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This paper aims to examine the effects of 9/11/2001 on strategic variability in the US air carrier industry. The paper also seeks to examine the role of firm size in these relationships.

The paper tests two different perspectives on organizational adaptation to environmental jolts: the punctuated equilibrium model and institutional isomorphism. The two counter hypotheses predict either increasing or decreasing variability in strategic response to 9/11, respectively. This is a longitudinal study of the US air carrier industry. The sample includes the major, national, and large regional air carriers in the US from 1979 (post‐deregulation) to 2008. The data come from archival sources. The study includes measures of variability in differentiation and low cost strategies as well as scope.

Time series regressions examine the effects of the 9/11 jolt on business strategy variability in the majors, nationals, and large regionals. The results lend some support to both perspectives on organizational adaptation. Air carrier size had a significant relationship to strategic variability.

The paper studies the behavior of firms in the US air carrier industry following the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. It examines two different theoretical approaches to environmental jolts and should provide useful information to both academics and managers who are interested in the effects of significant environmental changes on the behavior of an industry.

The aim of this article is to test the hypothesis that peer-to-peer technology platforms (Uber) are associated with disruption in the institutional environment, affecting beliefs, norms and users' ways of thinking and acting.

Probability sample comprising 843 users (446 passengers; 397 drivers) in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, using a set of indicators was specifically designed for this study.

Uber triggers significant changes in the systems of rewards and sanctions, in social preferences, and in entrepreneurial structure and governance, and promotes the coexistence of an institutional logic, hitherto dominant, with new believes, rules, norms and regulatory systems.

This is a pioneer study that associates institutional approach's elements with technology platforms; the authors also elaborated and utilized an analysis model consisting of a set of completely original indicators capable of mapping and measuring different dimensions of the phenomenon under analysis.

Evaluates how economic co‐operation can be organized for the mutual advantage of the two economies of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The methodological approach adopted by the authors explores the dynamics of market design within the two transitional economies and examines how they could contribute to the performance of an all‐island economy. The emphasis is on public utilities, electricity and telecommunications as sources of inter‐firm synergies. At a time when many European countries are moving towards greater integration, it is imperative that the two economies on the island of Ireland integrate in order to realize competitive advantages. Integration may not be the panacea for solving specific economic problems such as unemployment or housing shortages, however, it will solve the problem of diseconomies of small scale which impair the competitiveness of commercially oriented public utility firms on the island. The politics is not about the spoils of a united Ireland but the gains from participation in an integrated Europe. The primary objective is in realizing the economic reality of all‐island commercial activities which will dissipate rents, eliminate inefficiencies, create incentives and release real economic growth.

The equation of unified knowledge says that S = f (A,P) which means that the practical solution to a given problem is a function of the existing, empirical, actual realities and the future, potential, best possible conditions of general stable equilibrium which both pure and practical reason, exhaustive in the Kantian sense, show as being within the realm of potential realities beyond any doubt. The first classical revolution in economic thinking, included in factor “P” of the equation, conceived the economic and financial problems in terms of a model of ideal conditions of stable equilibrium but neglected the full consideration of the existing, actual conditions. That is the main reason why, in the end, it failed. The second modern revolution, included in factor “A” of the equation, conceived the economic and financial problems in terms of the existing, actual conditions, usually in disequilibrium or unstable equilibrium (in case of stagnation) and neglected the sense of right direction expressed in factor “P” or the realization of general, stable equilibrium. That is the main reason why the modern revolution failed in the past and is failing in front of our eyes in the present. The equation of unified knowledge, perceived as a sui generis synthesis between classical and modern thinking has been applied rigorously and systematically in writing the enclosed American‐British economic, monetary, financial and social stabilization plans. In the final analysis, a new economic philosophy, based on a synthesis between classical and modern thinking, called here the new economics of unified knowledge, is applied to solve the malaise of the twentieth century which resulted from a confusion between thinking in terms of stable equilibrium on the one hand and disequilibrium or unstable equilibrium on the other.

André Gide's prophetic words during an interview at Karlsbad in 1933: “Hitler represents a delay in the progress of humanity. There will be another peaceful Revolution in Spirit — different from Capitalism, Socialism‐Communism and Fascism — which will guide the development of humanity to its right destination.”

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.

China's economic transition is essentially the process of China's institutional changes. During the changes, the appearance of institutional innovation is not regular; instead, it is intermittent and random. The purpose of this paper is to show that the fitful appearance of institutional innovation is the root of China's economic growth and fluctuations.

This paper constructs a real business cycle (RBC) model introducing the institutional factor expressed in the quantitative form under the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) framework by measuring China's institutional changes quantitatively.

By comparing the characteristics of the actual economic data with those of the simulated economic data, we find that this RBC model can explain 94.44%, 66.07%, 23.46%, 21.03% and 15.45% of the cyclical fluctuations in output, investment, labor, consumption and capital, respectively.

The impulse response analysis finds that the institutional shocks have a relatively long duration, lasting about 30 years, and decline slowly over time, while technological shocks decline relatively fast, lasting approximately ten years.

This essay raises a concern about the trajectory that new institutionalism has been following during the last decades, namely an emphasis on heterogeneity, change and agentic behavior instead of isomorphism and conformist behavior. This is a crucial issue from the perspective of the philosophy and methodology of science since a theory that admits both change and stability as a norm has less scientific weight then a theory that predicts a prevalence of passivity and isomorphism over change and strategic behavior. The former provides explanations and predictions while the latter does not.

The paper offers an analysis of the nature, characteristics, functions and boundaries of institutional theories in the spirit of philosophy and methodology of science literature.

The power of the former institutional theory developed by Meyer, Rowan, DiMaggio and Powell lies in its generalization, explanation and prediction of observable and unobservable phenomena: as a typical organizational theory that puts forward directional predictions, it explains and predicts the tendency for organizations to become more similar to each other over time and express less strategic and interest-driven behavior, conforming to ever-increasing institutional pressures. A theory of isomorphism makes scientific predictions while its modern advancements do not. Drawing on Popper's idea of the limit of domains of explanation and limited domains of theories we present two propositions that may direct our attention towards the strength or weakness of institutional theories with regard to their explanations of organizational processes and behavior.

The paper draws implications for further theory building in institutional analysis by suggesting the nature of institutional explanations and the place of institutional change in the theoretical apparatus. Once institutional theory explains the tendency of the system towards equilibrium, there is no need to explain the origins and causes of radical change per se. Institutional isomorphism theory explains and predicts how even after radical changes organizational fields will move towards isomorphism, that is, institutional equilibrium. The task is, therefore, not to explain agency and change but to show that it is natural and inevitable processes that organizational field will return to isomorphic dynamics and move towards homogenization no matter how much radical change occurred in this field.

The paper discusses the practical problems with instrumental utility of institutional theories. In order to be useful any theory must clearly delineate its boundaries and offer explanations and predictions and it is only the former 1977/1983 institutional theory that satisfies these requirements while modern advancements merely offer ambiguous theoretical umbrellas that escape empirical tests. For researchers therefore it is important to recognize which theory can be applied in a given limited domain of research and which one has little or no value.

A long Introduction provides a composite methodological standard of 25 elements (concepts, theorems and basic relationships) which actually represent in analysis a system of general stable equilibrium in economics and other social sciences. In practice, the same composite standard refers to a possible regime of a free, just and stable economy and society. This double composite scientific objective standard was used to examine the content of the Memorial Lectures presented by nine Laureates who received the Nobel Prize in Economics from 1969 to 1974. Specifically, the purpose was to see how much these lectures have contributed to the clarification and the solution of the major problems of our time.

The economic science is again in a crisis and a new solution prolegomena to any future study in economics, finance and other social sciences has just been published by the International Institute of Social Economics in care of the MCB University Press in England. The roots of the major financial and economic problems of our time lie in an open conflict between theory and practice. In the 1930s and before the conflict was between classical theory and given realities. In the 1990s the conflict appears between the now prevailing modern, Keynesian theory and the actual realities. In addition during the twentieth century a great argument developed between the two schools of thought, argument which is not yet settled. In one sentence, the prolegomena tried and was successful to solve the conflict between theory and practice and the big doctrinal dispute of the twentieth century. It was a struggle of research and observation over half a century between 1947 and 1997.