London School Of Economics Research Articles

Go Your Own Way

In this panel, we share insights from LSE100 (London School of Economics) and Leading in a Post-Crisis World (University of Sydney Business School). These multidisciplinary programs engage students in collaborative problem-solving across diverse backgrounds and skill sets. Our challenge lies in integrating these varied perspectives into a cohesive classroom experience. To address this, we employ digitally enhanced practices, including media-rich course materials and a flipped lecture structure. These approaches connect students across disciplines, allowing them to select content relevant to their learning goals. Additionally, we explore video and digital storytelling as assessment tools, fostering student confidence in emerging technologies. Attendees will witness embedded video technology examples and receive basic training for digital storytelling using accessible tools like smartphones. We argue that these tools can be used by a variety of educators and will demonstrate easy ways to bring them into a program of study.

Caste and its implications for sociologies of inequality

The concern to think about the place of caste as a conceptual category – within, and in relation to, broader sociological understandings of inequality – was the primary motivation of the British Sociological Association Presidential event on ‘Caste and its Implications for Sociologies of Inequality’ held at the London School of Economics in late autumn 2023. It sought not only to engage with caste sociologically but also to ask the question of what a consideration of caste could bring to sociological thinking more generally.

“Social science is explanation or it is nothing.” Introduction to a debate

AbstractThis essay introduces contributions to a special section, which documents and extends a debate on the proposition “Social Science is Explanation or it is Nothing” held at the London School of Economics on October 13th, 2022. It discusses the history of the “Group for Theoretical Debates in Anthropology” led by Tim Ingold, Peter Wade and Soumhya Venkatesan, which has handed down a list of credible candidates for issues that had a chance of engaging every anthropologist, including students and those with interdisciplinary interests. It raises questions about the specific affordances of debates as forms of academic engagements. It argues that the chosen proposition concerning explanation invites a discussion about the contributions of the social sciences at a time when impulses from science and technology studies as well as fruitful exchanges across the boundary between “theory” and “method” have helped us moved beyond the older question as to whether or not sociology is “a science”.

Dynamic Interplay of Online Risk and Resilience in Adolescence (DIORA): a protocol for a 12-month prospective observational study testing the associations among digital activity, affective and cognitive reactions and depression symptoms in a community sample of UK adolescents

IntroductionThe impact of digital activity on adolescent mental health has been difficult to assess because of methodological limitations and a lack of strong theory. Dynamic Interplay of Online Risk and...

Capitalism, coronavirus, and war in the digital age: Interview with Radhika Desai

In Spring 2024, I met Radhika Desai for the first time at the London School of Economics and Political Science when we both held visiting positions at the Department of International Development as invited scholarly visitors. Although I had not expected her presence, I immediately recognized her after having been a reader of her works on geopolitical economy when developing my own ideas about the political economy of Chinese media and communications. I introduced myself and started talking with her, first at a coffee shop, then in a small office inside LSE’s Connaught House, and later at the Marx Memorial Library in London for a book launch party. Prompted by my questions rooted in the field of media and communication, Radhika Desai shared ideas from her newly published book, Capitalism, Coronavirus, and War: A Geopolitical Economy (Routledge, 2023), which is being translated into Chinese, her critiques about imperialism, globalization and essentially the world order after decades of neoliberalism, and, furthermore, her hopes for China, BRICS, and, ultimately, for the political left. Now, these conversations are turned into a dialogue piece, and with it I hope Communication and the Public readers will sense my gains from Radhika Desai, that is, to paraphrase from the famous line from the Communist Manifesto, in the digital age when all that is solid melts into ostensibly immaterial communication, man/woman is at last compelled to face with sober senses the real conditions of life and his or her relations with their kind.

The Semiotics of Solidarity: Reinterpreting Artefacts of Latin American Resistance in Contemporary Leeds

This paper examines reinterpretations of solidarity with Latin America through a student-led project at the University of Leeds. The project, ‘Thinking Inside the Box: 1973’ (hereafter, TITB), was a collaboration between the University of London – specifically, King’s College London, Queen Mary University of London, and the London School of Economics – and the Universities of Leeds and Liverpool in 2023. The broader framework of TITB seeks to generate liberatory and transformative learning by approaching the educative process with students as co-creators and co-curators of knowledge. The approach draws from decolonial theory by seeking to challenge the hierarchical practices of mainstream education in which the teacher imposes knowledge on the student. In dialogue with Freirian concepts of collective interpretation and ‘conscientisation’ (Freire, 1968), scholars and students involved in the project used archives to run a series of events and public engagements. It connects students to each other and to a range of archival materials, broadly themed around 20th century Latin America, to inspire them in designing, developing and delivering an output of significant impact by engaging with local communities; in this case, the Chilean diaspora of the dictatorship. The project promotes the co-curation of knowledge, teaching and learning, and supports students to practice autonomy in their journeys of content and skills acquisition (Grimaldi, Carvalho and Natale, 2022; Grimaldi and Rofe, 2023).

A Conversation with Professor Clare Hemmings

Clare Hemmings is a Professor of Feminist Theory at the Department of Gender Studies (formerly Gender Institute), London School of Economics and Political Science, where she has worked since 1999. Her research focuses on feminist and queer studies, examining the relationship between these fields and their institutionalization at national and international levels. She is interested in how participants in these fields narrate their history and current form, and how these narratives align with conservative agendas.

Visualization or Mathematization? The London School of Economics and “Diagrammatic Economics” in the 1930s

Although the subject of numerous contributions in the history of economics, the use of theoretical diagrams by economists is still quite misunderstood, as this practice is often characterized as a basic form of mathematization, soon replaced by more rigorous techniques of demonstration or exhibition. The present article attempts to challenge this view, focusing on a period of time, the 1930s, during which “diagrammatic economics” and other techniques coexisted, and on a specific community, that of students and young researchers from the London School of Economics with a keen interest in using diagrams as tools for economic reasoning. The cosmopolitan nature of research and education at the LSE, with its insistence on reading a vast amount of literature and attending seminars by a revolving cast of local and foreign lecturers, offered a favorable environment for a form of visual analysis that helped clarify concepts and resolve definitional issues, at a time when interest in various economic traditions had not yet given way to attempts to systematize and unify economic knowledge and its standards of production.

Generating learning through the crowd

Social media and higher education pedagogy have enjoyed a chequered relationship with significant debates about the efficacy of social media as a site of student centred learning, the manager/host of an individual’s learning trajectory and as a tool of facilitating collaborative learning at scale. This paper presents the findings from the evaluation of Constitution UK, an innovative civic engagement and open learning project run by the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK). This was the lead initiative in an institution-wide shift in pedagogical approach, designed to transform the learning experience through supporting students to be co-producers of knowledge. We argue that some of the behaviours inherent in social media learning (centred on fleeting connections, digital identity and discontinuous engagement) can create the conditions for effective learning through experience and practice, both at scale in open, online modes as well in the face-to-face delivery environment. Challenging the dominant pedagogical approaches of other massive online programmes, Constitution UK brought together a civil community of people engaging in the process of digital citizenship that produced a crowdsourced constitution for the United Kingdom. The learning design of the project successfully engineered both learning and problem solving at scale. The key aspects of the project arising from how social media can facilitate critical thinking, engagement, peer and crowd learning have informed pedagogical change within the mainstream provision of the School for initiatives such as Students as Producers, civic engagement over Brexit and games-based learning.

The behavioural changes managers need to make to boost staff confidence – and how HR can help

PurposeThis paper aims to explore how HR leaders can help their managers ditch the traditional command-and-control leadership style and instead adopt an enquiry-led management approach – Operational Coaching®. This approach helps managers to develop coaching-related behaviours in their day-to-day interactions with teams, to cultivate a culture that is more collaborative, inclusive and innovative with measurable improvements in engagement, productivity and performance.Design/methodology/approachResponding to the UK’s woeful productivity and employee engagement levels, the Government sponsored a large-scale academic research study (designed, conducted and independently evaluated by the London School of Economics, LSE) to assess the impact of managers learning to use an Operational Coaching® style of management. Managers in 62 organisations across 14 sectors worked through a learning programme designed to build managers’ confidence in using intentional enquiry as a part of their everyday management style.FindingsLSE proved, statistically significantly, that managers increased the amount of time they spent coaching their team members by an average of 70% and generated a 74 times return on investment. LSE also noted that intervention group organisations indicated a positive sixfold improvement in employee retention than in control group organisations.Originality/valueWhen managers learn to use an Operational Coaching® style of management in their day-to-day work with others, it allows them to learn how to challenge, support and grow the capabilities of their team members in ways that measurably benefit the individual and the organisation. Colleagues are more engaged, recognised and rewarded. As their competency and confidence grows, managers are released from aspects of their to-do lists and are able to invest even more attention towards coaching their team members.

Un especialista en realismo político clásico y en la obra de Hans Kelsen: entrevista a Robert Schuett

Robert Schuett, a former career civil servant (2011-2022), is currently a non-resident professor in international relations at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, a visiting fellow at the Department of Political Science at the University of Salzburg, as well as an honorary member of the School of Governance and International Affairs at the University of Durham, England. Robert Schuett was awarded a master’s degree by research in 2005 and a PhD in 2009, both in Political Science from the School of Governance and International Affairs at Durham University; the supervisor of his doctoral thesis was John C. Williams (Durham University), and his external evaluators were Chris J. Brown (London School of Economics) and Richard Little (University of Bristol). In 2007, he completed a doctoral research stay at LUISS University in Rome and, in 2010, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, USA. He currently lives and works in Vienna. Robert Schuett’s main areas of interest are political philosophy, international relations, and political methodology. He is particularly interested in the classical approach to political and legal theory, economics and society, ethics, and justice. Professor Robert Schuett has authored and edited numerous works, including Hans Kelsen’s Political Realism (2021), The Edinburgh Companion to Political Realism (2018), The Concept of the State in International Relations: Philosophy, Sovereignty, Cosmopolitanism (2015), and Political Realism, Freud, and Human Nature in International Relations: The Resurrection of the Realism Man (2010).

Professional Education for Social Work in Britain: An Historical Account (A Book Review)

This article is a review of Marjorie J. Smith's book, Professional Education for Social Work in Britain: An Historical Account, 2022. We present a comprehensive historical expression of the evolution of vocational education for social workers in the United Kingdom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The focus was on the initial training methods in social workers institutions, the transition to formal training schemes, the establishment and challenges of the School of Sociology, as well as the merger with the London School of Economics (LSE). This paper explores the ongoing tension between academic education and practical professional training in social work. As a valuable resource, this paper outlines the philosophical foundations, pedagogical approaches, and institutional challenges that shape social worker training. Through historical exhibitions, committee reports, and practical work reports, this paper provides a rich narrative that emphasises the importance of comprehensive education that integrates theoretical knowledge with practical skills. The review assesses the content, structure, and contribution of this book to the field of social worker education, exploring the target audience, advantages, and potential constraints as well as their relevance in contemporary discussions on training and preparation of social workers. In conclusion, the merger of the School of Sociology with the London School of Economics is not only a strategic step to maintain the quality and coverage of social worker education but also depicts further reflection on narratives that integrate social thinking and action into a more sustainable institutional framework.

How to conduct monetary policies. The ECB in the past, present and future

We study the evolving operating procedures used by the ECB since its creation. During the period up to 2015, bank reserves were scarce and the ECB, like other central banks, used a corridor system in which the money market rate could fluctuate within the bounds set by the lending and the deposit rates. With the start of Quantitative Easing (QE) the operating procedure evolved into a regime of reserve abundance. This regime has become problematic since the inflation surge forced the central banks to raise the policy rate. The result has been a massive transfer of central banks’ profits (and more) to the banks. We propose a two-tier system of reserve requirements that would only remunerate the reserves in excess of the minimum required. This would drastically reduce the giveaways to banks, allow the central banks to maintain their current operating procedures and make monetary policies more effective in fighting inflation.This paper was presented at the ECB@25 Symposium at Erasmus University, Rotterdam on 16th January 2024. We are grateful to Mary Pieterse-Bloem, Sylvester Eijffinger, Casper de Vries, Charles Goodhart and other participants in the Symposium for comments and suggestions. We also profited from comments and suggestions of an anonymous referee.Previous versions of this paper (De Grauwe and Ji, 2023a, 2023b) profited from comments by Ignazio Angeloni, Peter Bofinger, Robert Holzmann, Pablo Rovira Kaltwasser, Karel Lannoo, Vivien Lévy-Garboua, Anna Lozmann, David Marsh, Wim Moesen, Joachim Nagel, Theo Peeters, Stefan Schmitz, Miklos Vari, and by participants in seminars and presentations at the London School of Economics, King’s College (London), the Bundesbank, the Central Bank of Luxembourg, OMFIF, Sciences Po (Paris), the Austrian National Bank, SUERF, the Polish National Bank and the National Bank of Ukraine.

Special Issue on Securities Market: Governance, Instruments and Regulations for Sustainable Development

The National Institute of Securities Markets (NISM), along with the Systemic Risk Centre (SRC) at the London School of Economics (LSE), is organizing The Fourth Annual International Capital Markets Conference 2023 on "Securities Market: Governance, Instruments and Regulations for Sustainable Development" sponsored by State Bank of India.

Mapping business process outsourcing and innovation towards a future research

PurposeTo examine the development of research into the relationship between business process outsourcing (BPO) and innovation, a bibliometric methodology utilizing quantitative analytical methodologies was used. With the aid of a visualization analysis of scientific publications, this study also assessed the state of BPO and innovation practices.Design/methodology/approachUsing the Web of Science database, articles on BPO and innovation that published between 1992 and 2022 were retrieved. Records that had been extracted were examined in terms of publication year, nation, journal, subject area, authors and affiliations with organizations. The research on acupuncture for pain relief was visualized using the VOSviewer application.FindingsAn analysis of 219 original and review papers found that during the past 30 years, the overall number of publications has fluctuated constantly. The London University, the Copenhagen Business School and the London School of Economics were the institutions that produced the most articles in this topic. The three main categories of research that emerged from a network analysis based on the co-occurrence of keywords are innovation, outsourcing and performance.Practical implicationsA BP-innovation model must be created, and BPO must go beyond operational duties to incorporate management-wide shared strategic decisions in order to ensure improved performance of the firms. BPO enables a company's management to share knowledge and expertise about the strategic difficulties of outsourcing. A variety of technological and non-technological resources must also be considered when integrating an information technology (IT) infrastructure into BPO decisions in order to achieve greater performance.Originality/valueValidity of the paper can be justified by it contribution to the existing knowledge. First, linking BPO and innovation – by integrating the arguments of various academics, the study unifies the disparate components and contentious discussions in the relationship between BPO and innovation. Second, this study highlights a research trend, significant studies, relevant terms and concepts in the real world. Third, the study provides future researchers with a tip for statistically analyzing BPO, particularly in light of innovation.

Ronald H. Coase, Friedrich A. Hayek, and the Institutional Structure of Production and Exchange

AbstractThe essay investigates the parallels and connections between Friedrich A. Hayek and Ronald H. Coase. It emphasizes the shared context at the London School of Economics (LSE) in the 1930s within which both authors reacted, in particular the role of the so-called LSE tradition on opportunity cost. We focus attention on the same pattern of institutional reaction to the formal similarity proposition of neoclassical general equilibrium theory exposed in both authors. In “The Nature of the Firm” (1937a), Coase’s pioneer transaction cost argument was decisively constructed and shaped by the controversy around the possibility of rational economic calculation under socialism. This debate was crucial to Hayek’s fundamental reformulation of neoclassical equilibrium analysis in terms of a social coordination problem in “Economics and Knowledge” (1937). In a parallel manner, although focused on the microstructure of production, Coase (1937a) was reacting to the standard general equilibrium theory and its postulates. Traditional microeconomic theory could not explain the decisions to make within the firm or to buy in the market, nor the many hybrid organizational arrangements that lie between the centralized firm and the decentralized market process. In “The Problem of Social Cost” (1960), Coase develops his argument advanced in 1937 to the welfare corollaries of the general equilibrium framework encapsulated in the first and second welfare theorems. In this case, the connection was made through the influential ideas of his long-LSE friend, Abba P. Lerner. Finally, the essay explores Hayek’s instrumental role in the intellectual and institutional foundations of the Law and Economics movement at the University of Chicago.

Reflections on women’s activism in twentieth-century Britain

ABSTRACT This article is based on a talk I gave at the London School of Economics in March 2023. The talk was structured in a way to give me the freedom to reflect upon some of the key themes in my book Women’s Activism in Twentith Century Britain; making a difference across the political spectrum. I wrote the book during the pandemic. Archives were closed and even when they opened I could not use them as I had to shield because of health issues. Consequently, the material I relied on was what I could access on-line and on people who I could interview on Zoom. My book drew on my own experiences as an activist and my own theoretical development as a feminist. History and activism intertwined: my story as a former activist and my view that feminist historical scholarship is itself a type of activism came together to give direction and meaning both to my research and to my writing. In my talk, and in this Viewpoint, I want to show the heterogeneous nature of activism, of how individuals and groups from a range of different class and racial background sought to make a difference to their locality, their country and sometimes the world. I argue that women are not a homogenous group but are united—and divided—by class, ethnicity, gender and so on. For instance, not all female activists campaigned for progressive measures, indeed many promoted reactionary agendas.

Why We Explain.

Since its initial publication in 2018, Professor Anya Plutynski's Explaining Cancer: Finding Order in Disorder has garnered a great deal of accolades.1 In 2021, The London School of Economics and Political Science conferred Professor Plutynski the Lakatos Award, recognizing the book's significant contribution to the philosophy of science. On the heels of its recent reissuing as a paperback, it is an ideal time to revisit this remarkable work.

Vision and practice: the 1967 Robson Report on the Tokyo Metropolitan Government

ABSTRACT This article critically evaluates a 1967 consultancy report on the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) by Professor William A. Robson. Robson, a pioneer of public administration science based at the London School of Economics his whole academic life, provided an in-depth analysis of the state of the Japanese capital during its high-speed growth spurt and at the beginning of the socialist Minobe prefectural administration. While many of Robson's assessments and criticisms were poignant, his report failed to appreciate contextual intricacies as well as Tokyo's distinctive path of urban development. A re-reading of the report with this in mind expands our understanding of the Japanese capital's postwar history more than 50 years after the report's publication. Its critical assessment also contributes to our understanding of how urban knowledge ‘travels’ across geographies.

O capítulo da moeda baseada em reservas de commodities: Friedrich A. Hayek, John Maynard Keynes e a Ordem Monetária Internacional

ABSTRACT The frontal clash in the pages of Economica between Friedrich A. Hayek and John Maynard Keynes in 1931 was unique in scale and influence. Although this event had intense repercussions on the profession as a whole, in 1943 occurred a less discussed episode involving both men. Hayek and Keynes entered into controversy regarding the re-foundations of the international monetary order post-Second World War and the commodity reserve currency proposal. This round was somewhat neglected but is historiographically relevant since it was the only public debate with the active engagement of both sides in a professional journal after 1931. Moreover, it epitomized the personal and intellectual mature relationship of Hayek and Keynes, marked by convergence, dialogue, and friendship. This collaboration was particularly developed when the London School of Economics (LSE) evacuated to Cambridge during the Second World War and Keynes found rooms for Hayek in King’s College, Cambridge.