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In this chapter, we discuss the Change Laboratory as an intervention-research methodology in higher education. We trace its theoretical origins in dialectical materialism and activity theory, consider the recommendations made by its main proponents and discuss its use in a range of higher education settings. We suggest that the Change Laboratory offers considerable potential for higher education research, though tensions between Change Laboratory design recommendations and typical higher education contexts require consideration.

The European Forum for Enhanced Collaboration in Teaching (EFFECT, 2015–2019) (EFFECT, 2019), a project co-financed by the European Commission, through its Erasmus+ programme, has been exploring effective methods for university teachers’ development at the European level, including pedagogical staff development “modules” to support inclusivity and citizenship in teaching and learning practice. Throughout the project and in this chapter, the authors have taken “inclusivity” to convey an attitude and appreciation for principles which inform “inclusion” as a practice – in the context of reflective and reflexive practice the words become largely interchangeable.

The way academic staff teach is of critical importance in any reform designed to enhance inclusion and citizenship in higher education. Conveying these values-related topics in an academic context hardly lends itself to a traditional pedagogical training model. Promoting inclusion means stimulating discussion, challenging stereotypes and unconscious biases, as well as improving educational and social frameworks. The Change Laboratory methodology (Engeström, 2001) was chosen for the pedagogical staff development workshops under EFFECT, with a view to engaging teaching staff in a deeper reflection about the topics and about their teaching practice. Change Laboratory is an intervention-research methodology that aims at reconceptualizing activity: it intends to provoke authentic reactions, responses and disagreements among the participants and provides opportunity for them to work together to reimagine their activities and to identify “concrete” solutions that address persisting issues in their practice. The theory takes a broad conceptualization of “activity” and “practice,” which is not specific to the education sector or the “classroom.” The Change Laboratory is a methodology designed to support the “expansive learning cycle” described by Engeström and as such can be understood as a theory of change which the EFFECT project team applied to a pan-European higher education learning and teaching context.

In 2017, the project team designed and implemented four physical, face-to-face pedagogical staff development workshops on inclusivity and citizenship skills based on this methodology, attended by over 100 participants from across Europe. In 2018, the workshop model was adapted to a virtual learning environment and three online sessions on inclusivity and citizenship skills for higher education teaching staff were offered.

The pedagogical staff development workshops enabled participants to use open reflective questions to provoke discussion about the challenges faced in their own learning and teaching contexts, think about their pedagogical practices and identify their unconscious biases. Most of the participants rated the workshops as very good and innovative, and considered the methodology an effective vehicle for promoting meaningful open discussion.

In this chapter, the authors reflect on the design, implementation and lessons learnt from the pedagogical staff development workshops on inclusivity and citizenship skills. The authors propose a set of recommendations for individual teaching staff and institutional leadership to consider when addressing continuous professional development for inclusivity and citizenship.

This article discusses the methodology of using laboratory methods to address macroeconomic questions. It also provides summaries of the articles in this volume.

Purpose – The chapter reports a laboratory emissions trading experiment with imperfect enforcement that introduces environmental framing as a treatment variable.

Methodology – The research uses the methodology of laboratory experimental economics. In the current design, subjects self-reported their “emissions” at the end of each trading period and were inspected probabilistically and fined when they underreported.

Findings – Transaction volume and compliance rates were significantly lower in the environmentally framed condition, compared to the more standard neutrally framed control.

Practical implications – The latter result suggests that environmental framing reduced subjects' incentives to honestly report “pollution” to the experimental “regulator.” As experimenters employ more “framed field experiments” outside the lab, it may be important to evaluate such pure framing effects in the lab if a main research goal is to compare lab and field experiment outcomes.

Originality/value – Experimental economics research rarely manipulates environmental framing as a treatment variable. The substantial impact of framing on subject behavior documented in this study highlights its importance, particularly in the presence of moral concerns such as honest reporting.

Purpose – We investigate the outcomes of public sector charity provision, which relies on income redistribution. Increasing the level of redistribution can result in an efficiency-equality tradeoff. We investigate whether the efficiency-equality tradeoff can be explained by lowered work incentives.

Methodology – The chapter uses the methodology of laboratory experiments. We remove the administration costs of redistribution to see if a significant source of the tradeoff can be explained by lower work incentives.

Findings – We find a significant efficiency-equality tradeoff between low- and high-tax groups explained by lowered work incentives. Labor supply decisions are motivated by strategic and cooperative preferences which vary the size of the tradeoff.

Limitations – Our analysis is limited to measuring the size and distribution of labor income. We discuss avenues such as allowing for crowding out and volunteerism, to further explore the impact of public sector charity provision.

Practical and social implications – Charity can be provided by the public, private, and independent sector. The public sector must redistribute income to provide charity, which leads to an efficiency-equality tradeoff. This calls for a reconsideration of increasing dependence on public sector charity provision.

Originality – The efficiency-equality tradeoff traditionally focuses on the labor supply response to taxation. We allow subjects to respond to how their taxes are being used as well. Subjects are also given feedback on whether they are net taxpayers into redistribution or net recipients from it.

The purpose of the study is to analyze the risk of violent conflict with the global conflict risk factors in the Middle East economies by using an integrated fuzzy decision approach. For this purpose, five different dimensions and 24 different criteria are defined by analyzing similar studies in the literature. The dataset is borrowed from the European Commission, and experts appointed for the linguistic evaluation of each dimension and criterion. Additionally, fuzzy Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) methodology is used to weigh dimensions and criteria and Multi-objective Optimization on the basis of Ratio Analysis (MOORA) approach is considered to rank the countries with respect to the conflict risk. Social dimension was concluded to have the highest importance of the Global Conflict Risk Index. Moreover, Syria, Libya, and Saudi Arabia were identified as the countries that have high conflict risk. Because these countries have high risk of facing conflict in the future, it is strongly recommended that they should primarily focus on social factors in order to minimize this risk.

We review the existing laboratory experimental studies on corruption that have generated results with clear policy implications. We present and discuss experimental findings on the role that both monetary incentives and nonmonetary motivations may play in corruption decision-making, and, hence, in the fight against corruption.

This chapter includes a citation analysis of the first 16 volumes of Advances in Accounting Education: Teaching and Curriculum Innovations (henceforth, Advances in Accounting Education). Using this analysis, we identified the top 20 articles of the 195 articles published. This analysis provides an understanding of the relative contribution and impact of the papers published in Advances in Accounting Education, and the information provides past authors with a measure of how their contributions compare with the contributions of other authors. Also, this analysis may be valuable for potential contributors who are developing a research topic in that it will enable them to identify the types of articles that have traditionally had the greatest impact.

We also identify the top 30 authors of the 383 who have published in the journal. This analysis not only gives feedback to the authors listed, but also helps accounting education researchers identify authors whose work may be relevant to their interests.

We report the research categories (issues) and methodologies used for all articles published from 1998 to 2015 in Advances in Accounting Education. We also compare the research issues and research methodologies used in Advances in Accounting Education to those in the Journal of Accounting Education and Issues in Accounting Education for the period 2006–2015. Authors considering submitting a manuscript to one of these journals can use this information to determine which journal might be the best fit for their work.

Purpose – Motivated by new models of nonprofit organizations, we study a voluntary contributions environment in which the productivity of the public goods process is chosen endogenously by a manager. The experimental treatments incorporate two institutions of transparency in the organization, which we conjecture will assist the manager in achieving an outcome superior to the standard free-riding prediction.

Methodology – The chapter uses the methodology of laboratory experimental economics.

Findings – The findings demonstrate that transparency institutions can be important for assisting the manager and the stakeholders achieve relative stable and efficient outcomes.

Limitations – We discuss obvious areas for further investigation including environments in which firm productivity is only stochastically related to the decisions of the manager.

Practical and Social Implications – The chapter is oriented to real-world issues in the organization of nonprofit enterprises, which were a once ubiquitous and now re-emerging source of charitable activity. The chapter is written so that it should be accessible to informed practitioners in nonprofit organizations.

Originality – The study of endogenous environments and institutions in the provision of charitable and public goods is a relatively new advance and is indeed the theme of Research in Experimental Economics, Volume 13, “Charity with Choice.”