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This paper aims to explore how Maori entrepreneurs in Aotearoa New Zealand negotiate cultural and commercial imperatives in their entrepreneurial practice. Culture is integral to Indigenous entrepreneurship, an example being tikanga Maori (Maori cultural values) and Maori entrepreneurship. This study discusses the tensions and synergies inherent in the negotiation of seemingly conflicting imperatives both theoretically and practically.

This study reports on a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews involving ten Maori enterprises of the Ngati Porou tribe on the east coast of Aotearoa New Zealand.

This study finds that depending on their contextual and cultural orientation, Maori entrepreneurs use tikanga to help negotiate cultural and commercial imperatives. The contingency of entrepreneurial situations and the heterogeneity of Maori perspectives on whether (and in what way) tikanga influences entrepreneurial practice appear influential. The authors propose a typology of Maori entrepreneurs’ approaches to explain the negotiation of cultural and commercial imperatives comprising the “culturally engaged Maori entrepreneur”; the “culturally responsive Maori entrepreneur”; and the “culturally ambivalent Maori entrepreneur.”

This study proposes a typology to analyse entrepreneurial practices of Indigenous entrepreneurs’ negotiation of cultural and commercial imperatives.

Advocates that customer satisfaction must be at the centre of business processes and not treated merely as an anaesthetized by‐product. There is a need to redress the imbalance of commercial imperative, on the one hand, with customers’ values on the other. Urges the use of traditional company driven market research, customer‐driven consultation with consumers and stakeholder networks as essential implements in long‐term business strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the focus and changing nature of measuring academic accounting research quality. The paper addresses contemporary changes in academic publishing, metrics for determining research quality and the possible impacts on accounting scholars. These are considered in relation to the core values of interdisciplinary accounting research ‒ that is, the pursuit of novel, rigorous, significant and authentic research motivated by a passion for scholarship, curiosity and solving wicked problems. The impact of changing journal rankings and research citation metrics on the traditional and highly valued role of the accounting academic is further considered. In this setting, the paper also provides a summary of the journal’s activities for 2018, and in the future.

Drawing on contemporary data sets, the paper illustrates the increasingly diverse and confusing array of “evidence” brought to bear on the question of the relative quality of accounting research. Commercial products used to rate and rank journals, and judge the academic impact of individual scholars and their papers not only offer insight and visibility, but also have the potential to misinform scholars and their assessors.

In the move from simple journal ranking lists to big data and citations, and increasingly to concerns with impact and engagement, the authors identify several challenges facing academics and administrators alike. The individual academic and his or her contribution to scholarship are increasingly marginalised in the name of discipline, faculty and institutional performance. A growing university performance management culture within, for example, the UK and Australasia, has reached a stage in the past decade where publication and citation metrics are driving allocations of travel grants, research grants, promotions and appointments. With an expanded range of available metrics and products to judge their worth, or have it judged for them, scholars need to be increasingly informed of the nuanced or not-so-nuanced uses to which these measurement systems will be put. Narrow, restricted and opaque peer-based sources such as journal ranking lists are now being challenged by more transparent citation-based sources.

The issues addressed in this commentary offer a critical understanding of contemporary metrics and measurement in determining the quality of interdisciplinary accounting research. Scholars are urged to reflect upon the challenges they face in a rapidly moving context. Individuals are increasingly under pressure to seek out preferred publication outlets, developing and curating a personal citation profile. Yet such extrinsic outcomes may come at the cost of the core values that motivate the interdisciplinary scholar and research.

This paper provides a forward-looking focus on the critical role of academics in interdisciplinary accounting research.

The purpose of this paper is to connect the literatures on sustainability, innovation and paradox to suggest that sustainability constraints – simultaneously addressing commercial and sustainability goals – will increase organizational innovation.

Drawing from the literatures on paradox, innovation and sustainability, the authors develop theory about how managers can deliberately enhance the generation and implementation of creative ideas within their organizations.

The authors build on the existing literature that suggests sustainability considerations should be strategically and deeply integrated elements of business activity by developing arguments about how such integration improves organizational performance. The authors argue sustainability considerations, by creating unique forms of constraints, improve organizational success by enhancing creative idea generation and implementation.

Even strategic leaders espousing to only maximize economic efficiency face the challenge of effectively managing sustainability constraints. The discrepancy between what they should do and the problems they face means strategic leaders often have fewer tools to manage and reflect on their own decision-making than is available in the management literature. This paper presents arguments from diverse research that describes potential decision processes and their outcomes.

This paper highlights an important shift in how sustainability constraints are fundamental drivers of long-term organizational performance.

Extant literature treats the simultaneous attention to sustainability concerns and commercial success as difficult accomplishments of clever strategic leaders. Instead, the authors propose that simultaneous attention to sustainability and commercial imperatives is fundamental to long-term organizational success, because it is a powerful determinant of new products, services and business models.

This chapter provides a critical examination of the urban renewal process currently taking place in inner-city Johannesburg. It evaluates the effects of an approach to providing social housing which blends commercial, market-based practices with state intervention and regulation and discusses the implications these competing imperatives have for the area and academic understandings of urban renewal.

Findings are based on a qualitative research process, carried out over 9 months in inner-city Johannesburg. Research involved interviews with property developers, housing providers, government officials, and tenants living in renovated social and affordable housing developments.

The process is contradictory and overburdened, and attempts to fulfill competing goals and agendas. Some developmental ambitions are being realized as the supply of social and affordable housing is expanding. However, the benefits are limited, as poor communities are being displaced and, in many cases, commercial concerns trump social and developmental considerations.

Findings highlight the ways in which a range of political circumstances, policy decisions, and spatial conditions combine to create an approach to renewal which is neither entirely neoliberal nor developmental. The case study complicates narratives which stress the global dominance of neoliberal approaches to urban renewal and demonstrates that alternative developmental ambitions exist alongside commercial practices.

The chapter highlights the ambiguity and hybridity of localized approaches to housing provision. In doing so it adds nuance to debates about urban processes around the globe and draws attention back to the uncertainty, agency, and diversity which are continuously shaping urban societies.

Analyses the evolution of China’s telephone and cable systems, in terms of the public interest, discussing current bureaucratic conflicts and policy debates over convergence, and construction of an independent broadband cable network. Looks in depth at China’s problems and the different problems for its citizens with regard to poverty levels and access to the Web.

The purpose of this paper is to show the extent to which clients amend standard form contracts in practice, the locus of the amendments, and how contractors respond to the amendments when putting together a bid.

Four live observational case studies were carried out in two of the top 20 UK construction firms. The whole process used to review the proposed terms and conditions of the contract was shadowed using participant observation, interview and documentary analysis.

All four cases showed strong evidence of amendments relating mostly to payment and contractual aspects: 83 amendments in Case Study 1 (CS1), 80 in CS2, 15 in CS3 and 29 in CS4. This comprised clauses that were modified (37 per cent), substituted (23 per cent), deleted (7 per cent) and new additions (33 per cent). Risks inherent in the amendments were mostly addressed through contractual rather than price mechanisms, to reflect commercial imperatives. “Qualifications” and “clarifications” were included in the tender submissions for post‐tender negotiations. Thus, the amendments did not necessarily influence price. There was no evidence of a “standard‐form contract“ being used as such, although clients may draw on published “standard‐form contracts” to derive the forms of contract actually used in practice.

Contractors should pay attention to clauses relating to contractual and financial aspects when reviewing tender documents. Clients should draft equitable payment and contractual terms and conditions to reduce risk of dispute. Indeed, it is prudent for clients not to pass on inestimable risks.

A better understanding of the extent and locus of amendments in standard form contracts, and how contractors respond, is provided.

Scholarly research has increasingly emphasised the need for more research that provides fine-grained empirical accounts of how context plays a role in sensemaking. The purpose of this paper is to provide an in-depth look at how broader institutional context shapes the sensemaking of organisational change in a novel empirical context of a Pakistani commercial bank.

A qualitative inductive case study of a commercial bank using interviews and archival material.

Actors make sense of an organisational change initiative by accessing broader societal institutional logics when the field-level organisational logics are not plausible. The consequences of such frame switching may include the provocation of emotionally charged perceptions of politics and moral valuations of legitimacy.

This study is based on a single organisational case study in a particular national context.

This study urges organisational change leaders to consider the role of informal interpersonal relationships and culturally shaped, and emotionally charged, perceptions of change among the change recipients, beyond the technical considerations of the industry concerned. Instead of just focussing on official interaction and top-down communication, along with creating top-level “guiding coalitions” to manage change, organisational leaders need to be sensitive to informal channels at the lower rungs of the organisation to pick emotional reactions of change recipients.

The study contributes to the literature on sensemaking of organisational change by showing how the institutional context, a neglected factor in the literature, impacts sensemaking. The study also contributes to the empirical literature on microfinance (MF) by providing an in-depth account of a commercial bank that introduced MF as a product line.

In their work on ‘online consumer stewards’ in E-sports, the authors point to the competing social and commercial imperatives that govern behaviour and who can be seen as ‘authentic’ in a fast-paced digital environment. Drawing on insights from Bauman’s work on ‘liquidity’ they explore the case of Starcraft II, a global, multi-player online game, and show how the most successful stewards need to be both adaptable and free-floating whilst at the same time anchored in solid community structures. The most successful of these stewards are then able to leverage this (perceived) authenticity to meet both community and commercial objectives.