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The “theory” in the distinctive sociological theory of C. Wright Mills is this: American society was increasingly “postmodern,” by which he meant a society devoid of reason and freedom as practical features of everyday life and thus a societal formation fundamentally severed from the aims and optimism of The Enlightenment (Mills, 1959b, p. 13, p. 166, also 1959a). With Max Weber and John Dewey principally in mind, but also upon the benefit of his study of Marx and the Frankfurt School, Mills argued that “rationality without reason” was coming to dominate lived experience (see Dandaneau, 2001, 2006, 2007).

The purpose of this paper is to analyze potentially significant differences in a series of relevant characteristics of universities’ technology transfer offices (TTOs). To this end, TTOs have been classified by the function of their resources assigned to the enhancement of university entrepreneurship. The factors analyzed are the number of academic spin-offs created with the support of TTOs as well as the TTOs’ age, experience, professionalization and relational capital.

The authors have performed a hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis to identify the groups of TTOs with homogeneous behavior and features. This multivariate technique allows determining whether it is possible to identify some differentiated conglomerates of TTOs.

The results of the cluster analysis allow concluding that the number of academic spin-offs created with the support of TTOs, the age and degree of professionalization of these TTOs, the experiences of their employees in matters related to entrepreneurship and their relationships with market actors explain the different levels of commitment of TTOs toward the enhancement of university entrepreneurship. In contrast with the expected results, the relationship between TTOs and academic actors does not seem to explain such differences.

This research contributes to the identification of the particular design characteristics that TTOs should exhibit to promote the entrepreneurial performance of universities, offering important recommendations to academic institutions regarding the efficient design of TTOs to manage university ambidexterity and to build TTOs’ entrepreneurial identity.

Current TM literature shows a lack of empirical research on the actual implementation of TM as a mediating step in the TM process, and on the role of the line managers in that stage. Bos, Thunnissen and Pardoen look into this ‘black box’ of TM and focus in their study on the role of line managers in the actual implementation of TM. In particular, the impact of the line manager’s leadership style on employee reactions to TM is investigated, as well as the constraints in the line manager’s role in executing TM. Their exploratory, quantitative study on the role of the line manager demonstrates that the line manager can support employees in deploying and developing their talents, and when they do so employees feel more empowered and committed to the job. Most line managers are willing to support their employees in developing and utilizing their talents, and that they think they have the capability of doing. However, the study shows that in many cases the line manager overestimates his/her actions regarding the mobilization of employee’s talents, and employees often have different perceptions of the line manager’s behaviour to TM than the line manager him/herself. The bigger the gap in perceptions, the more it has a negative effect on employees’ cognitive and affective reactions to TM. The authors call for more research on the role of the line manager in TM, and in particular on this gap in perceptions.

This chapter explores what it means for adults to claim child rights. Focussing on activism against institutional child abuse, it considers the question of what happens to the mobilisation of child rights discourse when the person claiming those rights is no longer a child. In other words, how is the concept of child rights used retrospectively and what does this reveal, both about childhood and about child rights? The chapter begins with the contention that childhood needs to be understood as not only a concept that speaks to the lives of children, their experiences, and their place within the social structure. Rather, we suggest that a more expansive view enables recognition of the enduring significance of childhood in adults’ lives. We illustrate this argument with examples of the formation of collective identities based on childhood experiences, before turning to the ways that child rights are marshalled by adults in activism, in commissions of inquiry, and in the legal sphere. Throughout the chapter, we consider issues of temporality. We explore the ways in which adult survivors of childhood abuse retrospectively claim rights denied to them in the past and we examine how activism, official inquiries, and legal mechanisms position adults in relation to their childhood selves. We then consider some of the dilemmas that arise with retrospective rights claims; particularly questions of retroactivity in relation to responsibility and redress for past abuse. Finally, we explore the temporal repositioning of childhood and how past and present is bridged. This occurs through survivor activism and, in more formal mechanisms such as inquiries, by focussing on how people are represented as child victims in the past and survivors in the present.

Distributional issues have re‐emerged as an important issue in economics, social science, and philosophy in the last few decades. In the same period, the relevance of derivative Judeo‐Christian socio‐economic principles to the contemporary world has been (re)asserted, developing an incipient Judeo‐Christian economics. Methodologically, this undertaking is comparable to that underlying the evolution of Islamic and other forms of religious economics. The methodology employed in the Judeo‐Christian undertaking is described via a worked example. The example shows how normative principles can be derived from Judeo‐Christian thought allegedly relevant to shaping the contemporary distribution of wealth and income. The principles are deduced from a particular sub‐set of Judeo‐Christian source material, and have the effect of generating greater equity in economic distribution. The deductions are compared with selected ideas canvassed in recent economics' discussion about inequitable distribution concerning appropriate criteria for guiding redistributional policy, ideas of “equal opportunity” vs “equal outcomes”, and the relation between distribution and economic growth.

The freemium pricing model is dominant in digital products such as mobile applications. While limited evaluation of a product such as when a consumer is under time pressure, has been found to increase consumer preference for the free version (“the zero price effect”), this paper aims to explore moderators that attenuate or reverse that effect.

Three experiments test the role of anchoring effects induced by time pressure in moderating the zero price effect.

The studies offer evidence that anchoring effects induced by time pressure can be directed to reduce preference for free versions of products. In addition, these effects are mediated by the perceived performance risk of a product and an upper boundary condition for monetary price level is found.

This research demonstrates exceptions to time pressure’s role in intensifying the zero price effect. Future research could focus on additional moderators of the effect such as the need for certainty and examine time pressure’s effect on in-app purchases.

These findings can be directly applied by marketers of digital products using a freemium pricing model who wants to use time pressure to create urgency with customers without pushing them toward the free version of a product.

This paper finds exceptions to the zero price effect where consumers exhibit a stronger preference for the paid (vs free) version of a product when under time pressure.

This book comprises the second volume in the recently launched New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition book series. Volume 1 (Sund, Galavan, & Huff, 2016), addressed the topic of strategic uncertainty. This second volume comprises a collection of contributions that variously report new methodological developments in managerial and organizational cognition, reflect critically on those developments, and consider the challenges that have yet to be confronted in order to further advance this exciting and dynamic interdisciplinary field. Contextualizing within an overarching framework the various contributions selected for inclusion in the present volume, in this opening chapter we reflect more broadly on what we consider the most significant developments that have occurred over recent years and the most significant challenges that lie ahead.

Creativity and innovation have been buzzwords of managerial discourse over the last few decades as they contribute to the long-term survival and competitiveness of firms. Given the non-linear, causally ambiguous, and intangible nature of all innovation-related phenomena, management scholars have been trying to uncover factors that contribute to creativity and innovation from multiple lenses ranging from organizational behavior at the micro-level to strategic management at the macro-level. Along with important and insightful developments in these research streams that evolved independently from one another, human resource management (HRM) research – especially from a strategic perspective – has only recently started to contribute to a better understanding of both creativity and innovation. The goal of this chapter is to review the contributions of strategic HRM research to an improved understanding of creativity at the individual-level and innovation at the firm-level. In organizing this review, the authors rely on the open innovation funnel as a metaphor to review research on both HRM practices and HRM systems that contribute to creativity and innovation. In the last section, the authors focus on more recent developments in HRM research that focus on ambidexterity – as a way for HRM to simultaneously facilitate exploration and exploitation. This chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions.

IT is fitting that a new series of this magazine should be introduced by some reflections on the whole question of book selection, both for the general public and libraries.