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Hostage and crisis negotiators serve a vital function within society by resolving hostage/crisis incidents. This role, performed by specially trained police “volunteers”, helps to prevent numerous fatalities and forms an important part of the modern policing repertoire. There is limited research that identifies the experiences of police officers that dedicate their lives to saving others by volunteering in this capacity. This paper aims to provide an insight into this fundamental police role using negotiator’s personal narratives.

This study consisted of an exploratory qualitative grounded theoretical analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with 15 negotiators from nine English police forces.

The analysis revealed 3 primary, 7 secondary and 23 tertiary categories that form a conceptual model of the negotiator experience. The three primary categories consisted of “negotiator positives”, “negotiator negatives” and “negotiator ambivalences”, which provide an insight into the experiences and identities of negotiators in England.

The findings identify several positive factors that could be used to market the role more effectively within police forces and enhance future recruitment processes. Equally, the findings highlight several operational and organisational issues that have a negative impact on the negotiator experience. The findings are, therefore, discussed in light of the practical implications for negotiator training/continuing professional development, policy and practice.

This paper depicts the findings from one of the first qualitative analyses of negotiator experiences and provides a unique insight into the negotiator role from an Anglo-centric perspective.

Interest in developing institutional explanations of political and economic behavior has blossomed among social scientists since the early 1980s. Three intellectual perspectives are now prevalent: rational choice theory, historical institutionalism and a new school of organizational analysis. This paper summarizes, compares and contrasts these views and suggests ways in which cross‐fertilization may be achieved. Particular attention is paid to how the insights of organizational analysis and historical institutionalism can be blended to provide fruitful avenues of research and theorizing, especially with regard to the production, adoption, and mobilization of ideas by decision makers.

To be able to make sense of “Learning for Leadership” it is necessary to understand each of these vast subjects i.e. Learning and Leadership. Details the results of a research programme over a number of years that looks at leadership from a management development viewpoint to identify what needs to be done in order to improve the quality of leadership in organizations. Looks at some of the key elements of leadership and some leadership behaviour, then at learning and some of the most important methods of learning, and finally brings the two strands together to look at “Learning for Leadership”. Research has focused on what helps and hinders this learning and examples of these factors are given. Mentions various learning methods, particularly concerning “Social Influence” learning and the effect of the behaviour at the workplace of key people upon the learning and adoption of leadership behaviours.

About two years ago Professor Peter Hall gave a series of lectures at an Oxford college on the subject of regional planning, and devoted an entire lecture to a definition of planning. I have no wish to emulate such a performance, but perhaps I can spend some preliminary minutes in establishing what it is I am going to talk about. The more one reads and listens the more apparent it becomes that the word ‘planning’ means all things to all men—from planning next year's summer holiday to planning the American space programme. In all cases, though, there are common features. There is a goal to be achieved. The achievement of that goal is generally subject to a certain number of constraints, or limiting factors, such as the amount of time available or a limit on the financial budget. In most cases, also, there are several ways of achieving the goal and these have to be evaluated in terms of respective advantages and disadvantages, taking into account the known constraints, and one of them selected as the optimum solution. If this is then adopted as the plan, it has to be put into action, and of course the more complex the plan the longer the period of its implementation and, during that period, fresh constraints may arise, conditions may change and continuous modifications have to be made to the original statement of intent to adapt it to changing circumstances.

One way of thinking about “theory” in sociology is that theory is the ideas, concepts, and frames, which we get from reading the insights, interpretations, and explanations of other sociologists. Doing theory is about being in a conversation with the discipline. It is in this spirit that I approach talking about theory in the work of my colleague, Peter Hall. This idea of theory as conversation is particularly apt for talking about Peter’s work, about Symbolic Interactionism today, and Peter Hall’s contribution to it.

In the late 1960s, as Peter readily admits (Hall, 1972, p. 70), he accidentally discovered Murray Edelman’s (1964) The Symbolic Uses of Politics. He immediately pilfered Edelman’s ideas and ran with them. That was only the beginning of his larcenous career. Over the years, Erving Goffman, Anslem Strauss, and David Maines, to name but a few, fell victim to his scholarly pillage. Yet, no one seemed to mind. Perhaps it was because Peter never tried to pawn the plunder as his own. Maybe it was because he didn’t hoard the spoils but publicly plied them. Most likely, it was because of what he did with the booty.

The essays composing this special partial issue grew out of a program featuring and honoring the work of Peter M. Hall that was presented at the 2001 Convention of the National Communication Association (NCA) in Atlanta. The session was entitled: “Social Organization, Power, and Communication: The Contributions of Peter Hall in Organizational and Interpersonal Communication Inquiries.” Since the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (SSSI) became an affiliate of NCA in 1997, spotlight sessions like this one have been sponsored to recognize the work of distinguished scholars of symbolic interaction who have made important contributions to communication inquiry, as well as to promote further conversation and engagement with the featured scholar’s ideas. The participants in these panels are accomplished scholars in their own specialties who are well-credentialed to address and exemplify the value of the featured scholar’s work. Accordingly, the authors of the essays appearing here are fellow Symbolic Interactionists and include former and current colleagues and students of Peter Hall, as well as his students’ students.

Meta-power is communicated in our media age. Memories, expectations, assumptions of audiences, and decision-making practices take into account many messages and images. When democratic decision-making is expedited to enact policies that contradict the democratic process underlying a free society, then more than “politics as usual” is at work. Rather, the appearance of the political process has changed; it no longer matters that Congress pass legislation in a hurry because the “urgency demands it.” This is not easy to accomplish, and it is more difficult to understand. Peter Hall’s work offers some insights into these exciting, yet perilous times. Hall’s conceptualization suggests that social policy is reflexive of communication, meso-structure, and meta-power. Hall certainly complies with Vidich’s directive that “The source of some of sociology’s most compelling and important contributions to the understanding of social phenomena is the capacity for the sudden insight and the interpretative analysis…at its best it is an interpretative, creative craft” (Vidich, 1991, p. 522). Now more than ever it is imperative to understand the relationships between action, structure and history and their grounding in information technology, impression management, asymmetrical control. As Hall suggests, “Reviving the concept of institution would focus our attention upon the meso domain where social arrangements exist in and through processes that render them operational and operative. That is where the action is” (Hall, 1988, p. 355).