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Purpose – This chapter discusses the increased acceptance of biopolitical research by mainstream political science and examines the potential causes. It demonstrates that the changing status of biopolitics is part of a more general pattern in academia, where biological explanations of social phenomena are increasingly viewed as acceptable and even necessary.

Design/methodology/approach – A brief review of the history of the literature of biopolitics with a content analysis of the three leading general-readership journals of political science and other measures of activity in biopolitics.

Findings – Political scientists until recently have not been receptive to the arguments advanced by proponents of biopolitics, but this resistance is weakening. This case for a more biologically oriented political science is more tenable now in part because of the groundwork done by the early generation of biopolitics scholars but mainly because of changing circumstances.

Recent criticisms of organizational science theory have lamented a lack of depth and a growing “maturity” that is impeding empirical advances. The purpose of this paper is to propose that organizational scientists can address this problem by embracing “evolutionary awareness” (EA). EA builds on theories and constructs developed in the evolutionary sciences that serve to add depth to theory building.

The design of the paper is first to introduce the concept of EA and identify its four key constructs. Next, the authors apply EA to three areas of research within organizational science: human motivation, interpersonal communication and leadership. The authors’ intent is to show that EA constructs extend and deepen traditional organizational science theorizing. Thereby, the authors show that the problems noted above, i.e., lack of depth and maturing theories, can be addressed by embracing EA.

The findings are that EA substantially enhances and freshens theorizing in the organizational sciences in the areas of human motivation, communication and leadership. By extension, other areas of interest will also benefit by embracing the EA perspective.

The implications of the research are many. Organizational scientists can advance theory building, research and practical prescriptions by embracing EA. They can also engage in interdisciplinary research programs with scholars in the evolutionary sciences eager to see their work having practical implications. The limitation of this work is that the authors were only able to show a limited application of EA to three areas of interest to organizational science scholars.

The practical implications of this research are potentially far reaching. At this very moment, scholars in a wide array of disciplines are re-casting their views of humanity, cognition, values and other constructs based on the acceptance of evolution and its primary mechanism, variation and selection based on consequences. These changes will usher in new ideas about leadership, work-life balance, organizational purpose and many others.

A much-needed “consilience” across the human sciences through embracement of the EA perspective may provide insights that will advance human flourishing in organizations and beyond. The authors believe that an increasingly veridical understanding of humanity will produce substantial social impact.

This work will provide an encompassing perspective that will assist organizational scholars in advancing their theory building and research questions. A much-needed “consilience” across the human sciences may provide insights that will advance human flourishing in organizations and beyond.

Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Ludwig Lachmann and George Shackle upheld that investigations of the causes of purposes, preferences, beliefs or behaviors by the social scientist were unwarranted. Shackle proposed that human agency is an “uncaused cause.” Others admitted that human volitions and actions are caused, but ruled out explanations of these causes from social science. By considering Darwinian insights from modern evolutionary psychology, this essay criticizes the view that causal investigations of human volitions and actions are beyond social science. These insights also point to the role of habit and instinct in human behavior.

Biology and Politics (or Biopolitics) has been a part of the political science firmament since the 1960s. Over time, it has become less an odd outlier in the discipline and more a tolerated (and sometimes respected) part of the enterprise. After about 50 years of existence, this is a proper time to reflect on where biopolitics has been, where it is now, and where it might go as an academic endeavor. Indeed, some have said that the best step would for biopolitics to no longer be seen as a special, narrow part of political science – but a part of every field in the discipline, integrated into the larger world of the study of politics.

Purpose – This chapter provides an overview of the policy implications of neuroscience and argues that research initiatives, individual use, and aggregate social consequences of unfolding knowledge about the brain and the accompanying applications require particularly close scrutiny because of the centrality of the brain to human behavior and thoughts.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter summarizes the technological context of interventions in the brain and discusses their policy implications. It then examines research findings, principally from neuroimaging studies, that relate to decision making and emotions and looks at their potential impact on frameworks of political decision making.

Findings – Research on brain structure and functioning raises difficult policy issues and necessitates a reevaluation of our assumptions concerning the policy process, itself.

Practical implications – Given the inevitability of expanded strategies for exploration and therapy of the brain and the concerns they raise, it is important that these issues surrounding their application be clarified and debated before such techniques fall into routine use.

Originality/value – The chapter provides original analysis of the policy ramifications of interventions in the brain and neuroscience in general and makes some observations about the brain and society.

The purpose of the study is to propose a framework for understanding the dynamism of the human self-system from evolutionary and socio-psychological perspective. The study aims to help scholars interested to use an evolutionary lens for examining consumer behaviour.

Relying on the principle of self-cybernetics, the study proposed a general framework explaining the operating mechanism of human self-system. The proposed framework incorporates the socio-psychological and the evolutionary perspective of the human self-concept.

The framework may help consumer scholars to integrate socio-psychological and evolutionary theories to produce novel and testable hypotheses.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to propose a framework based on the principle of cybernetics to facilitate the use of an evolutionary lens in consumer research.

This essay critically examines possibilities for expanding democratic participatory governance in light of Mark Bevir’s treatment of the subject in his book Democratic Governance. The essay argues that a theory of participatory governance should retain an explicit role for expert analysis, and that the appropriate scope given to such analysis will vary by policy area. The essay also argues that the present organization of capitalist economies mandates a heavy reliance on experts, and that a full-blown account of expanding participatory governance thus must be paired with an account of how to achieve a more democratic political economy. Such an account should also specify how democratic-minded public officials can contribute to greater public participation in policymaking.