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This paper aims to show how social and economic differentiation that has become a feature of Australian cities and the urban housing literature emphasises the value in understanding such differentiation as an explanation of housing demand.

Using a consistent set of variables from the 2011 ABS Census of Housing and Population, this paper uses factor analysis to identify the socio spatial substructure of housing markets at suburb level for five mainland Australian cities.

The relative importance of this socio substructure in explaining median house price is determined for each city. The paper also identifies where the socio spatial structure is mismatched against expected house price and an explanation is offered for these anomalies.

The study is innovative in that it reveals, at suburb level, districts in each city where there is a marked divergence between the prices being paid for property and the socioeconomic makeup of the local community.

For sociological perspectives on globalization to do justice to its many facets, they must be informed by an understanding of modern societies as simultaneously complex, contingent, and contradictory – as modern capitalist societies. As is becoming ever more apparent, such an understanding of modern societies is the necessary precondition for identifying the defining features of globalization. Yet, for the most part, the history of the social sciences did not produce research agendas, theories, and methods designed to grasp complexity, contingency, and contradiction as core dimensions of modern social life that continually reinforce each other. The social sciences did not evolve as ongoing efforts to grasp the gravity each dimension exerts on concrete forms of political, economic and cultural life, and how the force of each depends on the constant exchange of energy with the other two. To the extent that scrutinizing the impact of globalization on the future – and possible futures – of human civilization is the primary challenge for social scientists to confront today, the current condition presents a unique, and perhaps most unusual opportunity to conceive anew the promise of each and all the social sciences, as elucidating how the complex, contingent, and contradictory nature of modern societies, in the name of advancing social justice, has engendered a regime of managing “social problems.”

The process for examining the value of house prices in an urban city has given limited attention, if any, to demographic variables associated with urban geography. Although the disciplines of property/real estate and demography have moved closer, little progress has been made when modelling house prices using population-related data in the field of urban geography to explain the level of house prices.

This paper proposes an innovative model to examine the influence of population variables on the level of house prices. It used a two-stage approach as follows: principal components analysis (PCA) identified social dimensions from a range of demographic variables, which were then retained for further analysis. This information was sourced from two Australian Bureau of Statistics censuses undertaken involving all Melbourne residents during 1996, 2001, 2006 and 2011; multiple regression analysis examined the relationship between the retained factor scores from the PCA (as independent variables) and established residential house prices (as the dependent variable).

The findings confirm the demographic profile of each household, which is directly related to their decisions about housing location and house prices. Based on a case study of Melbourne, Victoria, it was demonstrated that households with specific demographic characteristics are closely related to a certain level of house prices at the suburban level.

This is an innovative study which has not been previously undertaken for an extended period of time to facilitate an analysis of change over time.

Purpose—The notion of organizations as gendered is not new, yet critical gaps in the understanding of the processes responsible for the creation and maintenance of these gendered organizations still exist. Within the existing breadth and depth of feminist organizational scholarship, an increasing number of researchers have been drawn to Joan Acker’s notion of the “gendered substructure” as one of the more promising frameworks for analysis of the gendering of organizations. In this chapter, the authors seek to develop an analysis of Acker’s gendered substructure through, and reflection on, its application.

Design/methodology/approach—Acker’s framework of gendering processes is explored through a case study of the gendering of a single organization over time—Pan American World Airways (Pan Am). The authors’ “reading” of the archival materials was informed by a combination of feminist poststructuralism, critical discourse analysis, and critical hermeneutics.

Findings—Through an exploration of the roots of Acker’s framework and its application to a case study of a single organization over time (Pan Am), the chapter contends that its greatest potential lies in examining the four process sets—division of labor, workplace culture, social interactions, and (self) reflection—through a fifth process of “organizational logic” that is seen as temporal and contextual. Drawing on poststructuralist feminist theory, it argues that organizational logic can be viewed through analyses of organizational, and organizationally based, discourses.

Originality/value—The chapter argues that the (widely recognized) heuristic value of Joan Acker’s “gendered substructure” has not been realized due to inconsistencies in its interpretation and application. This study engages Acker’s framework in its entirety, as gendering processes do not exist in silos and are likely more interdependent than typically credited. The chapter looks at the dynamics of, and between the five sets of, gendering processes.

The notion of organizations as gendered is not new yet critical gaps in the understanding of the processes responsible for the creation and maintenance of these gendered organizations still exist. Within the existing breadth and depth of feminist organizational scholarship an increasing number of researchers have been drawn to Joan Acker's notion of the “gendered substructure” as one of the more promising frameworks for analysis of the gendering of organizations. In this paper the authors seek to develop an analysis of Acker's gendered substructure through, and reflection on, its application.

Acker's framework of gendering processes is explored through a case study of the gendering of a single organization over time – Pan American World Airways (Pan Am). The authors' “reading” of the archival materials was informed by a combination of feminist poststructuralism, critical discourse analysis and critical hermeneutics.

Through an exploration of the roots of Acker's framework and its application to a case study of a single organization over time (Pan Am), the paper contends that its greatest potential lies in examining the four process sets – division of labor, workplace culture, social interactions and (self) reflection – through a fifth process of “organizational logic” that is seen as temporal and contextual. Drawing on poststructuralist feminist theory, it argues that organizational logic can be viewed through analyses of organizational, and organizationally based, discourses.

The paper argues that the (widely recognized) heuristic value of Joan Acker's “gendered substructure” has not been realized due to inconsistencies in its interpretation and application. This study engages Acker's framework in its entirety, as gendering processes do not exist in silos and are likely more interdependent than typically credited. The paper looks at the dynamics of, and between the five sets of, gendering processes.

The purpose of this paper is to apply a spatial approach to organizational inequality to explore why unequal opportunity structures persist in an organization despite its commitment to diversity and employing highly skilled ethnic minority employees.

The (re)production of inequality is explored by linking research on organizational space with HRM diversity management. Data from an ethnographic study undertaken in a Danish municipal center illustrates how a substructure of inequality is spatially upheld alongside a formal diversity policy. Archer’s distinction between structure and agency informs the analysis of how minority agency not only reproduces but also challenges organizational opportunity structures.

The analysis demonstrates how substructures of inequality stabilize in spatial routines enacted in an ethnic zoning of the workplace and ethnification of job categories. However, the same spatial structures allows for a variety of opposition and conciliation strategies among minority employees, even though the latter tend to prevail in a reproduction rather than a transformation of the organizational opportunity structures.

The reliance on a single case study restricts the generalizability of the findings but highlights fruitful areas for future research.

The study sensitizes HRM practitioners to the situated quality of workplace diversity and to develop a broader scope of HRM practices to address the more subtle, spatially embedded forms of inequality.

Theoretical and empirical connections between research on organizational space and HRM diversity management have thus far not been systematically studied. This combination might advance knowledge on the persistence of micro-inequality even in organizations formally committed to diversity.

The New Economic Society was formed in 1973 to promote the aims of the School of Economic Synthesis. Economic synthesis, since its early formation in the 1930s, has sought to integrate historical economics with social and neo‐classical economics. As the academic movement toward economic synthesis broadened, a more formal organisation became necessary. The New Economic Society (International School of Economic Synthesis) is an interdisciplinary association open to economists and others who are interested in developing a more social and humanistic economics, and a more realistic and scientific understanding of modern developed and less developed societies. The membership includes persons from numerous academic disciplines in many countries; formal chapters of the Society exist in the United Kingdom, Germany, India and Israel. At present, the membership is developing on an informal basis and no dues are requested. Membership information may be obtained from the following persons.

This paper is in two parts. The purpose of the first part was to explore the basis for the creation of an agentic ecology theory that could provide a generic multidisciplinary context-free manifold that can be applied to specific domains and contexts. As an element of this, it explored the relationship between agency and its agents (at various foci) and the nature of agency ecologies. It also explored the relationship between viability and sustainability. In this second part, the purpose is to create an agency model that will recognise the analytical and decision-making attributes of the viability–sustainability relationship by centring on the modelling a socioeconomic ecosystem and a social disciplinary species model.

Agency theory will be used to model a generic agency ecology and its environment of subordinate elements – especially those subordinates that can be used as amenities to satisfy the needs to agency development. Part 1 of the paper took a tour of concepts relevant to the representation of ecosystem structures and their application. Part 2 will centre on delivering a schema capable of embracing agency ecology from which applications may derive.

It is shown agency theory is not only a modelling schema but can also provide diagnosis to examine the condition of, or for locating problems within, an agency in its ecosystem environment. This is illustrated within a socioeconomic context.

The paper is conceptual in nature, without any to diagnose any substantive issues within the socio-economic context.

A generalized agency ecology approach is proposed over this two-part paper that is novel through the use of 3rd order cybernetics.

Agency is inherently an institution and involves dynamic socio-cultural processes that facilitate development. This paper is written in three parts. The purpose in Part 1 was to represent agency theory as an institutional theory, and consideration was made of the relationship between development, growth and globalisation. In Part 2, the purpose was to explore development with respect to the political context, explaining in terms of culture under what conditions political groups may come to power. Using political frames intended to define their nature and realities, they seek to attract agents in their political sphere to gain administrative power. In this Part 3, the purpose of this paper is to model, using cybernetic agency theory, the nature of development and reduction to instrumentality.

Development theory is a multidisciplinary field in which research and theories are clustered together and set within an adaptive institutional activity system framework. An adaptive activity system has a plural membership of agents represented by agency. In Parts 1 and 2 of this paper, agency was shown to have an institutional basis. Activity system development was also explained as a process of institutional evolution, and its potential was shown to provide power acquisition in a political landscape by competitive political frames which vie for support in a place of potentially susceptible agents. Here in Part 3, agency theory will be used to model the dynamic relationships between political frames and the agents that they wish to attract by projecting both cognitive and emotional structures, this enabling the anticipation of behaviour.

These relate to the three parts of the paper taken together. Agency is an evolutionary institutional system that can represent socio-political development. A model for political development has been created that identifies the conditions under which formal political groups are able to promote frames of policy to attract support from autonomous agents that constitute the membership of the activity system, and hence gain agency status. On the way to this, it connects Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity to Sorokin’s theory of socio-cultural dynamics and cultural stability. One result is the notion of liquid development, an unstable condition of development in adaptive activity systems. Agency theory can usefully explain detailed changes in agency, the relationships between agency agents, and interactions between agencies, this embracing institutional processes.

The implication of this research is that it will allow empirical methods to be used that potentially enables political outcomes in complex socio-political environments to be anticipated, given additional appropriate measurement criteria.

The synergy of agency and institutional theories to explain the process of development is new, as is its application to the political development process in a political landscape. As part of this synergistic process, it has been shown how Bauman’s concept of liquidity relates to Sorokin’s ideas of socio-cultural change.