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An important element of more closely linking science – as a process as well as its outcomes – to society is to create interdisciplinary approaches to scholarship, teaching, and learning. Such interdisciplinary work directly improves the way that ideas and skills are taught in the classroom as well as encourages more creative scholarship, more collaborative research projects, and more effective applications of research findings. Creation of consistent and on-going interdisciplinary contact, cooperation, and collaboration between faculty members from the social sciences, humanities, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields can be encouraged with the development of pedagogical partnerships through engagement with Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs). In this chapter, we first describe FLCs and then discuss how they can encourage interdisciplinary intellectual and scholarly community development. We provide examples to illustrate the role that personal and intellectual community building plays in linking the different disciplinary approaches. Finally, we highlight the potential impact that interdisciplinary collaborations can have on creating permanent links between science and society.

Purpose – This chapter problematizes the concept of the “American Dream” – important for Messner and Rosenfeld’s Intuitional Anomie Theory (IAT).

Design/methodology/approach – The author uses work from political science, specifically Adcock and Collier in conversation with Gerring to consider if the American Dream concept is “good.” The author continues by contending that the work on the state, its power and reach, can assist with the reconceptualization of IAT and the American Dream concept theoretically and methodologically.

Findings – The author finds that the American Dream concept, while not completely inadequate, significantly departs from Adams’ original definition in The Epic of America while also being associated with mixed findings as it relates to race and the likelihood of violence. The author concludes that through critical work (e.g., Moten’s “The Case for Blackness” and Ahmed’s “Phenomenology of Whiteness”) that in order to better develop this basis of desire in the American Dream concept there is a need to integrate a growing body of work that critically engages with the legacy of racial violence and racialized social conditioning. The author concludes that by studying the ontology/phenomenon of race, understandings of cultural desire may be understood in order to inform IAT.

Originality/value – This chapter provides a framework for evaluating concepts with interdisciplinary conversations with political science. The author’s findings also add to a body of work that, through cross-disciplinary conversations, work to tease out the socio-ecological and historical conditions that influence the interaction of structure and culture that lead to anomie and ultimately deviance.

The purpose of the chapter is to explore the relation between women’s healthy eating intention and food attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and barriers with a focus on the effect of women’s income differences.

The research applies the Theory of Planned Behavior, including attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, perceived barriers, and ability opportunity resources. Close-ended survey responses of 704 women between ages 25 and 65 years, affluent and at-risk-of-poverty women in three EU-member countries were analyzed.

Women are mostly positively inclined towards healthy eating, and income does not differentiate women’s inclination. Influencing factors are perceived behavioral control, attitudes towards healthy eating, subjective norms, and level of knowledge regarding healthy food. Barriers, when present, are similar for lower or higher income women and relate to routinized family habits and food affordability and availability.

Future research should thoroughly investigate family network and structure features, with a focus on family food preferences and habits.

Encouraging women’s healthy behavior also impacts children and men, and vice-versa. There is need to target all family components with enjoyable, self-rewarding, emotionally gratifying, and pleasant tasting food.

Income is an overestimated driver in healthy food choices. Women are strongly influenced by personal and environmental factors, mainly personal control, feelings, and family habits.

Recently, ethical leadership has become a widely studied research topic. Simultaneously, many studies have begun to emphasise the role of interpersonal communication competence (ICC) in successful leadership. However, there has been little discussion on the links between ethical leadership and leaders’ ICC. To address this research gap, this study aims to compare and combine the research traditions of ethical leadership and leaders’ ICC. The study is based on two literature reviews examining (a) ethical leadership (substudy 1; N = 27) and (b) leaders’ ICC (substudy 2; N = 18). The research questions are as follows: (a) How are the requirements of leaders’ ICC noticed in the literature of ethical leadership? (substudy 1) (b) How are the requirements of ethical leadership noticed in the literature of leaders’ ICC? (substudy 2) The findings reveal that (a) studies in ethical leadership rarely pay attention to leaders’ ICC and (b) studies in leaders’ ICC do not often discuss ethical aspects of ICC, at least explicitly. While a larger sample would have been preferred, the study contributes to previous research by addressing a research gap between ethical leadership and leaders’ ICC and suggests integrating these research traditions to better understand the nature of ethics and ICC in leadership. By promoting novel interdisciplinary research perspectives, the study provides a foundation for further research and development of (a) a competence-based approach to ethical leadership and (b) an ethics-focused approach to competent leadership communication.

William Sims Bainbridge earned his doctorate in Sociology from Harvard University, with a dissertation based on research about the space program. He is the author of 13 books, 4 textbook-software packages, and about 200 shorter publications in information science, social science of technology, and the sociology of religion. Most recently, he is the editor of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of Human–Computer Interaction and author of God from the Machine (2006), Nanoconvergence (2007), and Across the Secular Abyss (2007). At the National Science Foundation since 1992, he has represented the social and behavioral sciences on five advanced technology initiatives, and represented computer science on the Nanotechnology initiative and the Human and Social Dynamics initiative. Currently, he is program director for Human-Centered Computing, after having directed the Sociology, Human Computer Interaction, Science and Engineering Informatics, and Artificial Intelligence programs.