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The purpose of this paper is to re‐examine accountability in a concrete historical context from the perspective of pragmatism and feminist theory.

An archival case study of Hull House.

Both pragmatism and feminist theory of Benhabib provide new insight into alternative conceptions of accountability, conceptions at odds with the prevailing and dominant emphasis on quantitative measures of performance. Further, this paper suggests that this limited view severely narrows the understanding of organizational “success.”

While this research serves to problematize notions of accountability further, it leaves the task of developing alternative practices to future researchers.

This paper contributes in two ways: first, there is a paucity of research linking pragmatism to the actual workings of concrete organizations. This paper begins to fill that gap. Second, this work draws the attention of accounting and other organizational researchers to the important role played by the settlement movement, and particularly Hull House, in the development of contemporary organizations.

This chapter challenges and augments the received view of the history of symbolic interaction at the University of Chicago. The history of the discipline’s development at the University of Chicago between 1889 and 1935 is well-known, especially the work of George Herbert Mead and John Dewey, sometimes called “the Chicago school of sociology” or symbolic interaction. But the Hull-House school of sociology, led by Jane Addams, is largely unknown. In this chapter I explore her founding role in feminist symbolic interaction. Her perspective analyzes micro, meso, and macro levels of theory and practice. Feminist symbolic interaction is structural, political, rational, and emotional, and employs abstract and specific models for action. Addams led a wide network of people, including sociologists, her neighbors, and other citizens, who implemented and institutionalized their shared visions. Addams led many controversial social movements, including the international peace movement, recognized in 1931 by the Nobel Peace Prize. “Feminist symbolic interaction” expands the scope of symbolic interaction by being more action-oriented, more political, and more focused on a successful social change model than the traditional approach to this theory. In addition, many new sociologists are added to the lists of important historical figures.

This essay is an exercise in imaginative historiography. Its purpose is to modify the boundaries between sociology, social work, and literature that have become impediments to the pursuit of socially responsible scholarship; its goal is to create an analogue in the past for a field that many revisionists wish to create in the present – a field of cultural inquiry in which knowledge is considered both cognitive and emotional, methods are imaginative, and results are meant to improve human relations. In the past I posit as a “working hypothesis” (in Mead’s sense of the term) for this field, I bring together figures, specifically Jane Addams and the nineteenth-century playwright Joanna Baillie, whose contributions to sociology and literature are being separately but not jointly recovered. I examine three key similarities that make Addams and Baillie kindred spirits: they cultivated sympathy as a way of knowing and acting, and made it the basis for social change; they preferred situational problem-solving to theory-building; they used drama for value inquiry and morality construction. Throughout, I also allude to affinities with the thought of Mead, affinities that are important for avoiding gender essentialism in this argument. I illustrate the combined use of problem-solving, sympathy and drama by linking Baillie’s plays on criminality with Addams’s and Mead’s efforts at criminal justice reform and with present-day efforts to move from an ethics of justice to an ethics of care. By bringing Baillie to Hull-House and considering how she might have contributed to the work of Addams, Mead, and their associates, I construct a precedent for transdisciplinary cultural inquiry.

In Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989), Jurgen Habermas argued that the public sphere in a democratic capitalist society is the conceptual arena in which private persons deliberate about public matters. Habermas's public sphere is a voluntary political enterprise that exists independently of either the state or the economy. Theoretically inclusive and accessible to all, it is the arena in which matters are decided collectively for the good of the entire society. The public sphere is the place, in fact, where the definition of “public good” is determined. For Habermas, the ideal public sphere flourished with the ascent of the liberal middle-class of the 19th century, but has declined in the contemporary era of mass media and consumerism.

This paper seeks to illustrate the instrumental role of reporter Nell Nelson in beginning a national labor reform movement resulting in improved working conditions for women and children in the USA.

Drawing on archival newspaper clippings, original scrapbooks kept by prominent Chicago figures of the time, US census records, and other labor history resources, the paper synthesizes heretofore‐disparate sources to provide a more complete picture of the cause‐and‐effect nature of Nelson's Chicago Times “City slave girls” series.

The research concludes that Nelson was an instrumental force in the formation of over ten advocacy organizations that worked to transform the way women and children in the USA were treated in the workplace and was instrumental in securing legislative reforms.

This is the first paper to explore the role played by Nell Nelson in securing labor reforms, thus, contributing to a more complete understanding of management history.

Institutions of learning are charged with the social responsibility to prepare future professionals for the ever-changing demands of modern society. Universities should provide expanded opportunities for learning and may choose to do so in many ways. Service learning is one approach designed to provide an educational experience that fosters a deeper community investment through involvement and outreach. Service learning engages students in the community in order to help meet the needs of that community (Osteen & Perry, 2012). Universities have begun to use this as an experiential learning approach to prepare professionals to better address the needs of the local communities. Instructors can integrate these opportunities into coursework. As universities respond to societal changes, the infusion of service learning may be the method to do so. While providing benefits to the local community, students also experience growth through the use of these practices. Specifically, service learning activities serve to improve critical thinking skills and improve multicultural competency (Coffey, 2010). This chapter will explore opportunities for universities to integrate social responsibility into the curriculum. Case examples will be provided to showcase possible strategies designed to foster engagement. These examples highlight educational experiences, while also demonstrating contributions that universities can make to the neighboring community.

In January 2012, the Jane Addams Hull House Association—one of Chicago's largest and oldest social service agencies and arguably its most iconic—announced that it might have to close in the spring due to financial difficulties. Just days later, the 122-year-old organization stunned the philanthropic world when it laid off its employees without notice, declared its intention to liquidate in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and shut its doors forever. In the weeks that followed, more and more people began to ask: What had happened to the board? Had bankruptcy really been inevitable? This case chronicles the organization's final decade and enables students to step into the shoes of the chairman of the board, Steve Saunders, as he led the board through its last two years. Students will examine the roles and responsibilities of effective boards and determine how internal and external factors contributed to Hull House's demise.

After reading and analyzing the case, students will be able to:

• Describe the roles and responsibilities of nonprofit boards

• Determine when the board is not performing its job and what the implications are for the organization

• Evaluate ways in which the board might change in order to do a better job

• Diagnose when external environmental factors threaten the security of a nonprofit and how the board itself might diagnose and work with such threats

Describe the roles and responsibilities of nonprofit boards

Determine when the board is not performing its job and what the implications are for the organization

Evaluate ways in which the board might change in order to do a better job

Diagnose when external environmental factors threaten the security of a nonprofit and how the board itself might diagnose and work with such threats

Since their creation through the Industrial Training Act 1964 to hear appeals against levies, the jurisdiction of industrial tribunals has grown considerably. One aspect of this jurisdiction, unfair dismissal, is examined here. Basic principles related to the law of unfair dismissal are examined. The practice and procedure of an industrial tribunal solely in connection with unfair dismissal cases are examined in greater detail. A case study is used to illustrate the important aspects of procedure. Appendices give relevant forms and extracts from the appropriate Code of Practice.

There are strong links between the mental health promotion and neighbourhood renewal agendas. In this paper we describe the process we have undertaken to develop a framework for monitoring and evaluating progress achieved by a neighbourhood renewal programme in East Hull (Preston Road) against a set of indicators of positive community mental health. Through a series of face‐to‐face and paper consultations with representatives of the Preston Road regeneration programme, a range of measures were devised to support the indicators and to identify sources of data that would provide evidence of progress on each measure. The framework that has emerged (and which is still open to development) will enable us to observe trends in the indicators over time. This will inform an evaluation of the impact of the regeneration programme on the community's mental health and provide the basis for the production of a Preston Road ‘mental health status’ report.