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Goffman’s (1961) work on total institutions has been relatively neglected in the fields of organizational research. This paper compares the conceptions of obedience to authority in two different types of voluntary total institutions and how such conceptions affect interaction contrary to the aims of the organizations. Consequently, by addressing how conceptions of authority and constructions of the obedient self shape conditions for underlife, the analysis provides knowledge about the variety of ways in which total institutional authority works and contributes to the understanding of the mechanisms of organizational underlife.

This chapter examines the explosion in International Humanitarian Law between the US Civil War and World War I. The primary foci are the Hague Conventions on land warfare and the Geneva Conventions for the sick and wounded. This body of treaties is the foundation of IHL and the modern laws of war. Most of central issues in the international laws of war emerge in this period.

This chapter examines World War II and its impact on international and military law. It covers the war’s key crimes, the Nürnberg and Tokyo tribunals, and the creation of the United Nations, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and the Genocide Convention of 1948.

This chapter explores the nature of military law and IHL during the cold war period. It explores what treaties were completed, Additional Protocols I and II of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the ad hoc international tribunals of the 1990s and 2000s, and examines the ICJ’s ruling of the legality of nuclear weapons.

This chapter summarizes both volumes of A Socio-legal History of the Laws of War. It reexamines the key themes and how they are interconnected. It closes with a consideration of the value of international law, especially the laws of war, and what may lie ahead.

This chapter focuses on the US Civil War of 1861–1864, the application of the laws of war to a civil war, and gives great attention to US Army General Order 100 (aka The Lieber Code), the first set of laws to direct and constrain the behavior of troops in the field.

This study aims to summarize studies that compared the performance of health-care institutions led by leaders with medical background versus those with no medical background.

A systematic search was conducted on three databases: PubMed, Ovid Medline and Google Scholar to identify relevant peer-reviewed studies using the keywords “performance,” “impact,” “physician,” “medical,” “doctor,” “leader,” “healthcare institutions” and “hospital.” Only quantitative studies that compared the performance of health-care institutions led by leaders with medical background versus non-medical background were included. Articles were screened and assessed for eligibility before the relevant data were extracted to summarize, appraise and make a narrative account of the findings.

A total of eight studies were included, four were based in the USA, two in the UK and one from Germany and one from the Arab World. Half of the studies (n = 4) reported overall better health-care institutional performance in terms of hospital quality ranking such as clinical effectiveness and patient safety under leaders with medical background, whereas one study showed poorer performance. The remaining studies reported mixed results among the different performance indicators, especially financial performance.

While medical background leaders may have an edge in clinical competence to manage health-care institutions, it will be beneficial to equip them with essential management skills to optimize leadership competence and enhance organizational performance.

The exclusive inclusion of quantitative empirical studies that compared health-care institutional performance medical and non-medical leaders provides a clearer link between the relationship between health-care institutional performance and the leaders’ background.

The purpose of this paper is to bring into the public domain converging ways of thinking about reality and human systems, exploring parallels between the theory of Physical Vacuum and the concept of Qi in Medical Qigong science.

The approach adopted in this paper includes: review of the relevant literature; dialogues between the first two authors over an eight-month period; review of the findings and discussion of interpretations by all.

There is evidence for the existence of an ideal information field. This field is a real space-time torsion structure. Qi is a torsion field. It spreads with superluminal velocity and connects the whole Universe. Any entity is in a constant dynamic connection with everything else in the Universe.

This paper offers limited discussion of the wider area of scientific discoveries.

The findings may impact future interdisciplinary research, health/well-being practices and public policy.

There is no known to us publication interpreting the parallels between the theory of the Physical Vacuum and the concept of Qi.

This paper aims to extend insights about the relationship between inter-organizational collaboration and approaches to control from the perspective of decision-makers. We investigate the relationship between approaches to control and intended forms of integration between actors responsible for solving the complex problem of integrated person-centered care for elderly with diverse and significant needs.

The empirical study is based on a content analysis of contractual agreements. We have analyzed a total of 118 collaboration agreements and associative documents between all Swedish regions and municipalities.

The study shows that intended integration is subject to remarkable variation in intended forms of inter-organizational collaboration in this Swedish case. The paper illustrates that decision-makers’ intentions with proposed collaboration in each given context are important for the chosen approach to control. Regardless of intended forms of integration, our study suggests that an imminent soft approach to control is expressed alongside limited signs of hard control. Various forms of intended integration can be managed by the two approaches simultaneously insofar as the agreements appear to have a two-sided purpose.

Our paper proposes an empirically driven taxonomy of intended forms of integration initiatives. The taxonomy provides resources for studies about how collaboration can be managed when it is stipulated by national legislation but local self-governance gives actors considerable freedom to decide on how to organize and manage services. By presenting the taxonomy and relating this to approaches of control, our iterative study builds on and adds to a recent stream of research arguing that the relationship between collaboration and approaches to control may by fuzzier and more complex than originally thought.

Value-based health care (VBHC) argues that health-care needs to re-focus to maximise value creation, defining value as the quota when dividing the outcomes important for the patient, by the cost for health care to deliver such outcomes. This study aims to explore the perception of value among different stakeholders involved in the process of implementing VBHC at a Swedish hospital to support leaders to be more efficient and effective when developing health care.

Participants comprised 19 clinicians and non-clinicians involved in the implementation of VBHC. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and content analysis was performed.

The clinicians described value as a dynamic concept, dependent on the patient and the clinical setting, stating that improving outcomes was more important than containing costs. The value for non-clinicians appeared more driven by the interplay between the outcome and the cost. Non-clinicians related VBHC to a strategic framework for governance or for monitoring different continuous improvement processes, while clinicians appreciated VBHC, as they perceived its introduction as an opportunity to focus more on outcomes for patients and less on cost containment.

There is variation in how clinicians and non-clinicians perceive the key concept of value when implementing VBHC. Clinicians focus on increasing treatment efficacy and improving medical outcomes but have a limited focus on cost and what patients consider most valuable. If the concept of value is defined primarily by clinicians’ own assumptions, there is a clear risk that the foundational premise of VBHC, to understand what outcomes patients value in their specific situation in relation to the cost to produce such outcome, will fail. Health-care leaders need to ensure that patients and the non-clinicians’ perception of value, is integrated with the clinical perception, if VBHC is to deliver on its promise.