A brief history of the university, from Oxford and Cambridge to Harvard and Columbia, then from the University of Virginia to the University of California. The chapter focuses on the Morrill Act of 1862 (known also as the Land Grant Act) and on the influence of the German research university in the late nineteenth century. Considers the analysis of Laurence Veysey that the university was in some respects “incoherent” from the late nineteenth century on, given the competing constituencies made up of faculty, students, and alumni. Traces the twentieth-century history of the American university, especially the role of federal funding for research, the GI Bill after World War II, and then the Master Plan forged between Clark Kerr, President of the University of California, and Pat Brown, Governor of California, in 1960.

In this chapter, we explore this possibility when it comes to the three most known exploitative work forms slavery, serfdom and wage labour. It turns out that they all have an attached ideology, explaining why respective way of organising work is the only morally good and therefore meaningful one. Each work form is portrayed as the single one being beneficial to all involved and thereby meaningful to all. Slavery is good for slave owners as well as slaves, serfdom for feudal lords as well as serfs, wage labour for capitalists as well as wage labourers. Each ideology also says that all other work forms are morally reprehensible and therefore meaningless. The aim of the chapter is to illustrate that the theorisation of the concept of work in the way we suggest opens up the possibility of comparative studies of the meaning of different work forms.

A particularity about the literature on the meaning of work is that the concept of meaning is discussed extensively and deeply, while the concept of work is hardly debated at all. Tackling this shortcoming, we start out by taking up contradictions in the social science debate on definitions of the concept of work. Four such contradictions stand out: (1) Subjective vs. objective definitions; (2) a single vs. several work concepts; (3) certain activities in themselves vs. any activity within specific social relations are to be regarded as work; and (4) empirical vs. ontological basis of the concept. In investigating them, we take help from what are often said to be the three most important classics of social science: How have Émile Durkheim, Max Weber and Karl Marx handled the concept of work? Specifically, can we get inspiration from them to take stands concerning the contradictions? The answers to these questions lead us to suggest this definition: Work is any activity performed in internal social relations that structure the sphere of necessity. Finally, we discuss the three suggested explicit conceptualisations of ‘work’ that we have found in the meaningful work literature.

This chapter begins with examples of experiments of building new universities or investing significant new resources in old universities in India and China to make the point that there seems to be more dynamism in the higher education sector these days in Asia than in America. The chapter moves from this to considering some of the core ideas of the university – to borrow the title of Cardinal Newman’s famous nineteenth-century book The Idea of the University – focusing on the ideas behind the liberal arts. I look at the relationship of the liberal arts to the humanities and consider some of the debates over both curricular requirements and canons as well as more broadly the way the humanities have often been narrowly identified with western civilization and specifically with departments of European language and literature (with a little history, philosophy, and classics thrown in). I consider the tensions and divides between the “arts” and the “sciences” as well as the residual investments of religious belief and values in many understandings and depictions of the liberal arts. I use this to consider issues related to free speech and open inquiry more broadly, as well as the residual tensions between teaching and research.

This chapter is an account of my experiences as a member of the faculty in different universities. I taught at Caltech where I was a member of an interdisciplinary group of faculty in the humanities and social sciences and came to know prominent humanists in other fields as well as scientists such as Richard Feynman, Murray Gel Man, and Max Delbruck. I then moved to the University of Michigan where I joined an active group of interdisciplinary scholars, encountered the attractions and problems of cultural studies, and then began to do institutional work by creating a new interdepartmental PhD program in Anthropology and History. Because of the success of that program, I was invited to Columbia University to chair the Anthropology Department and become the Franz Boas Professor at Columbia.

Clark Kerr, President of the University of California, famously coined the term the “multiversity” to capture the expansion of universities in mid twentieth-century America to the point that they contained multiple and often competing (and indeed conflicting) goals, interests, and trajectories. While Kerr waxed eloquent about the value of the multiversity, he worried about the loss of community and purpose he associated with the smaller undergraduate college – especially in relation to undergraduate education. In particular, he worried that incentive structures for faculty led them to focus on narrow research as well as their own entrepreneurial opportunities outside the university, while they became more detached from undergraduate teaching on the one side, and more resistant to administrative leadership and guidance on the other. I follow up on the tensions between administrators and faculty and the ways in which disciplinary structures impede both intellectual openness and institutional experimentation.

This chapter explains what Strategy Beyond Markets is, and why it is important to business practitioners.

Engaging in normative discussions about the characteristics and requirements of a good life in a good society, Political Philosophy has a long-standing history in identifying the economic, political and social requirements for turning waged work into a practice that contributes to human flourishing. Meanwhile, a widely shared scepticism towards meaningful work under capitalism is another powerful theme in the field, arguing that the alienating nature of waged work cannot be overcome. This chapter argues that contributions to meaningful work in the realm of Political Philosophy have a strong tendency to incorporate both positions, presenting an ambivalent understanding of wage labour as activity that is burdensome and alienating for the many and emancipatory and meaningful for the few. Discussing two of the most significant schools of thought in this field, virtue ethics and political materialist contributions, the chapter identifies and compares their ontological understandings of work and its nature under capitalism, the conceptualisation of labour agency and the guiding principles of meaningful work that they promote.

Sometimes, it is possible for an industry to preempt government regulation by mitigating the societal concerns that prompt the government to intervene. This is desirable when government intervention is likely to be clumsy. Executing preemption is difficult. The challenge lies in the absence of enforcement power: not every industry player, and sometimes no single industry player, necessarily has an incentive to do what is desirable for the industry as a whole. And, by construction, there is no Institution with the power to impose change. This chapter studies two general settings in which this challenge exists and, nevertheless, the industry is able to achieve optimal preemption.

The chapter begins with a brief summary of the theory and findings. It then examines whether the strong relationship between electoral autocracies and Chinese foreign spending is evident among a wider range of issues based on analysis of United Nations General Assembly votes. The findings indicate that electoral autocracies have displayed a markedly higher propensity to vote with China since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative. The chapter then discusses theoretical, policy, and business implications in turn.

To explain countries’ varying participation in the Belt and Road Initiative, this chapter begins with a discussion of recipient country characteristics that impact the demand for Chinese spending, including the political regime, clientelism, and the public-private orientation of the corporate sector. It then discusses the supply-side factors that influence Chinese foreign spending, including the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), state-owned entities (e.g., SOEs), and private firms. Finally, it evaluates the compatibility of these demand and supply characteristics. The key prediction is that electoral autocracies will display the strongest compatibility with Chinese foreign construction spending. This is amplified when the leaders of these regimes have a weak or insecure hold on power. Electoral autocracies are also predicted to be the most avid adopters of Chinese standards stemming from their eagerness for Chinese infrastructure spending.