and organizing; their number increased from 10,142 in 2006 to 11,173 in 2009 (PCS, 2010). PCS claimed an (increased) density of 71.8 per cent in September 2007, based on an assessment of actual and potential membership (PCS, 2007). Congruence is a term used in political science and social psychology to construct hypotheses of the predicted benefits of shared norms and values. The proposition here is that the achievement of political congruence within a union increases the likelihood of success in recruitment, retention and renewal. The article therefore explores past studies within the social psychology of union activism to supplement the insights gained from social movement theory in addressing the political congruence concept. Before defining the concept in more detail the article briefly reviews the ‘state of the debate’ on union renewal.

The state of the debate on trade union renewal: the need for ‘politicization’? Contemporary literature on trade union renewal is framed by the retreat of trade unionism in the face of globalizing neoliberalism. The retreat is partly for structural reasons, linked to the withdrawal of institutional support for collective bargaining, the relative decline of industrial sectors where unions have traditionally been strong, as well as trends towards increased flexibilization, such as outsourcing and informal working, in a context of higher unemployment. It is also an ideological retreat, as unions have struggled to dissuade their members from believing the inevitability of marketization, commodification and the ‘threat’ of wage competition from abroad. Academic literature has tended to focus on the technical contrast between the servicing and organizing models, and between a partnership approach as opposed to an organizing approach. The application of social movement theory introduced concepts of identity, framing, repertoires of action and mobilization. Labour studies scholars since the early 1990s have also discussed the necessity of global and international responses to neoliberal marketization (e.g. Croucher and Cotton, 2011; Moody, 1997; Waterman, 1998). More recently, social capital theory has been utilized by Nissen and Jarley (2005) to promote a return to values of workplace-based networks of ‘mutual aid’ as an explanatory factor of renewal. However, there remains a reluctance to broaden the perspective by embracing the political dimension of union renewal. Upchurch and Mathers (2012) suggest that much literature on social movement unionism, for example, is over-reliant on theories of the ‘new’ social movements and tends to de-politicize and de-class the nature of unions as movement in itself. It is de-politicized because of sympathy towards autonomist forms of organization and de-classed because trade unions are often relegated to one agent of change among a wider milieu of ‘cultural’ forces. Simms and Holgate (2010: 159) have

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observed in the UK, with respect to the organizing approach, ‘it appears to us that UK scholars have largely accepted organizing as a set of practices and tactics rather than as a wider political initiative’. If this faithfully reflects the current state of research, questions arise as to what might be the ‘wider political initiative’. How might a ‘wider political initiative’ be assessed in terms of trade union praxis? There are exceptions to de-politicization. Munck (2010), in reviewing union movements, states that ‘the old national-statist-corporatist model is no longer hegemonic but what will emerge from the current period of global turmoil is not entirely settled either’ (2010: 225). He argues the need to rediscover the ‘original characteristics of combination, a common moral economy and an instinctive internationalism’ (2010: 229). Sentiments of a common moral economy echo Edward Thompson’s (1971) description of the norms and values of the common people, when contrasted to those of liberalism and the market economy. Thompson’s approach found parallels in the work of other British Marxist historians, whereby ‘history from below’ emphasized class consciousness as a pre-determinant of labour as a movement (Kaye, 1995). Radical movements of the dispossessed, in these writings, expressed not only economic concerns but also broader categories of the human condition, embracing social and political justice. Protest movement theorists such as Charles Tilly (1978) and Sydney Tarrow (1998) continued the tradition, and developed theoretical constructs to analyse the ingredients of successful movements. Political framing, political opportunity structures, repertoires of action and cycles of contention are now well understood tools of analysis. The ‘Great Unrest’ of 1910 to 1914, for example, can be framed within a cycle of contention sparked by engineering and other employers in Britain attempting to reduce real wages to compete with Germany and other industrial nations. Factory occupations against redundancies in the 1970s in the UK also represented a particularized and time-specific repertoire of action. Given the challenge of neoliberal restructuring, the authors argue that the political and social aspects of unions’ identity need careful nurturing. Camfield (2007) suggests a new cycle of contention is evident, whereby the state and employers have stripped away privileges afforded to organized labour in terms of institutional support and practice. The union response may need to be more radicalized and active, unrestrained (or constrained) by institutional practice and the associated conservative views of both members and leadership and bureaucratic union structures. Unions may need to enter a period of debureaucratization, enable a left radical leadership prepared to resist neoliberal restructuring, and construct sustained networking and education to shift the attitudes and build the confidence of members in a period of counter-mobilization. Lévesque and Murray (2010: 345) approached this through an examination of union power, by constructing a resourcebased model of capacity. They argue the need for enhanced capacity as a precursor of collaborative union action and subsequent renewal through narrative resources, infrastructural resources, internal solidarity and network embeddedness. Their argument lies in ‘the weakening of links to political parties and policy processes (which) mean that the external solidarity resources derived from previous patterns of network embeddedness are not providing the leverage on which past patterns of union action relied’. Fairbrother (2008: 214) refers to a political dimension in elucidating pre-conditions for rebuilding ‘trade unions as social movements’. His formulation includes ‘emancipatory’ politics, to frame demands politically and formulate transformative visions. So how does political

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congruence fit in with such perspectives? Political congruence is a function of three different dimensions, those of: shared political frames; socialization; and mobilization. Each must be enabled and nurtured for the particular chemistry of dimensions to coalesce. The achievement of a shared political frame is necessarily a response to exogenous factors, while socialization and mobilization are endogenously driven.

Shared political frames Almond and Verba (1963), in The Civic Culture, hypothesized that active participation within political systems is more likely when there is high frequency of awareness or positive feelings between activists and the associated political structures and institutions. Feelings could be measured by cognitive, affective and evaluative orientations. The degree of positive feelings and hence participation within the political structure (or political organization) influences the likelihood of success in goal achievement. High positive feeling within all three orientations is identified as congruence, while high negative feeling is identified as incongruence. The concept is frequently applied to political parties, but has resonance in the study of religious and single issue organizations, as well as the construction of shared values between parents and their children in the family home. Political congruence can be attained by the development of positive attachment to the organization as a social unit. Attachment, in turn, is encouraged by activism and participation in the social unit. Congruence/incongruence might also be viewed as a binary condition, a ‘geometric abstraction’ that ‘either exists or not, never as something more or less’ (Eckstein, 1998: 10). Eckstein relates congruence, inter alia, to norms and expectations of patterns of authority relations within organizations, whereby congruence (and hence the likelihood of high performance) exists if the authority patterns of ‘social units’ are similar (Eckstein, 1998: 12). For trade unions this presents a dilemma, given the bureaucratic cleavage that may be apparent between paid full-time officials, rank-andfile activists and ordinary members. Increased rank-and-file activity, while increasing membership participation and socialization, may threaten leaders’ control. High membership mobilization, when driven from below by the rank-and-file, might be viewed with caution by trade union leaders. Child et al. (1973), examining trade unions as organizations, allude to this dilemma and include a model of congruence within the framework of a union’s administrative and representative rationality, ostensibly as a countervailing force to Michel’s predictive iron law of oligarchy (also see Anderson, 1978). The key to understanding the potential for congruence, they argue, comes through an alignment of expectations of both administrative and representative rationality, assessed through member participation and attachment to the union as a social unit. Child et al. bemoaned the lack of attention to these seemingly basic insights in previous studies of unions: ‘the general lack of appreciation of member orientations, of the processes leading to their emergence and the way they are acted out through behaviour in the union, have been serious omissions [in studies of trade unions]’ (Child et al., 1973: 75). In examining the debates of Child et al. and others in the 1960s and 1970s, Dufty (1976) expressed such coalescence of administrative and representative expectations in terms of the simple concept of solidarity. Union solidarity had two basic roots: ‘one lies in the congruence of membership goals and perceived

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union goals […] The other lies in the social relations between members, a matter strongly influenced by the technology of the industry as well as purely social factors’ (Dufty, 1976: 207). Following Sayles and Strauss (1967: 132) goal congruity is an ‘intellectual’ acceptance of the union, while ‘emotional’ acceptance is a function of social factors. The need to encourage activism as a route to union renewal is subject to political constraint. As such, the development of shared political frames in unions is likely to be spurred by external shocks, which threaten or challenge union or class solidarity. Most importantly, to be a successful movement unions need to supplement their ‘conventional’ contentious participative action (strikes, demonstrations etc.), and construct alliances, adopt strategies and expand their repertoires by using innovative practice which utilizes ‘skill and creativity to produce protest performances that gained followers, attracted attention from third parties and challenged opponents’ (Tarrow, 1998: 104). However, unions’ traditional commitment to social democratic institutionalization will constrain their ability to be disruptive in both conventional and innovative forms. Leaders tied to traditional social democratic repertoires may be reluctant to adopt more radical tactics, and unions as organizations may lack capacity to alter ways of working. In particular, as Gamson et al. (1982: 15) suggest, successful social movements must challenge the dominant set of beliefs that represent the status quo ‘with an alternative mobilizing belief system that supports collective action for change’. As such, contention is ‘framed’ by alternative ideology or sets of beliefs; it is necessarily politicized in vision and oppositional in character. Of course, political congruence as a conceptual framework can be used as an explanatory factor of success in movements of the right as well as of the left. However, in order to develop political congruence in unions it is suggested that the ideological framework will be left oppositionist, opposed to neoliberal accommodation and often in contradiction to prevailing normative union behaviour. This has important implications for internal debate within unions. Union democratic procedures may need to move beyond what Camfield (2007: 287) characterizes as ‘mobilization unionism’, with its maintained bureaucratic internal relationships, into forms which exhibit ‘democratic membership’ achieved by ‘developing workers’ knowledge, skills, confidence and activity’. This suggests a shift away from the bureaucratic-authoritative form of leadership that ‘disables development in its followers’ towards a democratic and persuasive form of leadership that enables the development of an active rank-and-file (Barker et al., 2001: 18). Leadership values are then a crucial mediating factor in encouraging participation and constructing political frames. A leadership in tune with and supportive of activist values, and vice-versa, aids congruence by offering support to networking activities, either formally through the traditional structures, or, in contemporary times, informally through processes of ‘distributed discourse’ via internet tools of social networking (Hogan, 2006). In the AEU case presented here, a left oppositionist leadership came from the Communist Party of Great Britain which enabled rank-and-file participation and mobilization through the creation of networks based around the agitational Propellor and New Propellor newspapers, and through prominent left leaders such as Jack Tanner and Wal (or Wally) Hannington. The CP was compromised by its support for the war effort after the collapse of the Stalin-Hitler pact in 1941, but despite significant issues, political congruence was nevertheless apparent in major organizational changes as well as the (more general) high levels of support for the Labour Party in 1945. In the

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contemporary case of the PCS, the authors observe a consolidation of left leadership throughout the union after General Secretary Mark Serwotka’s election from the ‘shop floor’ in 2001. The union, not affiliated to the Labour Party, has adopted a policy position of defence of the public service and jobs, and remains a left oppositionist pole within the TUC. Similar tendencies can also be observed within the railworkers’ RMT, which was expelled from the Labour Party (Darlington, 2009). The PCS has shown evidence of de-bureaucratization by replacing senior sectional full-time officer posts with dedicated regionally based organizers. Most crucially, the union has shifted away from a partnership orientation and has been prone to dispute, both in terms of national actions and localized disputes. The exceptional growth of ASTMS in the 1970s may be seen as more problematic in terms of identifying shared political frames. Its General Secretary, Clive Jenkins, adopted a left wing position and was vigorous in campaigning for an industrially and politically assertive ‘white collar’ trade unionism, with a permissive approach to activist initiatives (Wrigley, 1999). Yet, as McIlroy and Campbell (1999: 105) note, while the union took a position on the left of the TUC and Labour Party it was contradicted by the fact that 70 per cent of its members opted out of the political levy. The union is nevertheless worthy of testing against the P/c framework and potentially acts as a useful ‘control’ on other cases, particularly with respect to socialization and mobilization as it began to forge a distinct identity. The growth of ASTMS, predominantly based in the private sector, occurred as total employment in the private sector was in flux. Manufacturing employment was in long term post-war decline, and while private service sector employment (finance, etc.) was growing, it was starting from a position of very low union density. The growth of ASTMS took place both against and with the stream. The particularities need unpicking.

Socialization The links between participation, commitment and attachment have been declared in a number of subsequent studies. Aryee and Debrah (1997) draw on previous studies from the 1970s onwards to develop a hierarchical regression analysis on felt attitudes of Singapore-based union members. They confirm the prime significance of union socialization in developing satisfaction with, commitment to and participation in a union. From theories of social psychology one is aware that the degree to which activists are willing to participate is dependent on the degree of socialization. Such dialectics have been integrated into theories of social capital formation, whereby participation increases as degrees of reciprocity and trust are formed through networking activity and collective learning and education (Hooghe, 2001). Networks act as ‘envelopes of meaning’, aiding identity formation and the creation of opportunities to participate (Passy, 2003: 41), as well as conduits for ‘high risk’ social activism (McAdam, 1986). Theories of organizational learning link the need to adapt to changed external environments and the use of democratic structures to encourage learning and innovation. One barrier to innovation is reliance on routine ways of working (Argyris and Schön, 1978), prevalent in ossified union structures. Much custom and practice within the ‘social democratic’ model of trade unionism developed under the relatively protective umbrella of the Keynesian welfare state (KWS) whereby, as Offe (1985) argued, the cost of integration into the mechanisms

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of the KWS for unions was that they had jettisoned their old transformative agenda in return for piecemeal gains. As Choi (2008) suggests, this makes the case for organizational learning more urgent. A distinction is also made between participation in a union and democracy within a union. Carol Pateman’s (1970) analysis of democracy suggests that union decision-making structures can be more or less democratic, but more democratic structures are more likely to allow greater participation in union affairs, and also more likely to challenge bureaucratic control by union leaderships. Greater participation should be measured not just by attendance at meetings, voting etc. but also by tests of inclusivity, including the existence of formal and informal structures within the union that seek to organize and progress the concerns of ‘non-traditional’ members such as women and ethnic minorities. The early case of the AEU, for example, would need to address the heightened involvement of apprentices through self-initiated strike activity, as well increased women’s involvement as a consequence of war production, as important initiators of change and congruence within the union. The period of ASTMS growth took place within the time frame of important disputes such as those at Imperial Typewriters and Grunwicks, which placed race at the forefront of trade union struggle. The role of ASTMS must be explored with this in mind. More recently, self-organized rank-and-file groups are recognized as vehicles for the development of shared values, sometimes as a result of organizational and political neglect by the union leaderships (McBride, 2001; Humphrey, 2002). Even when such groups are established they may remain marginalized from the mainstream, either by the leadership, the activists or the general membership, making the dynamic a complex one. Indeed, the relationship generally between political discourse on race and gender, in particular, and actual political practice may be a lagged one, from which trade unions are not immune; see, for example, the graphic description of the process in Sivanandan (1981) and also Wrench (1986). On the other hand, Kirton and Healy (2004) have shown the establishment of womens’ networks can heighten union identification, acting as a countervailing current to conservatism. Johnson and Jarley (2005) found similar processes at work with young workers, framing their findings in the ‘raising social capital’ setting. Shared values, it would seem, need to be developed on a political dimension if congruence is an intended outcome. Union education programmes may play a vital role in enhancing and encouraging democracy and participation, as evidenced in case studies conducted by Bridgford and Stirling (2000) and Croucher (2004). This is particularly so when, as is common currently throughout union education globally, ‘active learning methods’ are utilized which focus on a tutor as facilitator of a collective problem-solving process rather than traditional didactic approaches of tutor as director. Concomitantly, the democratic nature of such an education process within unions has been shown to raise participation and enable activists to influence the policy and political direction of the union, further increasing possibilities for political congruence.

Mobilization To progress the argument, one might note the development of a virtuous circle, whereby socialization increases cognitive, affective and evaluative orientations. For Kelly and Kelly (1994), the most significant correlate of participation was the strength of group

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identification, followed by collectivist orientation and the degree to which the outgroup (management) were perceived in a stereotypical fashion. They refer to ‘belief congruence theory’ (Rokeach, 1968), whereby ‘perception of outgroup members as dissimilar in their attitudes and values paves the way for their dehumanization, which in turn facilitates aggressive action’ (Kelly and Kelly, 1994: 67). In other words, strong feelings of ‘them and us’ will be likely to increase attachment to the union and participation. While John Kelly (1998) utilizes mobilization theory as a method of understanding struggles over distributive concerns, mobilization also creates a qualitative dynamic of solidarity within the union (Fantasia, 1998). As Kelly (1998) later outlined, the role of union leaderships and activists may be crucial in mobilizing feelings of them and us, through identification and articulation of grievance, creation of a sense of collective identity and attribution of blame to management. Modelling of political congruence implies a crucial role for leadership within a union, in order to ‘frame’ what the union should be fighting against, and/or what it should be fighting for. Most importantly, congruence theory would suggest that there should be similar values, norms and expectations of this vision between leaders, activists and members (or at least a critical mass of members) as a pre-condition of high performance and successful outcomes.

Towards political congruence Political congruence may lead to more effective outcomes and act as a precursor to union renewal. P/c is strongly linked to collectivist identity and attribution of blame to the ‘other’, and is obtained through membership participation, inclusivity and the development of common political vision between leaders, activists and members of a union. Such common vision is necessarily ‘emancipatory’ and framed within opposition to prevailing practice. Oppositionist tenets may prove a challenge to traditional ‘social democratic’ models of representative democracy in unions, and may require a break with bureaucratic practice, a renewal of rank-and-file networks independent of the leadership and a consequent ‘opening-up’ of unions to alternative, more radical identity and practice. These processes are difficult to launch during periods when unions have been forced to adopt highly defensive stances. Unions are neither single issue organizations nor political parties. It is difficult to establish common norms and expectations, as unions will embrace different layers of consciousness among members and members will be of different political persuasions. What might be nurtured or occur, however, is a critical mass of (left/radical) leaders, activists and members who are able to work within the union in ‘common cause’, overlaying factional difference to a sufficient degree that commonality of cause outweighs difference. The achievement of political congruence within a union is a process which has dialectical features, whereby participation, activism, leadership, education, socialization and mobilization feed from each other in a virtuous path towards the state of congruence. One may certainly measure congruence, its existence or not at a single point in time, in a psychological sense by establishing the presence or not of cognitive, affective and evaluative orientations. However, it is assumed that political congruence might be more difficult to measure quantitatively, as it is dependent on the socio-political relationships

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developed over time between the union leadership and an unquantifiable critical mass of activists and members. This assumes a dynamic process, for which phenomenological study would be a more appropriate ontological tool. It is possible to construct a picture of events, opinions and actions which enable us to confirm the direction of the process either towards or away from congruence. Progress towards might be measured by voting figures for candidates of radical persuasions in union elections, by positive or negative attitudes of members towards information and communication, by the incidence (high or low) of networking and other socialization vehicles, by evidence of de-bureaucratization, by incidence of activity both in and beyond the workplace and by degrees of member mobilization in industrial disputes. As such the research agenda as outlined here requires an exploratory process in which it is first necessary to identify those unions who have experienced an ‘exceptional’ period of growth either ‘against the stream’, in a period of declining employment opportunity and retreating union power, or ‘with the stream’ during periods of union expansion. The authors’ chosen case studies can be placed within this framework, and so testing of the salience of the concept of political congruence can be done. The examples presented above are not exclusive of others and feedback on the authors’ approach would be welcome. Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

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Martin Upchurch is Professor of International Employment Relations at Middlesex University Business School, London, UK. Before becoming an academic he worked for the UK civil service and for a major public sector trade union in the UK. He is co-author of The Realities of Partnership at Work (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and The Crisis of Social Democratic Trade Unionism in Western Europe (Ashgate, 2009). He is currently co-authoring a book on Workers and Revolution in Post Milosević Serbia to be published by Manchester University Press. Richard Croucher is Professor of Comparative Employment Relations at Middlesex University Business School and Visiting Professor at Cranfield School of Management. The second edition of his book with Elizabeth Cotton, Global Unions, Global Business was published by Libri Publishing in 2011. Matt Flynn is a Reader in Age and Work at Middlesex University Business School in the UK, where he researches age management and industrial relations. He has conducted research on age, work and retirement, including trade union policies on the ageing workforce, in the UK and internationally. He is also joint author of Managing Age: A Guide to Good Employment Practice issued by the Trades Union Congress and the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development. He is a former researcher for the UK civil service union, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS). Date submitted May 2011 Date accepted March 2012