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The Ohio State leader behaviour description questionnaire XII (LBDQ XII) was used to assess the leadership preference opinions of business managers in England and Germany. Significant differences were noted between the two national groups. The most dramatic difference was on the factor production emphasis, defined as “measuring to what degree the manager applies pressure for productive output”, with the English sample indicating a preference for a leader to demonstrate a significantly higher level of production emphasis than the German sample. Large, significant differences were also observed for demand reconciliation, persuasiveness, tolerance of uncertainty, initiation of structure, predictive accuracy, and superior orientation. For English leaders, the followers seem to prefer a more interventionist approach. For German leaders, the imposition of Ordnung (order) is critical.

In 1985, I was moving along a more or less definable disciplinary path, writing qualitative sociology guided by my understanding of leading symbolic interactionist texts, productively disturbed by affection for Harold Garfinkel's ethnomethodology. Although there were prior lines of influence, my writing then was focused especially on various “social constructionist” projects, first with Peter Conrad (Conrad & Schneider, 1992 [1980]; Schneider & Conrad, 1983) and then with Malcolm Spector and John Kitsuse (Kitsuse & Schneider, 1984, 1989). I also read closely and had many conversations with Anselm Strauss about how to do what he and Barney Glaser called “grounded theory” and with Howard Becker about “doing sociology.” Not only did I feel that I was getting better at doing ethnography or field work and “writing it up,” as we put it in Sociology, I felt I was engaged in an epistemologically superior practice relative to the more quantitative and structurally oriented work that was then and still is defined as “mainstream” (a land from which I had emigrated, gradually, after the Ph.D.).

In recent decades, higher education institutes (HEIs) have come under pressure to cooperate with society as a whole. This shift towards an increased focus on third mission and social innovation activities implies a substantial organizational change process for many HEIs, as they need to initiate both structural and cultural changes. This paper provides guidance for such change processes by examining the views and attitudes of academic and administrative staff, as well as students within the HEIs over a period in which the HEIs increase their focus on social innovation.

The study uses a longitudinal quantitative approach consisting of a survey of administrative and academic staff, as well as students at two German HEIs. The authors studied members’ attitudes towards third mission and social innovation activities (N = 3470).

Results suggest that the university members’ attitudes towards third mission and social innovation are positive but change to some extent over time. Different aspects shape the attitudes within the three groups (administrative staff, academic staff and students). Furthermore, attitudes vary among academic employees who are involved in the process and those who are not.

The findings provide useful information for university managers and anyone aiming to promote social innovation at HEIs.

The study examines how attitudes of university members change whenever social innovation takes place at HEIs. This study includes data on the participation and empowerment of all HEI members in view of the important role that HEIs can play as supporters of social innovation.

This research uses the institutional theory perspective to better understand the social dynamics of the European Union (EU) tourism policy and its directions. The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the processes, content and outcomes of EU tourism policy.

A thorough literature review involving a critical discourse analysis on the regulative, normative and cultural elements of institutionalisation improves our understanding of the EU policy, in terms of its processes, content and outcomes. Therefore, this paper explores how the European institutions have incrementally legitimised tourism policy among Member States.

Over the years, the EU’s policies were intended to enhance the European single market whilst supporting the growth of the industrial competitiveness, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship. This has inevitably led to the development of new policies in the realms of tourism.

This contribution has identified a gap in academic research, as it reports about the evolution of EU tourism policy and on the conditions of how it has been planned, organised and implemented. It also exposes the challenges of institutionalising tourism policy in intergovernmental institutions.

It is a pleasure to comment on the celebration of my work by three of my dearest friends and most respected colleagues. At first I fretted over whether I had produced a “work,” especially one that could be celebrated. So the comments offered by Joseph Schneider, Michal McCall, and Norman Denzin at the World Congress of Qualitative Inquiry in 2005 and published in this issue were a gift to me. Schneider, Mc Call, and Denzin have drawn a line of thought through my writing, which has invited me to reflect on my career as a scholar and teacher in the discipline of Sociology. I want to express my gratitude to them and I will do so at the close of these remarks.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether and how employees’ proactive personality is related to work engagement. Drawing on job demands-resources theory, the study proposes that this relationship is moderated by a three-way interaction between proactive personality × transformational leadership × growth mindset.

The study is based on survey data from 259 employees of an internationally operating high-tech organization in the Netherlands.

In line with prior studies, support is found for positive significant relationships of proactive personality and transformational leadership with engagement. Additionally, transformational leadership is found to moderate the relationship between proactive personality and work engagement, but only when employees have a growth mindset.

The study advances the literature that investigates the proactive personality-engagement relationship. Specifically, this study is the first to examine a possible three-way interaction that may deepen the insights for how proactive personality, transformational leadership and growth mindset interact in their contribution to work engagement.