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The Village model, most extensively developed in the USA, is an innovative response to ageing populations and older adults who wish to remain living independently within their community. The “Urban Villages” participatory action research study aimed to test the potential of the Village model to work with groups of older adults in two economically deprived, inner-city neighbourhoods in Manchester, UK.

Participatory methods were used to work with residents to, first, adapt the Village model to the Manchester setting, and second, to develop and deliver community projects that supported ageing in place. The study aimed to involve marginalised individuals and groups in the co-design, leadership and implementation of the projects. Ethnographic methods were applied to observe and reflect on the development of “Urban Villages”. Interviews and focus groups were organised to gather the views of the residents involved in the community projects.

Residents were supported to develop and test seven projects, all aimed at reducing social isolation and supporting ageing in place. The study provides new insights into challenges related to co-production with older people in deprived neighbourhoods. These challenges are presented under the following headings: individual capacity and expectations; collective capacity including communication and knowledge; and the capacity of place.

To date, only a limited amount of literature is available showing how co-production with older adults can be realised when working with marginalised groups and deprived communities. The paper explores the potential of participatory approaches to develop age-friendly initiatives through strengthening the capacity of older adults to age in place.

This paper takes a prudent approach to assessing the quality of greenspace in low- and high socio-economic status (SES) settings. Socio-economic data from deprivation indexes were used to systematically define low- and high-SES suburbs. A Geographical Information System (GIS) observation of greenspaces was used to score spaces according to a scoring criterion contingent on six quality facets. Statistics were then synthesised, producing a Cohen effect score highlighting disparities in each criterion between the two SES groups.

As the phenomena of locational prejudice and meritocratic inequality continue to garner global attention, this paper extrapolates this to a world-renown metropolis, Melbourne. This paper endeavours to provide invaluable insights into the environmental injustice paradigm within greenspace and its respective quality.

Conclusive results affirmed a concerning disparity in the quality of greenspace between Melbourne's low- and high-SES settings. Cohen's effect size found that on average, there was a “medium” distinction between the spaces, whilst an individual focus on the quality facets concluded diverse findings.

The core of study adopted a meticulous virtual assessment to critique the quality of selected greenspaces opposed to an in-person-real world assessment which could garner more nuanced findings.

Existing literature on Melbourne has prioritised distribution, proximity and accessibility domains when assessing inequitable greenspace and, consequently, has catalysed a research gap in greenspace quality. This is also one of the first papers to provide insight into the “Plan Melbourne” policy regarding urban regeneration and ameliorating public open spaces.

The government of Ghana since independence has undertaken steps to develop educational infrastructure setup. This notwithstanding, the educational sector is beset with challenges such as low-quality education and low enrolment rates in Senior High Schools (SHS) of children from large households, among others. Given the myriad of challenges bedevilling the education sector, there have been calls for collaboration among public leaders to promote education. The paper, therefore, examines traditional leaders' roles in promoting quality education in Ghana.

Through a desk review approach, the study examines the role of traditional leaders in promoting quality education in Ghana. This approach was adopted due to its flexible nature.

The study found that traditional leaders have provided educational materials and resources to deprived schools. They have established scholarship schemes for needy but brilliant students, promoted gender parity in education, constructed educational facilities and promoted a healthy teaching environment.

The paper provides stakeholders in Ghana’s educational sector with the opportunity to review educational policies and include traditional leaders to influence educational policies. The recommendations call for support from the GETFUND and Scholarship Secretariat of Ghana to assist community-initiated projects and scholarship schemes established by traditional leaders.

The paper provides evidence to support the importance of traditional leadership, which has come under criticism from a democratisation perspective in contemporary times.

Migrants face some unique health-care challenges, which often remain unaddressed by the health system. The purpose of this study is to determine health-care access among migrants in Chhattisgarh, from a lens of health equity.

This study was conducted in a government-built tenement under the Integrated Housing and Slum Development program in Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh state of India. It is a mixed-methods study which used a survey method, focus group discussion, in depth-interviews, semi-structured interviews and non-participant observations of health facilities in the area. Respondents included residents (migrants) and other local stakeholders like the Chief Medical Officer of the district, elected representatives of the local government and frontline health workers. This paper focuses on the findings from the qualitative component of the study.

The move to resettle the people living in the slums to the periphery of the city had a negative impact on their health-care access. They find it difficult to access public health services, given the services are concentrated in the city. Women, elderly people and disabled people grapple with additional challenges in being able to access basic reproductive health services and care for chronic illnesses. Equity in health-care access is linked to various social determinants of health including access to housing and social security. However, the authors found that the migrant community is being deprived of appropriate housing facilities and social security.

This paper explores the health-care access of internal migrants in Chhattisgarh state of India in the larger context of urban development with a focus on health equity.

The purpose of this paper is to extend research on boundary making and breaking through alternative football clubs. These entities have borne out of the disappointment caused by the neoliberal turn of the football industry, which excluded traditional fans from being active actors and therefore call for study and generalization of specific forms of alternative accountability.

The study looks at emerging trends in the accounting and sport literature by drawing on two concepts that emerged in critical scholarship: critical performativity and critical dialogical accountability, with the aim of better understanding how these elements are developed and shaped within an alternative form of football organization. The focus on Football Club United of Manchester drives the ethnographic approach with data collected via participant observation, field-notes, documental analysis and semi-structured interviews.

The research shows that the pillars of the club's ethos, pushing its critical performative interventions toward setting new boundaries, are democratic governance and accountability, favoring participation and inclusion, and strictly linked to this, a responsibility to local communities. However, the study also highlights the difficulties of maintaining these boundaries when core values are threatened by degeneration.

The study makes a novel contribution to the field of accounting and sport, showing how an alternative football club adopts inclusive accountability systems that go beyond mainstream neoliberal practices. Such an inclusive approach can stimulate critical performativity, moving away from means-end rationality.

This paper aims to examine the effects of extractive activities on the well-being of local communities and assesses stakeholder expectations of resource benefits and the corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of oil companies in Ghana.

The paper uses a qualitative approach based on an exploratory research design to investigate the opinions and experiences of stakeholders in the growing oil and gas industry in Ghana.

The empirical findings demonstrate that entry negotiated agreements and local content requirements in the offshore oil industry have minimal benefits because of the lack of linkages with the economies of local communities. Additionally, the nature of CSR practices within the extractive industry is directly traceable to the resource governance arrangements and plural logics in Ghana’s institutional context.

This study only provides insights into natural resource governance and CSR issues in offshore oil and gas projects. Thus, the findings are not generalisable to the entire industry, including onshore drilling, which have other sustainability issues.

This research highlights the gap in natural resource management in Ghana and the effects of community expectations on CSR practices in the oil and gas industry. Therefore, this study posits the significance for including compliance requirements for improving the well-being of host communities in entry negotiated agreements and local contents.

By highlighting the nuanced issues in natural resource management within the oil and gas industry in Ghana, this paper makes significant contributions to the CSR and sustainability literature.

The abandonment of governmental development projects either after completion or midway completion at the taxpayer’s expense in Ghana could be attributed to lack of effective community engagement (CE). Thus, this study aims to assess CE in development projects by comparing government-sponsored projects to private-sponsored projects.

A qualitative approach was adopted where a multiple case study design was used as a research strategy. Data was collected from selected districts in the Central Region of Ghana by using a semi-structured interview guide and analyzed using the thematic and comparative analysis techniques.

The results reveal that CE in government-funded projects was low, while CE in projects funded by private organizations was high. Three levels of engagement (consultation, participation in decision-making and consent) were also identified. Furthermore, the roles of public participation, including knowledge sharing, collective sense of ownership, among others, were ascertained. Finally, resources constraints, competing interests, lack of information flow, public attitudes toward change and central government/political interference are challenges of CE in development projects.

This study has provided an empirical basis for government and other development agents to draft a policy on CE to serve as a guide, spell out the role of CE, mitigate the challenges of CE and ensure strict compliance to the three levels of engagement.

This study explores how a small minority of social entrepreneurs break free from third sector constraints to conceive, create and grow non-profit organisations that generate social value at scale in new and innovative ways.

Six narrative case histories of innovative social enterprises were developed based on documents and semi-structured interviews with founders and long serving executives. Data were coded “chrono-processually”, which involves locating thoughts, events and actions in distinct time periods (temporal bracketing) and identifying the processes at work in establishing new social ventures.

This study presents two core findings. First, the paper demonstrates how successful social entrepreneurs draw on their lived experiences, private and professional, in driving the development and implementation of social innovations, which are realised through application of their capabilities as analysts, strategists and resources mobilisers. These capabilities are bolstered by personal legitimacy and by their abilities as storytellers and rhetoricians. Second, the study unravels the complex processes of social entrepreneurship by revealing how sensemaking, theorising, strategizing and sensegiving underpin the core processes of problem specification, the formulation of theories of change, development of new business models and the implementation of social innovations.

The study demonstrates how social entrepreneurs use sensemaking and sensegiving strategies to understand and address complex social problems, revealing how successful social entrepreneurs devise and disseminate social innovations that substantially add value to society and bring about beneficial social change. A novel process-outcome model of social innovation is presented illustrating the interconnections between entrepreneurial cognition and strategic action.

The essay aims to suggest policies that can help strategically deconstruct and dereproduce the establishment of (child) sexual exploitation in Thailand and Cambodia in phases, for the purpose of upholding child and human rights and rebranding the global image of these two regional commercial sex hubs in the long term.

This essay is constructed based on the theoretical framework of the social control and general strain theories. Supported by the theories, the essay examines what are the socioeconomic determinants driving the prevalence of the (child) commercial sex industry in Thailand and Cambodia. Here the essay highlights and summarises how the (child) commercial sex industry has been constructed and reproduced. Next, the essay presents the existing policy gaps in relation to (child) sex tourism and sex exploitation. Last, and more importantly, the essay delivers perspectives on how Thai and Cambodian lawmakers and policymakers should respond to the severe societal problems of (child) sex trafficking and prostitution in relation to the prevailing sex tourism.

At the national level, Bangkok and Phnom Penh have an urgent need to rebrand their countries, despite partially allowing commercial sex activities. Moreover, to promote gender equality, Bangkok and Phnom Penh should redistribute their education and occupational opportunities, enabling more school-aged girls or work-aged women to obtain a fairer share of life chances for self-empowerment. At the regional level, Bangkok and Phnom Penh have to tighten regulations against (child) sex exploitation. At the community level, the promotion of community policing can be conducive to minimising any prostitution activities. At the family level, more positive socialisation should be exercised. When more children, including girls, are subsidised to enter school, and are positively parented, there are more educational opportunities for school-aged cohorts.

This essay contains scholarly originality and significance in the presentation of the socioeconomic construction of (child) sexual exploitation, and its relationship to sex tourism and (child) prostitution in Thai and Cambodian contexts, grounded in up-to-date, relevant sociological arguments. A major area that identifies the originality of this essay is the examination of existing, relevant policy gaps in a timely fashion, and correspondingly, the suggestion of policy development that helps deconstruct and deproduce (child) sexual exploitation at the national, regional, community and family levels.

This paper seeks to contribute to the debate on the usefulness of institutional theory to critical studies. It pursues this topic by exploring some of the possibilities for allocating local authority funds more fairly for poor residents. This paper aims to shed light on the institution of budgeting in a democratically elected local government under austerity.

This paper uses world culture theory, the study of the devolution of cultural authority to individuals and organisations through which they turn into agentic actors. Based on a field study of Newcastle City Council’s (NCC’s) budget-related practices, the paper uses the notion of actorhood to explore the use of fairness in austerity budgets.

This paper documents how new concerns with fairness gave rise to new local authority practices and gave NCC characteristics of actorhood. This paper also shows why it might make sense for a local authority that is managing austerity budget cuts and cutting back on services to make more detailed performance information public, rather than attempting to hide service deterioration, as some prior literature suggests. This paper delineates the limits to actorhood, in this study’s case, principally the inability to overcome structural constraints of legal state power.

The paper is suggestive of ways in which local government can fight inequality in opposition to central government austerity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first qualitative accounting study of actorhood. It coins the phrase fairness assemblage to denote a combination of various accounting technologies, organisational elements and local government practices.