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A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Does having alcoholic parents make you more susceptible to alcohol problems? Why do some people develop drink or drug problems while others in the same family do not? How much can genetic research tell us about why drink and drugs can affect people in so many different ways? With genetic research discovering increasing links with behaviour we invited two of the leading addiction and gene researchers to explain the science. Tamara Phillips and John Crabbe uncover the ever‐emerging world of genetic research and addiction theory.

This paper aims to explore a range of conceptual and practical challenges faced in delivering an innovative programme targeted at staff of UK higher Education (HE) and further education (FE) institutions. The two major foci of the programme are: on the pedagogies and organization of knowledge required to provide a true “feel” for the life world, values and ways of behaving of entrepreneurs in very different academic disciplinary contexts; and on strategically and operationally making things happen in the participant institution.

The paper is action research‐focused. Its aim is to explore the validity of a concept of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education which is truly interdisciplinary. It tests out in practice a “Mastery” model of an entrepreneurship educator in HE and FE.

The basic structure of the model is found to be appropriate as is its social constructionist view of education upon which it is founded. Importantly it values learning through practice, which may not be a total reflection of what is taught on the programme, equally with the application of programme knowledge.

The conceptual model and resultant programme are arguably unique in their total focus on behaviours in different organizational and disciplinary contexts.

In small-business-communities trust is important inter/intra family particularly in relation to familial dynamics. Seldom is mistrust or distrust examined in an academic context. In business families “Black-Sheep” often rebel against familial expectations by engaging in criminal activity. This is important because entrepreneurs are eulogised by society and as an institution, family business is venerated. The very idea that small business owners would knowingly engage in crime is anathema. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Using retrospective ethnography and immersion techniques this quasi-longitudinal study of (dis)organized crime in a small-business-community (SBC) starts the bridging process.

There is an assumption that business crime is best accommodated under the rubric of white-collar-criminality typically regarded as an excusable middle-class crime compared to organized working-class crime. By focusing on the black-sheep of business families collectively this work illustrates how there may be a stronger link between organized-crime-groups and the local-business-community than previously assumed because a small minority of businessmen engage in the commission of ordinary crime by choice.

The methodology used is a limitation as is replicating it in other small-business-communities.

This study provides an alternative heuristic through which to understand the application black-sheep-thesis in business settings. The knowledge developed has practical implications for the investigation of crime in such communities and for researchers in the field.

This study extends knowledge of white-collar-criminality within the business domain.

This is an original and novel study which extends our knowledge and understanding of trust based issues in business settings and the SBC.

The purpose of this paper is to show that the entrepreneurial project ongoingly is transformed. Empirically, three defining junctions demonstrate the malleability of the entrepreneurial project in perpetual action, expanding beyond effectuation theory on what constitutes given means, affordable loss, and other key concepts from this theoretical perspective. Drawing upon actor-network theory (ANT), this study demonstrates how different framing and support devices implicate different human and non-human actors in changing interpositions within the entrepreneurial process.

This study uses a longitudinal case study design. The case provides an overview of a new business’s emergence based on three identified translations, each representing critical junctures in the business’s development. An ethnographic approach is selected, which combines observations with qualitative interviews. This design allows the authors to focus on how the project emerges and is continuously supported by allies but is sometimes not supported by various human and non-human actors.

This study demonstrates that the entrepreneurial project undertaken by the entrepreneurial network changes as new humans or non-humans become part of it. Including a resource in the network means simultaneously changing the network. This interactionism shows that what sparks interest or attracts resources to a business idea is not simply an influx of additional resources but is simultaneously a dynamic definition of the entrepreneurial endeavour.

This paper examines how ideas are transformed into business ventures by using the ANT to expand understanding from effectuation theory. This shows that means, for instance, are not given but are co-created by the process of translation. In addition, which losses are affordable can be determined by the process within which the entrepreneur frames the project and manages to associate allies within and into the network.

Exploring a researchable topic and narrowing it down sufficiently to make it workable is a first task in any scientific research. This is particularly difficult when the researcher is a novice, because s(he) is unlikely to be properly aware of what the essential issues and the research question(s) in the field are. This article addresses the question of how to navigate a research topic for an academic project. The article is potentially of interest to novice researchers and researchers new to a field. Illustrating its argument by means of an example in the area of knowledge management, the article proposes a set of guidelines for narrowing down a research topic to workable size. A number of recommendations are made; by utilizing these recommendations to construct a navigation map, it is hoped that a researcher can use fully formulate research question(s). It can be argued that drawing such a navigation map is an art in which prospective researchers need to be trained.

The present study aims to contribute to the growing stream of literature about the network perspective of value co-creation via key account management (KAM) by exploring how firms, in complex industrial markets, use key account strategies to create value, not only for buyers and sellers of industrial products/services but also, more widely, for larger ecosystems of stakeholders. The research question this paper seeks to address is how the KAM approach promotes value co-creation in multi-stakeholder ecosystem.

To answer this research question, this study uses a qualitative research approach based on data triangulation. This study focuses on the market access (MA) strategies implemented by a multinational UK-based pharmaceutical company within the Italian multi-stakeholder health-care ecosystem over several years.

The results show that KAM in complex networks acts as a catalyst for value creation, through multiple interactions with different actors and an ad hoc configuration of five strategic levers: product performance, economic impact, institutional relationships, commercial organization and communication. These levers are able to unlock the appropriate value drivers and form a specific “market access mix” implemented by the firm to both promote the adoption of the firm’s products and generate value for all market stakeholders.

The study offers an innovative and comprehensive evidence-based model for designing specific MA strategies aimed at co-creating value within multi-stakeholder ecosystems. The proposed MA mix outlines the fact that knowledge, relationships and innovation are not unique factors that can be leveraged by stakeholders to co-create value.

The author′s purpose is to show by reference to Schmoller′s own writings that he can be classified as a social economist. Schmoller rejected the study of economics in isolation, but preferred a holistic approach. He eschewed laissez‐faire and thought little of self‐seeking entrepreneurs who made no contribution to the common good.

The purpose of this paper is to expand on some of the points made in Ken Merchant's paper (this issue) in connection with the research‐practice gap.

Aiming to be provocative for the purpose of evoking further discussion, this commentary adopts the perspective that some deeply rooted misconceptions about the nature and production of scientific knowledge underpin the research‐practice gap.

There are three key findings. First, contrary to popular belief, practical knowledge does not simply derive from basic (“scientific”) knowledge “trickling down” to practice; instead, basic knowledge needs to be transformed into a theory or phronesis of management accounting in a manner that reflects the context and purpose of organizations. Practical knowledge therefore becomes a distinct and rigorous mode of knowing in its own right, no less important than basic knowledge. Second, the adoption of field research or the case study method may be the only way to overcome all of the dimensions associated with the “data problem” existing in management accounting. Finally, a strong argument can be made to suggest that the research‐practice gap and its epistemological underpinnings not only impede the discipline's ability to carve out its own unique intellectual identity (Malmi and Granlund), but they also explain the discipline's inability to produce a cumulative body of knowledge.

The paper suggests that a key step, among others, in addressing the researcher‐practitioner gap is the need to overcome philosophical misconceptions about the nature and production of scientific knowledge. This perspective has not received significant coverage in accounting.

This paper aims to compose a systematic understanding of campus sustainability innovations and unpack the complex drivers behind the elaboration of specific innovations. More precisely, the authors ask two fundamental questions: What are the topics and modes of implementation of campus sustainability innovations? What are the external and internal factors that drive the development of specific innovations?

The authors code and analyze 454 innovations reported within the Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARS), the campus sustainability assessment tool of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. Using descriptive statistics and illustrations, the paper assesses the state of environmental innovations (EIs) within STARS. Then, to evaluate the role of internal and external drivers in shaping EIs, the authors have produced classification and regression tree models.

The authors’ analysis shows that external and internal factors provide incentives and a favorable context for the implementation of given EIs. External drivers such as climatic zones, local income and poverty rate drive the development of several EIs. Internal drivers beyond the role of the agent of change, often primarily emphasized by past literature, significantly impact the implementation of given EIs. The authors’ work also reveals that EIs often move beyond traditional mitigation approaches and the boundaries of campus. EIs create new dynamics of innovation that echo and reinforce the culture of a higher education institution.

This work provides the first aggregated picture of EIs in the USA and Canada. It produces a new and integrated understanding of the dynamics of campus sustainability that complexifies narratives and contextualizes the role of change agents.