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This paper reviews and compares six theoretical explanations of the effects of charismatic leaders on their followers. Of the six explanations two are based on psychoanalytic theory, two on attribution theory, one on a sociological theory of symbolic centers, and one on the social psychology of the self-concept. The review exposes differences among the explanations in their motivational assumptions, their predictions regarding leader behaviors and effects on followers, and the mediating mechanisms they posit between leader behaviors and effects on followers. The most critical differences are highlighted and suggested as foci of future research on charismatic leadership.

To summarize and evaluate John Levi Marin’s recent book, The Explanation of Social Action (2011), the central thesis of which is that the actions of other people cannot be explained without first understanding those actions from the point of view of the actors themselves. Martin thus endeavors to reorient social science toward concrete experience and away from purportedly useless abstractions.

This review chapter employs close scrutiny of and applies immanent critique to Martin’s argumentative claims, warrants, and the polemical style in which these arguments are presented.

This chapter arrives at the following conclusions: (1) Martin unnecessarily truncates the scope of sociological investigation; (2) he fails to define the key concepts within his argument, including “explanation,” “social action,” and “understanding,” among others; (3) he overemphasizes the external or “environmental” causes of action; (4) rather than inducing actions, the so-called “action-fields” induce experiences, and are therefore incapable of explaining actions; (5) Martin rejects counterfactual definitions of causality while defining his own notion of causality in terms of counterfactuals; (6) most of his critiques of other philosophical accounts of causality are really critiques of their potential misapplication; (7) the separation of experience and language (i.e., propositions about experience) in order to secure the validity of the former does not secure the validity of sociological inquiry, since experiences are invariably reported in language; and, finally, (8) Martin’s argument that people are neurologically incapable of providing accurate, retrospective accounts of the motivations behind their own actions is based on the kind of third-person social science he elsewhere repudiates; that he acknowledges the veracity of these studies demonstrates the potential utility of the “third-person” perspectives and the implausibility of any social science that abandons them.

To date Martin’s book has received much praise but little critical attention. This review chapter seeks to fill this lacuna in the literature in order to better elucidate Martin’s central arguments and the conclusions that can be reasonably inferred from the logical and empirical evidence presented.

This research investigates the effect of imposing a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) on the likelihood of purchasing SSBs. We design and test an experimental framework that examines this and the effects of providing an explanation about the presence of an SSB tax and information about the negative health effects of consuming SSBs. Consistent with Elbel, Taksler, Mijanovich, Abrams, and Dixon (2013) and Taylor, Kaplan, Villas-Boas, and Jung (2019), we find that imposing a tax, in addition to increasing the conspicuousness of the tax by explaining the presence of a tax (and in some cases, the negative health effects) reduces the likelihood of purchasing an SSB anywhere from 8.39% to 18.15%. We contribute to the public health and tax policy literature by testing consumer choice in a controlled experimental setting and considering the effect of individual differences on the choice to purchase SSBs. Imposing a tax on SSBs may be an effective tool for decreasing SSB consumption that is made more effective when the tax is conspicuous.

During the last decade or so, philosophers of science have shown increasing interest in scientific models and modeling. The primary impetus seems to have come from the philosophy of biology, but increasingly the philosophy of economics has been drawn into the discussion. This paper will focus on the particular subset of this literature that emphasizes the difference between a scientific model being explanatory and one that provides explanations of specific events. The main differences are in the structure of the models and the characteristics of the explanatory target. Traditionally, scientific explanations have been framed in terms of explaining particular events, but many scientific models have targets that are hypothetical patterns: “patterns of macroscopic behavior across systems that are heterogeneous at smaller scales” (Batterman & Rice, 2014, p. 349). The models with this characteristic are often highly idealized, and have complex and heterogeneous targets; such models are “central to a kind of modeling that is widely used in biology and economics” (Rohwer & Rice, 2013, p. 335). This paper has three main goals: (i) to discuss the literature on such models in the philosophy of biology, (ii) to show that certain economic phenomena possess the same degree of heterogeneity and complexity often encountered in biology (and thus, that hypothetical pattern explanations may be appropriate in certain areas of economics), and (iii) to demonstrate that Hayek’s arguments about “pattern predictions” and “explanations of the principle” are essentially arguments for the importance of this type of modeling in economics.

To clarify and address questions that have arisen concerning John Levi Martin’s Explanation of Social Action (2011). I reply to some of Martin’s comments to my original review of his book (2012). In particular, this paper examines the distinction between first-person and third-person accounts of human action and whether third-person explanations of action are ever justified.

This paper concedes several of Martin’s points, but contra Martin, maintains that third-person accounts are sometimes valuable forms of explanation. This paper also concludes that the distinction between first-person and third-person explanations is relative to the actor.

A careful and close analysis of his reply is employed along with careful explication and exemplification of central concepts related to the study of human action.

Martin has argued that third-person explanations of social action generate epistemological instability and hierarchical social relationships between researchers and those researched. This paper expresses doubts about the generalizability of these claims.

To date, no extended discussion has been published pertaining to the social value of third-person explanations of social action.

Purpose – This study looks at the explanations given in Finnish media for the two school shootings that took place in the country in 2007 and 2008. It also investigates how Finnish journalists reflected on the explanations and the problems they posed to journalists’ professional values.

Design/methodology/approach – The study gives an overview of the most common explanations for the two incidents in the media through a textual analysis. A qualitative reading of interviews with journalists after the two school shootings sheds more light on journalists’ reflections on the explanations given. The findings are considered against the concept of professional values of journalism in Finland.

Findings – The media coverage of explanations varied markedly between the two school shootings. After the first rampage, explanations centered on the shooter and portrayed the incident as an “isolated case,” whereas after the second rampage journalists focused on societal problems and authorities’ wrongdoings in their explanations. The change can be attributed to the different nature of the two incidents, plus journalists’ increased need to pay attention to audience feedback in the rapidly changing media landscape. The altered ways of reporting also indicated a partial rethink of the professional values among journalists. With the school shootings, Finnish journalists’ traditionally strong support for deontological ethics as the cornerstone of disaster reporting declined slightly, with teleological ethics gaining prominence.

Originality – The study provides new insights into recent changes and developments of disaster reporting and journalists’ professional values in Finland.

Making links between micro and macro levels has been problematic in the social sciences, and the literature in strategic management and organization theory is no exception. The purpose of this chapter is to raise theoretical issues in developing micro-foundations for strategic management and organizational analysis. We discuss more general problems with collectivism in the social sciences by focusing on specific problems in extant organizational analysis. We introduce micro-foundations to literature by explicating the underlying theoretical foundations of the origins of individual action and interaction. We highlight opportunities for future research, specifically emphasizing the need for a rational choice programme in management research.