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Educators have had good reason to be concerned with social justice in a context where diversity has become more pronounced in both our schools and communities, with widening divisions between the advantaged and the disadvantaged. Internationally, increasing emphasis has been placed on utilizing the role of school leadership to address issues of social justice and equality, within a scenario where comparative studies of the performance of educational systems dominate the policy imagination globally, thus leading to increased pressure on school systems. This chapter presents a problematization of the social justice concept within education as presented in the literature, while setting out to critique this concept as an educational goal, as well as the role educational leadership is expected to play in the promotion of equity and social justice discourses through the lens of Actor-Network Theory (ANT). This theoretical chapter has implications for theory, policy, and practice.

This paper seeks to understand kaizen in practice as it travels through time and space in the organisational setting.

A qualitative case study was carried out at a multinational company using mainly interviews for the data collection that were analysed from an actor-network theory (ANT) perspective.

This paper finds that the company deals with a series of paradoxes while managing the kaizen process. Efficiency and quality paradoxes are the basis for starting kaizen projects. Furthermore, intrinsic, and extrinsic motivation, emerge in these processes, and paradoxes relate to how spontaneous ideas emerge in a deliberated context of cost-saving objectives. The supply chain finance team coordinates kaizen projects with the collaboration of plant managers, promoting the paradox of autonomy and control. In addition, as kaizen mobilises and enrols the actors, some trials of strength emerge, showing actors who oppose the kaizen network and create competing networks that mutually exist in the firm.

This study presents valuable insights for professionals to successfully implement kaizen methodologies that take advantage of developing a network for problem-solving in organizations.

This study highlights the supply chain finance team's role in enrolling the actors within a network built by practitioners engaged in kaizen projects. Usually, engineers, quality, or manufacturing teams lead kaizen projects, and only occasionally, accounting and financial teams participate, including multidisciplinary teams.

This article discusses the methodological implications of a recent study on Luxembourg's offshore financial center. Insight from actor-network theory was essential in undertaking its ethnographic research with elites from the country's state and financial institutions. My intention in documenting this approach is to provide a template for ethnographers studying other localized contexts of global politico-economic significance, in which elite actors usually seek to curtail the enquiries of investigators. With this actor-network from Luxembourg as an example, I demonstrate how elite and difficult-to-access milieus can be entered via “networking” coupled with outreach via interviews and email correspondence. As I show, by initiating various modalities of entry into the context in question, ethnographers can establish themselves within an actor-network for the purposes of conducting interviews and participant observation with elite interlocutors.

This study aims to examine digital consumer culture and behavior in the community, namely, 180° Movement Digital Training Center (DTC), in Jakarta, Indonesia. It aims to describe the dynamics of digital consumer culture in contemporary society, particularly as experienced by the youth community in Jakarta in the context of socio-technology relations and incorporates it into the diagram of digital consumer culture network.

This research uses a constructivist qualitative approach and socio-technical relation analysis through actor-network theory and digital consumer culture.

The study finds that the individual model of digital consumption is constructed through the process of problematization, interessement, enrollment and mobilization of individuals. It generates a culture in which consumers are constantly up to date with high-intensity information, but within increasingly shorter timeframes, while also considering principles of affordability, needs, desires and satisfaction. The network of digital consumer culture construction among informants is peculiar and unstable.

The study of digital consumer culture within the 180° Movement DTC community highlights how consumer behaviors of its members are facilitated and interconnected within a digital cultural network. However, this research is constrained by the dialectical interplay between Christian principles and the emerging values of consumer culture, a result of the scarcity of theoretical resources and information. This study also provides a specific contribution as a foundation for mapping the volatile digital consumer culture for researchers.

Understanding the socio-technological relationships and consumption behavior of the youth community could help digital platforms tailor their services more effectively. It could also guide the 180° Movement DTC in developing programs that resonate with the youth, bridging the gap between the physical and virtual realms. Ultimately, this could lead to a more engaged and digitally literate society.

This study contributes to a broader societal understanding of how digital technology is shaping consumer behavior and identity within youth communities, which can influence social dynamics and interactions. It provides insights into the potential social impacts of digital technology, such as changes in relationships, communication patterns and self-perception, informing societal discourse on digital culture.

In addition to presenting socio-technological analysis on Indonesian consumer culture using actor-network theory, some also show that studies on digital connectivity ambivalence that concern the relationship between humans as actors and non-humans as actors have become one of the popular sociology studies at present.

The purpose of this paper is to help better understand the translation process of the management control system (MCS) of privatised solid waste management (SWM) towards creating a stable network.

Drawing on the actor network theory (ANT), the case of a privatised SWM was studied. Data were collected from all entities involved in the privatisation process of SWM, which include Department A, Corporation X and the private sector concessionaire. Six documents were reviewed, 20 interviews were conducted and two observations were carried out.

The findings reveal that the control mechanism of SWM is complex, involving the interaction between human and non-human actors. Non-human actors include the key performance indicators (KPIs) and the concessionaire agreement (CA), which are the main control mechanisms towards creating a stable SWM network. Essentially, stability is achieved when the KPIs and CA can influence the activities of both intra- and inter-organisational relationships.

This paper provides a better understanding of the translation process of the MCS that adds to the stability of the network of a privatised SWM from the lens of the ANT.

This paper illustrates the socio-political nature of accountings, referring to the partial privatisation of the monopoly telecommunications organisation in a lower-middle-income country.

Actor-network theory and an ANTi-history approach are used to trace circumstances and occurrences. Empirical materials include official documents, print media and retrospective interviews with organisation employees ten years on from the privatisation.

Proponents of privatisation used retrospectively constructed historical accounts to problematise the natural monopoly of telecommunications and the government organisation administering it. A restructuring programme followed. Proponents addressed controversies pertaining to the programme thus garnering widespread support for complex and controversial changes. Proponents produced and reproduced accounting artefacts as evidence in these processes of history reconstruction, consequent changes and restoring stability to telecommunications in its reconfigured commercial domain. The proponents used selective, controversial accounting evidence to problematise the government organisation's existence, then to mobilise various actors to reduce and close the controversies previously aroused and reinstate stability in a partially privatised telecommunications company. Although no longer having a monopoly this company still dominates. Dissenters did the same but with little success.

The findings demonstrate the importance of tracing the socio-political process of arriving at the dominant outcome about the past. This assists in making sense of present circumstances and re-imagining the future.

The study demonstrates that, during controversial circumstances, taken-for-granted history, as well as what is thought to have not existed in the past, support the dominant network in gaining advantage over their opponents and black-boxing their perspectives of how things should be.

This research aims to examine and understand the rationales and modalities behind the use of disclosure before, during and after a corporate governance scandal involving CPA Australia (CPAA).

Data beyond CPAA's annual reports were collected, such as news articles, media releases, an independent review panel (IRP) report, and the Chief Operating Officer's letter to members. These disclosures were manually coded and analysed through the word counts and word trees in NVivo. This study also relied on Norbert Elias' conceptual tool of power games among networks of actors – figurations – to model the scandal as a power game between the old Board, the press, concerned members, the IRP and the new Board. This study analysed the data to reveal a collective and in fieri power balance that changed with the phases of the scandal.

A mix of voluntary, involuntary, requested and absent disclosures was important in triggering, managing and ending the CPAA scandal. Moreover, communication and disclosure fulfilled a constitutive role since both: mobilised actors, enabled coordination among actors, contributed to pursuing shared goals and influenced power balances. Such a constitutive role was at the heart of the ability of coalitions of figurations to challenge and restore the powerful status quo.

This research introduces to accounting studies the collective and in fieri dimensions of power from figurational theory. Moreover, the research sheds new light on using voluntary, involuntary, requested and absent disclosures before, during and after a corporate crisis.

This paper aims to explore how a shared service centre (SSC) is mobilised in a power-dominant context of a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE). Specifically, it examines the mobilisation of SSC within this multi-divisional SOE, the role and dynamics of actors involved and the influence of changes in the integrated information system (IIS) during the mobilisation process.

The study follows a qualitative case study methodology. The authors draw on actor-network theory to examine the network and translation processes constructed in mobilising SSC in the chosen SOE. The data sources of this study were collected through semi-structured interviews, observations and documentary reviews.

The mobilisation of SSC is not a linear process but rather a “spiral” interplay through continuous interactions and compromises between human and non-human actors. Power gave the core actor as an orchestrator legitimacy and formality to reduce resistance and obstruction in translation for the mobilisation of SSC. The changes in IIS appear to facilitate the interaction between the heterogeneous actors.

This case study contributes towards understanding the mobilisation of SSC in a power-dominant context by highlighting the impact of changes in IIS and the details of the mobilisation of SSC in terms of the role played by both the individual actors and the technology.

This study provides a broader understanding of the interactions of the heterogeneous actors for mobilising SSC in a power-dominant context. More importantly, the study inspires future research into examining how SSC practices unfold and how the changes in IIS influence the mobilisation of SSC.

This study examines accounting reform in the Sri Lankan public sector using an actor–network perspective. The study is particularly concerned with the role of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Sri Lanka (ICASL) in building networks of organisational actors in the diffusion of Sri Lankan Public Sector Accounting Standards (SLPSAS).

The empirical data draws on interviews with key actors to understand the role of ICASL in the diffusion of SLPSAS. Twenty-two semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of ICASL and senior public sector officers. The data were analysed based on the four stages underlying the translation process: problematisation, interessement, enrolment and mobilisation.

The data suggest that ICASL became a lead player in the diffusion of public sector accounting standards because of its superior technical capability. ICASL cultivated a way of thinking about accrual accounting by executing relational influence generated through professional knowledge, and connections with the government and public sector accountants.

Findings should be interpreted with caution; data are limited by the subjective interpretation of data. By concentrating on the role of ICASL, the role and influence of other key actors may be overlooked.

This study contributes to the literature on how innovations transform accounting practice through the lens of the ICASL. The result builds on evidence explaining why provincial governments and public sector governments were hesitant to adopt SLPSAS despite central government directives.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the ontological assumptions regarding the concept of agency and sociality within business networks in the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group (IMP) research by refining these assumptions with a relational sociological (RS) perspective. This paper reinforces the robustness of the actors-resources-activities (ARA) model with an in-depth investigation of the actor dimension, where local interactions between interdependent individuals play a central role in building common futures within business networks through organisational reflexivity.

This conceptual paper investigates the social ontology of research. It challenges the implicit assumptions of IMP research regarding agency and sociality within business networks with a problematisation strategy (Sandberg and Alvesson, 2011). Combining IMP views on agency with the RS perspective, it sets this combined framework as an alternative for the analysis of sustainability and ethics within business networks.

Combining IMP research and an RS perspective allows us to extend the knowledge of sociality within business networks, highlighting the centrality of meaning sharing in the process of network change. By focusing on symbolic interaction processes, an RS perspective contributes to a deeper theoretical understanding of the relationship between local communication and business network patterns. Combined with an IMP perspective on agency, it provides researchers with an alternative conceptual framework for examining sustainability by considering ethics and leadership dialectically.

RS is still an emerging stream within sociology, characterised by diverse views. Not all relational sociologists, as scientists, feel obliged to engage with sustainability research. Thus, the paper is a two-sided invitation to IMP researchers and relational sociologists to delve into the adaptation processes in business networks in highly uncertain environments.

RS focusing on the centrality of communication in local interactions, business network researchers can show that organisational leaders are not the ones with a charismatic vision isolated from any natural and social environment; rather, they are the people with “the capacity to assist the group to continue acting ethically, creatively and courageously in the unknown” (Stacey,2013).

Adopting an RS perspective on agency in business networks can help managers and researchers determine how business networks can be managed in a more sustainable way. Combined with a dialectical and processual understanding of ethics, the IMP-RS perspective emphasises day-to-day local communication practices within and between organisations that challenges microeconomic views on nature, strategy, ethics and leadership. This paper thus places the social at the centre of sustainability approaches.

From an RS perspective, business networks are analysed as patterns of interactions between many organisations and individuals. The value of this conceptual paper is in showing that change within business networks is negotiated through local interactions and symbolic communication between individuals. Thus, it suggests the need to combine the individual and the organisational levels to analyse agency within business networks and to examine the adaptation of business networks to sustainability.