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The purpose of this paper is to examine proposals for a Tobin tax to curb currency speculation in global markets.

Financial markets are viewed from the perspective of Michel Serres.

Managing volatility is really about managing relationships that can buffer governments against risk. The resolution of a paradox is embracing the paradox.

The work of Michel Serres has not previously been used in analyses of global currency markets. His theory of parasitical relationships offers a novel response to proposals for a Tobin tax.

Purpose – A study of amateur gourmet chefs was conducted in order to expand our understanding of consumer resistance, and to theorize the relationship between culture, consumer culture, and material culture.

Methodology/approach – A semi-structured long interview approach was employed, so that the interviewees could relate their experience of cooking in their own terms. The methodology was inspired by the existential–phenomenological tradition in consumer research.

Findings – All eschewed participation in the market for cookware. They contend that “real” cooks value utility over all, and question the aestheticization, fetishization, and mass marketing of cookware to a general audience. Their responses reveal the role of culture, knowledge, information, socialization, and market structure on consumer values and beliefs, thereby bringing into question the concept of consumer agency.

Research limitations/implications – The interviews were conducted in only one geographic location and cultural milieu. Future research should examine these concepts in additional contexts.

Practical implications – The analysis reveals the basis of effective consumer resistance. In order to resist, consumers must reject citizenship in consumer culture and reconceive their political subjectivity. That said, such an approach only has emancipatory potential at the level of the individual. The interviews underscore the need for a continued critique of the operation of power in the market.

Originality/value of paper – Most of the extant literature focuses on cultural practices that have formed in response to practices within mainstream consumer culture. The cooks interviewed argued that their practice is rooted in traditions that precede consumer culture.

The purpose of this chapter is to uplevel the two-by-two binary matrix of differences to a three-by-three cross-referential one, in order to inquire into the nature and movement of Spirit within us at different levels of analysis. Our design is a non-liner, post-structural inquiry. The implications of our findings include an invitation to co-explore the muddled middle area of relationship, such as Synthesis − between Thesis and Antithesis − and Breath − between Mind and Body, individually and collectively as a metaphorical set to explore Spirit as the relationship between Self and Other. The social implications reveal more possible interpretations than currently assumed, beyond the label of enemy and the erection of lines of containment, in the relational space between concepts and among people. Our essay is original, in its playful and post-modern interface of fact and fiction, mind and body, self and other, and spirit and breath.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the understanding of paradox in corporate strategy as unintended and unwanted consequences that must be overcome.

The paper builds upon the concept of patching and holds the paradoxical nature of multi‐business firms as essential for corporate evolution. It presents an inherent contradiction of corporate organising, closely related to interdependency between patches. These interdependencies vary according to whether the patches are similar or different and whether there exist competing views on centralisation and decentralisation within the company.

Studying reorganizations in a large Norwegian telecommunication corporation, we explore these interdependencies and find that for the corporation to move in novel ways, combinations have to display a dynamic close to the edge of chaos.

This paper presents new research on organizational “patching”.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate paradoxes in the development of organizational cultural problems – paradoxes that go undetected by people involved in them. The paper explains why these paradoxes remain undetected, and shows how their “invisibility” is a foundation for the development of “cultural problems”.

The approach is phenomenological, in that it explores how actors in cross‐cultural settings understand “difference” and thereby socially construct “cultural problems”.

Three interrelated paradoxes are uncovered: In dyads, actors perceive two‐way “cultural difference” as being one‐way. “Difference” thus becomes embodied in the “other” – “the other” alone is “different” and “difficult”. In bi‐cultural organizations, perceptions of “the other” as “different” and “difficult” encourage the formation of in‐groups and out‐groups that lead to “cultural problems”. “Difference” becomes embodied in “the others” while “cultural problems” that are the results of their own actions are also embedded in “the others”. In multicultural organizations these understandings break down. “Difference” becomes disembodied, and “cultural problems” become embodied in “difference”. More cultural differences thus engender fewer “cultural problems”.

The novel theoretical part of the study is so far untested. The paper thus calls for studies that apply the developed theoretical approach. The ethnographic observations that support the existence of the multicultural paradox are preliminary and ongoing.

The novel theoretical approach can immediately be applied to other organizational issues.

This paper introduces, for the first time, the Buddhist concept of anatta in the analysis of organizations. The theoretical approach is new, and can be applied to further studies of organizational problems.

The question of whether the words “American Dream” point to something of substance is at the heart of the authors' inquiry. James Truslow Adams coined the term in his 1933 book The Epic of America as a way to re‐establish a sense of optimism decimated by the Great Depression. Adams' contribution was to move the public discourse from that of individual effort to a sense of a collective identity. The American Dream is an element of the “cultural stuff” whose singularity (“dream”) rapidly breaks down into a variety of interpretations about the American nation (“dreams”). The popular press suggests that the Dream proposes to balance collective membership in a national identity with the individual freedom to achieve prosperity and success. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Dream and the construction of an American identity by examining the accounts of men who surely represent the American Dream: US Presidential candidates.

In order to analyze the candidates' accounts of themselves as committed to their American identity and to the American Dream, the authors view the tax returns and speeches of Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney through the lens of the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan and locate the American Dream as a construct of the imaginary and symbolic orders, as they are defined by Jacques Lacan. The inspirations for the authors' analysis are twofold. One is a 1953 report in which Lacan said, “The unconscious of the subject is the discourse of the other”. The authors argue that the American Dream is the “discourse of the other” and suggest that the American identity is decentered: i.e. a signifying construct (the American Dream) substitutes for identity. The second inspiration is a 2009 paper titled “No one is perfect” by John Roberts, who argues, “The ideal of a transparency pretends to a mere making visible […] [But] transparency works to advertise an ideal against which we will always fail”.

It was found that the candidates' efforts to be transparent advertise an ideal: in this study, the ideal is the ideal of a “perfect‐able” American who lives the American Dream. It is an ideal against which the candidates fail because it is the “discourse of the other”.

This study has limitations. The subjects are two American citizens and the authors' interpretation might not be appropriate to other American citizens and residents.

The authors are aware of no other study that uses Lacanian psychoanalytic views to examine the American Dream.