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Using a critical perspective, this study reviews human rights and media in the context of capitalist empire, using Habermas' notion that capitalism offers formal but not substantive democracy. The author draws the reader into an impassioned discussion of the failure of government and media to address the significant inequalities in the world and the resulting human rights violations to demonstrate that human rights encompass concerns about economic and social inequalities as well as political and civil rights. Criticism of how capitalism treats rights has been part of the international human rights conversation since World War II.

Increasing human rights violations in the world today and the mass media's evidentiary lack of interest in the sources of these social problems underlie the author's earnest search for a better way. The study draws from the social science literature, while observing and gathering data on media coverage. Data limitations on media human rights indicate further research by the author that would explain the ideology and rhetoric as well as historic shifting patterns.

David L. Altheide is Emeritus Regents’ Professor in the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University. Using qualitative methodology, his work has focused on the role of mass media and information technology for social control. His two most recent books are: Terrorism and the Politics of Fear (Alta Mira, 2006) and Terror Post 9/11 and the Media (Lang, 2009). The former work as well as Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis (Aldine/Transaction, 2002) received the Cooley Award as the best books for the year in the tradition of symbolic interaction, from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. Dr. Altheide also won this award in 1986 for his book Media Power, and he is the 2005 George Herbert Mead Award recipient for lifetime contributions from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.

The Studies in Communications book series presents contemporary scholarship on the central dynamic of society – communications. Theoretically grounded empirical studies drawn from the social sciences focus on the institutional patterns, media, and the dynamic process of meaning construction. Incorporating communications, mass media and communications, sociological and critical theories, comparative and historical analysis, with combinations of qualitative and quantitative research provide compelling themes for each volume of the series. Volume 6 develops the “Human Rights and Media” theme. The collective rights associated with age, class, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, and disability are framed by the media. The studies in this volume explore the connections and discourse of media and human rights, through media production, social policies and responsibilities, human rights violation and the social, institutional, and global contexts of social movements for human rights protections and about human rights violations.

This paper aims to correct some misconceptions about George Homans. Specifically, it clarifies the relationship between Homans and Malinowski, explains why Homans is rightfully considered the father of social exchange, shows Homans’ perspective on altruism and self-interest and analyses Homans’ place in management’s complex history.

This is a conceptual paper which synthesizes both primary and secondary sources on Homans, social exchange theory (SET), Malinowski and other Homans’ contemporaries and theories, which, in aggregate, help dispel some common misconceptions in the literature today.

This paper disperses several common misconceptions about Homans and his work. First, the findings show that beliefs that Homans was unaware of Malinowski are not justified, as Homans was not only aware of Malinowski but also significantly influenced by Malinowski’s work. Second, this manuscript clarifies that while Homans, for specific reasons, focussed on self-interest, his work accounted for altruism. Lastly, this paper also further cements Homans’ place in history as the father of social exchange.

Recent misconceptions have emerged in the literature calling to question not only Homans’ legitimacy as the father of social exchange but also some of his views on the theory itself. By clarifying these misconceptions, this paper enables scholars from a variety of management fields to better understand historical foundations of SET and its impact on current research.

Social entrepreneurs and market-driven organizations are those that hold themselves accountable to both social and financial outcomes; they advance their mission by building focused strategies and sustainable business models that address customer needs and yield competitive advantage. In order to apply these market-based approaches toward social solutions, leaders must first be equipped with skills and resources to build organizational capacity that can deliver results. Wendy Kopp, Founder and Executive Director of Teach for America, recently summarized this point during a convening at the Annie E. Casey Foundation of leaders across sectors: “There’s nothing more important than talent and team in organization building as we think about how to get where we want to go”. Teach for America address. Annie E. Casey Foundation Baltimore, MD).

Inequality is an important organizational phenomenon. Scholars have argued that inequalities persistently dwell in the flow of our lives and have a lingering impact. Yet, despite such compelling evidence, research has overlooked how individuals make sense of the inequalities they face inside and outside the organizations. The purpose of this paper was to address these gaps and capture its complexity on individual lived experiences with inequalities.

The present study used Seidman's adapted 2-interview strategy to collect the data. The first interview placed the participant's life history at the center, allowing the participant to share their childhood and adulthood experiences with inequalities inside and outside the organizations. The second interview focused on the concrete details of the participant's present lived experience and their reflections on the meaning of their experiences. In total, the present study relied on 26 interviews with 13 participants.

Lived experiences provided an extended-time view and allowed the researcher to explore how study participants perceived, coped and were shaped by inequalities throughout their lives. In addition, the sense-making perspective offered a new lens to study inequalities. Findings underscore the racial, class and gendered dynamics within organizations supporting their intersectional impact and acknowledge the pre-existing societal norms that condition individual actions and choices.

The study presents an “engaged” view of inequality to highlight it as a cumulative and complex experience. The findings help us recognize that participants are immersed in their specific contexts to act, negotiate, empower and make decisions under real-life pressures. Overall, the study pushes the boundaries of inequality research beyond its current episodic treatment.

Patent litigation consists of non-market actions that firms undertake to access intellectual property rights defined by prior legislation and enforced by the courts. Thus, patent litigation provides an interesting context in which to explore aspects of firm’s non-market strategies. In contrast with prior non-market strategy research that has largely focused on how political institutions define the rules of the game for market competition, non-market actions within patent litigation primarily seek to access and apply these broad policies to specific situations, products, or assets that matter to the firm. Furthermore, because such non-market actions are directly influenced by the firms’ market strategies, they represent a promising area for research on integrated (market and non-market) strategies as well.

The goal of this paper is to explain how generic patent strategies that firms use to support their competitive advantage in the product-market influence non-market outcomes related to the timing of patent litigation resolution. In contrast with prior research that has studied settlement in patent litigation essentially as a one-shot bargaining game, this paper seeks to explain litigation resolution as an outcome of the competing mechanisms of settlement and adjudication that operate continually during litigation. Using a large sample of patent litigations in research medicines and computers, I model the timing of patent litigation resolution in a proportional hazards framework, wherein settlement and adjudication are competing risks. The evidence found is consistent with the proposition that the speed with which patent litigation is resolved by either settlement or adjudication reflects the use of proprietary, defensive, and leveraging patent strategies by firms. These findings also help to explain unexpected and anomalous findings regarding the settlement of patent litigation reported in prior research.