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This article combines Mead's notion of sociality with his implicit theory of morality. Specifically, it uses Mead's emphasis on temporality to analyze decisions made by key characters in the cinematic adaptation (Amazon TV) of Philip Dick's novel, The Man in the High Castle. Using a selective and subversive method to read into this adaptation, I regard Mead's view of morality as complex and as distinguishing between a morality in the specious present and a morality grounded in sociality. The paper links Mead and Mead's pragmatic emphasis to varieties of characters representing immoral foils (e.g., Nazis) and everyday lives to show how morality can emerge from a variety of standpoints, locating Mead's position as distinct from moral absolutism and moral relativity.

In this chapter I attempt to merge Athens’ conception of domination as a complex interactionist concept with Goffman’s notion of demeanor and deference as lynchpins of dramaturgical analysis. I ground the merger in an analysis of metaphorical duel between a superordinate and subordinate in the TV show Mad Men. The examination of this metaphorical dual also implies a connection between a radical interactionism as defined by Athens and a radical dramaturgy informed by Athens’ conception of domination. In particular, I propose an examination of civil domination within institutionalized settings in which use of shared pasts and concomitant acts of demeanor and deference enhance the construction of domination between superordinates and subordinates. The fictional representation of a metaphorical duel in the television show Mad Men depicts a struggle for control in which the superordinate demands that a willful subordinate sign a contract which will bind the subordinate to a particular place for an extended period of time. The examination of events leading to signing reveals a complex weave of social acts that combines the force of domination with the artistry of demeanor and deference.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and identify the causes of the failure of the Larkin Company (Buffalo, NY), once one of the nation's largest mail‐order houses in the decades surrounding 1900.

Borrowing conceptual frameworks from both recent management and historical scholarship on organizational failure that integrates exogenous and endogenous factors, this study employs traditional historical methods to explain the causes of Larkin's failure. The main primary sources include the Larkin Company records, government documents, personal papers, trade journals, and other primary sources.

Begun as a modest soap manufacturer by John D. Larkin, in Buffalo, in 1875, the Larkin Company grew to become one of the largest mail‐order houses in the USA in the decades surrounding 1900 owing to its innovative direct marketing practices, called the “factory‐to‐family” plan, that relied on unpaid women to distribute its products. In 1918, anticipating the chain store boom, Larkin established two grocery store chains (other retail ventures followed). The company regularly lost money in these ventures and, combined with a shrinking mail‐order economy, struggled during the 1920s and 1930s, and eventually liquidated in 1941‐1942. A number of exogenous and endogenous factors, acting alone and in various combinations, proved too challenging to second‐ and third‐generation family members who ran the company after 1926.

This research paper tries to understand the decline of an important progressive firm during the interwar period. Whereas Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward were able to make the transition from mail order to stores, Larkin Company failed to navigate this transition successfully. It also adds to the small but important literature in management and business history on organizational failure and may serve as a cautionary tale for family businesses.

This chapter compares and contrasts the British invasion and punk rock as mystified, post-performance products. Expanding on Goffman's notion of mystification to discuss texts that emerged from performances and drawing on Mannheim's distinction between ideological and utopian perspectives, we discuss the British invasion as bound to elite interpretations of mystified products and punk rock as bound to more provincial and anti-elitist interpretations. We note that despite differences, both genres involve, to varying degrees, mystifying differences, mystifying legendary status, and mystifying popularity itself. The discussion of both musical genres compliments and affirms previous analyses, especially the analysis of punk rock as a dramaturgical and utopian version of play.

Purpose – I extend the discourse regarding The Days of Wine and Roses (TDoWaR) as an Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) film in particular and analyses of A.A. films in general and provide a symbolic interactionist reading of TDoWaR as involving compliance dramas.

Design/methodology/approach – Borrowing from Norman Denzin's notion of a subversive reading of films, in which the author attends to the literal content of a text from a predefined perspective, I deal with the characters as if they create and maintain aligned and congruent actions that authors can analyze as conversational and interactional content. My main interest, drawing upon symbolic interactionist conceptualization and previous reviews of TDoWaR, involves the decisions made by characters to imbibe against their better judgment.

Findings – I detected four dramas (foreshadowed, evocative, profane, and complementary) that differed in interactional intensity and consequences. Each involves mutual decision making associated with self-definition and definition of the relationships. I also locate the dramas in the context of moral themes of an A. A. Film, specifically an epiphany, a categorical commitment to sobriety, an ongoing life cycle of recovery, and synchronicity.

Originality/value – Compliance dramas involve decisions to engage in ordinary activity (in this case, drinking) that becomes nonordinary, owing to semiotic, situational, historical, and interactional dynamics. The chapter can encourage thinking about alcoholism and alcoholic films as involving a moral career of a recovering alcoholic that sometimes must involve sacrifice of other prestigious moral careers (e.g., of a romantic relationship) in order to maintain the authenticity of the identity.

The purpose of this paper is to perform a systematic review of articles that have used the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT).

The results produced in this research are based on the literature analysis of 174 existing articles on the UTAUT model. This has been performed by collecting data including demographic details, methodological details, limitations, and significance of relationships between the constructs from the available articles based on the UTAUT.

The findings indicated that general purpose systems and specialized business systems were examined in the majority of the articles using the UTAUT. The analysis also indicated that cross-sectional approach, survey methods, and structural equation modelling analysis techniques were the most explored research methodologies whereas SPSS was found to be the largely used analysis tools. Moreover, the weight analysis of independent variables indicates that variables such as performance expectancy and behavioural intention qualified for the best predictor category. Moreover, the analysis also suggested that single subject or biased sample as the most explored limitation across all studies.

The search activities were centered on occurrences of keywords to avoid tracing a large number of publications where these keywords might have been used as casual words in the main text. However, we acknowledge that there may be a number of studies, which lack keywords in the title, but still focus upon UTAUT in some form.

This is the first research of its type which has extensively examined the literature on the UTAUT and provided the researchers with the accumulative knowledge about the model.