Helmut Staubmann is professor for social theory and cultural sociology and dean of the School of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He has authored and edited several books on action theory in the Parsonian tradition. Together with Victor M. Lidz he is editor of the book series Studies in the Theory of Action. Victor M. Lidz was a student and later collaborator of the late Talcott Parsons who has published contributions to the theory of action developed by Parsons for 45 years. He has held faculty positions at the university of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Drexel University College of Medicine (and predecessor institution) in the Department of Psychiatry from which he is now Professor emeritus.