Search results

The purpose of this paper is to understand the antecedents of fanaticism through the lens of attribution theory and “norm of reciprocity”. It is proposed that consumers will reward firms with high perceived effort, including both general and specific effort by increasing their loyalty and becoming a fan of the company.

The data are collected in a high-tech services industry, mobile phone services. A paper-based survey using mall intercept technique was employed in this study. The sampling design was a combination of convenience sampling (any adult who happened to be at a given location on a given day and time) and system probability sampling (every fifth adult who passed the data collection point was approached and asked to participate in the study). The final sample size is 600.

The antecedents of fanaticism are identified as both firm’s general effort (i.e. service quality and innovativeness) and specific effort (i.e. perceived reciprocity). In addition, perceived regulatory control moderated the relationship between innovativeness, part of firm’s general effort and customer fanaticism. To be more specific, perceived regulatory control increased the effect of perceived innovativeness on fanatical loyalty.

The introduction of the role of perceived regulatory control in the interactions between firms and customers has not been adopted in previous research and can contribute a new body of knowledge to the current literature. This research has implications for service providers, especially in high-tech industries.

The Sri Lanka Telecommunications company was recently partially privatised and a major Japanese company became responsible for its management. Previously, it was a government department characterised by rule bound, bureaucratic management and political interventions into operational issues. The longitudinal study illustrates how a Japanese manager's charismatic and patrimonial leadership eliminated bureaucratic controls, brought new management controls and reward systems, and achieved some commercial success. However, some employees unsympathetic to the changes allied with politicians frustrated with their exclusion from organisational affairs to get the Japanese manager removed and restore formal bureaucracy. This was achieved not through direct intervention but largely through the politicians' control of the regulatory system. Conflicts between the two competing management control ideologies were profound and violent. The paper traces how modes of production and management accounting and controls in less developed countries are related, and are transformed in an unpredictable and often unexpected fashion due to cultural, economic, and political factors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effectiveness and pedagogical implications of integrating wikis into the curriculum and the subsequent learning outcomes of a group of Net‐Gens who enrolled in an International Marketing course. The research problem of the study is: “What are the learning outcomes and pedagogical implications arising from the use of wikis?”

A qualitative research methodology supported by the NVivo data analysis software was employed. A triangulated approach to collecting data was used. First, the content of the three student‐generated wikis and the written text of 30 student assignments were analysed by using Nvivo software to identify emerging themes pertaining to wiki‐based learning outcomes. Second, a critical incident method was employed where students were asked to describe two positive experiences and two negative experiences related to the wiki pedagogy. Third, in‐depth interviews were conducted with six members of the teaching panel of the course to further understand the pedagogical implications of wikis.

Consistent with previous studies, it was found that wikis promoted collaborative learning, organic discussions and independent thinking. Against previous studies, however, it was found that students adapted to wiki‐based pedagogy very well, and with little difficulty. There were differential levels of student engagement in wikis, and that occasionally wikis resulted in stagnated discussions, unless clearly aligned to the curriculum.

A well thought‐out alignment of wiki assessments with other learning activities has the potential to engage Net‐Gens. In order to keep students enthusiastically engaged in wiki discussions, it is important to embed wiki‐based activities into other learning activities. Understanding that there is a “spill over” effect from one learning activity to another is important.

The outcomes were especially beneficial to non‐English speaking background (NESB) students who are often inhibited in their responses in typical classroom settings.

While research has focussed on the use and functionality of wikis in curriculum design, there is a paucity of work on their pedagogical implications. This paper look sat the implications of a “wiki‐based pedagogy” which assumes an “emancipatory”, partially‐“constructivist” paradigm of learning, where teachers should be ready to ‘loosen the controls of the conventional teaching‐centred learning environment’.

The paper's aim is to investigate environmentally conscious behaviour among young individuals in Australia with special attention given to their climate change risk perceptions.

In total, 20 in‐depth interviews were employed in this qualitative investigation. The informants of the investigation are young individuals (aged between 19‐25 years) in a major city in Australia. Twenty semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews ranging from 1.5‐3 hours were conducted. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to ensure informant diversity and access to “information rich” cases of youth engaged in environmental groups, activism and environmental behaviour.

Four thematic categories were derived. They are: unperceived adverse effects of climate change, disassociation between adverse effects of climate change and environmentally conscious behaviour, challenges to the dominant economic model and, redefined environmental paradigm

Based on the implications of the findings, several recommendations for communicating climate change remedial actions and encouraging environmentally conscious behaviour among young individuals are made.

The study contributes toward enhancing the understanding of climate change risk perceptions and environmentally conscious behaviour among young environmentalists in Australia where studies on young consumers are scarce. Findings of the study are useful in gaining young individuals' support for the successful implementations of climate change remedial actions.

The purpose of this study is to extend the current knowledge of curriculum developments in international business and marketing curricula. Integrating sustainability into business and marketing curricula of the universities are widely debated in previous literature. Sustainability is a global phenomenon; however, curriculum development projects aimed at integrating sustainability education into international business and marketing curricula are scarce. The study investigates the learning gaps in sustainability education among undergraduates enrolled in an International Marketing course to postulate a series of pedagogical practices, leading to effective integration of sustainability education into the curricula.

Two-phased research method consisting of complementary data collection techniques informed the findings of this study. First, an online survey was conducted among 111 undergraduates enrolled in an International Marketing course. The findings of the survey are used in designing the second phase of data collection performed through a content analysis of essays written by 60 undergraduates evaluating sustainable marketing practices of international firms. Informed by the findings gathered through SPSS- and Nvivo-aided data analysis, this study postulates a series of pedagogical practices.

The study argues that curriculum development projects in integrating sustainability into an existing curriculum in universities should be aimed at bridging undergraduates’ learning gaps in sustainability education. The main learning gaps identified in the study reveal that undergraduates find it difficult to view the social function of international business firms from a holistic point of view; critically assess sustainable marketing practices; and articulate futuristic views on sustainable marketing practices. Further, the content analysis revealed three major thematic categories: sustainability from reductionists’ perspective, sustainable marketing practices bring nothing “but good for businesses”, ambivalent about the future success of sustainable marketing practices. Triggered by these learning gaps, thematic categories and the theoretical underpinnings of Rusinko’s (2010) matrix for integrating sustainability education, the study offers a set of practical pedagogical guidelines to incorporate sustainability education into curricula.

The study is limited to exploring undergraduate student perspectives, and it would be worthwhile if educators’ perspectives are explored in future studies. The findings could be further improved by conducting a cross-sectional study across several business disciplines.

Based on the findings of the study, a set of guidelines for developing a pedagogical plan to incorporate sustainable education into curricula is presented.

Educators argue that successful curriculum development projects aiming at integrating sustainability into existing curricula should be aligned with the structure of the existing curricula, and those new pedagogical practices in integrating sustainability into existing curricula should be built on students’ learning gaps in sustainability education. To this end, this study examined undergraduates’ learning gaps in sustainability education and postulated pedagogical practices toward integrating sustainability education into an existing curriculum of international marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the themes and aims of this Accounting, Auditing & Accountability (AAAJ) special issue and comments on the papers included in the issue. The paper provides a thematic outline along which the future researchers can undertake more empirical research examining how neoliberalism shapes, and shaped by, management accounting.

This entails a brief review of the previous critical accounting works that refer to liberalism and neoliberalism to identify and highlight the specific themes and trajectories of neoliberal implications of management accounting has been and can be explored. This is followed by a brief commentary on the papers the authors have included in this special issue; these commentaries explain how these papers capture various dimensions of enabling and enacting neoliberal governmentality.

The authors found that management accounting is now entering new territories beyond its conventional disciplinary enclosures of confinement, reconfiguring its functionalities to enable and enact a circulatory mode of neoliberal governmentality. These new functionalities then produce and reproduce entrepreneurial selves in myriad forms of social connections, networks and platforms within and beyond formal organizational settings, amid plethora of conducts, counter-conducts and resistances and new forms of identities and subjectivities.

This review can be read in relation to the papers included in the special issue as the whole issue will inspire more ideas, frameworks and methodologies for further studies.

There is little research reviewing and commenting how management accounting now being enacted and enabled with new functionalities operating new territories and reconfiguring forms of governmentality. This paper inspires a new agenda on this project.

This paper aims to report on subalterns' emancipatory accounting (SEA) embedded in transformation of governance and accountability structures (GAS) in Ceylon Tea.

The paper draws on James Scott's political anthropology to examine how subalterns' resistance and emancipatory accounting triggers structural transformations.

An attempt is made to theorise subaltern resistance as a form of emancipatory accounting. Concerning the commentaries that accounting has been to suppress or hegemonise the subalterns and appreciating the analysis of indigenous resistance implicated in emancipatory potential, this paper examines how a distinct subaltern group in Ceylon Tea deployed their own weapons towards the changes in GAS.

The accounting literature neglects how subalterns reconstruct governance and accountability structures: this paper introduces a social accounting perspective on resistance, control and structural transformations. Also, it introduces to accounting researchers James Scott's political anthropology as an alternative framework.

The purpose of this paper is to reflectively narrate the methodological journey of the authors in penetrating the positivitic hegemony of accounting and management control research in their native countries, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

This paper offers an auto-ethnography to demonstrate the lack of diversity in accounting, accountability and management control research.

Global developments in accounting and accountability reforms entail not only about how developing countries being governed through these reforms but also about how accounting research itself can be pursued alternatively. In the past several decades, a camp of British accounting researchers initiated a programme of research in this direction. Inspired by post-positivistic traditions, they aimed to explore how these reforms are predicated upon cultural-political milieus in developing countries. However, the academia in most accounting and management researchers from local universities in these countries are blindly bombarded with positivistic traditions.

The authors unpack how this hegemony formed and how attempts were made towards some emancipatory potentials.

Drawing on the ideas of postcolonial hybridity and postcolonial feminism, the purpose of this paper is to explore a contextual variant of neoliberalism, which the authors call postcolonial neoliberalism. It unpacks the peculiarities of hybridised practices of management controls therein to reflect on its construction and consequences.

A seven-month ethnographic study was carried out in a Sri Lankan tea estate to understand both the nature and the practices of these controls.

Postcolonial neoliberalism has been animated by a hybrid form of management controls encompassing colonial action controls, postcolonial cultural controls and neoliberal results controls. This created an emancipatory space for female workers to engage in some confrontations to attain some compromises.

The message is that the hybridised controls are central to the construction of this form of postcolonial neoliberalism and to its reproduction. However, as these controls accompany a gendered form, female workers find a condition of possibility for some emancipatory potentials within the neoliberal development policy.