Date of Award
2026
Degree Type
Open Access Dissertation
Degree Name
Psychology, PhD
Program
School of Social Science, Politics, and Evaluation
Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair
Jeanne Nakamura
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Scott T. Allison
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Michelle C. Bligh
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
M. Gloria González-Morales
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2026 Michael Condren
Keywords
ACT UP, job resources-demands, organizational identity and life cycle, positive emotions/broaden-and-build, social heroism, vital engagement (meaning flow)
Subject Categories
Developmental Psychology | Organizational Behavior and Theory | Psychology
Abstract
Contextual factors are particularly important in understanding social heroism, which is characterized by heroic action in the service of existing and emerging community values, principles and ideals (Franco et al., 2011). Social heroism almost always entails serious risks for the hero and frequently requires committed action over long time periods to achieve positive social change. Unlike other types of heroism, social heroism frequently emerges from and is enacted through organizations. However, heroism research has focused largely on individual factors involved in different types of heroic actions, such as character, moral development and courage. The goal of this study was to begin to develop a broader conceptualization of optimal functioning of social heroes in organizations over long periods of engagement in social heroism. This study applied a qualitative, multi-factor research design to 47 archival interviews with social heroes to analyze the individual and organizational factors that influenced the sustainment of social heroism in a social activist organization (ACT UP/New York) across its seven-year organizational life cycle. At the individual level, this study analyzed the relationship between vital engagement (a higher-order construct composed of flow and meaning) and positive emotions in social heroes. At the organizational level, the study analyzed the relationship between vital engagement and job resources-demands and organizational identity. Systematic content analysis, deductive and inductive coding and thematic analysis of archival interviews with social activists were conducted to understand the role of these individual and organizational factors in their lived experiences and their evolution over time. This study proposes a model of individual and organizational factors that sustained their social heroism, grounded in previous research with these data (Condren, 2019; Csikszentmihalyi et al., 2017). The study’s proposed model was largely supported. Vital engagement was found to be a critical factor in sustaining the interviewees’ social heroism over a seven-year organizational life cycle. Vital engagement was predicated on their sense of alignment with the organization’s identity, which led them to join and become active members. Positive emotions supported interviewees’ relationships with the organization, and positive emotions’ broaden-and-build mechanism supported vital engagement by enhancing individual thought-action repertoires and personal resources; organizational-level job resources; and mitigating the costs of social heroism. Enhanced job resources supported vital engagement and sustained social heroism by creating organizational and role conditions that enabled the interviewees to do their work effectively in the organization and to also experience meaning and flow through their work. Social heroism was eventually undermined later in the organization’s life cycle by the emergence of conflict for control of the organization’s identity and interviewees’ increasing misalignment with multiple-conflicting organizational identities. Misalignment was accompanied by a decline in vital engagement and the other sustaining factors; the emergence of burnout; and the decline of the organization and its members’ social heroism. The proposed model did not account for emergent findings identified during the analyses. These included the identification of a novel job resources dimension – network resources – which sustained social heroism; a novel hindrance demands dimension – external hindrance demands – which undermined social heroism; the identification of multiple-coexisting organizational identities early in the organizational life cycle; the emergence of organizational identity misalignment associated with the rise of multiple-conflicting organizational identities later in the life cycle; the emergence of burnout associated with multiple-conflicting organizational identities and misalignment later in the life cycle; and the emergence of a new organizational identity following the organizational rupture which led to the diminution of a core organizational function. Analyses also identified three distinct stages in the evolution of the organizational life cycle associated with changes in the model’s factors and in their relationships over time. This study contributes to the advancement of heroism scholarship, vital engagement scholarship and organizational scholarship in multiple ways. It extends heroism research beyond individual factors to include the subjective experiences and contextual factors that affect social heroes’ lived experiences by analyzing social heroism in relationship to established research literatures on individual- and organizational-level variables (flow, meaning, emotions, job resources-demands, organizational identity). The study applies a longitudinal perspective to identify how these individual- and organizational-level factors interacted to sustain social heroes and social heroism over extended periods of time, and provides insights into the evolution of these relationships across the organization’s life cycle. It advances research on the higher-order construct of vital engagement by studying it in an organizational context and in relation to social heroism, job resources-demands, organizational identity, positive emotions and their broaden-and-build mechanism. The study distinguishes two novel dimensions of job resources-demands; identifies potential optimal organizational conditions to sustain and enhance the effectiveness of social heroes; and provides foundational findings and directions for future research and application in the field.
ISBN
9798244857900
Recommended Citation
Condren, Michael. (2026). We Can Be Heroes: Sustaining Vitally Engaged Social Heroes in a Heroic Organization (ACT UP/New York). CGU Theses & Dissertations, 1092. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/1092.
