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This chapter considers whether and how race/ethnicity can be examined using experimental methods.

We begin by discussing the highly contextual nature of race/ethnicity and reviewing the properties of experiments. After examining existing experimental literature that focuses on race/ethnicity, we turn to our current study that uses the incompatible complexity condition to examine the multilevel interactions of diverse racial/ethnic groups composed of Mexican American and White participants in Texas and Black and White participants in Ohio.

We argue that experiments, when guided by formal theoretical approaches that allow for general inquiries of theoretical principles, are especially suitable for studying interactional characteristics such as race/ethnicity.

We suggest a particular approach that emphasizes interactional aspects of race/ethnicity and how these aspects can be utilized to diminish inequality in group processes.

Norberto Bobbio's Birth Centenary was celebrated in Turin in October 2009. This article acknowledges an important 20th century legal philosopher whose work is yet to be fully appreciated in the Anglo-American context. A short introduction is followed by an overview of his works in English, and intellectual profile. Relevant excerpts aim to convey some understanding of his legal scholarship. Three exemplars of his contribution to law: jurisprudence, legal sociology and the general theory of law are discussed. It is argued that a Bobbian lens can be usefully employed to consider some of the pressing 21st century legal-political and social issues.

The aim is to identify and demonstrate the paradigmatic changes that quantum information science engenders in observing and the cybernetics thereof. The new paradigm obviates articulation nodes between the physical and non‐physical worlds (in the sense of Penrose).

Using modal/conditional heuristics, falsification, and consistency analysis, the study designs a formal approach to operating distinctions and (re‐)unifying them through their (formal) languages. To be able to introduce new concepts, consequences of key theses in cybernetics, information, and quantum information science are discussed.

The observer's observer turns into a quantum observer through extending both the how‐controls to what‐why‐controls, and cybernetics' competence of conveying control across disciplines. This turn confines successive‐orders cybernetics to particular applications, but enables the observing to become nearly as self‐generative as information or knowledge is. Quantum observer and cybernetics are shown to be tight in a mutual learning circularity.

Immediate implications concern the framework for unifying observation‐based disciplines with those relying on knowledge generated formally. A limitation is that the framework is necessarily incomplete. At the far‐end, formalisms that solve problems of observer‐dependent complexities are expected to result.

The approach and findings are reported here for the first time. These and the philosophy/epistemology behind cross‐, or non‐disciplinary observers‐languages are crucial for designers of research programmes as well as for actualising sociocybernetics' potential of becoming a unifier.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a personal, reflective account of applying grounded theory, in particular Glaser's approach, in accounting research. It seeks to reduce barriers to adopting the grounded theory approach.

The approach taken is providing an overview of Glaser's grounded theory and discussing the authors' application of it, thus discussing their personal experiences.

The paper seeks to provide a greater insight into using the grounded theory approach, through illustrating the authors' personal experiences with its application. It seeks to highlight the merits and pitfalls, including any attempts to overcome these, as these are perceived from a subjective viewpoint.

The paper provides an individual account of how a grounded theory study was undertaken. The subjectivity of such undertaking has to be taken into consideration.

The application of the grounded theory approach is discussed retrospectively, in a bid to provide an insight to interpretive research projects in general and grounded theory in particular. It is still rarely used in accounting research, but has potential to contribute at all levels of accounting research. The paper provides an individual account of using this approach.

The purpose is to forward systems theory one more step towards social theory and integrate problem-solving and theory-building, and search for the integration and unity of science by revealing the nature and role of critical systems thinking (CST).

This article describes relations between systems theory and social theory in three parts. First, it examines the links of systems methodologies with three social science approaches as well as the role of CST. Second, the focus of theory and the form of explanation are discussed from critical social science (CSS) perspective. Third, the direction of theorizing of a CST-based systems theory is investigated.

First, CST is a hidden assumption of system dynamics (SD)/systems thinking (ST). Second, systems theory is positioned in CSS. Third, CST integrates traditional and soft systems methodologies (SSM), and connects systems science and social science. Fourth, this article reveals hidden links between systems approaches and three corresponding social science approaches. Fifth, the theoretical focus of a CST-based systems theory could be formal/structure theory and/or substantive/content theory. Sixth, the form of explanation could be structural/mechanismic explanation combining causal and interpretive explanations. Seventh, a CST-based systems theory may adopt abduction, which complements a defect in deduction and induction in a difficulty of nonlinearity.

It illustrates a graph of the competing approaches in systems science corresponding to paradigms in social science.

The processes of legitimation and institutionalization are difficult to study because they are hard to measure. Instead, theories of legitimacy use its elements to explain various effects. We propose that these effects are due to the trust-building aspects of legitimation and institutionalization. If research can establish the trust-building nature of legitimation, then theoretical research programs in the area may progress more rapidly. Research on leadership in groups can be used to assess fundamental questions of legitimacy and trust because group leadership represents an interface between research on organizations and basic group processes. We describe an experimental setting to investigate legitimation, institutionalization, and trust.

Bloomington scholars are critical of the rather wide-spread “Model Platonism” of both Austrian and Chicago economists. Their empirical, B, perspective avoids the more extreme views of both Austrian “mindful economics,” A, and Chicago “mindless economics,” C. Yet the B is not a mere convex combination of A and C. It is rather a psychologically grounded empirical evidence-oriented approach that keeps clear of the non-empirical spirit of von Mises’ and Selten’s methodological dualism on one hand and the instrumentalist and behaviorist spirit of much of neo-classical economics on the other hand.

We survey and organize over fifty years of theoretical research on status and expectation state processes. After defining some key terms in this theoretical approach, we briefly describe theories and branches in the program.

We also focus on a few theories that illustrate distinct patterns of theory growth, using them to show the variety of ways in which the research program has grown.

The program structure developed from a single set of theories on development and maintenance of group inequality in the 1960s to six interrelated branches by 1988. Between 1988 and today, the overall structure has grown to total 19 different branches. We briefly describe each branch, identifying over 200 resources for the further study of these branches.

Although the various branches share key concepts and processes, they have been developed by different researchers, in a variety of settings from laboratories to schools to business organizations. Second, we outline some important issues for further research in some of the branches. Third, we emphasize the value of developing new research methods for testing and applying the theories.

These theories have been used to explain phenomena of gender, racial, and ethnic inequality among others, and for understanding some cases of personality attributions, deviance and control processes, and application of double standards in hiring.

Status and expectation state processes often operate to produce invidious social inequalities. Understanding these processes can enable social scientists to devise more effective interventions to reduce these inequalities.

Status and expectation state processes occupy a significant segment of research into group processes. This chapter provides an authoritative overview of ideas in the program, what is known, and what remains to be discovered.