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This paper explores the issue of accounting and accountability in the spirituality and practices of an ecumenical Christian group – the Iona Community. Fundamental to the existence and operation of the Iona Community is their Rule, which requires all full‐members to account to each other for their use of money and time. This paper explores the development of that Rule and how it is actualised. It examines the accounting practices of individuals in the Community and the distinction between individualising and socialising accountabilities. Findings reported challenge the assumption that accounting has no role in a religious or sacred setting. The study also serves to illustrate that the distinction between individualising and socialising accountability is not clear. In the Iona Community structures of individualising accountability were subject to resistance. Structures of socialising accountability, while perceived as positive and empowering, had the potential to function as forms of internalised surveillance and domination.

It’s been nearly 30 years since the original articulation of Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life was written in collaboration with my remarkable mentor Suresh Srivastva (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987). That article generated more experimentation in the field, more academic excitement, and more innovation than anything we had ever written. As the passage of time has enabled me to look more closely at what was written, I feel both a deep satisfaction with the seed vision and scholarly logic offered for Appreciative Inquiry (AI), as well as well as the enormous impact and reverberation. Following the tradition of authors such as Carl Rogers who have re-issued their favorite works but have also added brief reflections on key points of emphasis, clarification, or editorial commentary we have decided to issue a reprint the early article by David L. Cooperrider and the late Suresh Srivastva in its entirety, but also with contemporary comments embedded. To be sure the comments offered are brief and serve principally to add points of emphasis to ideas we may have too hurriedly introduced. My comments – placed in indented format along the way – are focused on the content and themes of furthermost relevance to this volume on organizational generativity. In many ways I’ve begun to question today whether there can even be inquiry where there is no appreciation, valuing, or amazement – what the Greeks called thaumazein – the borderline between wonderment and admiration. One learning is that AI’s generativity is not about its methods or tools, but about our cooperative capacity to reunite seeming opposites such as theory as practice, the secular as sacred, and generativity as something beyond positivity or negativity. Appreciation is about valuing the life-giving in ways that serve to inspire our co-constructed future. Inquiry is the experience of mystery, moving beyond the edge of the known to the unknown, which then changes our lives. Taken together, where appreciation and inquiry are wonderfully entangled, we experience knowledge alive and an ever-expansive inauguration of our world to new possibilities.

This article presents a conceptual refiguration of action-research based on a “sociorationalist” view of science. The position that is developed can be summarized as follows: For action-research to reach its potential as a vehicle for social innovation it needs to begin advancing theoretical knowledge of consequence; that good theory may be one of the best means human beings have for affecting change in a postindustrial world; that the discipline's steadfast commitment to a problem solving view of the world acts as a primary constraint on its imagination and contribution to knowledge; that appreciative inquiry represents a viable complement to conventional forms of action-research; and finally, that through our assumptions and choice of method we largely create the world we later discover.

This is the first paper in a volume devoted exclusively to antitrust law and economics. It summarizes the other papers and addresses two issues. First, after showing that the federal courts generally view consumer welfare as the ultimate goal of antitrust law, it asks what they mean by that term. It concludes that recent decisions appear more likely to equate consumer welfare with the well-being of consumers in the relevant market than with economic efficiency. Second, it asks whether a buyer must possess monopsony power to induce a price discrimination that is not cost justified. It concludes that a buyer can often obtain an unjustified concession simply by wielding bargaining power, but the resulting concession may frequently – though not always – improve consumer welfare.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between women’s sexual health agency and their intent to initiate communications with their doctors. The research questions examined the effect sexual health agency has on patient-doctor communication, women’s emotional responses to health advertisements encouraging patient communication with their doctors, attitude toward the message and behavioral intentions after exposure to the advertising message.

An experimental design was implemented via an online questionnaire instrument to test the differences between younger-aged women (25 to 45 years) and mature-aged women (46 to 70 years). It was observed that 188 women who reported their status as single and sexually active in the past 12 months were exposed to a health advertisement that encouraged patient-doctor communication. Analyses were conducted to compare between-group measures on sexual health agency, emotional response and attitude toward the ad and behavioral intention.

No statistical difference existed between younger and older women. In general, women expect their doctor to lead conversations about sexual health but are positively reinforced by health messages that encourage their assertiveness as patients.

The small sample size also may have limited the study’s potential to evaluate differences between age segments. Future research should explore this further.

The study provides evidence that sexual health advertising can reinforce women’s intent to initiate conversations with doctors regardless of age.

Health communications can bolster women’s sexual health agency and improve patient-initiated conversations with doctors.

The study is the first to explore advertising messaging’s potential for applying health agency as a communication strategy for encouraging sexual health communications between women and their doctors.

In this chapter, we focus on the three examples of ‘destructive’ art by contemporary artists Ai Weiwei, Michael Landy and Banksy to unpack issues of dematerialisation. By adopting the lens of object-oriented ontology, we reveal the hidden agency of artworks as objects. We find that artworks are charismatic objects that are alive to infinite possibilities and interpretations. As this meaning changes over time, we argue that any attempt at measuring or pinpointing cultural value is bound to fail. Instead, we suggest a need for further consideration of how art can operate as a hypo-object, presenting us with new perspectives on the world.

This paper is concerned with the difficult question of what our field can contribute to preventing and resolving the sorts of destructive conflicts which are so prevalent in our world today at the interpersonal, inter‐group, interethnic, and international levels. In this paper, I outline an approach to this question. The paper is divided into three parts. The first is a brief discussion of some of the factors which determine whether a conflict will take a constructive or destructive course. The second deals with the prevention of destructive conflicts—here I consider the potential roles of government, education, the media, religion, and industry. The third is concerned with how to manage intractable, destructive conflicts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Generation Y, potential graduate entrants to UK retailing, in respect of their job experiences, career perceptions and initial employment expectations.

Utilising qualitative research methods, an exploratory study was undertaken with 33 students (all of whom fell into the category of Generation Y) from two UK universities.

The study found that many of the propositions contained within the Generation Y literature were reflected among participants in relation to their future career and lifestyle aspirations. This points to the need for retailers to carefully manage graduate expectations and experiences to ensure commitment to the sector.

Being an exploratory study, the results are not genralisable to the wider population. The findings frame a future longitudinal study on the retail careers of Generation Y graduates as they move from the anticipation to the encounter stage of their career development. This will seek to further explore the implications of Generation Y values, including those relating to diversity and equality which were not raised as an issue in this preliminary study.

The findings of this research contribute to our knowledge of the career aspirations of Generation Y. It indicates to retailers some of the future recruitment and HR practices they might adopt to meet the needs of this generation of employees.

This chapter is situated as a study of rural central New York, among a post-Vietnam generation, and under the force of land grabs following the United States farm crisis of the 1970s–1980s “consolidation” of farmlands into Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). This study unfolds these surroundings of this particular rural society and environment through critical theory and socioanalysis focused on a mute narrative of reified (thingified) species and beings. From a student of sociology this chapter is a response to the conditions of academic character formation and how a particular local milieu constituted the affinities for investigating society with the environment of nonhumans as political.