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Systems thinking is a comprehensive approach to analysis and problem solving that examines the relationship between different parts of a system and the environment in which the system operates. Climate change and environmental issues directly affect humanitarian activities, and the impacts can threaten people’s lives and livelihoods. This chapter provides an overview of how the systems thinking approach can integrate with impact assessment techniques to determine the effects of climate change on organisations. An illustrated case of the internal and external interactions of a small vegetable farm is presented, along with an exercise of assessing the impact of climate change on organisations.

THE proposition that British library schools should examine their own students is not a new one. As long ago as 1954, Roy Stokes put the question bluntly to the profession. In those days his was a voice crying in the wilderness. The profession at large was not ready for such a development, and continued to adhere to its long held view that the Library Association should examine the products of the schools, while the schools confined themselves to teaching.

Literary art is often embraced by a people because it provides answers to life’s questions and showcases idealized heroes who function as respected role models. By analyzing the popularity of universally loved literary masterpieces, it becomes possible to gain a greater understanding of how a specific people respond in uniform fashion to symbolic communications. In order to examine this phenomenon, parallels between Virgil’s The Aeneid (which was addressed to ancient Romans just as the Empire was being established) and Owen Wister’s The Virginian (which provided a symbolic hero for the USA at exactly the time when that country was emerging as an industrialized world power) will be compared. Significantly, in many cases, almost all members of a culture react to stimuli in parallel, universal, or identical ways. This tendency is important for marketers who seek to influence a wide and diverse market in similar ways. The implications of this analysis are of value to strategic planners who want to understand how consumers respond to symbolically charged products.

The law-oriented short stories and novels of lawyer/English professor John William Corrington are receiving increasing attention from legal scholars. However, no one has analyzed the science fiction screenplays he co-wrote with his wife, Joyce, from a legal perspective. This article analyzes two such screenplays and concludes that they are “Socratic” texts whose narrative structures and epistemological processes work in much the same way that the traditional participatory exchange works in law school. My analysis explores the links between law, allegory and science fiction as intersecting methods to imagine the possibilities for the future.

The presence of Latin in heavy metal music ranges from full texts, intros, song and album titles to band names, pseudonyms, and literary quotations. This chapter sheds light on heavy metal's fascination with the history and ‘arcane’ sound of Latin, and investigates its patterns of use in lyrics with the help of Natural Language Processing tools and digitally-available linguistic resources. First, the authors collected a corpus of lyrics containing differing amounts of Latin and enhanced it with descriptive metadata. Next, the authors calculated the richness of the vocabulary and the distribution of content words. The authors processed the corpus with a morphological analyser and performed both a manual and a computational search for intertextuality, including allusions, paraphrase and verbatim quotations of literary sources. The authors show that, despite it being a dead language, Latin is very frequently used in metal. Its historical status appears to fascinate bands and lends itself well to those religious, epic and mysterious themes so characteristic of the heavy metal world. The widespread use of Latin in metal lyrics, however, sees many bands simply reusing Latin texts – mostly from the Bible – or even misspelling literary quotations.

Chapter 1 is entitled “Normative Scripture – Christian and American.” Here Pelikan considers the normative status of the two documents. Though their texts were “originally composed under very specific circumstances,” illumined by later scholarship, they have been “adopted by a community as its normative Great Code…occupying a position that in some profound sense stands beyond its own history” (pp. 4–5).That normative status is based on the assumption that it can be applied to any and all of the radically changed situations of later times, many of which the writers who originally framed it could not themselves conceivable have foreseen…. Therefore its words and phrases have for centuries called forth meticulous and sophisticated – and sometimes painfully convoluted – interpretation, as well as continual reinterpretation.…a massive corpus of authoritative, if often controversial, commentary. (p. 5)

The Protestant Work Ethic (PWE) is an important construct for management theorists. However, there appear to be biases and distortions in the way it is used in research. This paper aims to discuss the issues of assumptions involving the PWE, thus addressing this gap in the management literature.

The management literature distorts the PWE in three ways. First, though there are multiple work ethics, researchers largely focus on this one. This paper examines work‐ethics research and language in various management fields. Second, the construct has been developed within limited philosophical perspectives. This is tested by comparing work histories. Third, the historic documents are investigated and it is argued that the PWE is not Protestant.

There is evidence of bias in the management literature concerning the PWE. Though there are many work values, management research is dominated by the PWE. Luther's and Calvin's writings indicate that their essential views on work are the opposite of Webers' formulation of the PWE. However, the views of Marx and Engels on work echo the PWE.

If a basic assumption is distorted, research utilizing this assumption is suspect. The PWE is an important construct in several management disciplines. Bias in construct assumptions can result in inaccurate measurements and results.

Researchers must constantly be aware of possible personal bias, particularly regarding key constructs. Scholars should regularly examine assumptions in their discipline. The history of a discipline can greatly assist this examination.

This is one of the few examinations of the assumptions behind a key construct in the management literature, the PWE. There are strong indications that distortions about the PWE have been reified.