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The Finnish social philosopher Arvid Aulin has made an attempt to develop a theory of social progress based on cybernetic principles. In his sociocybernetics two fundamental concepts are “self‐steering” of actors and “hierarchy” in social systems. Emancipation processes are directed towards an increase of self‐steering and a decrease of outside steering of human actors. In his “Law of the Requisite Hierarchy”, Aulin formulates a negative relationship between the production level of a society and its optimal level of hierarchy; the higher the production per capita, the lower the necessary amount of hierarchy for that society; democracy flourishes as the economy grows. In this paper his arguments for and the consequences, especially for developing countries, of this fundamental law of sociocybernetics, are discussed.

A cybernetic theory of hierarchical social systems is given, starting from an extension of Ashby's general theory of regulation and control to amplifying regulation. Regulation and control in human society are then discussed and the conditions for the existence of social classes and social hierarchy examined.

To provide an interesting approach for determining interval measures, through the analytic hierarchy process, for integration with social network analysis for knowledge mapping in organizations.

In order to develop improved organizational and business processes through knowledge management, a knowledge audit should be conducted to better understand the knowledge flows in the organization. An important technique to visualize these knowledge flows is the use of a knowledge map. Social network analysis can be applied to develop this knowledge map. Interval measures should be used in the social network analysis in order to determine the strength of the connections between individuals or departments in the organization. This paper applies the analytic hierarchy process to develop these interval measures, and integrates the values within the social network analysis to produce a meaningful knowledge map.

The analytic hierarchy process, when coupled with social network analysis, can be a useful technique for developing interval measures for knowledge‐mapping purposes.

The analytic hierarchy process may become tedious and arduous for use in large social network maps. More research needs to be conducted in this area for scalability.

As social network analysis is gaining more prominence in the knowledge management community, the analytic hierarchy process may be able to provide more valuable measures to determine the strengths of relationships between actors than simply using ordinal numbers.

Coupling the analytic hierarchy process with social network analysis provides a novel approach for future knowledge‐mapping activities.

Over the last two decades, change has been an important theme for the public services in England and Wales. The Salmon Report heralded the change era by attempting to rationalise the nursing hierarchy according to specific definitions of nursing tasks and grades of pay (1). The Seebohm Report followed suit, recommending that any improvements in the social services had to be accompanied by fundamental administrative re‐organisation(2). Seebohm stated that the three separately administered local authority social work departments of childrens' welfare and mental health (as part of the local health department) should be integrated in one organisation ‐ the social service department (SSD). The recommendations of the report were implemented by the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970. Within two years, the Local Government Act 1972 was in operation requiring substantial changes in local government boundaries and the re‐allocation of local government duties within the new units. The reason for the change of boundaries was that previously different local authorities had substantially different numbers of population in their catchment area. In order to promote equality of resource distribution nationwide, the new local government units were created to meet the demands of comparable population sizes. A year later, the Health Services were reformed on the grounds of attempting to establish comparable geographical boundaries with the newly created local govern‐ment units.

This study aimed to expand the normative model of police legitimacy literature by assessing the impact of cultural values and their role as a driver of the perception of legitimacy. Specifically, the current study assessed cultural values like Confucianism and their impact on the perception of police legitimacy.

The current study used convenience sampling of South Korean university students from all seven metropolises. A perception survey regarding their perception of the legitimacy of Korean police was asked via a six-point scale. For statistical analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess the hypotheses.

The authors' results indicate that Confucian values like social hierarchy and social harmony impacted various stages of police legitimacy. In particular, Confucian values significantly impacted procedural justice, the obligation to obey and cooperation. However, it failed to predict legitimacy in any capacity.

First, by assessing Confucian values and their impact on police legitimacy, the current study aimed to expand the police legitimacy literature. Second, police legitimacy research in non-Western settings is still lacking and has not reached a consensus regarding the primary driver of legitimacy. Furthermore, South Korea in particular is still at an infant stage regarding police legitimacy research. The current study aimed to add to the literature by examining police legitimacy in the Korean context.

The aim of this research is to explore the behavioral model of Chinese organizational leaders acquiring resources for the development of their organizations under the influence of hierarchically oriented social governance.

The paper compares the differences between Western and Chinese contexts and conducts a grounded multi-case study to explore leadership behavioral model in the Chinese context.

First, the Chinese social governance structure is hierarchically oriented, whereas the Western social governance structure is market oriented. Second, this unique inconformity found in the Chinese organizational leaders as contorted leadership, which refers to the inconsistency between leaders’ cognition and their behavior when acquiring resources for the development of their organizations, is defined. Third, the conflict between leaders’ cognition and behaviors is caused by the social governance mechanism within which leaders are embedded.

The authors have just made a first step to understand contorted leadership in the Chinese context, further researches should pay more attention to exploring the origins, functions and impacts of leaders’ contorted behaviors.

First, leadership is linked with social governance by emphasizing on the core role of social governance in allocating the resources which organizational leaders scramble for. Second, a new kind of leadership –contorted leadership – in the Chinese context that emphasizes on the contradiction between leaders’ cognition and behavior, which deepens the understanding of leadership contextualization, is identified.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the different features of social skills and outline a hierarchy of social skills model.

This paper draws on clinical work over 25 years and presents the results of research using a hierarchical approach to developing social skills.

Social skills interventions delivered according to a hierarchy of social skills (self-awareness and self-esteem; body language; conversational skills; friendship skills; assertiveness) are effective in improving social skills.

Effective assessment should determine which skills to start with. Intervention should involve the environment, peers and a variety of direct instructional approaches to maximise the potential for success and generalisation into everyday life.

This paper provides an overview of social skills and social competence, stresses the importance of good assessment to target the start point for intervention and emphasises the need to involve others to maximise success and generalisation.

This study seeks to examine aspects of social class associated with British public accountancy immigrants to the USA prior to the First World War. The study's specific purpose is to investigate the social mobility and fluidity associated with these élite immigrants in the early history of US public accountancy.

The paper is informed by previous studies of both social class and élite immigration and uses biographical data describing 395 British chartered and incorporated accountancy immigrants entering the USA between 1875 and 1914. Data analyses describe social mobility and fluidity based on the recorded occupations of these élite immigrants.

Despite their élite status, the immigrants experienced inter‐generational downward mobility immediately post‐migration. The evidence also indicates inter‐generational and intra‐generational upward mobility for immigrants settling in the USA and for those who did not settle there. The study further reveals evidence of social fluidity associated with both settlers and non‐settlers.

The study suggests that immigration to the USA did not immediately improve the occupational status of British public accountants who settled there. Nor, compared to those who did not settle in the USA, was it necessarily a more advantageous career path to improved occupational status. The study adds to existing knowledge of British accountants in the early US public accountancy profession and, more generally, to that of social mobility associated with immigration of the period.

The study is significant because it provides knowledge of social mobility and fluidity associated with élite immigrants and contributes to the social history of British accountants in the early development of US public accountancy.

The purpose of this study is to integrate status conflict, as a relatively recent and unexplored phenomenon, to the family business literature.

The authors follow multilevel theory building to develop a multilevel conceptual model of status conflict in family firms (FFs).

The authors identify the main antecedents, processes and consequences of status conflict at three levels of analysis (individual, family and firm) unique to FFs. Seventeen theoretical propositions at three levels of analysis are presented.

The authors address the need for multilevel research for organisations and multilevel status research, contribute to the under-researched theory of conflicts in FFs and show that the conflict literature, which has predominantly focussed on the individual- and group-level factors, can borrow from the family business literature, which has primarily been oriented to the group- and firm-level factors.