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This paper examines how the management control practices of organization members enable the alignment of product development projects with potentially conflicting corporate strategies during the product development process.

Using an ethnomethodology informed research approach, we carry out a case study of an innovative New Zealand food company. Case study data included an internal company document, interviews with organization members, and an external market analysis document.

Our case study company had both sales growth and profit growth corporate strategies which have been argued to cause tensions. We found that four management control practices enabled the alignment of product development projects to these strategies. The first management control practice was having the NPD and marketing functions responsible for different corporate strategies. Other management control practices included the involvement of organization members from across multiple functions, the activities they carried out, and the measures used to evaluate project performance during the product development process.

These findings add new insights to the management accounting literature by showing how a combination of management control practices can be used by organization members to align projects with potentially conflicting corporate strategies during the product development process.

While the alignment of product development projects to corporate strategy is not easy this study shows how it can be enabled through a number of management control practices.

We contribute to the management accounting research in this area by extending our understanding of the management control practices used during the product development process.

The essential investments in new product development (NPD) made by industrial companies entail effective management of NPD activities. In this context, performance measurement is one of the means that can be employed in the pursuit of effectiveness.

Purpose – In the recent redefinition of the European Commission's corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy, attention is brought to CSR as a motor for innovation. However, literature in the area remains scarce. This chapter describes and discusses innovation as a consequence of a firm's CSR activities.

Methodology/approach – The empirical part of the chapter is based on the content analysis of 58 annual reports issued by the companies listed on the Swedish large-cap stock exchange. Their statements on CSR were coded to grasp the meanings of CSR, what areas they focus on, and types of innovation.

Findings – The study indicates that CSR innovation mostly focuses on environmental aspects. Companies that are less regulated by law in their operations tend to become more creative in their CSR approaches. CSR policy complements rather than enhances CSR innovation. CSR orientation is path-dependent on competences and position in the supply chain, and puts focus on incremental innovation. For product innovation, CSR may either appear as CSR in product (CSR-influenced material choices) or CSR in use.

Research limitations/implications – The data comprises established Swedish firms, however acting on international markets.

Social implications – Innovation and CSR are two important pillars for societal development. Finding motors that foster innovation, while increasing CSR awareness and using CSR as the driver for innovation, are important challenges for the future.

Originality/value of chapter – The study contributes to previous research through linking CSR orientation to innovation, describing types of innovation, and connecting their combined foci to different industry sectors.

An approach to social responsibility in higher education will be proposed in this chapter and informed by a canon of literature and theorizing on critical pedagogy (Darder, Baltodano, & Torres, 2009; Freire, 1971; Giroux, 2011). Rooted in the work of education theorist Paulo Freire (1971, 1993) critical pedagogy embodies a set of critical dispositions about community, politics and education. Freire (1971, 1993) posited the nature of hope through transformative action in communities in which community empowerment arises from emerging critical consciousness and informed action. In common with the ideals of university–community partnerships critical pedagogy connects both to a community development mission and to an educational mission. However, though these principle philosophies of critical pedagogy may be inferred in the literature on civic universities, on higher education and public engagement and on wider aspects of social responsibility in higher education (Goddard & Kempton, 2016; UPP, 2019; Webster & Dyball, 2010), the chapter will explore how they may be more centrally located in analysis and in practice development.

Women transport workers are a proud part of the workforce, central to the global economy linking supply chains and keeping the world moving. But the transport industry is highly gendered. Women transport workers are overrepresented in precarious informal work and non-standard forms of employment without social protections, they are underrepresented in leadership and decision-making, and are facing endemic gender-based violence, and sanitation indignity. Women’s jobs in transport are more likely to be vulnerable to the impacts of automation and digitalisation. Responses to the challenges arising from the COVID-19 crisis have the potential to exacerbate existing inequalities.

This chapter argues that it is imperative that the transport industry – including employers, governments, investors, and unions – put into action a gender-responsive approach to ensure that inequalities are not reproduced, perpetuated or intensified, and that there is a ‘gender equal new normal’. Strengthening women’s employment in transport needs to address more than just recruitment, and failure to also address the reality of gender-based violence and other aspects related to decent work risks undermining any interventions to increase women in transport. The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) continues to prioritise work to improve the status and working lives of women in transport. Through policy and innovative action programmes – including union organising, campaigning, collective bargaining, developing women’s activism and leadership, and building strategic alliances – the chapter shows how the ITF is supporting women transport workers, through their trade unions, to address their most significant industrial and workplace issues, to shape, and lead the struggle for equality.

Between 2002 and 2018, at a time when UK universities were being increasingly measured in economic and financial terms, Staffordshire University established a dedicated public engagement unit. Staffed by an experienced team of “pracademics” (Posner, 2009), the Creative Communities Unit (CCU) engaged with community members and voluntary organizations through teaching, research, and consultancy. Underpinning CCU practice was a clear set of principles influenced by those of community development, including participation, inclusion, and action-driven practice. However, despite strong community connections the work of the unit remained isolated with little coordination for public engagement at a strategic level in the university.

This chapter charts the work of the CCU over its lifespan and its influence on a strategically embedded Connected Communities Framework through which civic engagement is supported across the institution. It explores how the alignment of grass roots activity through the CCU, shifts in UK policy and a clear, institutional strategic vision for civic engagement enabled the move from public engagement as a small team activity to an institutional commitment. It concludes with a reflection on the enabling conditions that supported the journey toward a civic university.

This chapter begins by introducing trade unions: their purpose in representing members, different perspectives on the role and impact of trade unions and the opposition they face within the workplace. The chapter proceeds to discuss the role of, and particular challenges faced by, trade unions in the civil aviation industry. There follows a discussion of the role of women in civil aviation and both the crucial role played by women within trade unions and the role of trade unions in representing the interests of women. The chapter closes with a discussion of the role women might play in the revitalisation of the labour movement within the civil aviation industry.

This chapter focuses on the Street Work Homeless Project that was the site of one of the ethnographic case studies conducted in Manchester and also one of the participatory action research projects. The participants – men with lived experience of homelessness – were in many ways the antithesis of those usually considered for inclusion in a study on youth participation. However, the chapter shows how there is much to learn from this project, particularly in terms of how marginalised groups can actively participate in and for society. In preparation for the chapter, Rowley and Charles revisited their reflections and learning from the project. From this process, they wrote conversations exploring tensions that ran throughout the project. These tensions, and an antidote, are explored in the chapter. The chapter emphasises the importance of relationality in building mutuality and trust, the limitations of empowerment due to internalising pathologising dominant narratives, and the need to witness rather than spectate the more discomforting aspects of learning participation. By working through these tensions, it was possible to shift relations and roles between those designated as facilitator and participant leading to the question ‘who was lost and who was found?’. The chapter concludes that such processes are necessarily agonistic and creative to enable more inclusive and democratic participation to occur for marginalised groups.

InfoMe is an innovative research program that explores and facilitates how ethnic minority youth help members of their social networks, especially elders, with everyday life situations through information and technology.

The project employs mixed methods, iteratively using Teen Design Days and a stratified random, classroom-based survey (n = 500) in six schools, with multiple community partners in King County, WA.

InfoMe inductively demonstrates how ethnic minority youth help others with situations of daily living through information and technology.

The findings are being used to develop InfoMe applications with the youth and InfoMe Train-the-Trainer workshops for professionals who work with youth.

The research is developing a model of how ethnic minority youth engage as information mediaries in different community settings, how individuals and communities benefit; and it is contributing to our general understanding of specific concepts related to the human information experience.