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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between theory and history, or more specifically the role and use of theory in the field of history of education. It will explore the following questions: What is theory, and what is it for? How do historians and, in particular, historians of education construe and use theory? And how do they respond to openly theoretical work? The author poses these questions in light of ongoing discussions in the field of history of education regarding the role, relevance, and utility of theory in historical research, analysis, and narratives.

The explicit use of theory in historical research is not altogether new, tracing an intellectual genealogy since the mid-1800s when disciplinary boundaries among academic fields were not so rigidly defined, developed and regulated. The paper analyzes three books that are geographically located in North America (USA), Australia, Europe (Great Britain) and Asia (India), thereby offering a transnational view of the use of theory in history of education. It also examines how historians of education respond to explicitly theoretical work by analyzing, as a case study, a 2011 special issue in History of Education Quarterly.

First, the paper delineates theory as a multidimensional concept and practice with varying and competing meanings and interpretations. Second, it examines three book-length historical studies of education that employ theoretical frameworks drawing from cultural, feminist poststructuralist and postcolonial approaches. The author’s analysis of these manuscripts reveals that historians of education who explicitly engage with theory pursue their research in reflexive, disruptive and generative modes. Lastly, it utilizes a recent scholarly exchange as a case study of how some historians of education respond to theoretically informed work. It highlights three lenses – reading with insistence, for resistance, and beyond – to understand the responses to the author’s paper on Foucault and poststructuralism.

Setting theory to work has a fundamentally transformative role to play in our thinking, writing and teaching as scholars, educators and students and in the productive re-imagining of history of education.

In this paper we examine three distinct types of ownership advantages, and argue that these are associated with three different kinds of limits to the growth of the firm. For some firms, the inability to regenerate its asset‐based advantages is critical, while for others, the inability to effectively coordinate its assets (inside or outside the firm), or the inability to negotiate the nonmarket environment are more salient. We think that the identification of different analytical categories of ownership advantages enables the construction of better proxies in empirical research, and helps to explain the limited geographical reach of MNEs observed in the literature.

Recently, multiple examples of large firms acquiring real estate have polarized investors. Who are the firms investing in real estate and what are their characteristics? How does this investment in owning commercial real estate relate to cash holding policies? Is owning commercial real estate associated with better credit ratings? This study questions commonly held beliefs in finance that firms prefer to lease their real estate rather than own it and examines what are the differences in outcomes between the choices.

The authors identify three testable hypotheses based on the research questions and prior literature. The authors use univariate and multivariate analyses to test these hypotheses along with thorough robustness and addressing of endogeneity issues to confirm that our results hold in a variety of settings. The authors employ new proxies of real estate to the literature from Bloomberg and firm level data from Compustat.

The authors show that more firms within the S&P 500 choose to own commercial real estate. The authors also find many significant differences in corporate characteristics between firms who own real estate and those who do not, such that firms with real estate ownership have significantly: higher growth opportunities, higher R&D expenses, higher working capital levels, lower capital expenditures, higher leverage and higher cash flow. Firms with corporate real estate (CRE) ownership hold less cash. Contingent on real estate ownership, firms have higher cash holdings as their real estate holdings increase. Last, firms with commercial real estate ownership have higher credit ratings.

One of the main contributions of this study is in the use of a new specific proxy using data on corporate land, buildings and construction in progress, which to the best of our knowledge has not been done in the past. Other studies focus on aggregate property, plant and equipment data which blurs the CRE ownership picture. Additionally, the authors provide an underexplored variable of CRE ownership to its impacts of cash holdings and credit ratings, which had yet to be uncovered.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the post‐merger operating performance of acquiring companies involved in merger activities during the period 1999‐2002 in India. It attempts to identify synergies, if any, resulting from mergers.

This paper uses the operating performance approach, which compares the pre‐merger and post‐merger performance of companies using accounting data to examine merger related gains to the acquiring firms.

It is found that the post‐merger profitability, assets turnover and solvency of the acquiring companies, on average, show no improvement when compared with pre‐merger values. So it seems that, contrary to common beliefs and expectations, mergers usually do not lead to improve the acquirer's financial performance.

Further studies may develop some alternate measures of merger‐related gains as financial measures have limitations to capture the full impact of merger on corporate performance. Moreover, a study providing detail insights into the reasons and patterns of post‐merger corporate performance across the types of mergers and industry would be useful.

The results show that mergers are not aimed at maximizing wealth of owners. This result suggests the need for managers to better focus on post‐merger integration issues in order to create merger‐induced synergies, rather than simply acquiring bigger size and achieve hidden objectives.

The value of this research is its extension of the mergers and acquisitions performance research, which has been conducted on mostly American and European firms, to Indian firms.

Vulnerability is a label and a concept that is widely used in disaster studies. To date the meaning has been quite limited and implied “weakness”, with criticisms arising periodically but not halting vulnerability's reproduction. In this paper, the authors offer a new theory of vulnerability for the field, suggesting that complicating the concept can create space for liberatory discourse and organising.

The authors draw from diverse understandings of vulnerability to generate new conceptual ground for disaster scholars. The authors explore the relationships between power and agency and autonomy and social hierarchy with regards to how vulnerability is considered within neoliberal democracies. The authors also outline ideological responses and the political actions that follow.

This exploration is underpinned by dissatisfaction with the way that vulnerability has thus far been theorised in disaster studies. Using the analytical framings provided, the authors hope that others will build on the idea that so-called “vulnerable” people, working in solidarity and using intersecting frameworks of anti-racism, anti-colonialism and anti-capitalism, can undermine the risk-creating norms of the neoliberal state.

The authors argue that the dominant framing of vulnerability in disaster studies – and usage of the vulnerability paradigm – provides political traction for neoliberal social projects, based on notions of humanitarianism. The authors make this claim as a challenge to the authors and the authors' peers to maintain reflexive scholarship and search for liberatory potential, not only in vulnerability but in other concepts that have become normative.

This paper aims to enhance the understanding of what is being taught – and how – to future built environment (BE) professionals in higher education (HE) BE curricular in the context of disaster risk reduction (DRR).

Reflecting on the results of an extensive survey carried out among 21 BE educators representing 14 countries, the pedagogies used to educate tomorrow’s BE professionals about DRR-related subjects are explored.

The vast majority of HE training for the future BE professionals focuses on hazards as a “problem” posed by nature – something that can be “solved” through a technical solution. Little reflection is required as to the social implications of DRR “solutions”, and knowledge too often remains analytical and distant from any sort of lived experience. Whilst many DRR-related subjects introduce the ideas of human-centric DRR, there is still a disconnection between technical engineering subjects and broader social science subjects. This is a missed opportunity for students acquiring technical knowledge to reflect on and engage with a wider societal context.

The paper draws on the liberative pedagogies of Paulo Freire, bell hooks and others to engage BE educators in collectively drawing on philosophies and practices that emphasise holistic ways of knowing and learning and encourage the broader consideration of non-technical ideas. This kind of DRR pedagogy is required if the society is to collectively strive for a BE that enhances equity and well-being, while avoiding the creation of risk through development and redevelopment.

Attempts to discover an internal logic in the high‐speed events taking place in the former Soviet Union. In addressing the problems of the country′s disintegration, examines the issue in its socioeconomic, political and territorial‐administrative aspects. Analyses, for this purpose, the nature of Soviet society prior to Gorbachev′s reforms, its present transitional stage and its probable direction in the near future.

Recent trends in Western civics education have attempted to secure democratic institutions from perceived threats. This paper investigates how political securitisation historically operated within civics textbooks in Australia and Aotearoa, New Zealand. It further evaluates how Māori, Aboriginal and other Indigenous peoples were variably incorporated or marginalised in these educational discourses.

This discourse analysis evaluates a sample of civics textbooks circulated in Australia and New Zealand between 1880 and 1920. These historical sources are interpreted through theories of decoloniality and securitisation.

The sample of textbooks asserted to students that their self-governing colonies required the military protection of the British Empire against undemocratic “threats”. They argued that self-governing colonies strengthened the empire by raising subjects who were loyal to British military interests and ideological values. The authors pedagogically encouraged a governmentality within students that was complementary to military, imperial and democratic service. The hypocritical denial of self-government for many Indigenous peoples was rationalised as a measure of “security” against “native rule” and imperial rivals.

Under a lens of securitisation, the discursive links between imperialism, military service and democratic diligence have not yet been examined in civics textbooks from the historical contexts of Australia and New Zealand. This investigation provides conceptual and pedagogical insights for contemporary civics education in both nations.

Expanding on the findings of the SOPIFF research project, this paper aims to identify eight futures schools of thought, which are analyzed and critiqued through an integral framework. As “Part II” of a previous publication, it seeks to focus on the lower (plural) quadrants.

The paper adapts Ken Wilber's integral theory to clarify various philosophical orientations to the future. It also adapts Fredrich Polak's approach to futures as a matter of “social critique and reconstruction”; however, the approach is global, civilizational, and integral, so it proposes civilizational critique and integral reconstruction as a method for evaluating futures schools of thought.

The IF framework is found to be a valuable theoretical and analytical tool for clarifying images of the future; it shows lines of development within each quadrant and interactions between quadrants, illustrating the effectiveness of the four‐quadrant approach.

It further illuminates the “global problematique” expressed in the SOPIFF project and proposes the IF framework as a way to interpret those research findings.

This approach to futures/foresight studies broadens the range and offers more depth to conceptions of the future, so it should help to develop/improve futures methodologies/practices in general.

Civilizational critique and integral reconstruction of images of the future imply unprecedented social change.

The paper should help futurists to see and interpret the “bigger picture” of civilizational futures through revealing the “crack” of the modern image of the future, how it relates to the current world crisis, and what is needed to heal the crack, so a new vision of a preferred future can emerge.

The purpose of this paper is to describe imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA), a novel socio-politically inspired optimization strategy for proposing a fuzzy variant of this algorithm. ICA is a meta-heuristic algorithm for dealing with different optimization tasks. The basis of the algorithm is inspired by imperialistic competition. It attempts to present the social policy of imperialisms (referred to empires) to control more countries (referred to colonies) and use their sources. If one empire loses its power, among the others making a competition to take possession of it.

In fuzzy imperialist competitive algorithm (FICA), the colonies have a degree of belonging to their imperialists and the top imperialist, as in fuzzy logic, rather than belonging completely to just one empire therefore the colonies move toward the superior empire and their relevant empires. Simultaneously for balancing the exploration and exploitation abilities of the ICA. The algorithms are used for optimization have shortcoming to deal with accuracy rate and local optimum trap and they need complex tuning procedures. FICA is proposed a way for optimizing convex function with high accuracy and avoiding to trap in local optima rather than using original ICA algorithm by implementing fuzzy logic on it.

Therefore several solution procedures, including ICA, FICA, genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization, tabu search and simulated annealing optimization algorithm are considered. Finally numerical experiments are carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of models as well as solution procedures. Test results present the suitability of the proposed fuzzy ICA for convex functions with little fluctuations.

The proposed evolutionary algorithm, FICA, can be used in diverse areas of optimization problems where convex functions properties are appeared including, industrial planning, resource allocation, scheduling, decision making, pattern recognition and machine learning (optimization techniques; fuzzy logic; convex functions).