bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Superstitious Behavior as a Byproduct of Intelligent Adaptation
Authors: Denrell Jerker 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
This article reviews the literature on superstitious behavior in psychology. It then illustrates why limited experimentation is a necessary feature of an intelligent learning policy and why limited experimentation can explain why individuals and organizations perpetuate superstitious behavior. It subsequently discusses several sources of superstitious behavior in organizations. Finally, the article notes that an implication of the author's analysis is that innovations will emerge from managers who are inclined to, or forced by stakeholders, to make unreasonable decisions that ignore the costs of experimenting.
Facilitating Serious Play
Authors: Statler Matt , Oliver David 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
This article provides a descriptive account of how researchers at the Imagination Lab Foundation (I-Lab) designed, facilitated, and followed up on organizational interventions involving a process called “serious play”. It additionally describes the outcomes observed in association with these interventions, and closes with a series of reflections on the significance of those outcomes for organizational decision making, especially with regard to the relationship between strategy process and content; the overcoming of psychological defenses; the role of power; and the cultivation of adaptive potential. This article begins by outlining several basic assumptions. It then describes in detail the design and facilitation of interventions involving serious play in organizations.
Structuring the Decision Process: An Evaluation of Methods
Authors: Wright George , Goodwin Paul 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
This article examines the effectiveness of methods that are designed to provide structure and support to decision making. Those that are primarily aimed at individual decision makers are examined first and then attention is turned to groups. In each case weaknesses of unaided decision making are identified and how successful the application of formal methods is likely to be in mitigating these weaknesses is assessed.
Troubling Futures: Scenarios and Scenario Planning for Organizational Decision Making
Authors: Healey Mark P. , Hodgkinson Gerard P. 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
Drawing on research in the psychological sciences that has largely been overlooked in the scenario planning literature, this article argues that when used unskillfully scenarios can anchor and confine, rather than stretch and expand, strategic thinking and that constructing scenarios can itself be a biased activity, one that can induce new and amplify extant biases rather than remove them. Furthermore, unless skillfully introduced, scenario techniques can reduce or increase disproportionately the confidence and uncertainty of decision makers, leading correspondingly to misplaced optimism and threat rigidity among decision makers. In addition, the article highlights how, in some circumstances, the negative emotional impact of scenario analysis can override the potentially positive cognitive effects. Guidelines for using scenarios in organizational decision making are offered throughout.
How Durkheim's Theory of Meaning‐making Influenced Organizational Sociology
Authors: Dobbin Frank 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
Émile Durkheim's Division of Labor has palpably influenced students of organizations, occupations, and stratification. Durkheim's influence has been documented by exploring his contribution to our understanding of the global division of labor. This article examines the influence of Durkheim's theory of meaning on organizational sociology, which has taken a cultural turn since the late 1970s with the rise of the new institutional theory and organizational culture theory. As the founder of the cultural approach in sociology, Durkheim might well have won credit for the cultural turn in organizational analysis. But while he is frequently cited for his influence on symbolic interactionists, Durkheim is rarely cited by social constructionists who study organizations.
The Sociology of Race
Authors: Nkomo Stella M. 
Published: September 2009

AbstractThis article aims to review the seminal work of W. E. B. Du Bois—who has been proclaimed, ‘the first sociologist of race’ (Lewis 2000: 550)—and to explore its relevance for organization studies. This review is done within the complex contours of today's global racial context. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote of race as the problem of the twentieth century and while Du Bois wrote primarily about race in the United States, he astutely recognized the problem was global in scope. Globalization today has evoked two visions of how race and ethnicity manifest in the workplace. There is the positive vision of a multicultural global village in which people of different cultures intermingle across boundaries, use technology to bridge physical distance, exchange goods, and leverage capital and resources. In a contrasting vision, cultural harmony and integration remain elusive. Globalization produces a situation in which identities continue to be sources of conflict, marginalization, and political struggle.
Peopling Organizations
Authors: Hallett Tim , Shulman David , Fine Gary Alan 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
Interactionists have long focused on what goes on within organizations—thus their scholarly importance as researchers of work. However, they have avoided conceptualizing organizations as such until quite recently. Their primary concerns are the relationships among individuals and how people create meanings and social relations. Structures and institutions, while never denied, receive secondary attention. Interactionists have made their most significant advances studying interpersonal realms, not in their investigations of ‘institutions’ or ‘society’. This article argues that the value of the interactionist approach for organizational research exists in its emphasis on how interaction and meaning provide a foundation for thinking about the constitutive role of people in organizations. The ‘peopled’ perspective of symbolic interaction stands in stark contrast to the ‘un-peopled’ view that has often characterized organizational sociology.
Sociological Classics and the Canon in the Study of Organizations
Authors: Davis Gerald F. , Zald Mayer N. 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
This article states that a distinctive feature of many parts of sociology, including organizational sociology, is their impulse towards classicism, and their evident variations of the ancestors. The article summarizes the analysis that has been offered in this book. It concentrates on the influence of classic authors and asks questions about the contexts within which the classical texts came about and how such texts became known as ‘classics’. It also looks at canonical changes in the field. It analyses the reasons why studying the classics might help with the theorizing the contemporary transition away from a society of organizations. The analysis in this volume has presented a feast for reflection on the continuing relevance and sometimes irrelevance of past works, this article states. The classics and the canon evolve.
‘Now and in England’ ()
Authors: Jay Elisabeth 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
This article describes a historical trajectory that could be interpreted as leading to the final crumbling away of institutional religion, the breakdown of shared values, and the disappearance of a distinctively national literature, or as the empowerment of the laity in a wider community no longer hedged about with effectively policed border controls. Full empowerment, however, involves access not only to the data, but to knowledge about how that data has been produced and used in the decision-making processes which led people to this stage. This book is designed not only for those academically committed to the interdisciplinary study of literature and theology, but for any general reader interested in the cultural state people find themselves in ‘Now and in England’.
The Study of Literature and Theology
Authors: Jasper David 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
In recent times, the study of ‘literature and theology’ or ‘literature and religion’ has been granted, if often somewhat grudgingly, its place in the curriculum of the academy. Within churches and Christian communities, there has been a rather bemused acknowledgement of the power and importance of literature, resulting in such phenomena as ‘narrative theology’. The study of literature and theology is alive and well, though it remains unsystematic and patchy. The texts of English literature and the doctrines of theology continue to enjoy creative conversations, though perhaps not much more than that, and the fundamental terms of the two fields of study remain unchanged. That change, specifically in theology, may now be beginning at the same time the churches which have been the guardians of Christian theology continue a seemingly irreversible slide into institutional decay.
The Protestant and Catholic Reformations
Authors: Cummings Brian 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
A history of theology in Western Europe that failed to place the sixteenth-century religious Reformations at a prominent place in its narrative would make strange reading. A history of literature in the sixteenth century that placed a similar emphasis on the religious Reformations would, until very recently, have looked decidedly eccentric. In the last ten years, such assumptions have been put into disarray. Increasingly, it is becoming as hard to separate literary production from the processes of religious change as it is the visual and musical arts, where the Reformation has long been a key object of enquiry. Not only evidently devotional works, but literature across the genres, are increasingly seen in this light: the shadow of the Reformation has been observed even across the face of Shakespeare studies. Moreover, secularization itself can be seen as an important dimension of the reaction to religious division.
The Enlightenment
Authors: Lewis Rhodri 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
As is so often the case, the simpler the question, the more difficult it can be satisfactorily to answer it. This article explains why. It investigates: the meaning and usefulness of the term ‘Enlightenment’; the origins and evolution of British Enlightened thought, which emerged a number of decades before that of France or Scotland; and the animating role of theological debate, controversy, and speculation within this. It becomes clear that there was such a thing as a British, and specifically an English, Enlightenment, and that, far from being religiously iconoclastic, it was characterized by deep theological commitment. The article also sketches some aspects of the relationship between British Enlightened thought and literature. It happened at a time in which books, periodicals, and other printed materials were more widely available, and literary texts came both to shape and to animate the whole gamut of Enlightened thinking.
The Victorians
Authors: Wright Terry R. 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
In looking at the Victorians in the context of the development of ‘literary’ modes of understanding theology, this article presents a generic organization that highlights the way in which literary form shapes theological meaning. The second section of the article explores the novel, which became the dominant literary form during this period. Victorian poets also provide an account of the age's engagement with Christianity. The third section focuses primarily on the dramatic monologue, perhaps the single-most-important literary invention of an age when the theatre itself is widely regarded as having undergone a relatively barren time. The point of the dramatic monologue, the discussion argues, is that it explores the particular significance of a particular individual's experience of religion in a particular place and time.
Postmodernism
Authors: Hart Kevin 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
Any general consideration of postmodernism must begin with more than a ritual bow to Jean-François Lyotard, whose The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge extended and accelerated the circulation of the word. Lyotard uses ‘postmodern’ to denote the impact of twentieth-century cultural transformations ‘in the context of the crisis of narratives’, and thereby brings literature onto centre stage in discussion of the postmodern. In treating English literature and theology from the perspective of postmodernism, one can do more than reflect on fiction influenced by cultural postmodernism that also touches on religious matters, and theology marked by postmodernism in one or another sense. One also needs to take account of attempts in Britain to make ‘literature and theology’ into a discipline in its own right and assess the ways in which that has been shaped by postmodern concerns.
The Bible as Literature and Sacred Text
Authors: Hawkins Peter S. 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
Any consideration of the ‘Bible as Literature and Sacred Text’ must begin by recognizing the problematic nature of that deceptively simple conjunction, ‘and’. Although it may imply an easy equivalency, these two identities have never rested easily with one another. For centuries, appreciation for Scripture's artistry sprang from the devout conviction that its divine Author would offer nothing less than perfection. Now, by contrast, biblical writing is typically considered a human endeavour that warrants critical consideration for historical and aesthetic reasons. Given the Bible's importance to Western literature, people study it to gain some notion of the biblical literacy that until recently almost any writer both possessed and expected to find in a reader.
Judges
Authors: Beal Timothy K. 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
Like the literature that precedes and follows in the Hebrew Bible, the book of Judges is clearly the product of a complicated literary history involving the early formation and deformation of Israel in the land of Canaan. It is a book whose coherence is in many ways found in its dissymmetry. In recent decades, such tensions between surface structure and deep chaos, and predictable repetition and disturbing interruption, have made the book of Judges a significant focus of study for new literary approaches in biblical studies. The book of Judges may be divided into three main parts: 1: 1–3: 6, accounts of tribal conquest and failure in Canaan; 3: 7–16: 31, the cycles of thirteen judges who delivered Israelites from oppression by other peoples; and 17: 1–21: 25, narratives of atrocity, civil war, and collapse among the tribes of Israel.
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job
Authors: Nielsen Kirsten 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job form the main part of the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. They share an interest in everyday life and the desire to create order out of human experiences, but offer no single theology that can be described as ‘wisdom’ theology – only a common concern for the conditions of human life and for human experience as the basis for theology. The conceptual origin of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job is of a world created and therefore ordered, but they disagree on whether man is capable of perceiving that order. They agree that the path to wisdom is through experience, but whether an underlying order can be construed from human concrete experiences is debatable. The three wisdom books are concerned with the human condition; they are not accounts of historical persons, but tales of everyman.
Prophetic Literature
Authors: Sherwood Yvonne 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
One of the reasons that the Prophets have been confined to the peripheries is because the new literary study in Biblical Studies has usually defined itself in opposition to historical criticism, with its emphasis on the text as an uneven composite of sources. The untidy Prophets have proved difficult to fit into models of literature defined on holistic, New-Critical lines. Compiled according to a system that seems perverse by Western standards, oracles are often placed adjacent to one another on the basis of a shared pun or catchword. Generally, the reception of prophecy tends to focus on prophecy as a generic category, so transcending awkward textual specifics. Prophecy has been understood as a high aesthetic category meaning variously, and by no means coherently, inspiration, dissidence, individualism, innovation, and supreme craft.
The Gospel of John
Authors: Reinhartz Adele 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
Like other books of the New Testament, the Gospel of John can be viewed from a variety of perspectives. For the Christian church, it is sacred Scripture that enshrines eternal truths about God, Jesus, humankind, and the relationships among them. For historians, it is a potential source of information about the historical Jesus. This article introduces the literary-critical study of the Gospel of John. It considers the following issues: the Fourth Gospel's literary structure and the basic narrative elements such as plot, setting, characterization, and chronology; some of the literary devices that pervade the Gospel; the ways in which literary approaches to the Fourth Gospel resonate in English literature; and a number of the major literary-critical approaches which have been applied to the Gospel. Finally, the article addresses the question of the Gospel of John and historical criticism, to show how literary-critical approaches can actually complement and even illuminate historical concerns.
William Blake
Authors: Burdon Christopher 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
The labour of that celebrant of Energy and the Prolific, William Blake (1757–1827), has generated an energetic and prolific diversity of interpretation. Though little known to his contemporaries and largely forgotten after his death, Blake's huge output of art and poetry inspired a range of twentieth-century readers, who drew from him or read into him principles democratic and aristocratic; libertarian and nationalist; activist and quietist; and Christian, Gnostic, and atheist. This article first reflects on how this difficult poet-artisan-prophet-artist can be read theologically. It then examines particular motifs, symbols, and beliefs in Blake, and considers how these might inform or subvert Christian and other theologies today. The article looks at the place of energy and imagination; the notions of ‘Divine Humanity’ and ‘One Man’ or Albion; and the depictions of law, sin, liberty, and forgiveness.
George Eliot and Hardy
Authors: Vance Norman 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
George Eliot was the first English translator of the iconoclastically post-Christian commentators David Strauss and Ludwig Feuerbach. But as a novelist she continued to explore connections between divinity (or ‘the Unseen’) and human goodness in an informal, residually numinous ‘Religion of Humanity’. Thomas Hardy, much more overtly negative about traditional Christianity in his novels, has been less congenial to theologians, though Pamela Dalziel has recently demonstrated his sustained religious seriousness. For Hardy, as for many others, the First World War made it much harder to defend any kind of optimism about human affairs. For him, as for George Eliot, Christianity might have become metaphysically problematic, but it still provided a language and a reference point for moral and social concern, a way of approaching the pain and the possibility of good in the world.
James Joyce
Authors: Cunningham Valentine 
Published: September 2009

AbstractThis article compares James Joyce's work as a supersaturation: the excessive adding of an element to a liquid, going further than is strictly necessary, a severely overdone baptism. Joyce's texts come soaked in religion, supersaturated indeed in the specifically Christian, the Roman Catholic, the Irish Roman Catholic – an awesomeness of detailing, all the more obsessive as these writings' bulk expanded in an almost overwhelming exuberance of Catholicized baroque. While looking at his works, particularly in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, the discussion notes that Joyce's fiction, his fabulation, his textuality, and his poetics are shaped by an usurping, heretic, father-killing, word-colonizing metamorphosis.
Cranmer and the Collects
Authors: Gray Donald 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
In the days before universal literacy, linguistic style was most chiefly influenced by that which was heard being read aloud. The place where everyone was subject to this was in church at worship. The first major dose of this wholesome and improving medicine was administered by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) through the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. The collects provide a rich source of the Archbishop's art. The collect is a short and particular type of prayer that is a feature of the worship of Western Christianity. It asks for one thing and one thing only, and that in the tersest of language. To be good, it must have colour, rhythm, finality, a certain conciseness as well as vigour of thought; but it must be a united petition or it becomes something else rather than a collect.
John Bunyan
Authors: Collmer Robert G. 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
Seventeenth-century Puritanism offers a remarkable spectrum of political and religious diversity. Specifically, Monica Furlong asserted that Puritanism produced ‘two geniuses in the persons of John Milton and John Bunyan’. The complexity of thought and range of knowledge possessed by John Milton stood in sharp contrast to the apparent simplicity and narrowness of view of John Bunyan. Bunyan wrote some sixty works, including The Pilgrim's Progress, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman , and The Holy War, didactic works, his spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, his systematic theology, A Confession of my Faith and A Reason of my Practice, and other doctrinal writings. His theology is firmly Bible based. Bunyan's literary creations were not abstractions but sprang from problems and successes either in his immediate experience, or in that of persons with whom he associated.
Bishop Butler
Authors: Branch Lori 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
One of the great ironies of the history of theological writing in England is that Bishop Joseph Butler (1692–1752) viewed his intellectual projects – scientific in spirit, clouded only by the careful qualifications of his claims – as eminently practical extensions of his pastoral duties as a clergyman. This article suggests that in the rise and fall of Butler's influence, one can see the way in which religion in modernity has tended to become rationalized and secularized into a morality that has no need of faith. In the apologetic quest for rational arguments in favour of Christianity, Butler came to affirm the element of uncertainty in religious belief to an extent so disturbing in the Age of Reason. Butler's gradual recognition of the subtle ways in which people shape their propensity to believe led to an interest in church ritual and self-construction.
Possibilities of Redemption Through the Novel
Authors: Boscaljon Daniel 
Published: September 2009

Abstract
Redemption is a powerful and uplifting theme that acknowledges the human potential to succeed after having failed. Theological understandings of it focus on how humans can restore their relationships with God despite having fallen from grace into sin. Literature takes the same theme of brokenness and renewal and places it in the context of life on earth, thus including understandings of redemption that may stray from those theologically defined. In this way, even ‘secular’ literatures can be seen as doing ‘theological’ work. Although many pre-novelistic works of British literature utilize the theme of redemption – from Gawaine and the Green Knight to the plays of Shakespeare – this article limits the examination to ways in which the theme of redemption is developed through the form of the novel. It looks at books that unsettle or challenge previous understandings.