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1 – 10 of over 2000
Open Access
Article
Publication date: 13 December 2021

Matteo La Torre, Patrizia Di Tullio, Paola Tamburro, Maurizio Massaro and Michele Antonio Rea

The Italian government addressed the first wave of its COVID-19 outbreak with a series of social restrictions and calculative practices, all branded with the slogan #istayathome…

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Abstract

Purpose

The Italian government addressed the first wave of its COVID-19 outbreak with a series of social restrictions and calculative practices, all branded with the slogan #istayathome. The hashtag quickly went viral, becoming both a mandate and a mantra and, as the crisis played out, we witnessed the rise of the Italian social movement #istayathome. This study examines how the government's calculative practices led to #istayathome and the constituents that shaped this social movement.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors embrace social movement theory and the collective identity perspective to examine #istayathome as a collective action and social movement. Using passive netnography, text mining and interpretative text analysis enhanced by machine learning, the authors analysed just over 350,000 tweets made during the period March to May 2020, each brandishing the hashtag #istayathome.

Findings

The #istayathome movement gained traction as a response to the Italian government's call for collective action. Thus, people became an active part of mobilising collective responsibility, enhancing the government's plans. A collective identity on the part of the Italian people sustained the mass mobilisation, driven by cohesion, solidarity and a deep cultural trauma from COVID-19's dramatic effects. Popular culture and Italy's long traditions also helped to form the collective identity of #istayathome. This study found that calculative practices acted as a persuasive technology in forming this collective identity and mobilising people's collective action. Numbers stimulated the cognitive, moral and emotional connections of the social ties shaping collective identity and responsibility. Thus, through collective identity, calculative practices indirectly influenced mass social behaviors and the social movement.

Originality/value

This study offers a novel theoretical perspective and empirical knowledge to explain how government power affects people's culture and everyday life. It unveils the sociological drivers that mobilise collective behaviors and enriches the accounting literature on the effects of calculative practices in managing emergencies. The study contributes to theory by providing an understanding of how calculative practices can influence collective behaviors and can be used to construct informal networks that go beyond the government's traditional formalities.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 35 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 29 October 2019

Julie Bull, Karen Beazley, Jennifer Shea, Colleen MacQuarrie, Amy Hudson, Kelly Shaw, Fern Brunger, Chandra Kavanagh and Brenda Gagne

For many Indigenous nations globally, ethics is a conversation. The purpose of this paper is to share and mobilize knowledge to build relationships and capacities regarding the…

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Abstract

Purpose

For many Indigenous nations globally, ethics is a conversation. The purpose of this paper is to share and mobilize knowledge to build relationships and capacities regarding the ethics review and approval of research with Indigenous peoples throughout Atlantic Canada. The authors share key principles that emerged for shifting practices that recognize Indigenous rights holders through ethical research review practice.

Design/methodology/approach

The NunatuKavut Inuit hosted and led a two-day gathering on March 2019 in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, to promote a regional dialogue on Indigenous Research Governance. It brought together Indigenous Nations within the Atlantic Region and invited guests from institutional ethics review boards and researchers in the region to address the principles-to-policy-to-practice gap as it relates to the research ethics review process. Called “Naalak”, an Inuktitut word that means “to listen and to pay close attention”, the gathering created a dynamic moment of respect and understanding of how to work better together and support one another in research with Indigenous peoples on Indigenous lands.

Findings

Through this process of dialogue and reflection, emergent principles and practices for “good” research ethics were collectively identified. Open dialogue between institutional ethics boards and Indigenous research review committees acknowledged past and current research practices from Indigenous peoples’ perspectives; supported and encouraged community-led research; articulated and exemplified Indigenous ownership and control of data; promoted and practiced ethical and responsible research with Indigenous peoples; and supported and emphasized rights based approaches within the current research regulatory system. Key principles emerged for shifting paradigms to honour Indigenous rights holders through ethical research practice, including: recognizing Indigenous peoples as rights holders with sovereignty over research; accepting collective responsibility for research in a “good” way; enlarging the sphere of ethical consideration to include the land; acknowledging that “The stories are ours” through Indigenous-led (or co-led) research; articulating relationships between Indigenous and Research Ethics Board (REB) approvals; addressing justice and proportionate review of Indigenous research; and, means of identifying the Indigenous governing authority for approving research.

Research limitations/implications

Future steps (including further research) include pursuing collective responsibilities towards empowering Indigenous communities to build their own consensus around research with/in their people and their lands. This entails pursuing further understanding of how to move forward in recognition and respect for Indigenous peoples as rights holders, and disrupting mainstream dialogue around Indigenous peoples as “stakeholders” in research.

Practical implications

The first step in moving forward in a way that embraces Indigenous principles is to deeply embed the respect of Indigenous peoples as rights holders across and within REBs. This shift in perspective changes our collective responsibilities in equitable ways, reflecting and respecting differing impetus and resources between the two parties: “equity” does imply “equality”. Several examples of practical changes to REB procedures and considerations are detailed.

Social implications

What the authors have discovered is that it is not just about academic or institutional REB decolonization: there are broad systematic issues at play. However, pursuing the collective responsibilities outlined in our paper should work towards empowering communities to build their own consensus around research with/in their people and their lands. Indigenous peoples are rights holders, and have governance over research, including the autonomy to make decisions about themselves, their future, and their past.

Originality/value

The value is in its guidance around how authentic partnerships can develop that promote equity with regard to community and researcher and community/researcher voice and power throughout the research lifecycle, including through research ethics reviews that respect Indigenous rights, world views and ways of knowing. It helps to show how both Indigenous and non-Indigenous institutions can collectively honour Indigenous rights holders through ethical research practice.

Details

Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, vol. 15 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-5648

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 27 May 2021

Catrine Kostenius and Catarina Lundqvist

This study explores to what extent health promotion policy in practice and leadership engagement is reflected in school actors' experiences of health dialogues (HDs) and their…

1382

Abstract

Purpose

This study explores to what extent health promotion policy in practice and leadership engagement is reflected in school actors' experiences of health dialogues (HDs) and their ideas about promoting health and learning in schools.

Design/methodology/approach

The 93 participants consisted of 44 school nurses, 37 students in grades 4, 7 or the first year of high school and 12 teachers, who shared their experiences with HDs by writing open letters.

Findings

The qualitative content analysis resulted in four themes: Putting health on the agenda, Finding a common goal, Walking side by side and Pointing out a healthy direction. The participants' expectations of school health promotion leadership are revealed in suggestions on how the HDs can fulfill both the educational assignment and promote student health.

Practical implications

Based on the findings, we argue that for successful school health promotion leaders need to acknowledge the field of tension where leadership has to take place, anchor health promotion policy and administer “a Sandwich approach” – a top-down and bottom-up leadership simultaneously that facilitates school-based health promotion.

Originality/value

When different school actors (school nurses, teachers and students) are given a voice, a collective picture of HDs can emerge and help develop health promotion practices.

Details

Health Education, vol. 122 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0965-4283

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 19 October 2021

Jutta Haider and Olof Sundin

The article makes an empirical and conceptual contribution to understanding the temporalities of information literacies. The paper aims to identify different ways in which…

1983

Abstract

Purpose

The article makes an empirical and conceptual contribution to understanding the temporalities of information literacies. The paper aims to identify different ways in which anticipation of certain outcomes shapes strategies and tactics for engagement with algorithmic information intermediaries. The paper suggests that, given the dominance of predictive algorithms in society, information literacies need to be understood as sites of anticipation.

Design/methodology/approach

The article explores the ways in which the invisible algorithms of information intermediaries are conceptualised, made sense of and challenged by young people in their everyday lives. This is couched in a conceptual discussion of the role of anticipation in understanding expressions of information literacies in algorithmic cultures. The empirical material drawn on consists of semi-structured, pair interviews with 61 17–19 year olds, carried out in Sweden and Denmark. The analysis is carried out by means of a qualitative thematic analysis in three steps and along two sensitising concepts – agency and temporality.

Findings

The results are presented through three themes, anticipating personalisation, divergences and interventions. These highlight how articulating an anticipatory stance works towards connecting individual responsibilities, collective responsibilities and corporate interests and thus potentially facilitating an understanding of information as co-constituted by the socio-material conditions that enable it. This has clear implications for the framing of information literacies in relation to algorithmic systems.

Originality/value

The notion of algo-rhythm awareness constitutes a novel contribution to the field. By centring the role of anticipation in the emergence of information literacies, the article advances understanding of the temporalities of information.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 78 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 18 August 2022

Leanne Johnstone

This study aims to address how the ISO 14001 standardisation and certification process improves substantive performance in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the…

2433

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to address how the ISO 14001 standardisation and certification process improves substantive performance in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through the development of an environmental management control system (EMCS).

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative cross-case interview design with those responsible for the implementation of an environmental management system (certified to ISO 14001) in SMEs is adopted to inductively “theorise” the EMCS.

Findings

The design and monitoring of environmental controls are often beyond the scope of the SMEs’ top management team and include extra-organisational dimensions such as the external audit and institutional requirements. This suggests more complex control pathways for SMEs to produce EMCS that primarily function as packages and are broader than the analytical level of the firm. Here, controlling for environmental performance exists at strategic and operational levels, as well as beyond the SMEs’ boundaries.

Practical implications

Various internal controls are put forward for SME owner-managers to meet environmental targets (e.g. gamification and interpersonal communication strategies). This builds upon a broader accountability perspective wherein formalised hierarchical control is only one route for ensuring sustainable action within the ISO 14001-certified SMEs.

Social implications

This study contributes to a more sustainable society through developing an understanding of how environmental sustainability is substantively managed by SMEs to improve performance for current and future generations.

Originality/value

This paper, to the best of the author’s knowledge, is one of the first to establish how SMEs control for environmental sustainability from empirically derived evidence. In doing so, it provides an example of the EMCS for the SME context.

Details

Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, vol. 13 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-8021

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 16 June 2023

Akram Hatami, Jan Hermes, Anne Keränen and Pauliina Ulkuniemi

To respond to recent calls for better understanding of the complexities related to happiness management, especially from the employees' perspective, this study examines how…

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Abstract

Purpose

To respond to recent calls for better understanding of the complexities related to happiness management, especially from the employees' perspective, this study examines how corporate volunteering (CV), as one form of corporate social responsibility (CSR), creates sustainable happiness in business organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

Theoretical knowledge of CSR and CV as well as the literature on happiness management was examined to form a preliminary understanding of the phenomenon. The empirical section includes a qualitative multiple case study including two company cases of CV in Finland. The data were collected through qualitative interviews. Empirical analysis was made using thematical coding based on existing theory but also by allowing themes to emerge inductively from the data as well.

Findings

The study found that CV enables the emergence of sustainable happiness by allowing individual employee volunteers to transition from individual and rational mindsets to collective and emotional mindsets. A third transition was also identified, a process of change in the volunteers' approach in life that the authors describe as “from actual to potential”.

Originality/value

The study provides a theoretical contribution to the existing literature on happiness management by identifying the third dimension, from actual to potential, and depicting the way this allows employees to move from a state of being to becoming and thus the emergence of sustainable happiness. The study also contributes to existing literature on CV and CSR by revealing the way CV, as a form of practical CSR activity, generates happiness. This study concludes that companies' strategic activities that engage with society can create sustainable happiness for employees who participate. In order to achieve this, volunteering employees should have the chance to reflect on their experience and constant support from managers.

Details

Management Decision, vol. 62 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0025-1747

Keywords

Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 30 April 2019

S. J. Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas

Ethics is fundamentally a science of social and collective responsibility. Ethics concerns human behavior as responsible or accountable. Because of the nature of social…

Abstract

Executive Summary

Ethics is fundamentally a science of social and collective responsibility. Ethics concerns human behavior as responsible or accountable. Because of the nature of social interaction, certain members of the society will bear greater authority, and hence, greater individual and social responsibility than others. In our world, personal responsibility and social responsibility are hardly separable. Personal responsibility becomes responsibility for the world because the person and the world are inseparable. In this chapter, we use the term responsibility from a legal, ethical, moral, and spiritual (LEMS) standpoint as some promise, commitment, obligation, sanctioned by self, morals, law, or society, to do good, and if harm results, to repair harm done on another. Hence, responsibility from a moral perspective is trustworthiness and dependability of the agent in some enterprise. Its inverse is exoneration – the extent to which one is excused from commitment and repairing the harm done to others by one’s actions. We apply the theories and constructs of executive responsibility to two contemporary cases: (1) India’s Super Rich in 2014 and (2) the Fall and Rise of Starbucks. After exploring the basic notion of responsibility, we present a discussion on the nature and obligation of corporate responsibility into three parts: Part I: Classical Understanding and Discussion on Corporate Responsibility; Part II: Contemporary Understanding and Discussion on Corporate Responsibility, and Part III: A synthesis of classical and contemporary views of responsibility and their applications to corporate executive responsibility.

Details

Corporate Ethics for Turbulent Markets
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-192-2

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 29 November 2022

Antonella Cifalinò, Irene Eleonora Lisi, Mara Gorli and Giuseppe Scaratti

Modern intra- and inter-organizational arrangements require firms to cross boundaries, but this process represents a crucial and complex challenge, especially for organizations…

1041

Abstract

Purpose

Modern intra- and inter-organizational arrangements require firms to cross boundaries, but this process represents a crucial and complex challenge, especially for organizations that face pluralistic tensions. Scholars still lack sufficient knowledge of how boundaries can be crossed and what kind of boundary management is necessary within pluralistic contexts. This paper aims to enrich the understanding of these issues by exploring how strategy maps can be mobilized and used as boundary objects to elicit boundary-spanning practices that foster cross-boundary collaboration in pluralistic organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper employs the case study methodology to capture the dynamics of cross-boundary management elicited by the use of a strategy map within a pluralistic social/healthcare organizational context.

Findings

This study identifies four practices of boundary spanning (i.e. identifying and crossing problem boundaries, orchestrating collective responsibilities, acknowledging a common understanding of convergent values and goals, and evolving into action) in the analysed pluralistic context and investigates the conditions under which cross-boundary interactions can mobilize a shared zone of knowing via strategy maps.

Originality/value

This paper suggests a complex (and not linear) processual model of boundary management in pluralistic contexts in which the use of the strategy map mobilizes a dynamic of centrifugal and centripetal movements which engage plural actors in a shared site of collaborative knowing. The study contributes to a conceptualization of boundary management in pluralistic contexts as a progressive social accomplishment.

Details

Management Decision, vol. 60 no. 13
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0025-1747

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 3 November 2020

Netta Iivari

Digital technology education of children needs to be reconsidered. The purpose of this paper is to focus on empowering the young generation as regards digital technology. Digital…

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Abstract

Purpose

Digital technology education of children needs to be reconsidered. The purpose of this paper is to focus on empowering the young generation as regards digital technology. Digital technology education should reap the benefits of recent developments brought in by extensive, ongoing digitalization and prepare the young generation to manage and master in their technology rich future. The recent COVID 19 pandemic has made this particularly relevant and visible in the society. The young generation should adopt a proactive and critical stance toward digital technology and consider how design and technology can be used for making the world a better place.

Design/methodology/approach

This commentary reviews literature on the complex concept of empowerment and suggests a model on the aspects to be considered when aiming at empowering the young generation as regards digital technology in the context of digital technology education.

Findings

A model is proposed that comprehensively addresses empowerment of children as regards digital technology both at individual and collective levels and in mainstream sense as a relational and motivational construct as well as in critical sense in terms of collective empowerment, social responsibility and liberation of the oppressed.

Research limitations/implications

Radical renewal in the children's education is needed in the digital age. This model outlines aspects to be considered in such a transformation. The insights should be valuable for research communities addressing the topic of children's education in the digital age in general or the topic of children's digital technology education in particular.

Practical implications

The model should also be of help for practitioners, i.e. teachers and facilitators working in informal learning spaces for developing children's digital education in practice.

Social implications

The commentary addresses significant societal issues. It is actually not only children who should be empowered to engage in making and shaping our digital futures, but people in general. The model provides novel and valuable insights on what aspects to consider in such a significant endeavor.

Originality/value

The model proposed is novel and clearly needed in the research addressing this topic.

Details

The International Journal of Information and Learning Technology, vol. 37 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2056-4880

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 30 October 2023

Giacomo Pigatto, John Dumay, Lino Cinquini and Andrea Tenucci

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…

Abstract

Purpose

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).

Design/methodology/approach

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.

Findings

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.

Originality/value

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.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 36 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 2000