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This chapter complements the one that appeared as “History of the AIB Fellows: 1975–2008” in Volume 14 of this series (International Business Scholarship: AIB Fellows on the First 50 Years and Beyond, Jean J. Boddewyn, Editor). It traces what happened under the deanship of Alan Rugman (2011–2014) who took many initiatives reported here while his death in July 2014 generated trenchant, funny, and loving comments from more than half of the AIB Fellows. The lives and contributions of many other major international business scholars who passed away from 2008 to 2014 are also evoked here: Endel Kolde, Lee Nehrt, Howard Perlmutter, Stefan Robock, John Ryans, Vern Terpstra, and Daniel Van Den Bulcke.

There is no exaggeration in the claim that abstract-deductive political economy in pre-Tractarian Oxford was driven by Richard Whately and hence centred at Oriel College. At this time Oriel was defined by a group of intellectuals now commonly referred to as the Oriel Noetics, of whom Whately was one, and the nature of Oxford political economy in the opening decades of the nineteenth century (including William F. Lloyd's contribution to it) cannot be understood outside the context of the intellectual tradition established by the Oriel Noetics. The Noetics were unconventional reformist clerics (one could not use the slippery mid-Victorian word ‘liberal’, as they were predominantly conservative Whigs or reform-minded Tories of the Pitt mould, in which order and tradition were maintained through moderate, but not radical, change); admired rational thought and absent-mindedly tested social conventions with their speech; were unafraid to question religious shibboleths if they deemed them bereft of scriptural foundation (such as Sabbatarianism); deployed logical processes to bolster their religious beliefs, which they held in an unsentimental fashion, and thereby to some extent practised that most contradictory of creeds, a logical faith; and, most importantly for this chapter, constructed a Christian Political Economy by dichotomising knowledge into a theological domain, in which they inferred from scriptural evidence that individuals should pursue the ends of attaining specific virtues (not utility!), and a scientific domain, in which they deduced scientific laws that would enable individuals to achieve the ends of attaining these virtues. They looked upon the rising Romantic Movement in general and the spiritualist yearnings of the Oxford Tractarians in particular with simple incomprehension, if not disgust. They deplored with equal measure the Evangelicals' enthusiasms, willing incogitency and lack of institutional anchor, yet sought to establish a broader national church that included dissenters (but not Catholics). They were most prominent in the 1810s and 1820s before colliding violently in the 1830s with, and being sidelined by, the Tractarians, many of whom they had, ironically enough, mentored and promoted.²

David Ahlstrom is a professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He obtained his PhD in management and international business in 1996, after having spent several years in start-up firms in the data communications field. His research interests include management in Asia, entrepreneurship, and management and organizational history. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles in journals such as the Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Business Venturing, and Asia Pacific Journal of Management. He also co-authored the textbook International management: Strategy and Culture in the Emerging World. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of International Business Studies and Journal of Small Business Management in addition to APJM. Professor Ahlstrom has guest edited two special issues of Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice. At APJM, he has also guest edited two special issues (turnaround in Asia in 2004 and Managing in Ethnic Chinese Communities, forthcoming in 2010), and served as a senior editor during 2007–2009. He became editor-in-chief of the Asia Pacific Journal of Management in 2010.

Using the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys (2003–2015), this chapter explores the relationship between the gender gap in math test scores and computer (digital devices) gaming, as a potential “swimming upstream” factor in the quest to close that gap. Using a decomposition based on a pooled hybrid specification, we attribute two to three points (from 13% to 29%) of the gender math gap to gender differences in the incidence and returns to intense gaming. The comparison of the negative versus positive girl-specific effects found for collaborative games versus single-player games suggest a potential role for gaming network effects.