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The System Concepts Laboratory (SCL) of Xerox PARC is in the second year of a research program investigating the support and enhancement of collaboration. To begin, we explain our research goals and operationally define “collaboration” as we have chosen to study it. Then, we describe the environment in which the research takes place, including the two‐site, distributed organization of SCL. In our first year, we have had many experiences that are relevant to understanding collaboration and we present a few of them and discuss how they are affecting the course of our future research. Also, we present a brief discussion of some hypotheses arising from our work so far, in hope of stimulating thought and work in the research of cooperative work.

I survey applications of Markov switching models to the asset pricing and portfolio choice literatures. In particular, I discuss the potential that Markov switching models have to fit financial time series and at the same time provide powerful tools to test hypotheses formulated in the light of financial theories, and to generate positive economic value, as measured by risk-adjusted performances, in dynamic asset allocation applications. The chapter also reviews the role of Markov switching dynamics in modern asset pricing models in which the no-arbitrage principle is used to characterize the properties of the fundamental pricing measure in the presence of regimes.

Knowledge management (KM) is a global organizational practice that focuses on core questions around knowledge sharing and creation, and which is characterized by definitional issues and a schism over the nature of knowledge. Against this by definition problematic background, this study aims to investigate how KM practitioners construct identities as expert in an online discussion forum, showing how knowledge sharing is inextricably linked to identity construction.

The study adopts a discourse analytic approach, grounded in the discourse psychology paradigm, and its underlying theory that all language, including both talk and text, is situated action in social interaction, marked by variation, function and consequences.

Analysis demonstrates how forum contributors deploy discursive devices constructively, actively and relationally to formulate membership of an expert elite group, and that group membership is marked by inter‐group competitive rivalry. This has synergies with the theory of creative abrasion.

The study has implications for KM theories and practice in showing how attention to the social‐interaction practices of talk and text can reveal deeper understanding of how people share knowledge, and in demonstrating the important and consequential relationship between identity construction and knowledge.

This is among the first studies to take a discursive approach to the study of language in the KM domain, and demonstrates the rich potential for future studies.

Building on work that explores the relationship between individual beliefs and ability to recognize discrimination (e.g., Kaiser and Major, 2006), we examine how an adherence to beliefs about gender essentialism, gender egalitarianism, and meritocracy shape one’s interpretation of an illegal act of sexual harassment involving a male supervisor and female subordinate. We also consider whether the role of the gendered culture of engineering (Faulkner, 2009) matters for this relationship. Specifically, we conducted an online survey-experiment asking individuals to report their beliefs about gender and meritocracy and subsequently to evaluate a fictitious but illegal act of sexual harassment in one of two university research settings: an engineering department, a male-dominated setting whose culture is documented as being unwelcoming to women (Hatmaker, 2013; Seron, Silbey, Cech, and Rubineau, 2018), and an ambiguous research setting. We find evidence that the stronger one’s adherence to gender egalitarian beliefs, the greater one’s ability to detect inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment while gender essentialist beliefs play no role in their detection. The stronger one’s adherence to merit beliefs, the less likely they are to view an illegal interaction as either inappropriate or as sexual harassment. We account for respondent knowledge of sexual harassment and their socio-demographic characteristics, finding that the former is more often associated with the detection of inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment at work. We close with a discussion of the transferability of results and policy implications of our findings.

Against the various literatures asserting that myths serve administrators well in varying ways, this paper takes a decidedly skeptical stance. While myth is a tool that may be well or poorly used, its use to fashion administrative theory, or to construct an administrative order, or to enhance administrative thought is most often a poor use indeed. What serves Public Administration best involves the much more difficult effort of constructing theories of historical causation that derive directly from the experiences that practitioners have with the problems they find it necessary or desirable to solve.

In the previous chapters, I set out a conceptual model of trauma-informed servant leadership and discussed servant leadership supervision for working with burnout, compassion fatigue and secondary trauma in employees within trauma related health and social care settings. In this chapter, I further extend servant leadership to the peer support principle in trauma-informed approaches (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2014). The first part of this chapter will examine peer support work (PSW) and report on the outcomes associated with it. Then, servant leadership will be discussed and used to operationalise the principle of peer support as set out in trauma-informed approaches. A servant leadership peer support approach is put forward with a theoretical basis. This theoretical model has been slightly changed from the previous servant leadership approaches discussed, in order to represent the PSW role more accurately. However, as discussed previously, it is not the characteristics of the Servant leadership (SL) model that define the approach, rather the philosophy and desire to serve first. In the last section of this chapter, Martha Griffin brings the characteristics of this model to life using her vast experience and discusses some of the potential challenges faced by peers in training and practice.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.