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James March's highly influential article on organisational learning underpins the studies of exploration and exploitation collected in this issue. What is less well known is that March's article, which is based on a computer simulation of collective and individual learning, reflects a real-life experiment in exploration and exploitation that he, in large part, designed and conducted when he was the new ‘boy Dean’ of the School of Social Sciences in the University of California at Irvine between 1964 and 1969. This chapter tells this story and then uses it to critique March's original model. It argues that March's model, which was probably the first simulation of an organisation learning, worked to constitute rather than model the phenomenon of organisational learning. The Irvine story is also important because it provides the context for what constitutes knowledge in organisation theory, and because it highlights the personal trauma and distress that can accompany the creative play of exploration.

Previous theoretical and empirical literature has advocated growth in the access and use of flexible working arrangements by establishing their link with individual and especially parental subjective well-being. Given this, the current research investigates impact that their own or their partners’ transition to flexitime and teleworking has on parental subjective well-being. The cross-partner dimension has not been explored yet by prior studies. Measures for cognitive, subjective well-being include satisfaction with life overall, satisfaction with the amount of leisure time, and satisfaction with health. Ordered logit longitudinal models are estimated using Understanding Society data from 2009 to 2019. Corroborating prior studies, the current analysis finds that mothers’ transition to flexitime and teleworking has a positive impact on their leisure time and health satisfaction. For fathers, switching to telework improves satisfaction with their amount of leisure time, while adopting flexitime can take a toll on self-reported health satisfaction. However, contrary to expectations, mothers’ move to teleworking can be injurious for fathers’ life satisfaction levels, yet fathers’ adoption of flexitime fosters mothers’ satisfaction with their leisure time amount.

“Men make their own history,

but they do not make it just as they please;

they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves

but under circumstances directly encountered,

given and transmitted from the past.”

–Karl Marx

“Men make their own history,

but they do not make it just as they please;

they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves

but under circumstances directly encountered,

given and transmitted from the past.”

Over one dozen books have been written about historically black colleges and universities over the last 15 years. However, not one of the volumes published addresses this cohort of institutions from a global dimension. Each of the books ignores the reality that there are institutions of higher education populated by persons of African descent scattered around the globe. Equally, the emergent literature is silent on issues of racial stratification; consequently, treating black colleges as homogenous monoliths. This quiesance ignores the important tension of racial oppression/white supremacy, social stratification, and the persistent hegemony of power in societies with black populations. In this commencing chapter, there are two primary explorations: (1) the particularities of race and identity in black colleges in the United States, and (2) the nexus between race and culture in black colleges outside of the United States. In order to properly contextualize this diorama, it is imperative to examine the meaning of diaspora, the realities of racial stratification, and the ways in which hegemony can be unsettled and usurped.

Resurgent interest in the life and work of the Italian Cambridge economist Piero Sraffa is leading to New Directions in Sraffa Scholarship. This chapter introduces readers to some of these developments. First and perhaps foremost is the fact that as of September 2016 Sraffa’s archival material has been uploaded onto the website of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University, as digital colour images; this chapter introduces readers to the history of these events. This history provides sharp relief on the extant debates over the role of the archival material in leading to the final publication of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, and readers are provided a brief sketch of these matters. The varied nature of Sraffa scholarship is demonstrated by the different aspects of Sraffa’s intellectual legacy which are developed and discussed in the various entries of our Symposium. The conclusion is reached that we are on the cusp of an exciting phase change of tremendous potential in Sraffa scholarship.