WEST LIBERTY, W.Va., Oct. 24, 2018 — West Liberty University Professor of Psychology Michael Marshall was the lead author of a study published in the Housing and Society Journal, October 2018 issue, that looks at home owners associations and problems.
The article, entitled “Home Owners Association Power Relationship, Problem-Solving, and Communication Patterns During a Major Building Renovation Construction Crisis,” explores the social interactions that occur in one homeowner’s association when it was faced with a crisis.
“We studied this scenario for one year. What we learned as we analyzed the communications between the board of directors and the homeowners, was that during a crisis, lots of mismanagement emerged and there was social strife between owners of these condominiums and the management due to a volunteer board of directors and the inexperience of these non-professionals and other factors.
The crisis amounted to more than 10 million dollars damage due to water intrusion in a real-life location, near the Gulf of Mexico.
“The damaged buildings were condemned by the county and hadn’t been kept up or maintained properly. We found that years of mismanagement caused distrust and warring factions. No money had been set aside to deal with the expensive repairs and many things went wrong. Eventually one of the homeowners with 35 years of relevant experience became the president of the BOD and he and his new, more competent board members are now correcting mistakes and stabilizing the situation.”
Marshall received his master’s degree in experimental psychology from California State University and went on to earn a doctoral degree in social/environmental psychology from Claremont Graduate University.
He joined WLU in 1992 and since then has taught a variety of psychology courses including forensic psychology, statistics and industrial-organizational psychology. Dr. Marshall also is a clinical psychologist and has a part-time private practice in Wheeling.
The psychology program is housed within the Department of Health Sciences in WLU’s College of Sciences and it offers both a Bachelor of Science in Psychology degree and a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology degree program.
To view the entire article authored by Dr. Marshall, please click here.