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This study aims to broaden the understanding of activist public relations in developing contexts. The power of formal laws and policies in developing contexts diminishes by traditional norms and authorities, and therefore, a great deal of activist public relations efforts is devoted to controlling destructive norms and informal authorities. Activist public relations literature often assumes powerful formal institutions that are capable to control behaviors. The authors challenge this assumption by exploring activist public relations against gender-based violence (GV) in Bangladesh.

This study took an interpretative and social constructionist approach to examine public relations practices of two GV activist organizations in Bangladesh. The data were collected through observation, interviews and document analysis of four campaigns. The data were coded in NVivo.

The data show that the activist organizations used public relations campaigns for informal institutional work. The campaigns included educating various publics and storytelling to build supporting identities, norms and networks to address GV in Bangladesh.

The study has been limited to advocacy campaign of the non-governmental organizations.

The knowledge from this study can be applied to the social development sectors where public relations is used to activate activism. In addition, the public relations practitioners and scholars can find how activists public relations is emerging in developing context.

The findings suggest that activist public relations in developing contexts carry out institutional work and create informal institutions to compensate for the formal institutional voids. In addition, this paper highlights the role of public relations in institutional work, to create and maintain contributory institutions or disrupt disturbing institutions.

Purpose – Mainstream science, technology, and society (STS) scholars have shown little interest in engineering ethics, one going so far as to label engineering ethics activists as “shit shovelers.” Detachment from engineering ethics on the part of most STS scholars is related to a broader and long-standing split between the scholar-oriented and activist-oriented wings of STS. This chapter discusses the various STS “subcultures” and argues that the much-maligned activist STS subculture is far more likely than the mainstream scholar subculture to have a significant impact on engineering ethics education and practice.

Approach – The chapter builds on analyses of STS subcultures in research and education from the literature and identifies a similar set of subcultures for engineering ethics research and education.

Findings – Reconciliation of the STS subcultures will tap an activist tradition that already has strong ties (practical, historical, and theoretical) to engineering ethics research and education. Acknowledging that STS and engineering ethics each have legitimate, activist-oriented subcultures will position STS scholars and educators for providing needed insights to engineering activists and the engineering profession as a whole. STSers should recognize and appreciate that many engineering ethicists and engineering activists are concerned both with issues internal to the profession and broader social implications of technology.

Originality/value – The chapter presents an analysis of STS subcultures and their relationship to engineering ethics. As such, it will be of interest to STS scholars and engineering ethicists alike, as well as engineering ethics and STS educators.

Activist criminology advocates for social change by acting beyond the role of the academic, mainly through first-hand involvement in the field (Goyes, 2016). In this chapter, the author offers a longitudinal reflection on the researcher’s positionality, epistemology and methodology from the personal experience since their first research project, in 2019. During this project, the author started having cooperation with the Liberi Nantes migrants’ sports centre, now a community centre in Rome’s working-class suburb. This sparked her first reflections on activist criminology and how to embed it in her research approach and practice. The initial cooperation evolved in the ongoing and evolving collective ‘conversational integration’ project, which aims at overcoming the notion of integration as one-sided assimilation, working on addressing the diverse needs of the local community through a bottom-up governance initiative. This chapter is to be intended as a checkpoint in their growth within activist criminology and it hopefully serves to spark questions, suggestions and a push to form a solid network of activist academics that can help in fostering social change outside of the neoliberal agendas of academia.

This paper aims to deal with the issue of shareholder activism of private equity investors in public companies. The study identifies characteristics of target firms and investors related to the likelihood of private equity activism. The research also examines whether shareholder activism strategy of private equity investors is associated with the better performance in future and value creation of target firms.

The paper applies econometric modeling to hand-collected data on private equity investments in listed companies, in the form of private investment in public equity and open-market share purchases, from eight Continental Europe’s countries for the period 2005–2014.

The findings indicate that the probability of shareholder activism is higher if the target firm’s industry corresponds to the private equity investor’s industry specialization, if the private equity firm is older, if the target is larger and the average ownership share purchased by the investor is higher. Conversely, the probability of shareholder activism is lower where a private equity firm invests in the target for the first time. A target firm with an activist investor has poorer operational performance results one year following the investment compared to a target firm with a passive private equity investor.

Results from the analysis of transactions in Continental Europe countries with French and German legal origin may be not generalizable to other markets with the different legal tradition and institutional environment.

This research provides new empirical evidence on private equity activism in listed companies of Continental Europe. By distinguishing between active and passive investments, testing rarely considered characteristics to provide valuable insights and analyzing the effect of activism on the target firm’s performance, the study contributes variously to the still-limited body of literature on private equity activism in public companies with a governance structure based on concentrated ownership. The findings emphasize the relationship between shareholder activism and both target and investor’s characteristics from perspective of mitigating agency problem and value creation in target firms. By simultaneously investigating investments in public companies from several European markets, the study complements empirical evidence mostly obtained from studies of a single national market.

Grassroots activists leverage innovative, justice-oriented strategies to address wide-scale problems like climate change, life-threatening poverty, threats to Indigenous land rights, and racialised incarceration while simultaneously navigating highly localised issues like food insecurity. In the United States, urban activists are associated with large-scale demonstrations and social justice campaigns, yet rural community leaders have been campaigning against inequality and racism for decades, rarely receiving similar nuanced attention. Beyond differences in awareness and recognition, rural and urban activism generally operate independently from one another. However, more robust alliances across community types are needed more than ever to tackle today’s most pressing social problems. In this chapter, the authors draw on their scholarship on urban and rural activism to show that both varieties share common features, including a critical, political, and sociological consciousness with a core mission of social justice through community mobilisation. From this, the authors discuss common differences between urban and rural activism, reflect on the role of activist scholars in supporting (more unified) struggles for justice, and address some critical issues regarding academics who wish to study or work with activists and social movements.

The purpose of this paper is to present the gap between conceptualizations of social injustices and the desired social transformation that addresses multiple social subsystems and levels on one hand, and social justice leadership that addresses intra-school efforts on the other. The paper aims to expand the conceptualization of social justice leadership and tie it together with concepts of activism and social change.

The paper adopts a socio-ecological perspective. It reviews works about social justice leadership in education, activism, and social change to present the notion that in light of existing social justice barriers educational leaders should serve as activists in schools and in the community and policy areas.

The paper presents a macro framework, focussing on individual leaders in the field and on the consolidation of intentions, actions, and outcomes in a manner necessary for using social justice as an effective socio-political agenda in a socio-ecological system.

The paper presents a conceptual framework which can enable practitioners and researchers to better understand social justice efforts.

The aim of this conceptual paper is to assess the continued relevance of operations based training within hospitality management higher education programmes. The paper explores the purpose of a hospitality management degree programme and how this might have impacted upon curriculum development and the student learning experience.

The paper attempts to draw together writing on some of the key issues surrounding operations based training including balancing preparedness for industry with providing a true higher education experience and the growing clamour for a more liberal approach to hospitality education.

The paper identifies and discusses two UK programmes that have made significant changes to their operations provision.

The paper further explores issues around the debate into the hospitality curriculum adding a valuable dimension concerning operational training.

Activist groups apply a range of tactics in order to improve labour conditions in the global sports and apparel industry. The accumulation of these tactics leads to the build‐up of pressure on firms within this industry (brands, retailers) to change their policies and activities on labour issues in their supply chains. The purpose of this paper is to explore how activist groups instigate change within an industry.

By re‐examining a series of previously published accounts, eight conflict situations in the global sports and apparel industry, involving Nike, Reebok and Adidas, were analysed.

The paper demonstrates how an industry‐level approach is helpful in understanding how the sequential patterning of tactical choices evokes change in an industry. Studying activist groups’ tactics from this approach provides a richer understanding.

The paper contributes to the growing literature on activists’ influence strategies in conflicts with firms and speaks to current attempts at bringing together social movement and organization theories.