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Article
Publication date: 11 March 2024

Signe Skov and Søren Smedegaard Bengtsen

In Denmark, there has been, over decades, an intensified political focus on how humanities research and doctoral education contribute to society. In this vein, the notion of…

Abstract

Purpose

In Denmark, there has been, over decades, an intensified political focus on how humanities research and doctoral education contribute to society. In this vein, the notion of impact has become a central part of the academic language, often associated with terms like use, effects and outputs, stemming from neoliberal ideologies. The purpose of this paper is to explore how humanities academics are living with the impact agenda, as both experienced researchers and as doctoral supervisors educating the next generation of researchers in this post-pandemic era. Specifically, the authors are interested in the supervisor-researcher relationship, that is, the relationship between how the supervisors navigate the impact agenda as researchers and then the way they tell their doctoral students to do likewise.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors have studied how the impact agenda is accommodated by humanities academics through a series of qualitative interviews with humanities researchers and humanities PhD supervisors, encompassing questions of how they are living with the expectation of impact and how it is embedded in their university and departmental context.

Findings

The study shows that there is no link between how the supervisors navigate the impact agenda in relation to their own research work and then the way they tell their doctoral students to approach it. Within the space of their own research, the supervisors engage in resistance practices towards the impact agenda in terms of minimal compliance, rejection or resignation, whereas in the space of supervision, the impact agenda is re-inscribed to embody other understandings. The supervisors want to protect their students from this agenda, especially in the knowledge that many of them are not going to stay in academia due to limited researcher career possibilities. Furthermore, the paper reveals a new understanding of the impact agenda as having a relational quality, and in two ways. One is through a positional struggle, the reshaping of power relations, between universities (or academics) and society (or the state and the market); the other is as a phenomenon very much lived among academics themselves, including between supervisors and their doctoral students within the institutional context.

Originality/value

This study opens up the impact agenda, showing what it means to be a humanities academic living with the effects of the impact agenda and trying to navigate this. The study is mapping and tracking out the many different meanings and variations of impact in all its volatility for academics concerned about it. In current, post-pandemic times, when manifold expectations are directed towards research and doctoral education, it is important to know more about how these expectations affect and are dealt with by those who are expected to commit to them.

Details

Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education, vol. 15 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2398-4686

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 5 July 2023

Arita Holmberg and Aida Alvinius

Previous studies show that the implementation of gender equality encounters resistance in military organizations, but it is often invisible or seen as confined to anonymous…

1990

Abstract

Purpose

Previous studies show that the implementation of gender equality encounters resistance in military organizations, but it is often invisible or seen as confined to anonymous structures or troubled individuals. This paper aims to show how the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) use organizational principles to resist implementing gender equality measures.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is a qualitative analysis of discursive strategies in the SAF’s 2013–2018 annual reports to government.

Findings

The organizing principles of instrumentality and distance, while existing in parallel with gender equality efforts, actually pursue logics that prevents the SAF from implementing gender equality. The principle of instrumentality in this context means that gender equality in the SAF is of secondary interest to organizational members. The principle of distancing from the problem includes strategies that alienate female from male officers.

Originality/value

The contribution of this paper is the finding that the use of organizing principles represents conscious organizational resistance to gender equality efforts. This kind of use needs to be revealed and criticized to change military organizations.

Details

Gender in Management: An International Journal , vol. 39 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1754-2413

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 October 2023

John De-Clerk Azure, Chandana Alawattage and Sarah George Lauwo

The World Bank-sponsored public financial management reforms attempt to instil fiscal discipline through techno-managerial packages. Taking Ghana's integrated financial management…

Abstract

Purpose

The World Bank-sponsored public financial management reforms attempt to instil fiscal discipline through techno-managerial packages. Taking Ghana's integrated financial management information system (IFMIS) as a case, this paper explores how and why local actors engaged in counter-conduct against these reforms.

Design/methodology/approach

Interviews, observations and documentary analyses on the operationalisation of IFMIS constitute this paper's empirical basis. Theoretically, the paper draws on Foucauldian notions of governmentality and counter-conduct.

Findings

Empirics demonstrate how and why politicians and bureaucrats enacted ways of escaping, evading and subverting IFMIS's disciplinary regime. Politicians found the new accounting regime too constraining to their electoral and patronage politics and, therefore, enacted counter-conduct around the notion of political exigencies, creating expansionary fiscal conditions which the World Bank tried to mitigate through IFMIS. Perceiving the new regime as subverting their bureaucratic identity and influence, bureaucrats counter-conducted reforms through questioning, critiquing and rhetorical venting. Notably, the patronage politics of appropriating wealth and power underpins both these political and bureaucratic counter-conducts.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the critical accounting understanding of global public financial management reform failures by offering new empirical and theoretical insights as to how and why politicians and bureaucrats who are supposed to own and implement them nullify the global governmentality intentions of fiscal disciplining through subdued forms of resistance.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 37 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Understanding Intercultural Interaction: An Analysis of Key Concepts, 2nd Edition
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-438-8

Article
Publication date: 26 September 2023

Ellie Norris, Shawgat Kutubi, Steven Greenland and Ruth Wallace

This study explores citizen activism in the articulation of a politicised counter-account of Aboriginal rights. It aims to uncover the enabling factors for a successful challenge…

Abstract

Purpose

This study explores citizen activism in the articulation of a politicised counter-account of Aboriginal rights. It aims to uncover the enabling factors for a successful challenge to established political norms and the obstacles to the fullest expression of a radical imagining.

Design/methodology/approach

Laclau and Mouffe's theory of hegemony and discourse is used to frame the movement's success in challenging the prevailing system of urbanised healthcare delivery. Empirical materials were collected through extensive ethnographic fieldwork.

Findings

The findings from this longitudinal study identify the factors that predominantly influence the transformational success of an Yaṉangu social movement, such as the institutionalisation of group identity, articulation of a discourse connected to Aboriginal rights to self-determination, demonstration of an alternative imaginary and creation of strong external alliances.

Originality/value

This study offers a rich empirical analysis of counter-accounting in action, drawing on Aboriginal governance traditions of non-confrontational discourse and collective accountability to conceptualise agonistic engagement. These findings contribute to the practical and theoretical construction of democratic accounting and successful citizen activism.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 37 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 16 January 2024

Kedir Assefa Tessema

This study aimed to investigate the sensemaking strategies employed by early-career employees working within organizationally constrained environments.

Abstract

Purpose

This study aimed to investigate the sensemaking strategies employed by early-career employees working within organizationally constrained environments.

Design/methodology/approach

Grounded in the sensemaking-as-accomplishment framework, a longitudinal multi-case study was conducted, involving three early-career employees. These participants were interviewed multiple times concerning tasks they themselves identified as anomalous and ambiguous.

Findings

The study's findings illuminate how early-career employees utilize sensemaking strategies to accomplish anomalous-ambiguous tasks. These strategies are interwoven with deliberate efforts to mitigate organizational constraints that exist in the organization or arise during the execution of complex tasks.

Research limitations/implications

Notable limitation pertains to the time gap between task completion and the interviews. Conducting real-time interviews concurrently with task execution or immediately afterward was not feasible due to constraints in participant availability. This research has implications for organizational learning initiatives, particularly those encompassing employee-driven self-learning components. Insights derived from studies like this can inform the development of effective self-learning schemes within organizations.

Originality/value

Previous sensemaking research focused on what takes place in high-reliability organizations. This study explored sensemaking strategies in workplaces that are organizationally constrained.

Details

Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, vol. 19 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-5648

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 January 2024

Ana Argento Nasser

This article aims to provide a new paradigm for thinking about disability, which can be applied to other social groups, historically invisible and whose rights have been violated…

Abstract

Purpose

This article aims to provide a new paradigm for thinking about disability, which can be applied to other social groups, historically invisible and whose rights have been violated. The Model of Communication and Legitimate Acknowledgement of Disability (MCLAD) tries to break with the logic of continuing to add terms and euphemisms around the issue. The author proposes a new line to think about relationships in democratic societies. Taking the step from inclusion to acknowledgment does not imply another way of naming the disability, but rather addressing the problem from concrete practices of recognition. In order to arrive at the proposal of the MCLAD, the author will make a journey that addresses how disability has been understood throughout history, according to the study of different authors.

Design/methodology/approach

Disability has been perceived over time in many different ways, which led some authors to build models in order to explain certain social approaches to the subject. This article traces a journey from the first model to the present. In turn, it proposes a new one: the MCLAD, which is characterized by a paradigm shift: moving from inclusion to acknowledgment. To substantiate this, three categories are presented: acknowledgment, distance and vulnerability. The different theories and concepts that support the model will also be presented. The purpose of the MCLAD is to deepen the idea of empowering people with disabilities as part of today’s diverse societies and closing historically constructed gaps which are still in force.

Findings

The MCLAD proposes three categories: acknowledgment, distance and vulnerability. In turn, in each of them, there is a link between three axes: person with disability/society/state, analyzing the dynamics of these relationships presented, will provide us with the necessary elements to understand the proposed turnaround.

Research limitations/implications

Although the different models will be presented according to the chronological order of definition over time, all of them still coexist today, in many cases in hybrid and naturalized ways in social practices. Recognizing what practices and conceptions are behind each model, allows us to recognize and resignify the ways of communicating toward people with disabilities (PWD) and on the issue of disability. It also allows other specific recognition practices, such as the legitimization of public policies from the laws that protect them.

Practical implications

To replace the paradigm of inclusion for that of acknowledgment and to recognize how the three categories (acknowledgment, distance and vulnerability) are linked with the three issues (PWD – society and state) allowing specific relationship and practises of legitimate or not acknowledgement. When the author affirms that the MCLAD implies a paradigm shift, the author means that it provides some elements from legitimate acknowledgment to complement aspects which inclusion does not address, and that the other models did not take into account. These are: the self-acknowledgment of people with disabilities and the sense of responsibility linked to empowerment; vulnerability as a category of reconciliation, which is typical of every human being; the contribution of the Phenomenology of the Among to think about how relationships and practices actually occur in society and, finally, the role of the state, which must watch over all its citizens, avoiding the distance between discourse (laws) and practices and, above all, avoiding exclusion from the system due to lack of monitoring of actions.

Social implications

It should be noted that the MCLAD starts from the idea of language as a constructor of realities and conceives communication as an enabler of the acknowledgment of the other, who is also subject to rights. At the same time, it vindicates the voice of people with disabilities as protagonists (“Nothing about us without us”) and fosters the need for PWD themselves to be active in their struggles, promulgating legitimate acknowledgment. At the same time, it points out that the empowerment of PWD implies not only that they are aware of their rights but also that they themselves know and fulfill their duties within the democratic societies of which they are a part of and which, at least discursively, are regulated by laws. In other words, being empowered is also being responsible for living in society.

Originality/value

The main contribution that the MCLAD has to offer is to replace the paradigm of inclusion for that of acknowledgment. And, throughout the path followed in this article, an attempt has been made to establish that the turnaround is not to capriciously install a new concept (acknowledgment), but to demonstrate that the new paradigm involves three categories that sustain and support a model that seeks to be the basis for effective public policies, for a society that values diversity and for people who feel worthy and contribute to dignify others.

Details

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, vol. 43 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-7149

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 February 2024

Jeffrey Wiebe

The purpose of this study is to understand how and why consumers engage in market-shaping activities on behalf of firms.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to understand how and why consumers engage in market-shaping activities on behalf of firms.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses a combination of archival, netnographic and interview methods to examine how consumers responded to the entry of Tesla into the U.S. automotive market.

Findings

Consumers are driven to engage in supportive institutional work by the culturally resonant ideologies embodied in Tesla’s strategic orientation. This work takes both discursive and practical forms and sees consumers adopting responsibilities typically associated with other actors, including activists and sales professionals.

Originality/value

In developing an account of an understudied phenomenon – consumers’ firm-supportive market shaping – this research extends theorization around institutional work and cultural branding.

Details

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, vol. 27 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1352-2752

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 November 2023

Ezequiel Aleman

This paper aims to address the limitations in designing educational approaches that apply critical approaches to data literacy, given the obscure nature of digital platforms…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to address the limitations in designing educational approaches that apply critical approaches to data literacy, given the obscure nature of digital platforms, which leave youth unable to develop discourses that challenge dominant narratives about the role of data in their lives. The purpose of this study is to propose and evaluate a critical data literacy approach that empowers youth to engage with data from a sociocultural perspective using a speculative participatory research approach that affords opportunities to develop alternative discourses.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a multiple-case study that involves five alternative schools in Uruguay which implemented the Nayah-Irú curriculum over ten weeks leading to the development of six distinct research projects about the materialization of data in youth lives. The curriculum incorporates an alternate reality game (ARG) to engage youth in critical data literacy, based on the principles of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) epistemology and Speculative Civic Literacies.

Findings

The findings of this study highlight the integration of speculative storytelling and real-life experiences in developing alternative discourses about datafication. The analysis revealed instances of discursive closure among the youth, but through the curriculum's speculative fiction elements, such as the narrative of Nayah-Irú, emotional connections were formed, leading to increased engagement, critical inquiry, and problem framing.

Research limitations/implications

The study conducted on the Nayah-Irú curriculum shows its effectiveness in engaging youth and educators in critical data literacy by affording opportunities for youth to engage in the analysis of their personal data literacies in an alternative world. Bringing speculative approaches to data literacy can open new avenues for exploring data literacy with youth in ways that center their voices and help them overcome different forms of discursive closure.

Originality/value

This study offers new insights into critical data literacy education blending youth participatory action research epistemologies with a speculative literacies framework to support youth in developing alternative discourses regarding the role of data in their lives.

Details

Information and Learning Sciences, vol. 125 no. 3/4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2398-5348

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 15 May 2024

Sibel Ozasir Kacar

The purpose of this study is to showcase how entrepreneurial opportunities can be contextually formed differently for women entrepreneurs concerning their relationship with…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to showcase how entrepreneurial opportunities can be contextually formed differently for women entrepreneurs concerning their relationship with religion. This article reveals the multi-level and nuanced relationship between religiosity and entrepreneurship through a contextual lens by studying the interaction in a specific national country, Turkiye.

Design/methodology/approach

The study uses the life stories of 10 Turkish women entrepreneurs operating in Turkiye. Data were selected purposefully to conduct an in-depth analysis. Thematic content analysis with a discursive approach and deductive and inductive coding methods were performed.

Findings

The findings suggest that the relationship between religiosity and entrepreneurial opportunities is highly contextual and nuanced. Religiosity brings trust and provides access to religious networks which can lead to entrepreneurial opportunities, while leaving people outside of this network bereft of these benefits. The creation of a closed circle for its beneficiaries is a feature of a social network, yet the results show that contextual forces of politics and gender can lead women entrepreneurs outside of this religious network to limit their possibilities of accessing public funding and facilities based on their perceptions as well as negative experiences. It is also seen that religiosity at a certain level is necessary to operate in conservative settings and traditionally masculine business environments with patriarchal practices and norms, as well as due to the religious affinity of the ruling political party. However, because of perceptions and discursive meanings attached to religion and religiosity in the country, women entrepreneurs need to be cautious in expressing their religiosity and find a balance so that they are not seen as unprofessional, incompetent and unqualified as well as do not jeopardise their business due to a controversial religious affiliation.

Originality/value

This paper is of value as it studies religiosity from a contextual perspective enabling and constraining women entrepreneurs in their entrepreneurship in relation to gendered and political structures. In this way, it displays the multiple ways of limitation and support that religiosity can bring for them concerning entrepreneurial opportunities. Turkiye provides a rich context with its mixed religious and secular societal norms and values and neo-liberal institutions and policies to examine the so-far underexplored issue of religiosity in the field of entrepreneurship.

Details

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-2554

Keywords

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