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The greatest asset of US capitalism until recently has been a blend of pragmatism with a passion to create the best socio‐economic system in the world. Today the USA is besieged by unprecedented budget deficit, public debt, financial crises, unemployment and rising anti‐governmentalism. The author believes the root cause lies in the elimination of the principles of pragmatism from governance, together with an assumption that the system which triumphed over communism is infallible. The purpose of this paper is not to find proof that an interventionist government would always be better or that higher taxes benefit the economy. Instead, using the examples of various policy mishaps, the paper seeks to prove the superiority of pragmatism over any ideology as a guiding principle of good governance.

The author uses pragmatism as criteria for impartial, non‐partisan, non‐ideological evaluation of the state of the American economy and the causes for the rise of populist movements in the country.

Neoconservatives were right to believe that markets do work. They will be needed to find solutions for skyrocketing costs of medicare, medicaid and job displacement caused by globalization. Neoliberals were correct to allow the development of profitable financial sector and give Americans access to cheap credit. However, what has been dramatically missing is a countervailing government economic policy to address increased riskiness of the financial markets, falling labor income, wealth distribution, education, energy dependence and an aging infrastructure. Liberal democrats did not propose comprehensive plan for government economic interventionism also they well understood its importance.

The paper is believed to be the first interdisciplinary (political economy, history, social economics, social psychology) attempt to identify the causes of the declining economic power of the USA.

The paper can improve understanding of complex socio‐economic phenomena by the students of US economy and those who would like to sort out true facts from unproven beliefs and do not understand complex econometric models.

The paper can improve understanding of complex socio‐economic phenomena affecting lives of millions of people.

The paper states clearly that the problems of the US economy are not caused by globalization but they originate at home from self‐imposed ideological straitjackets by the decision‐making elites and their departure from traditional US pragmatism.

To show that the neo‐pragmatist position of Richard Rorty, when combined with a sociocultural perspective, provides library and information science (LIS) with a forceful epistemological tool.

Literature‐based conceptual analysis of: historical development of pragmatism in relation to other epistemological positions; neo‐pragmatism as a non‐dualist, both purpose and communication oriented, epistemology; and a sociocultural perspective within pedagogy, originated from the Russian researcher Lev Vygotsky.

Brought together, a neo‐pragmatist, sociocultural perspective contributes to a focus on people's actions through the use of linguistic and physical tools. As a tangible example of how neo‐pragmatism can be applied as an epistemological tool within LIS, information seeking seen as communicative participation is discussed. This article unites a perspective on information seeking as communicative participation with the neo‐pragmatist concepts of “tools” and “communities of justification”. The article is concluded by an assessment of neo‐pragmatism as an epistemological position within LIS, including those research issues that arise from this position and that are introduced along the way.

In its focus on usability, the neo‐pragmatist position provides a possible bridge between academic and other professional practices in the field of LIS.

Provides, through the means of neo‐pragmatism, an argument for the necessity of epistemological argumentation within LIS.

The purpose of this paper is threefold. To clarify what is meant by “pragmatism” as a philosophy for social and environmental accountability (SEA) research, to survey its use within this research field and to explore how a further pursuit of pragmatism may extend this research field.

An extensive review of the SEA literature was conducted in order to determine what aspects of the philosophy of pragmatism have been used within the research. The authors organised the discussion of the literature around the pragmatist ideas of “truth” and “sensemaking”.

SEA research is a heterogeneous space in which various ideas are commonly attributed to the philosophical notion of pragmatism. However, there is a tension in the literature between seeing accounting as a medium for representing social and environmental organisational activities and a pragmatist view of accountings as a way of allowing managers and stakeholder to make sense of these same activities.

A clearer development of the ideas of pragmatism may be used to redirect the focus of SEA research in a number of useful ways. Seeing accounting as a medium of sensemaking between organisations and their stakeholders allows the authors to widen the exploration of accounting not only to the production of reports but also their interpretation by users. The ideas of pragmatism also allow the authors to explore the ways stakeholders might affect change within organisations and how accounting may support this process rather than capture or limit it.

This paper concludes by providing a set of methodological prescriptions for conducting future SEA research in a way that is inspired by pragmatism. It outlines an approach to research that focuses on users and their sensemaking and encourages an exploration of the possible ways accounting may create positive change in organisations.

Overall, this paper refines what it means to follow pragmatism within SEA research. It will promote a clearer understanding of how we, as a research community, may engage with practice in more positive ways in order to facilitate corporate social responsibility.

A reinvigorated social theory based on the social philosophy of John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, William James, and others has begun to make significant contributions to the study of human societies. The so-called “Pragmatic Turn” in philosophy and social theory, associated especially with Richard Rorty and Hans Joas, has drawn our attention to the role of habit and creativity in social action. This chapter reviews some of these trends, but argues that the modern revival of neopragmatism sidesteps many of the core insights of the classical pragmatists. Relating the issue to Michael Burawoy's call for “public sociology,” and drawing on the pragmatism of C. Wright Mills, a critical public pragmatism would seek to provide the preconditions for democracy via the cultivation of a public that valued what Dewey called “creative intelligence,” and what Mills called “the sociological imagination.”

Pragmatism is very relevant to workplace management and performance measurement, yet in the accounting literature, it is a term used loosely and in a colloquial manner. By drawing on a framework based on classical pragmatism, this study aims to examine how a pragmatic perspective is discernible in the form and use of management control (MC) practices.

This study collects data using a case study of a firm in the green energy construction sector.

Building on the analytical framework, this study provides evidence that a pragmatic perspective is discernible in both form and use of MC practices, through a clear focus on targets rather than variance analysis, the presence of mutable local MC practices characterised by interaction and problem-solving and the absence of other common MC practices with no clear links to ends-in-view. This study also provides evidence of the potential limitations of a pragmatic perspective including myopia and an exacerbation of the inherent bias in organisations towards exploitation.

This research brings analytical clarity to the study of pragmatism in the accounting literature and insights into how a pragmatic perspective is discernible in the form and use of MC practices. Further, the study shows the potential limitations of a pragmatic perspective for management.

Professor Dewey's pragmatism always strikes me as fundamentally ambiguous, oscillating between a conception of knowledge as “technique,” essentially a biological function, and some vague mystical conception of it in terms of “shared life” or “shared experience.”(Knight, 1936, p. 230)

This paper examines the limits of pragmatism in strategy formulation in the new, knowledge‐rich economy. By tracing the history of pragmatism in social and management thought, and assessing the commonalties and complementarities between a firm’s vision and mission, we explore the possibility and consequences of an intangible resource curse for firms pursuing strategies of incessant pragmatic growth in the expanding Web‐based domain. Ultimately, we posit a combined influence of market‐based governance and strategy simplification as an effective antidote to the executive intangible resource binging, which is sustainable as long as confidence and trust continue to be shared among the firm stakeholders.

This paper aims to explore the topic of embodiment as a gap in meaning-making within the literature on business relationships in IMP and business marketing academic discourse. Referring to the theories of embodiment, the authors question the dominant worldview of Cartesian dualism which marginalizes the influence of the body in meaning-making and explore relevant implications of an embodiment agenda for research and practice. The aim is to demonstrate that embodiment has a vitally important influence in the construction of meanings.

The paper provides a review of theoretical and empirical literature on embodied cognition and theories of embodiment to construct a cooking metaphor as an analogical vehicle for exploring meanings within business relationships.

The authors use a cooking metaphor to explore how meaning is created in human interaction. Body and mind blended together produce meaning through the catalyst of discourse and semiotics. Cognition is described as a mixture of rational and non-rational processes involving blended elements of embodied perceptions and psychological ideas stirred and heated in a semiotic “sauce” of discourse (language, communication, information, power/knowledge).

The contribution of the paper is in proposing that both body and mind influence the creation of meanings in business relationships blended through the mediation of language and discourse. The authors aim to advance a “practice” and “linguistic” turn in the business marketing discourse by proposing that embodied, discursive and cognitive processes are more effectively conceived as blended influences.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the benefits of implementing the Project method, by applying the technique in adult vocational training environments.

While the central idea of this method stems from Greek antiquity, the method itself began to evolve within American pragmatism based on the principles of cognitive and Gestalt psychology. In the present paper, the assessment process of the Project method was undertaken with the multi‐methodical approach and use of combined levels of triangulation to determine whether it can be applied to a group of adults, training in the subject of marketing communications.

Since the projected conditions from the bibliography are observed through the implementation of the Project technique it appears that adult trainees activate learning skills and competencies of emotional intelligence. Thus, the creation of knowledge operates as a “spiral” process starting from the individual level and expanding to the business and social environment with significant benefits for participants.

This application proposes fertile speculation about alternative, practical instruction, in the future environments of the broader vocational education, as well as their effective connection with society and the economy in general.

This paper provides empirical results from the application of Project technique in vocational training for adults. It highlights the benefits of this method in teaching standards, personal and social development, human resource development and, consequently, in the development of the business, economic and wider environment.