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This chapter uses a dataset of heights calculated from the femurs of skeletal remains to explore the development of stature in England across the last two millennia. We find that heights increased during the Roman period and then steadily fell during the “Dark Ages” in the early medieval period. At the turn of the first millennium, heights grew rapidly, but after 1200 they started to decline coinciding with the agricultural depression, the Great Famine, and the Black Death. Then they recovered to reach a plateau which they maintained for almost 300 years, before falling on the eve of industrialization. The data show that average heights in England in the early nineteenth century were comparable to those in Roman times, and that average heights reported between 1400 and 1700 were similar to those of the twentieth century. This chapter also discusses the association of heights across time with some potential determinants and correlates (real wages, inequality, food supply, climate change, and expectation of life), showing that in the long run heights change with these variables, and that in certain periods, notably the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the associations are observable over the shorter run as well. We also examine potential biases surrounding the use of skeletal remains.

The chapter examines the ways in which qualitative and quantitative methods support each other in research on occupational stress. Qualitative methods include eliciting from workers unconstrained descriptions of work experiences, careful first-hand observations of the workplace, and participant-observers describing “from the inside” a particular work experience. The chapter shows how qualitative research plays a role in (a) stimulating theory development, (b) generating hypotheses, (c) identifying heretofore researcher-neglected job stressors and coping responses, (d) explaining difficult-to-interpret quantitative findings, and (e) providing rich descriptions of stressful transactions. Extensive examples from research on job stress in teachers are used. The limitations of qualitative research, particularly in the area of verification, are also described.

Shortly before the Second World War, a woman who had never accepted her orphan status, Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, nicknamed ‘Little Coco’ by her father and known as ‘Coco’ to her relatives, became the first women in history to build a world-class industrial empire. By 1935, Coco, a fashion designer and industry captain, was employing more than 4,000 workers and had sold more than 28,000 dresses, tailored jackets and women's suits. Born into a poor family and raised in an orphanage, she enjoyed an intense social life in Paris in the 1920s, rubbing shoulders with artists, creators and the rising stars of her time.

Thanks to her entrepreneurial skills, she was able to innovate in her methods and in her trendsetting approach to fashion design and promotion. Coco Chanel was committed and creative, had the soul of an entrepreneur and went on to become a world leader in a brand new sector combining fashion, accessories and perfumes that she would help shape. By the end of her life, she had redefined French elegance and revolutionized the way people dressed.

Purpose – This chapter examines the licensing behavior of patent pools when they are unconstrained by antitrust rules.

Design/methodology/approach – Patent pools allow competing firms to combine their patents and license them as a package to outside firms. Regulators today favor pools that license their patents freely to outside firms, making it difficult to observe the unconstrained licensing strategies of patent pools. This chapter takes advantage of a unique period of regulatory tolerance during the New Deal to investigate the unconstrained licensing decisions of pools. Archival evidence suggests that – in the absence of regulation – pools may not choose to license their technologies.

Findings/originality/value – Eleven of twenty pools that formed between 1930 and 1938 did not issue any licenses to outside firms. Three pools granted one, two, and three licenses, respectively, to resolve litigation. Six pools issued between 9 and 185 licenses. Archival evidence suggests that the pools studied in this chapter used licensing as a means to limit competition with substitute technologies.

This article considers a series of ways in which hierarchy is ontologically and politically opposed to flatness, particularly in the work of the artist Takashi Murakami and the cultural critic Dick Hebdige. It explores the attractions and problems of flatness as an alternative to hierarchy, but concludes that both are equally two-dimensional representations of organizing. Instead, alternative organizers with a commitment to anti-hierarchical practices would be better learning from the three-dimensional practical examples of anarchism, feminism, socialism and environmentalism.

In both natural sciences and social sciences, there is relative agreement about the fact that the 20th century saw great diminishment of the earth's natural resources. In addition to dwindling materials and space for human activities, our industrial mode of natural resource consumption brought various ecological problems, including waste, and pollution of water, soil, and air.¹ The specifics of any given social system influence an individual's perception of pollution of the surrounding environment and its consequences, and also influence the reaction of a society in general to ecological problems. In other words, different societies develop different collective and individual strategies for coping with problematic situations related to “technogenic” pollution of the environment. This article, based as it is on an in-depth case study, analyzes the peculiar relationship of people to ecological issues in Russian society. Research was carried out in the city Dzerzhinsk, which, throughout the Soviet period, was proudly called the “Capital of Soviet Chemistry.” This city is thus a demonstrable example of the Soviet period, and the history of the city will serve as a lens through which we will analyze contemporary ecological problems of the city and the relations of its citizens to these problems. Dzerzhinsk was selected for study after it was described in newspapers as “the dirtiest (i.e., most polluted) city in Russia.”