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1 – 10 of 16Kristiina Niemi-Kaija and Steven Pattinson
The purpose of this systematic narrative review is to discourse on vision and organizational performance. By analysing work-life and organization studies journals, the authors…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this systematic narrative review is to discourse on vision and organizational performance. By analysing work-life and organization studies journals, the authors respond to a call to view the process of visioning more holistically.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodological approach is a discourse-oriented qualitative content analysis. The authors explore visioning through an epistemological lens, which emphasizes both the connections and differences between “traditional” philosophical approaches.
Findings
The findings show how the different interpretations of vision and related concepts are tied to the following themes: clarity, causality, embodiment and sensory experiences and actionability.
Originality/value
Through the frameworks of scientific realism and relativism, the authors illustrate novel insights into the ways in which visioning occupies a place in knowledge management.
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In this article, I explore how critical realism influenced the methods and methodology as well as the translations of interviews from Japanese into English and the interpretations…
Abstract
Purpose
In this article, I explore how critical realism influenced the methods and methodology as well as the translations of interviews from Japanese into English and the interpretations of teachers’ understanding of the school at the center of this research.
Design/methodology/approach
This article investigates the interaction of critical realism within an English-language-based study of a Japanese high school using ethnographic methods and methodology and its influence on translations within the study. Critical realism combines a postpositivist ontological view with an epistemological constructionism. There is a reality to the school, which cannot be completely measured. This reality, the physical dimensions and composition (breadth, height, volume and number of classrooms) of the school, does not change based upon time or viewing location of an observer.
Findings
Critical realism provided strategies for and a focus on the translation of participant interviews from Japanese into English within this ethnographic study of a high school in Japan. These helped to provide a better understanding of the teachers' perception of the reality of the school.
Originality/value
This is original research.
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Research on Islamic entrepreneurship (IE) is growing but with difficulty. After reviewing six IE models, several problematic inconsistencies were identified, which can be…
Abstract
Purpose
Research on Islamic entrepreneurship (IE) is growing but with difficulty. After reviewing six IE models, several problematic inconsistencies were identified, which can be categorized into three: sporadic objectives of IE, diverging core components and inconsistent levels of analysis. This study aims to articulate a synthesized IE model.
Design/methodology/approach
An Islamic critical realist synthesis is used by combining six IE models and situating them within an Islamic system of governance. Specifically, the Islamic governance conceptual matrix is used to offer an objective template.
Findings
A synthesized model of IE within an Islamic system of governance comprises the following: the objectives of IE are not to be confined to only financial sustainability, but to achieve all five Maqās.id of the Sharī’ah (i.e. preservation and promotion of faith, life, intellect, posterity and wealth); models of IE should cover the individual, group, organizational, societal, state and international levels for comprehensiveness; tawhīd is crucial to distinguish between IE and conventional entrepreneurship; halal IE activities can be further categorized into obligatory, recommended, permissible and reprehensible; Islamic values are to be differentiated from cultural values; and both Islamic and cultural values shape IE and vice versa.
Research limitations/implications
Limited number of models of IE were included in this synthesis. Although the resulting synthesized model is extensive, additional models of IE can be built to extend or even challenge it.
Originality/value
A novel model of IE within an Islamic system of governance is presented.
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This article analyses the structure of hypertext and the world wide web through the contrasting metaphors of the network and the rhizome and applies that analysis to the epistemic…
Abstract
Purpose
This article analyses the structure of hypertext and the world wide web through the contrasting metaphors of the network and the rhizome and applies that analysis to the epistemic challenge presented by fake news.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is a critical and theoretical study of the development of concepts in information science. It outlines the limitations of the network metaphor and analyses the ways in which it has influenced both the development and critical understanding of the World Wide Web and its wider social and cultural consequences. The paper develops an alternative description of the ontological structure of the Web in terms of interrupted and dissipated energy flows.
Findings
The paper argues that the Web is better described as a dynamic reorganization of the socio-cultural system that has no determinate boundaries and which is constituted properly in the spaces between technologies and the spaces between persons.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to and extends research into the rhizomic nature of hypertext and the Word Wide Web and in understanding the role of metaphor in descriptions of hypertext and the web.
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Bård Tronvoll and Bo Edvardsson
The philosophical foundations determine how an academic discipline identifies, understands and analyzes phenomena. The choice of philosophical perspective is vital for both…
Abstract
Purpose
The philosophical foundations determine how an academic discipline identifies, understands and analyzes phenomena. The choice of philosophical perspective is vital for both marketing and service research. This paper aims to propose a social and systemic perspective that addresses current challenges in service and marketing research by revisiting the philosophy of science debate.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper revisits the philosophy of science debate to address the implications of an emergent, complex and adaptive view of marketing and service research. It draws on critical realism by combining structuration and systemic perspectives.
Findings
A recursive perspective, drawing on structures and action, is suggested as it includes multiple actors’ intentions and captures underlying drivers of market exchange as a basis for developing marketing and service strategies in practice. This is aligned with other scholars arguing for a more systemic, adaptive and complex view of markets in light of emerging streams in academic marketing and service research, ranging from value cocreation, effectuation, emergence and open source to empirical phenomena such as digitalization, robotization and the growth of international networks.
Research limitations/implications
The reciprocal dynamic between individuals and the overarching system provides a reflexivity approach intrinsic to the service ecosystem. This creates new avenues for research on marketing and service phenomena.
Originality/value
This paper discusses critics, conflicts and conceptualization in service research. It suggests a possible approach for service research and marketing scholars capable of responding to current complexities and turbulence in economic and societal contexts.
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The purpose of this article is to summarize three Luhmannian critiques on morality, illustrate new roles for morality and add constructive interpretations.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to summarize three Luhmannian critiques on morality, illustrate new roles for morality and add constructive interpretations.
Design/methodology/approach
Luhmann has recently been described as downright negative toward morality, resulting in a refusal to use ethics as a sociologist, thus leading to a limited use of his theory in moral issues. A constructive interpretation could support a more functional use of morality in social system theory.
Findings
First, Luhmann signals that morality can no longer fulfill its integrative function in society but also that society has recourse to moral sensitivity. Second, Luhmann describes how anxiety is crucial in modern morality and indicates which role risk and danger could play. The author builds further on this and proposes the concept of “social system attention” that can provide answers to individual and organizational anxiety. The author proposes that institutionalized socialization can support an integrative morality. Third, Luhmann states that ethics today is nothing more than a utopia but also that the interdiction of moral self-exemption is an essential element. The author adds that a relational ontology for social systems theory can avoid ethics as utopia.
Practical implications
This article is a programmatic plea to further elaborate morality from a system theory perspective in which meaning is relationally positioned.
Originality/value
This article could potentially provide a more functional application of morality in social systems, thus leading to improvements of attempts of ethical decision-making. The originality of the approach lies in the interpretation of basic assumptions of Luhmann social system theory that are not core to his theory.
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This paper offers a way of revivifying classical accounting research in the form of a pragmatist neoclassical programme with a sound epistemological underpinning.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper offers a way of revivifying classical accounting research in the form of a pragmatist neoclassical programme with a sound epistemological underpinning.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on a pragmatist perspective on financial accounting and accounting research springing from John Dewey's theory of inquiry.
Findings
Although a pragmatist underpinning does not entail specific methodological prescriptions, it can provide fruitful insights in research design. The paper discusses the structure and content of a research programme drawing on a pragmatist underpinning and sets out proposals for a practical research agenda. Although the agenda is shaped around the topic of identifiable intangibles, much of the paper has substantially wider relevance.
Research limitations/implications
The approach justifies a revival in scholarly research employing classical methods and directed at improving accounting methods and standards.
Practical implications
The approach would promote closer engagement between scholarly accounting and practitioners such as standard-setters, making some contribution to closing the widely acknowledged gap between research and practice.
Originality/value
The paper offers a neoclassical programme of research drawing considerably more extensively on pragmatist philosophy than did theorisation in the classical period.
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Olivier Fuchs and Craig Robinson
Critical realism is an increasingly popular “lens” through which complex events, entities and phenomena can be studied. Yet detailed operationalisations of critical realism are at…
Abstract
Purpose
Critical realism is an increasingly popular “lens” through which complex events, entities and phenomena can be studied. Yet detailed operationalisations of critical realism are at present relatively scarce. This study's objective here is built on existing debates by developing an open systems model of reality, a basis for designing appropriate, internally consistent methodologies.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use a qualitative case study examining changing practices for client contact management in professional services firms during restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 crisis to show how the model can be operationalised across all stages of a research study.
Findings
This study contributes to the literature on qualitative applications of critical realism by providing a detailed example of how the research paradigm influenced choices at every stage of the case study process.
Originality/value
More importantly, this model of reality as an open system provides a tool for other researchers to use in their own operationalisation of critical realism in a variety of different settings.
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Samantha Cooms and Vicki Saunders
Poetic inquiry is an approach that promotes alternate perspectives about what research means and speaks to more diverse audiences than traditional forms of research. Across…
Abstract
Purpose
Poetic inquiry is an approach that promotes alternate perspectives about what research means and speaks to more diverse audiences than traditional forms of research. Across academia, there is increasing attention to decolonising research. This reflects a shift towards research methods that recognise, acknowledge and appreciate diverse ways of knowing, being and doing. The purpose of this paper is to explore the different ways in which poetic inquiry communicates parallax to further decolonise knowledge production and dissemination and centre First Nations’ ways of knowing, being and doing.
Design/methodology/approach
This manuscript presents two First Nations’ perspectives on a methodological approach that is decolonial and aligns with Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. In trying to frame this diversity through Indigenous standpoint theory (Foley, 2003), the authors present two First Nation’s women's autoethnographic perspectives through standpoint and poetics on the role of poetic inquiry and parallax in public pedagogy and decolonising research (Fredericks et al., 2019; Moreton-Robinson, 2000).
Findings
The key to understanding poetic inquiry is parallax, the shift in an object, perspective or thinking that comes with a change in the observer's position or perspective. Challenging dominant research paradigms is essential for the continued evolution of research methodologies and to challenge the legacy that researchers have left in colonised countries. The poetic is often invisible/unrecognised in the broader Indigenist research agenda; however, it is a powerful tool in decolonial research in the way it disrupts core assumptions about and within research and can effectively engage with those paradoxes that decolonising research tends to uncover.
Practical implications
Poetic inquiry is not readily accepted in academia; however, it is a medium that is well suited to communicating diverse ways of knowing and has a history of being embraced by First Nations peoples in Australia. Embracing poetic inquiry in qualitative research offers a unique approach to decolonising knowledge and making space for Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing.
Social implications
Poetic inquiry offers a unique approach to centring First Nations voices, perspectives and experiences to reduce hegemonic assumptions in qualitative research.
Originality/value
Writing about poetic inquiry and decolonisation from a First Nations’ perspective using poetry is a novel and nuanced approach to discussions around First Nations ways of knowing, being and doing.
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Ely Laureano Paiva, Rafael Alcadipani, Kenyth Alves De Freitas, Larissa Alves Sincorá and Arun Abraham Elias
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how three core elements of critical management studies (CMSs), “de-naturalisation”, “reflexivity” and “(non)-performative intent”, can…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how three core elements of critical management studies (CMSs), “de-naturalisation”, “reflexivity” and “(non)-performative intent”, can help expand the current debate in the supply chain management (SCM) field.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a systematic literature review to select 103 articles published in 12 high-ranking journals in the SCM field based on the Academic Journal Guide of the Chartered Association of Business Schools.
Findings
The findings of this study suggest that SCM studies can be narrowed down into four major CMSs themes: “power”, “ethics and environmental issues”, “diversity” and “working conditions”, but even these themes are still under-discussed and undertheorized in SCM. The literature the authors reviewed is more concerned with explaining these phenomena than questioning them and proposing new agendas. This paper, therefore, will discuss how these three core elements of CMS can help transform the “hidden” issues of SCM, which it will do by illustrating it in the context of buyer–supplier relationships and lean manufacturing.
Practical implications
This research will encourage SCM scholars who are interested in conducting more critical studies and teaching the harmful effects of global supply chains.
Originality/value
This paper highlights that a combination of SCM and CMS approaches is important when we decide to adopt a more critical “constructive” view of supply chain challenges and engage practical and critical views, respectively, to generate knowledge that not only increases (corporate) performance but also highlights social needs and values.
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