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This paper reports the findings of an exploratory, small sample, one institution study designed to assess the value of process‐oriented theory coursework in enhancing students’ conceptual complexity. The study is based on conceptual systems theory which acknowledges that there are considerable differences among individuals in their abilities to process information in their social environments. The authors conclude tentatively from the study that process‐oriented theory coursework does affect students' conceptual complexity. For example, those who formally studied organization theory generally make more differentiations among constructs than do other students; similarly, they scored higher on a general measure of integrative complexity.

Introduction‐Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Do you have trouble concentrating in meetings? Do you find yourself forgetting what you just read? Do you constantly fight a losing battle at “getting organised”? Do you become “depressed” too often?

Interactive products include all of the new computerized vending, service, and consumer products such as video games, automatic tellers, and telecommunications shopping systems. Human factors researchers and other behavioral scientists who study these machines seek to make them more “user friendly.” Most of their research, however, is aimed at making them less uncomfortable and less difficult to use. In contrast, this paper describes a paradigm for making these machines more stimulating and fun to use. A case study is provided which describes how this paradigm was applied in the design of a teaching machine, the “Talking Typewriter,” a forerunner of Texas Instrument's successful “Speak 'N Spell” and today's educational software packages.

This paper describes the evolution of educational administration training for secondary school principals and teachers in New Zealand's Central Region, following a national pattern of short withdrawal courses to train trainers who would themselves be expected to train others. Problems associated with this approach are examined, especially massive client resistance to theoretical approaches. The value of theory in such courses is seen in its encouragement of role conceptualization, and acceptable teaching material is designed to achieve this end without theoretical exposition, through the development of techniques seen as answers to specific school‐based problems, but implying the development of skills and concepts on a broader base. The management of time is seen as the critical entry point. In this way resource groups of teachers are trained to continue the autonomous development of administrative training in their own in‐service areas.

This chapter focuses on the intricacies of marginalized communities in Bangladesh. It provides an in-depth understanding of these communities, considering their sociocultural backgrounds and the challenges they face. This chapter introduces the empowerment paradigm, highlighting the importance of empowering marginalized groups as a catalyst for positive change. It further explores various strategies and initiatives designed to uplift these communities, emphasizing the pivotal role of family planning in this process. By examining the transformative impact of family planning on marginalized communities, this chapter underscores how it can lead to improved health, education, economic opportunities, gender equality, and overall community development in the Bangladeshi context.

This study reflects an examination of four teachers and their approaches to teaching the Holocaust and comparative genocide. The purpose was to address four succinct research questions that followed a conceptual framework which emerged around these teachers’ rationale, methodology, preparation, and characteristics. Analysis of the results allowed for the emergence of six themes: (a) citizenship, (b) curriculum and design, (c) teaching pedagogy, (d) influence of modeling, (e) neoteny, and (f) life-altering experiences.

Field theory is waxing in the sociology of science, and Pierre Bourdieu’s work is especially influential. His characterization of field structure and dynamics has been especially valuable in drawing attention to hierarchical and center-periphery relations in science and technology, and to the stability and reproduction of science and technology practices. What field theory does less well, however, is to capture the existence of multiple (including marginal) logics around a given sociotechnical object. Nor does it capture the dynamics of a specific logic of neoliberal capitalism in the US: the cultural and economic value of entrepreneurship that emphasizes the continual reconfiguration of social relations, which has its roots in a longer US history of progress-through-reinvention, and is abetted by new technologies designed to continually “update” and remix. Much better at capturing these qualities, we argue, is an institutionalist theory in which dynamism, not stasis, is foregrounded, and there is room for multiple, contradictory, and non-cognitive logics to co-exist. Using the expansion of “alternative nutrition” in the US, we show that its formation took place via the conjunction of parallel streams of social action that encompassed diverse logics and encouraged creativity and hybridity. More generally, variability in field stability and qualities, not static fields, deserve analytic attention.

This Introduction gives a historical and theoretical overview of this volume on Fields of Knowledge: Science, Politics and Publics in the Neoliberal Age, which showcases original research in political sociology of science targeting the changes in scientific and technological policy and practice associated with the rise of neoliberal thought and policies since the 1970s. We argue that an existing family of field theoretic frameworks and empirical field analyses provides a particularly useful set of ideas and approaches for the meso-level understanding of these historical changes in ways that complement as well as challenge other theory traditions in sociology of science, broadly defined. The collected papers exhibit a dual focus on sciences’ interfield relations, connecting science and science policy to political, economic, educational, and other fields and on the institutional logics of scientific fields that pattern expert discourses, practices, and knowledge and shape relations of the scientific field to the rest of the world. By reconceptualizing the central problem for political sociology of science as a problem of field- and inter-field dynamics, and by critically engaging other theory traditions whose assumptions are in some ways undermined by the contemporary history of neoliberalism, we believe these papers collectively chart an important theoretical agenda for future research in the sociology of science.

Today, newly founded businesses are inevitably driven to start in a digital form from day 1. Moreover, most existing businesses conceive digitalization as an important part of their strategic orientation by developing and improving their digital assets and digitalizing their processes. By taking account of this development, this chapter investigates how entrepreneurial orientation (EO) affects a small firm’s proclivity to both digitization and internationalization and their performance that comes from it. Internationalization has been a key topic for many small- and medium-sized companies (SMEs) over the past decades. As digitization is currently taking over the helm from internationalization as the most pressing topic affecting business, we carried out research among SMEs to understand the interplay of these factors influencing business performance. The focus of the research was on the precursory factors inducing firm performance as well as on their interrelationships. Using a sample of 357 SMEs, EO is found to be significantly closely associated with an SME’s degree of digitization as well as with its overall performance. In contrast, EO does not affect the SME’s level of internationalization. This result is surprising considering that proactive and risk-taking firms tend to be more inclined to enter foreign and distant markets.