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An integral metamap creates a common language to dynamically track values‐based urban change at multiple levels of scale: individual, organization, neighbourhood, city, bio‐region and nation.

In a pilot project, using an ethnographic codebook, analysis of data collected from urban residents via telephone interviews, discloses diverse lenses, indicators and values at different levels of complexity. A four quadrant metamap of the data reveals the relationship between four sets of values: (subjective, intersubjective, objective and interobjective) at eight levels of complexity.

A review of taxonomies of indicators shows how multiple existing data bases can be translated into a common integral map. The pilot project demonstrates how the four quadrant‐based analysis and feedback methodology creates vital signs monitors for what we value, want to change (stop or improve), and how we can develop processes to influence change.

The scope of application is global, and embedded in a paradigm shift to an integral worldview, implying users share that worldview. However, the methodology can be applied anywhere, on all scales.

Conclusions show how metamapping research data, planning and management, contributes to improving choices, monitoring and influencing change and the quality of urban life.

This paper proposes a new integral common language to frame and track urban change.

Research on high-growth firms (HGFs) or gazelles is expanding due to their significant contribution to job growth and economic development. However, the knowledge about the conditions and factors that set these firms on their rapid growth trajectory remains fragmented. Therefore, this chapter provides an abreast inventory of the surging gazelle studies by systematically reviewing the international gazelle growth literature and consolidating firm-level, industry-level, and macroeconomic-level growth factors and their interactions as elaborated in the studies. Based on the review of 62 international empirical studies, this chapter finds that the gazelle growth is complex and multidimensional in its scope and nature. The firm’s growth intention and entrepreneurial nature emerge as necessary but not sufficient conditions to guarantee rapid growth as it results from the impact of and interaction between various firm-level and external factors. The different growth-influencing factors are summarized using a theoretical gazelle growth model, which supports the rare and temporal nature of the gazelle growth.

The literature on marriage formation neglects different pathways to marriage. This study focuses on arranged marriage, introduced marriage, and self-initiated marriage as three main marriage pathways in East Asia and examines how people’s marriage pathway choices are associated with education and change over time in mainland China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Using data from the East Asian Social Survey, this study finds that education is associated with fewer arranged marriages and more self-initiated marriages and that more recent marriage cohorts also witness a decline in arranged marriages and an increase in self-initiated marriages. However, how introduced marriage is associated with education and change over time varies in four East Asian societies. The findings support the “developmentalism-marriage” framework that developmental idealism leads to modern marital practices.

To summarize and evaluate John Levi Marin’s recent book, The Explanation of Social Action (2011), the central thesis of which is that the actions of other people cannot be explained without first understanding those actions from the point of view of the actors themselves. Martin thus endeavors to reorient social science toward concrete experience and away from purportedly useless abstractions.

This review chapter employs close scrutiny of and applies immanent critique to Martin’s argumentative claims, warrants, and the polemical style in which these arguments are presented.

This chapter arrives at the following conclusions: (1) Martin unnecessarily truncates the scope of sociological investigation; (2) he fails to define the key concepts within his argument, including “explanation,” “social action,” and “understanding,” among others; (3) he overemphasizes the external or “environmental” causes of action; (4) rather than inducing actions, the so-called “action-fields” induce experiences, and are therefore incapable of explaining actions; (5) Martin rejects counterfactual definitions of causality while defining his own notion of causality in terms of counterfactuals; (6) most of his critiques of other philosophical accounts of causality are really critiques of their potential misapplication; (7) the separation of experience and language (i.e., propositions about experience) in order to secure the validity of the former does not secure the validity of sociological inquiry, since experiences are invariably reported in language; and, finally, (8) Martin’s argument that people are neurologically incapable of providing accurate, retrospective accounts of the motivations behind their own actions is based on the kind of third-person social science he elsewhere repudiates; that he acknowledges the veracity of these studies demonstrates the potential utility of the “third-person” perspectives and the implausibility of any social science that abandons them.

To date Martin’s book has received much praise but little critical attention. This review chapter seeks to fill this lacuna in the literature in order to better elucidate Martin’s central arguments and the conclusions that can be reasonably inferred from the logical and empirical evidence presented.

There has been considerable research into different approaches to workplace dispute resolution in the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), and to a lesser extent other English-speaking countries. This chapter considers what guidance this research can provide into the practical implications of these different approaches.

One frame of reference for evaluating different approaches to workplace dispute resolution is provided by Budd’s three objectives of the employment relationship: equity, voice and efficiency.

While dispute resolution procedures can contribute to all three objectives, there can be negative consequences for employees who make use of formal workplace dispute resolution procedures. It is desirable that workplace disputes be resolved quickly and informally.

Such an approach places considerable weight on the skills of line managers. Unfortunately, there is evidence of a preference among line managers to replace pragmatic approaches to conflict resolution with a rigid adherence to process and procedure. This is partly due to a lack of skills, but is often compounded by inadequate support from senior management.

While it is important for organisations to have formal workplace dispute resolution procedures, the focus should be on line managers. The role of human resources staff and senior management should primarily be to monitor the dispute resolution system, ensure that it is operating effectively and deal with any emerging issues. They should ensure appropriate training is in place and provide appropriate support to line managers. Only when line managers have failed to resolve disputes should they become directly involved.

This study aims to trace the relationship between the evidence-based design (EBD) process and decision-making during the architectural design process, the barriers to informing health-care architects and possible methods to overcome these barriers.

This study aims to explore the barriers to the EBD process during the design process by reviewing the relevant literature and future steps to overcome these barriers and support design decisions.

The study shows that EBD is a relevant, useful tool for providing evidence that positively affects design decisions. This study divides EBD barriers into simple barriers and complex barriers, depending on the nature of the barrier. Additionally, methods to overcome these barriers are discussed to ensure the best use of EBD findings with a significant impact on health-care design decisions, as they are core elements in informing architects, especially when combined with the traditional design process. This study investigates how likely it is for the EBD to contribute optimally to design decisions depending on architects’ skills and cooperation with researchers.

This study can apprize health-care architects of the need to consider the role of EBD in improving the quality of design decisions, and the importance of combining EBD with the traditional design process to implement optimal design decisions.

Given this casting of the problem, the logical question by the late 1980s had become, how should government craft policy tools to motivate stronger efforts by local educators? A variety of central governments in the West had tried to lift children's learning curves through new funding for particular categories of students, along with tighter regulation of how these dollars must be spent. But this assumed that legislators and education bureaucrats knew how to best organize instructional “inputs” and social relations inside classrooms. The conceptual breakthrough with the new buzz around standards-based or performance-focused reform was that government would concentrate on clarifying learning outcomes, leaving local educators to tailor school inputs and pedagogical practices. (Several chapters in this volume show how, in fact, central governments have difficulty resisting the exercise of control over output standards and input mixes.)

This study analyses the effects of alcohol consumption on the labour market outcomes of older individuals. The data set used consists of five waves of the Health and Retirement Study. The results from models with a limited number of covariates indicate that there is a wage and earnings premium associated with alcohol use. This premium progressively diminishes as more individual-level controls are added to the standard earnings function. The data set is longitudinal which allows for estimation of individual-fixed-effects specifications. These results indicate that alcohol use does not have a positive effect on earnings and wages.