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The branding of universities is increasingly recognized to present a different set of challenges than in corporate, for-profit sectors. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how faculty make sense of branding in the context of higher education, specifically considering branding initiatives in business schools.

The paper is based on qualitative interviews with faculty regarding their responses to organizational branding at four business schools. Discourse analysis was used to analyze the interview data.

The study reveals varied, fluid and reflexive faculty interpretations of organizational branding. Faculty interviewed in the study adopted a number of stances towards their schools’ branding efforts. In particular, the study identifies three main faculty responses to branding: endorsement, ambivalence and cynicism.

The study contributes by highlighting the ambiguities and ambivalence generated by brand management initiatives in the higher education context, offering original insights into the multiple ways that faculty exploit, frame and resist attempts to brand their organizations. The authors conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for branding in university contexts.

Existing literature has begun to identify the agonistic and contested aspects of the ongoing development of accountability systems. These “contests” are particularly important during periods of change when an accountability “deficit” has been identified, that is, when existing accountability systems are deemed inadequate and requiring revision. The purpose of this paper is to explore one such set of contests in the case of large technology and social media firms: the so-called “big tech”. The authors focus specifically on “big tech” because of increasing societal concerns about the harms associated with their products, services and business practices.

The authors analysed four US Congressional hearings, in which the CEO of Facebook was held to account for the company's alleged breaches and harms. The authors conducted a discourse analysis of the dialogue between the account giver (Mark Zuckerberg) and account holders (Members of Congress) in the oral testimony at the four hearings.

Two areas of contestation in the dialogue between the account giver and account holders are identified. “Epistemic contests” involved contestation about the “facts” concerning the harms the company had allegedly caused. “Responsibility contests” involved contestation about who (or what) should be held responsible for these harms and according to what standards or criteria.

The study advances critical dialogical accountability literature by identifying two areas of contestation during periods of change in accountability systems. In so doing, they advanced the theory by conceptualising the process of change as underpinned by discursive contests in which multiple actors construct and contest the “problem” with existing accountability systems. The outcomes of these contests are significant, the authors suggest, because they inform the development of reforms to the accountability system governing big tech firms and other industries undergoing similar periods of contestation and change.

The aim of this review paper is to identify the methodological practices and presentational styles used to report interview-based research in “leading” management and organisation journals.

This paper reviews a sample of 225 articles using qualitative interviews that were published in management, human resource management, organisational behaviour and international business journals listed in the Financial Times 50 list between 2009 and 2019.

The review found diversity and plurality in the methodological practices used in these studies and the presentational styles used to report interview research.

The findings are expected to help doctoral students, early career scholars and those new to using qualitative interviews to make decisions about the appropriateness of different methodological practices and presentational styles. The findings are also expected to support editors, reviewers, doctoral examiners and conference organisers in making sense of the dissensus that exists amongst qualitative interview researchers (Johnson et al., 2007). These insights will also enable greater “paradigmatic awareness” (Plakoyiannaki and Budhwar, 2021, p. 5) in the evaluation of the quality of interview-based research that is not restricted to standardised criteria derived from positivism (Cassell and Symon, 2015).

To make sense of this plurality, the authors map these practices and styles against the onto-epistemological paradigms identified by Alvesson (2003, 2011). The paper contributes to calls for philosophical diversity in the evaluation of qualitative research. The authors specifically articulate concerns about the use of practices in interview-based studies that derive from the positivistic logic associated with quantitative research.

To outline paradoxes found in literature on management consulting and present a novel way of re‐conceptualizing paradox using a performative or action‐oriented approach to discourse.

The approach is based on a theoretical reinterpretation of existing research findings on management consulting. Limited ethnographic data are also used to support the argument.

The paper argues that paradoxes are an outcome of the many, often conflicting, interpretive repertoires (IR) used to understand management consulting. This suggests that paradoxes may never be resolved but instead may constitute a key resource for agents in affecting change. This idea is illustrated with reference to ethnographic data from a study of management consultants.

The paper suggests that a performative theory of discourse enables researchers to appreciate how and why paradoxes are reproduced in the context of organizational change.

Practitioners are seen to work within paradoxes, using conflicting IR as a toolkit for negotiating change.

Proposes a novel way of viewing paradoxes by shifting the focus away from what paradoxical accounts reflect towards what they achieve in the context of interaction.

The purpose of this paper is to use Actor Network Theory to explore the role of management accounting systems (MAS) in the construction of business strategy.

The paper draws on findings from an ethnographic study of a UK‐based firm. Theoretical concepts from Actor‐Network Theory are used to illuminate the findings of the study.

The study found that MAS acted as an obligatory point of passage into the strategic agenda of the firm. However, the findings also reveal the political tactics used by employees in order to work within, against and around the MAS.

The paper shows that MAS are a key player in the political contests that occur during the process of strategy formulation, as opposed to offering a neutral tool for measuring the strategic value of innovative ideas.

In this chapter, we share our top tips on writing impact for funding bids and reports. These are drawn from our extensive experience working across a UK university as research impact managers and also successfully developing and writing small to multimillion-pound grant applications for UK charity, UK Government and European funding. We have developed and delivered impact training to researchers at all career stages, written impact case studies for the UK's research assessment and published on the genre. ¹ We also lead the Impact Special Interest Group for the UK's Association of Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA) and contribute to conferences and specialist training internationally, which has included the Australasia region, Africa and Europe.

This paper aims to analyse the rise and institutionalization of the discourse of strategic management. It seeks to advance an agenda for studying strategy from a sociologically informed perspective. Moreover, it aims to make a case for a critically informed, interdisciplinary approach to studying strategy.

The paper provides an overview to studying strategy critically. It is a theoretically informed paper.

The findings can be summarised as: first, strategy emerged as a major discipline in the 1970s; second, as a body of knowledge strategy has remained close to its industrial economics origins; and third, an agenda for the sociological study of strategy revolving around concerns of performativity and power is outlined.

The paper offers a sociologically informed account of strategy.