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The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.

By reconsidering the concept of the historic environment, the aim of this study is to better understand how heritage is expressed by examining the networks within which the cultural performances of the historic environment take place. The goal is to move beyond a purely material expression and seek the expansion of the cultural dimension of the historic environment.

Conceptually, the historic environment is considered a valuable resource for heritage expression and exploration. The databases and records that house historic environment data are venerated and frequented entities for archeologists, but arguably less so for non-specialist users. In inventorying the historic environment, databases fulfill a major role in the planning process and asset management that is often considered to be more than just perfunctory. This paper approaches historic environment records (HERs) from an actor network perspective, particularizing the social foundation and relationships within the networks governing the historic environment and the environment's associated records.

The paper concludes that the performance of HERs from an actor-network perspective is a hegemonic process that is biased toward the supply and input to and from professional users. Furthermore, the paper provides a schematic for how many of the flaws in heritage transmission have come about.

The relevance here is largely belied by the fact that HERs as both public digital resources and as heritage networks were awaiting to be addressed in depth from a theoretical point of view.

The authors conducted a study at a history museum with the objective of examining changes in the knowledge of students aged 12 to 14 concerning the use of primary sources.

Students utilized self-led guides while exploring two museum spaces presenting different historical events. These guides encouraged students to scrutinize the exhibits, become acquainted with the methods employed in their research, and develop an awareness of the information derived from them. Students' responses to pre- and postquestionnaires were compared and analyzed using mixed methods.

The results revealed that students became familiar with various types of primary sources, recognized that only specific sources endure through time and gained an understanding of the research methods employed to study them. Additionally, most students comprehended that the same sources could lead to diverse historical accounts and the potential reasons for such variations.

Recommendations for practice are discussed.

This study contributed to the limited knowledge regarding learning during a single, self-led tour in a history museum. The findings illuminate the potential for learning and advancing historical thinking concepts even within such museum-visit contexts.

The UNESCO recommendation under the historic urban landscapes (HUL) title and Operational Guidelines (OPG) were used to create dynamic protective boundaries to maintain the integrity and authenticity of Isfahan's heritage waterways. Accordingly, by using GIS and Isfahan urban layers, three protective zones were proposed and evaluated; the central zone, the functional zone and the visual zone.

Heritage waterways in historic cities are not adequately protected against the negative impacts of urban development, and there is a lack of a dynamic protective system to protect their integrity and authenticity. The problem can be observed in Isfahan, a historic Iranian city, where the boundaries of urban heritage waterways (Madi canals) are usually rigid and arbitrary. This study aims to develop a practicable paradigm for determining protection boundaries for Isfahan's Jolfa Madi, an urban heritage waterway.

Compared to the current protective boundaries, the authors found that proposed protective boundaries create a greater amount of protection space, which makes a strong connection among the ecological, historical and socio-economic characteristics of the urban context. Furthermore, the protective zones based on the HUL approach give Isfahan's urban planning policy the opportunity to consider participatory tools, financial tools and regulatory systems.

Many studies have emphasized a fixed-width buffer or an arbitrary distance from the urban waterway's axis (urban heritage) or its banks. Although these protections include technical conservation or setting restrictions on the adjacent buildings and blocks, studying crucial concepts such as urban dynamic, urban heritage context and producing a particular technique for protected boundaries has not been investigated. In this article three dynamic boundaries are delineated with various functions in order to provide urban heritage with dynamic preservation and sustainable development for the historic urban landscapes.

In this article, we examine the historical and cultural foundations of Nordic states’ strong contemporary social indicators to understand whether their successes can be replicated in other contexts.

We draw on a range of academic literature to frame a comparison of two regions’ cultural and theological roots, identifying contrasts to make arguments about prescriptions for contemporary welfare policy.

We find Nordic history contributes to a duty-based culture with strong cohesion and social trust. These cultural norms make palatable welfare policies with strong activation measures, while the US model prefers to avoid the latter because of its strong cultural orientation to rights and autonomy.

To mitigate differences between the Nordic states and other cultural contexts, policymakers seeking to replicate Nordic welfare successes should consider welfare programming that combines stronger activation policies with oversight and relational components that mitigate gaps in social cohesion.

We uniquely bring together the literature on comparative welfare policy and on religion and culture to understand the precursors of contemporary attitudes and their implications for welfare policy prescriptions.

The purpose of this article is twofold. Its first objective is to bring to the fore the unexplored and neglected origins of social exchange theory (SET) to critique this body of conjecture. This unearthing is illustrated through focusing on the way the theory was developed and how this development was mischaracterised in literature. Its second objective is to invoke the methodological assemblage of ANTi-History and the “close reading” notion using multiple archival sources to demonstrate their usefulness within the critical qualitative method debate.

The historic character of management and organization studies is exemplified through utilizing a combination of textual sources to examine how SET emerged from within the human relations school of thought throughout much of the twentieth century. Specifically, an array of sources (including archival data) is deployed and closely examined to trace how SET formed and became prevalent in organizational studies over the last decades.

SET is not only indebted to the human relations movement in general and to Elton Mayo’s work in particular (as is well-known), but also to logical positivism and behavioralist-school psychology. As such, Homans’ work marked the beginning of a new era in organizational behavior research.

The article highlights the role of historical analyses in interpreting mainstream constructs in organizational behavior. In doing so, it reveals how critical qualitative research leads to understanding some shortcomings of a theory and indicates potential remedies.

The European Union (EU) and Russia are considered to be trapped into security concerns in a form of spillover, in a zero sum perspective, considering each step of the other as directed against another. Such an approach seems to prevail, after attempts of engagements for decades after the Cold War. Rather history prevailed in informing perceptions and currently driving the behaviors toward each other, in other words in othering each other.

Discourse analysis

The move in Eastern Europe of both parties is perceived with suspicion from both sides, materialized through their policies, culminated in clash of interests and crash of policies between both parts, manifested by Russian aggression in Ukraine in 2014 and recently in 2022 in one side, and the EU response through massive, unprecedented sanctions against Russia. This has created a context that fosters not just keeping a status quo of clash and struggle for influence between them in the region, but also nourishes further securitization of their respective policies toward the Eastern Europe and beyond. In 2014 and more recently in 2022 Russian aggression in Ukraine, the EU and Russia appear to have the same image to each other as they had during the Cold War, or even beyond. Having this in mind, this paper will address those developments, with particular focus on attempts to avoid them, the failure to do so and how they are impacting the EU, Russia and global politics in a form of emerging new world (dis)order.

This paper is an original paper having a critical approach toward the current conflicts going on in Eastern Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical historical analysis of the business (mis)behaviors and influencing factors that discourage enduring cooperation between principals and agents, to introduce strategies that embrace the social values, economic motivation and institutional designs historically adopted to curtail dishonest acts in international business and to inform an improved principal–agent theory that reflects principal–agent reciprocity as shaped by social, political, cultural, economic, strategic and ideological forces

The critical historical research method is used to analyze Chinese compradors and the foreign companies they served in pre-1949 China.

Business practitioners can extend orthodox principal–agent theory by scrutinizing the complex interactions between local agents and foreign companies. Instead of agents pursuing their economic interests exclusively, as posited by principal–agent theory, they also may pursue principal-shared interests (as suggested by stewardship theory) because of social norms and cultural values that can affect business-related choices and the social bonds built between principals and agents.

The behaviors of compradors and foreign companies in pre-1949 China suggest international business practices for shaping social bonds between principals and agents and foreign principals’ creative efforts to enhance shared interests with local agents.

Understanding principal–agent theory’s limitations can help international management scholars and practitioners mitigate transaction partners’ dishonest acts.

A critical historical analysis of intermediary businesspeople’s (mis)behavior in pre-1949 (1840–1949) China can inform the generalizability of principal–agent theory and contemporary business strategies for minimizing agents’ dishonest acts.

This study aims to analyze the extent to which the walking tour in virtual version appeals to the younger generation and still provides lessons about cultural acculturation that can inspire citizenship today compared to an actual walking tour.

This quasi-experimental design uses pre-test and post-test with structured interviews for data collection from five purposive participants who related the experience and storytelling that they experienced from the tours.

This study finds while virtual tours cannot replace physical walking tours because of real multisensory experiences, storytelling and guiding interpretation through virtual tours is more likeable than walking tours Due to some potential disturbance in the field. However, the guiding interpretation related to the message of multiculturalism still reaches tourists both through actual and virtual tours.

This study has limitations regarding the number of participants. A larger number of participants may provide greater objectivity. In addition, regarding the quasi-experimental method used, it is possible to have different results if the actual walking tour precedes the virtual tour, and this can be a broad discussion space for future researchers.

Practically, this walking tour is expected to be a model for civic education, especially in Indonesia, which is delivered in a fun way through a walking tour.

This study offers a novelty regarding the development of a walking tour based on citizenship education, which can be seen from its impact on the younger generation when it is held virtually or actually.

The purpose of this study is to present ANTi-microhistory of social innovation in education within Robert Owen’s communal experiment at New Harmony, Indiana. The authors zoom out in the historical context of social innovation before zooming into the New Harmony case.

The authors used ANTi-microhistory approach to unpack the controversy around social innovation using the five-step procedure recently proposed by Mills et al. (2022), a version of the five-step procedure originally proposed by Tureta et al. (2021).

The authors found that the educational leaders of the New Harmony community preceded proponents of innovation, such as Drucker (1957) and Fairweather (1967), who viewed education as a form of social innovation.

The authors contribute to the history of social innovation in education by exploring the New Harmony community’s education society to uncover the enactment of sustainable social innovation and the origin story of humanistic management education.