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In this chapter, I consider how and why gender continues to impact motivation, task engagement, self-regulation, and educational aspirations, choices, and outcomes among both boys and girls. How can motivation theory and research contribute to understanding gender differences in achievement at school, where girls now tend to do better than boys, especially in less advantaged social groups, and at work, where women still tend to achieve and earn less than similarly qualified men? In the first section of this chapter, I review evidence of gender-related motivational orientations whereby boys tend more to “prove and protect” and girls tend more to “doubt and try to improve” their abilities. I analyze the benefits and costs of these orientations, focusing on how they contribute to the superior school performance of girls, to spurring high-achieving boys to succeed more in later life than similarly able girls, and to placing lower-achieving boys, who often belong to minority groups, at particular risk for academic disengagement. I then consider how boys and girls construct and maintain motivating and motivated beliefs and strategies in interactions with parents, teachers, and peers within the social and educational contexts of their daily lives. In the final section, I first present some educational recommendations that follow from my analysis. I then engage directly with the overarching theme of this volume by considering some broad societal trends that present continuing challenges to educators concerned to promote optimal motivation for learning among both boys and girls in the twenty-first century.

The goal of this chapter is to both provide a sociological explanation for gender differences in risk-taking behavior and to explain how such gender differences in behavior may contribute to women’s underrepresentation at the top of hierarchies.

I synthesize relevant research findings from the fields of social psychology, economics, psychology, decisions science, and sociology.

I argue that risk-taking is a gendered action due to both prescriptive and descriptive gender stereotypes. The fact that risk-taking is a gendered action offers sociological insights as to why women take fewer risks than men. First, women may rationally choose to take fewer risks, given that risk-taking is less rewarding for them. Second, the aforementioned gender stereotypes may cause institutional gatekeepers to give women fewer opportunities to take risks.

Sociologists should care about this phenomenon because large rewards are attached to successful risk-taking behavior. Thus, if men as a group take more successful risks than women as a group – simply because they take more risks, and thus by chance experience more successful risks – then more men than women will experience upward mobility caused by risk-taking.

Gender differences in risk-taking behavior likely depress the upward mobility of women and are a contributing factor to the dearth of women in top positions. In this era of falling formal barriers and women’s educational gains, gender differences in risk-taking behavior are likely of increasing importance for understanding the inequalities in hierarchies in U.S. society.

Prior learning and prior knowledge are among the most dependable and consistent factors in predicting students’ success (Richardson et al., 2012). Although for UK Higher Education, the traditional A-level (advanced level qualification) remains the principal qualification students use to gain entry to University, there has been a small but significant rise in alternative qualifications, such as the International Baccalaureate (IB) and vocational qualifications such as that from the Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC). The multidisciplinary nature of Psychology means students enter the degree program with a range of qualifications in differing topic areas. The current case study aimed to assess if science qualifications aided student success in the University of Liverpool’s Psychology course. Ordinal regression and correlations were used to examine the impact of prior qualifications on three first-year cohort module scores (Psychobiology, Social psychology, and Research Methods) and the overall degree mark across three cohorts of Psychology students (n = 1,072). University entry grades showed a significant overall and subject specific effect of scientific prior knowledge. However, the effects of previous qualifications were not cumulative and did not persist beyond the first year of study. These findings were strongest for Chemistry in the Psychobiology module suggesting that scientific literacy – the understanding of scientific concepts, phenomena, and processes, as well as an individual’s ability to apply such knowledge to new or non-scientific situations (Schleicher, 2019) – rather than domain-specific knowledge is driving such increase in grades. A negative relationship was seen for those holding BTEC qualifications, suggesting that vocational qualifications, specifically for this Psychology program, were of less use than academic ones, even if topic areas were similar – a finding which may also apply to other academic based courses, and warrants further study. Although the advantage of prior qualifications diminishes across the course of study, this small but distinct advantage suggests that making a science qualification a requirement for a place on a Psychology degree course would be a beneficial step for admissions tutors to consider.

Competence-Based Management (CBM) theory and research suggest that a firm’s competence building and leveraging processes are key factors influencing its competitive success. To achieve sustained competitive success, a firm’s competence building processes must continuously renew and extend the competences a firm has and can leverage. However, the ability of a firm to sustain strategically adequate levels of competence building – while also maintaining strategically successful competence leveraging – may be limited by various self-reinforcing managerial and organizational mechanisms that can arise from competence leveraging processes. In this paper we focus on certain managerial behaviors that may create path dependencies that lead an organization to become “locked-in” to its current competence leveraging processes and to neglect essential competence building, resulting in an inability to renew competences at a strategically adequate level and eventually in competitive failure.

In order to avoid such consequences, the management literature suggests that organizations must cultivate dynamic capabilities to overcome tendencies toward lock-in and to sustain ongoing competence building. This study investigates ways in which firms can maintain healthy competence building processes by avoiding lock-ins, especially those resulting from self-reinforcing managerial behaviors. A case study of successful competence-renewing processes in a home improvement retailing company helps to amplify the components of dynamic capabilities and to illustrate the insights that emerge from our study.

Although stress has become a prominent research theme in consumer behavior and occupational health, to the authors knowledge there is only one review on the relationship between consumer behavior and stress (i.e., when internal and external factors exceed an individual’s resources and endangering the individual’s well-being) and this was published 10 years ago. Further, research on occupational stress has yet to be fully integrated into the consumer stress literature. In this chapter, the authors attempt to advance research on consumer stress by a drawing on a satisfaction mirror framework which outlines that consumers and employees influence each other through a “mirror” where they positively and cyclically influence each other in a service environment. The authors argue that consumers and employees may likewise mirror each other in a negative cycle of stress and well-being depletion. First, the authors describe how stress is viewed in consumer behavior and marketing. Second, the authors review evidence that consumption serves as a form of coping with stress. Third, the authors discuss the role of consumption as a stressor that may drive consumer stress. Finally, the authors introduce the satisfaction mirror model and outline the bi-directional influence on increased stress and well-being depletion at the consumer–employee interface in service encounters. The model introduced in this chapter serves as a framework for organizing findings related to stress and well-being in the fields of consumer behavior and occupational health. In addition, the model serves as a springboard for developing propositions for future research. Ultimately, the authors hope this chapter both updates and builds upon previous findings on stress and consumer behavior, as well as grounds future research on stress and well-being at the intersection of consumers and employees.

This chapter uses Goffman’s concept of total institutions in a comparative case study approach to explore the role of psychotropic drugs in the process of transinstitutionalization.

This chapter interprets psychotropic drug use across four institutionalized contexts in the United States: the active-duty U.S. military, nursing homes and long-term care facilities, state and federal prisons, and the child welfare system.

This chapter documents a major unintended consequence of transinstitutionalization – the questionable distribution of psychotropics among vulnerable populations. The patterns of psychotropic use we synthesize suggest that total institutions are engaging in ethically and medically questionable practices and that psychotropics are being used to serve the bureaucratic imperatives for social control in the era of transinstitutionalization.

Psychotropic prescribing practices require close surveillance and increased scrutiny in institutional settings in the United States. The flows of mentally ill people through a vast network of total institutions raises questions about the wisdom and unintended consequences of psychotropic distribution to vulnerable populations, despite health policy makers’ efforts regulating their distribution. Medical sociologists must examine trans-institutional power arrangements that converge around the mental health of vulnerable groups.

This is the first synthesis and interpretive review of psychotropic use patterns across institutional systems in the United States. This chapter will be of value to medical sociologists, mental health professionals and administrators, pharmacologists, health system pharmacists, and sociological theorists.