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The papers collected here were written for the second biennial Wirth conference on Austrian Economics. The Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies sponsored the conference in cooperation with the University of Toronto in Mississauga. The conference was held from 17 to 18 October 2008 in Mississauga. The Wirth Institute has a natural home in Edmonton on the campus of the University of Alberta, which is a leading center for Central European Studies. The fact that the Institute has received support not only from government of Austria, but also from the governments of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia reflects its historically minded recognition of the unique intellectual milieu of the Habsburg Empire. This intellectual milieu lasted beyond the breakup of the empire right through to the Anschluss in 1938. It is this milieu that shaped the Austrian school of economics and helped shape the context for the conference.

In this chapter, the post-disaster handling of the British Petroleum Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico is analyzed according to the concept of “Public Reserve.” Public Reserve extends the theory of privacy from the individual into the context of corporate behavior and environmental regulation and management by government. Secrecy is viewed as a form of privacy.

This chapter argues that modern societies are changing in ways that disrupt the complementarity between social structure and character structure. One source of this divergence occurs because, on the one hand, there exists a “neoliberal” character structure that is oriented toward the accumulation of human capital and holds that such accumulation and hard work will allow one to achieve the “American Dream.” On the other hand, the deep embeddedness of this character structure may in fact deepen the possibility of structural crisis, as developments in automation and ongoing transformations of labor continuously shift the economic structure and many feel they are employed in meaningless “soul crushing” jobs. This diagnosis prompts the question: is the accumulation of human capital futile? In other words, can there exist an abundance of jobs that simultaneously pay enough to provide a middle-class lifestyle and be both socially respected by most members of society while also providing subjective meaning for the individual – without accruing high social costs? Through reflections upon my own biography growing up in East Tennessee, this chapter utilizes the framework of Planetary Sociology to encourage sociologists to rethink the category of “human capital” and recognize the divergence of social structure and character structure to be a serious problem with planetary implications. Only by critical examination of the sociohistoric context from a planetary perspective can these challenges be constructively evaluated and reckoned with.

Since the late 1980s we’ve been inspired by feminist theorizing to interrogate our field of organization studies, looking critically at the questions it asks, at the underlying premises of the theories allowing for such questions, and by articulating alternative premises as a way of suggesting other theories and thus other questions the field may need to ask. In so doing, our collaborative work has applied insights from feminist theorizing and cultural studies to topics such as leadership, entrepreneurship, globalization, business ethics, issues of work and family, and more recently to sustainability. This text is a retrospective on our attempts at intervening in our field, where we sought to make it more fundamentally responsive to problems in the world we live in and, from this reflective position, considering how and why our field’s conventional theories and practices – despite good intentions – may be unable to do so.

A quick search of the headlines of major newspapers reveals a treasure trove of technology procurement gone wrong. While the private sector seems to adopt and implement new technology seamlessly and quickly to deliver for customers, the government struggles to accomplish technology purchases and integrations with the same ease. As governments in the United States are looking to retain their current workforce and attract the next generation of workers, the technological capabilities and ethos of governments will be paramount. With nearly every industry being transformed by technology and Generation T being the first generation to have an ingrained “technology first” mindset, the ability of governments to attract these workers depends, in large part, on the ability to transform their government technology culture, policies, and practices.

In this chapter, the authors examine the administrative branch and observe two key components at the root of most technology failures: poor organizational structure in the bureaucracy and the lack of an empowered Chief Information/Technology Officer. Building upon case studies from Massachusetts and California, this chapter looks at the factors related to failure or success to understand the technology procurement culture. The chapter concludes by presenting four key “best practice” principles of public policy and administration that can be implemented by almost any governmental entity to improve their acquisition and implementation of technology.