Celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2015, the Ecological Society of America (ESA) is the largest professional society devoted to the science of ecology. A Centennial History of the Ecological Society of America tells the story of ESA's humble beginnings, growing from approximately 100 founding members and a modest publication of a few pages to a membership that exceeds 10,000 with half a dozen important journals, in print and online. It is the story of a successful scientific society that set an example for the world. Beginning with the society's inception, the book describes the difficulties faced early on and ways in which it expanded. It tracks the society's progress from the early years when female ecologists were few and inconspicuous to today when they are equally conspicuous as men, and there are as many or more female graduate students in ecology as male. ESA now has members from all around the world, and its journals contain contributions from around the world. Like all sciences, ecology began with simple questions that led to fairly simple answers. But, as ecological sciences progressed, complexity emerged in both questions and answers and the ESA has documented that process along the way. This book describes important initiatives such as the International Biological Program, the Long Term Ecological Research Network, and establishing new journals, as well as recent programs including the National Ecological Observation Network. With numerous illustrations, photographs, charts, and diagrams, the book lets you explore the early beginnings of ESA as if in conversation with its founders and appreciate the early work and achievements in the field.

Bruce Kogut's writing has sketched a theory of human motivation that sees managers as social, often altruistic, sometimes as selfish, who care about their colleagues and their status among them. For the first time this book collects together key pieces that show how this view works in application to practical managerial issues, such as technology transfer and licensing, joint ventures as options, and the diffusion of ideas and best practices in the world economy. In an extensive introduction to these chapters, Kogut grounds this view in recent work in neurosciences and behavioural experiments in human sociality. On this basis, he provides a critique of leading schools of thought in management, including the resource based view of the firm cognition, and experimental economics. He proposes that people are hardwired to learn social norms and to develop identities that conform to social categories. This foundation supports a concept of coordination among people that is inscribed in social communities. It is this concept that leads to a theory of the firm as derived from social knowledge and shared identities. Kogut argues that the resource based view of the firm is only a view and it fails as a theory because it lacks a behavioural foundation. If it were to choose one, the choice would be between knowledge and organizational economics. Similarly, he argues that recent statements regarding cognition do not confront the age-old question of shared templates. If it did, it too would have to confront a theory of social knowledge. The author then proposes that this foundation is essential to an understanding of norms and institutions as well. Thus, we are moving into a period in which rapid advances in neuroscience increasingly lead to an integrated foundation for the social sciences. This opening chapter is the gateway to the collected essays, which assemble the author's published articles on knowledge, options, and institutions. The book ends on the most recent work on open source software and generating rules. The chapter on open source discusses how new technology is changing the face of innovation. The final article on generating rules is the segue to the author's current work that looks at how simple rules of social exchange leads to complex patterns of local and global knowledge.

This book gives an inside view of real engineers communicating in a modern aerospace engineering environment. Using many authentic texts and language examples, the author describes the writing of specifications and requirements, engineering proposals, executive summaries and other communication tasks.

This book explores the ways in which professional groups develop specific interactional procedures for conducting and representing their activities, all of which contribute to a distinctive collaborative identity. It highlights the drawbacks as well as the advantages of collaborative talk, pointing to ways of improving professional performance.

This book helps students to understand American politics by guiding them through the different institutions of American government. It covers the electoral and party systems, the separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, and the division of powers between the federal government and the states. It also explores the internal organization of each institution. This book gives students a solid understanding of the 'rules' of the American political game, the 'pitch' on which the game is played, and the basic characteristics and orientations of the 'teams' that are playing the game. It enables students to study contemporary American politics with greater understanding, and to see the differences between the government of the United States and the governments of other democracies.

What is the link between working life and the nature of production on the one hand, and the changing organisation of the firms and institutions in which work and production take place? In this book, leading socio-economic theorists analyse how these have changed over the last two decades.

Although many industrialized countries have had to face the same political and economic pressures in reforming their public sectors there have been different reactions and a diversity of solutions to the emerging problems. This book examines the most significant initiatives targeted towards the restructuring of public sector employment relations in countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The contributors focus on national and local governments, and health, education and social services. The first section provides an up-to-date analysis of six European countries. The second part considers the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

In this provocative study, Paul du Gay makes a compelling case for the continuing importance of bureaucracy. Taking inspiration from the work of Max Weber, du Gay launches a staunch defence of `the bureaucratic ethos' and highlights its continuing relevance to the achievement of social order and good government in liberal democratic societies. Through a comprehensive engagement with both historical and contemporary critiques of bureaucracy and a careful examination of the policies of organizational change within the public services today, du Gay develops a major reappraisal of the so-called `traditional' ethic of office. In doing so he highlights the ways in which many of the key features of bureaucratic conduct that came into existence a century ago still remain essential to the provision of responsible democratic government.

For more than a century, New York City's public hospitals have played a major role in ensuring that people of every class have had a place to turn for care. This comparison of the history of Bellevue Hospital with that of the private New York Hospital illuminates the unique contribution that public hospitals have made to the city and confirms their continued value today. Portraying the hospital as an urban institution that reflects the social, political, economic, demographic, and physical changes of the surrounding city, this book links the role of public hospitals to the ongoing debate about the place of public institutions in American society.

Performing Institutions: Contested Sites and Structures of Care builds upon scholarly work rooted in the social and cultural histories of education, self-organization, activist practices, performance, design, and artistic research, (at)tending to the ways that institutions are necessarily political and performed. By evoking the idea of Performing Institutions, it foregrounds all kinds of 'actors' that engage with (re)imagining creative practices - social, artistic, and pedagogical - that critically interact with institutional frameworks and the broader local and global society of which these institutions are part. With case studies and critical reflections from Denmark, Ireland, Finland, the UK, Canada, the USA, Chile, Asia and Australasia contributors show how they envision or pursue performing artistic, cultural, social and educational practices as caring engagements with contested sites, addressing the following questions. How do current institutions perform - academically, spatially, custodially and structurally? How might we stay engaged with the ways that institutions are inherently contested sites, and what role do care, and counter-hegemonic practices play in rearticulating other ways of performing institutions, and how they perform on us? These are the questions central to this book as it stages a productive tension between two main themes: structures of care (instituting otherwise) and sites of contestations (desiring change). Some of the texts in this collection stage a productive tension between ideas about caring contestations and contestation as a caring engagement in practice, with a view towards institutional transformation. Other contributors investigate the idea of caring contestations as a critical concept that draws attention to questions of power and to the exclusions produced and reproduced in and through specific institutional practices. As such, this collection of writing puts forward caring contestations as a critical mode for (re)enacting institutional engagements. This also brings forward questions of agency and how, for those of us who perform within institutional structures, we care to engage and/or contest those institutional engagements. It is primarily aimed at scholars, educators, research-practitioners and postgraduate students in the fields of performance studies, theory, creation and design, those working at art institutions and art schools Also relevant to researchers working across various fields of organizational as well as educational approaches to performance culture.

This book focuses on the emerging field of evolutionary economic policy, highlighting the interface between the state, markets, and the evolutionary complexity of modern economies. The contributors explore the possibilities and limitations of governance, and provide a unique platform for the advancement of modern evolutionary economic theory. Decision-making is discussed, with particular reference to: economic evolution as an open process self-organization and networks the political economy of complexity. Issues of evolutionary economic governance at various levels of aggregation are also examined. Inspired by evolutionary thinking, a range of models emerge from the study, illustrating the variety and complexity of evolutionary governance of economic systems. Exploring the little investigated aspects of an evolutionary economic policy, this collection of original papers goes beyond the traditional confines of positive theory, making a long overdue contribution to the field of evolutionary economics. It will therefore be invaluable to a wide ranging audience including evolutionary and institutional economists, governmental scientists, management scientists and scholars following an interdisciplinary approach in the social and cognitive sciences.

'The region' has been used to understand and propose solutions to phenomena and problems outside the dominant spatial scale of the twentieth century - the nation state. Its influence can be seen in multiple social science disciplines and in public policy across the globe. But how was this knowledge organised and how were its concepts transmuted into public policy? This book charts the development of the academic field of Regional Studies and the application of its concepts in public policy through its learned society, the Regional Studies Association. In their modern form, learned societies often play a complementary role to universities, offering networks that operate in the spaces between and beyond universities, connecting specialised academics and knowledge and making it possible for them to have impact outside the academy. In contrast to the geographically tangible and popularly understood role of the university, contemporary learned societies are nebulous networks that transcend barriers and whose contribution is difficult to discern. However, the production and dissemination of knowledge would be stunted were it not for the learned society connecting scholars through a network of publications and events. This book traces the intellectual history of regional studies and regional science from the 1960s into the 2000s and the impact of the regional concept in public policy through the changing priorities of government in the UK and Europe. By approaching the history through the Regional Studies Association, it interrogates the role and function of the 'learned society' model of organisation in contemporary academia and importance as a knowledge exchange vehicle for public policy influence.

This indispensable Handbook examines both economic and legal aspects of competition policy and industrial organization. It provides a scholarly review of the state of the art regarding economic theory, empirical evidence and standards of legal evaluation. The book aims primarily at furthering our understanding of the interplay between economic reasoning and legal expertise by concentrating on the fundamental issues and principles underlying competition policy. Following a comprehensive introduction, the authors investigate a number of important themes including: * the natural limits of competition * efficiency versus market power * small firms, innovation and competition * trade policy and competition policy * financial services * the political economy of antitrust * dominance and monopolization * identifying anti-trust markets * competition policy versus regulation * competition policy in a globalized economy. Each of the specially commissioned chapters, written by leading authorities in the field, provides a stimulating exploration of the intricacies of competition policy. The book will be accessible to a wide audience including students of economics and law, public administrators, lawyers, consultants and business managers. It will also be of particular interest to policymakers in EU accession countries who are required to introduce an appropriate legal framework to implement EU competition policy.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a tool for public and private institutions to promote sustainable development in developing and emerging markets. This work brings together contributors from a variety of fields and international perspectives to assess and improve the effectiveness of CSR by addressing the following questions: what are the linkages between CSR and sustainable development? What does CSR mean for developing or emerging economies and in what ways does this deviate from orthodoxies and universalist approaches? What institutional factors and actors influence the effectiveness of CSR in developing and emerging economies? How can developing and emerging economies promote a flexible, diverse and reconstructed form of CSR that leads to inclusive and sustainable development? This book should be read by anyone interested in understanding what normative factors, theoretical models, policy strategies, and corporate practices best facilitate effective CSR and sustainable development.

Dating back to antiquity, semiotics is both a "technique" and a "science" that aims to understand the nature of meaning. An academic discipline in its own right, semiotics uses signs, such as words and symbols, to think, communicate, reflect, transmit, and preserve knowledge. Since the initial publication of The Quest for Meaning in 2007, the world has changed dramatically with the advent of online culture, new technologies, and new ways of making signs and symbols. Updated to reflect these many changes, the second edition includes a comprehensive chapter on the use of semiotics in the Internet age. Written in a student-friendly style, featuring examples from everyday life, the book explains what semiotics is all about and why it is so important for gaining insights into our elusive and mysterious human nature.

A comprehensive analysis of the stop & frisk policy, its origins as Chicago's predominant strategy for responding to violence, and its impact on crime and public opinion. Stop & frisk has drawn a great deal of attention-and heated criticism-in recent years, for racial bias in its application and for the often violent and sometimes fatal nature of these encounters. In Stop & Frisk and the Politics of Crime in Chicago, Wesley G. Skogan offers a comprehensive analysis of the stop-and-frisk policy, its origins as Chicago's predominant strategy for responding to violence, and its impact on crime and public opinion. Drawing on a crime database of over 14 million incidents, interviews with 1,450 Chicagoans and 714 police officers, and the author's 30 years of studying, talking to, and riding along with Chicago police officers, Skogan looks at the inner workings of police departments and the history and politics of crime prevention that motivate these policies. Rather than looking at individual stops and how they are handled, he argues for considering stop & frisk as an organizational strategy, intimately tied to the move from reactive to preventive policing. Examining one of America's predominant crime control strategies, this book provides an essential analysis of the origins, implementation, and effects of stop & frisk in Chicago and on urban policing in general.

Drawing on the research of more than 50 influential international scholars, this extensive interdisciplinary survey consolidates and evaluates what is known and not known about organizations, and critically examines how we learn about and study them.
Contributors include 50 influential international scholars.
Contributions represent the most important contemporary perspectives on organizations, including networks, ecology and technology.
Each topic is covered at three levels of organization: intraorganizational, organizational, and interorganizational.
Chapters structured around five common elements for ease of use.

A growing field of inquiry, biosemiotics is a theory of cognition and communication that unites the living and the cultural world. What is missing from this theory, however, is the unification of the information and computational realms of the non-living natural and technical world. Cybersemiotics provides such a framework. By integrating cybernetic information theory into the unique semiotic framework of C.S. Peirce, S ren Brier attempts to find a unified conceptual framework that encompasses the complex area of information, cognition, and communication science. This integration is performed through Niklas Luhmann's autopoietic systems theory of social communication. The link between cybernetics and semiotics is, further, an ethological and evolutionary theory of embodiment combined with Lakoff and Johnson's 'philosophy in the flesh.' This demands the development of a transdisciplinary philosophy of knowledge as much common sense as it is cultured in the humanities and the sciences. Such an epistemological and ontological framework is also developed in this volume. Cybersemiotics not only builds a bridge between science and culture, it provides a framework that encompasses them both. The cybersemiotic framework offers a platform for a new level of global dialogue between knowledge systems, including a view of science that does not compete with religion but offers the possibility for mutual and fruitful exchange.

It is now widely acknowledged that institutions are a crucial factor in economic performance. Major developments have been made in our understanding of the nature and evolution of economic institutions in the last few years. This book brings together some key contributions in this area by leading internationally renowned scholars including Paul A. David, Christopher Freeman, Alan P. Kirman, Jan A. Kregel, Brian J. Loasby, J. Stanley Metcalfe, Bart Nooteboom and Ugo Pagano.This essential reader covers topics such as the relationship between institutions and individuals, institutions and economic development, the nature and role of markets, and the theory of institutional evolution. The book not only outlines cutting-edge developments in the field but also indicates key directions of future research for institutional and evolutionary economics.Vital reading on one of the most dynamic and rapidly growing areas of research today, The Evolution of Economic Institutions will be of great interest to researchers, students and lecturers in economics and business studies.

In communities plagued by conflict along ethnic, racial, and religious lines, how does the representation of previously-marginalized groups in the police affect crime and security? Drawing on new evidence from policing in Iraq and Israel, Policing for Peace shows that an inclusive police force provides better services and reduces conflict, but not in the ways we might assume. Including members of marginalized groups in the police improves civilians' expectations of how the police and government will treat them, both now and in the future. These expectations are enhanced when officers are organized into mixed rather than homogeneous patrols. Iraqis indicate feeling most secure when policed by mixed officers, even more secure than they feel when policed by members of their own group. In Israel, increases in police officer diversity are associated with lower crime victimization for both Arab and Jewish citizens. In many cases, inclusive policing benefits all citizens, not just those from marginalized groups.

Infrastructures are complex networks dominated by tight interdependencies between technologies and institutions. These networks supply services crucial to modern societies, services that can be provided only if several critical functions are fulfilled. This book proposes a theoretical framework with a set of concepts to analyse rigorously how these critical functions require coordination within the technological dimension as well as within the institutional dimension. It also shows how fundamental the alignment between these two dimensions is. It argues that this alignment operates along different layers characterized successively by the structure, governance and transactions that connect technologies and institutions. These issues of coordination and alignment, at the core of the book, are substantiated through in-depth case studies of networks from the energy, water and wastewater, and transportation sectors.

The promotion of knowledge was a major preoccupation of the Victorian era and, beginning in 1831 with the establishment of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, a number of national bodies were founded which used annual, week-long meetings held each year in a different town or city as their main tool of knowledge dissemination. Historians have long recognised the power of 'cultural capital' in the competitive climate of the mid-Victorian years, as towns raced to equip themselves with libraries, newspapers, 'Lit. and Phil.' societies and reading rooms, but the staging of the great annual knowledge festivals of the period have not previously been considered in this context. The four national associations studied are the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (NAPSS), the Royal Archaeological Institute (RAI) and the Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE), who held annual meetings in 62 different provincial towns and cities from 1831 to 1884. In this book it is contended that these meetings were as important as royal visits and major civic ceremonies in providing towns with an opportunity to promote their own status and identity. By deploying a wealth of primary source material, much of which has not been previously utilised by urban historians, this book offers a new and genuinely Britain-wide perspective on a period when comparison and competition with neighbouring places was a constant preoccupation of town leaders.

Over the past three decades, Meyer, Jepperson, and colleagues have contributed to the development of one of the leading approaches in social theory, by analyzing the cultural frameworks that have shaped modern organizations, states, and identities. Bringing together key articles and new reflections, this volume collects the essential theoretical ideas of 'sociological neoinstitutionalism.' It clarifies the core ideas and situates them within social theory writ large. Among other topics, the authors discuss the changing nature of the "actors" that have operated within contemporary social structure. The book concludes with the evolving frameworks that have structured social activity in the post-World War II period of 'embedded liberalism,' in the more recent neoliberal period, and in an emergent post-liberal period that appears to be a radical departure.