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1 – 10 of over 34000Gudrun Baldvinsdottir, John Burns, Hanne Nørreklit and Robert Scapens
The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between management accounting software and the management accountant, as (re)produced in adverts appearing in professional…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between management accounting software and the management accountant, as (re)produced in adverts appearing in professional management accounting journals. The paper analyses how such adverts have shaped the management accountant and the social practice of management accounting; in particular, whether these adverts are producing an image of management accountants who are in control of their management accounting system or who are controlled by it. The paper also discusses whether these adverts reflect changes in broader social practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper analyses two software adverts that were published in Chartered Institute of Management Accountants' professional journal. It uses discourse analysis to understand both the image of management accountants and the nature of the management accounting software portrayed in these adverts, as well as to explore the relationship between management accountants and their control systems.
Findings
It is concluded that the software adverts project an image of management accountants who are effectively handing over control to their systems, and who are encouraged to place substantial trust in the software. The paper relates these changes to trends in contemporary social practices, and reflects in the light of recent events in the financial markets and global economy more generally.
Originality/value
This paper contributes by adding more insight to the diffusion of the images of the accountant as a more action oriented and hedonistic person (while the software system “does the work”), as well as considering the broader implications of such diffusion in the context of the recent financial crisis.
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To explore the discursive construction of disordered eating and athlete identity meanings within elite female athlete’s stories. Published athlete autobiographies were…
Abstract
Purpose
To explore the discursive construction of disordered eating and athlete identity meanings within elite female athlete’s stories. Published athlete autobiographies were interrogated as cultural sites of analysis to accomplish this aim.
Approach
A critical social constructionist perspective on disordered eating is outlined along with narrative research findings on female athletes and disordered eating. A discursive psychological approach and critical discourse analysis (CDA) is then discussed to theorize and study meanings of disordered eating and athlete identities/subject positions. Next, the utility of studying two elite female athlete’s autobiographies is outlined followed by examples from a CDA of two athlete stories.
Findings
Two discourses and two identity/subject positions within each are outlined: discourse of performance and the “committed, controlled athlete” and a discourse of personal growth and the “empowered athlete in transition.” The features of each discourse and subject position are outlined and examples from each athlete’s story. The intention is to show the ways in which discursive resources construct the body, food and identities in sport and the implications.
Implications
The chapter is concluded with why studying “disordered eating and body talk” within discourses is useful to expand understanding of constraining and emancipative aspects of athlete identities, struggle and recovery.
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As school districts continue to devalue social studies through a narrowed focus on English language arts (ELA) and mathematics, this study investigated elements of curricular…
Abstract
Purpose
As school districts continue to devalue social studies through a narrowed focus on English language arts (ELA) and mathematics, this study investigated elements of curricular control in a district lacking a formal, purchased curricular program in the elementary grades. Without prescribed and scripted lessons, it was hypothesized that teacher autonomy would allow greater opportunities to investigate social studies concepts and skills.
Design/methodology/approach
Without prescribed and scripted lessons, it was hypothesized that teacher autonomy would allow greater opportunities to investigate social studies concepts and skills. Bernstein's theory of pedagogic discourse guided this study's analysis of power and control. This manuscript describes a micro-level discourse analysis that applies Gee's tools on interview data from two teachers.
Findings
Findings demonstrate some opportunities for teacher autonomy, but hierarchical control from administration persists and influences teacher decision-making. As researchers continue to argue for the increased presence of elementary social studies, this study demonstrates that the lack of a formal scripted curricular program presents opportunities for teachers, but administrative control endures and hinders teacher autonomy and instructional decision-making.
Research limitations/implications
The data size and number of participants in this study may present limitations that impact generalizability. However, the focus for this study was to gain a deeper understanding of the messaging from two teachers. Comparability and translatability were identified as factors for research design to establish legitimacy (LeCompte and Preissle, 1993).
Practical implications
When considering implications from this study, two elements are considered. First, the continued devaluation of social studies persists, despite the implementation of Common Core standards. As a result, other measures must be investigated and implemented to ensure the subject is elevated to a more prominent position representative of its importance to a democracy. To accomplish this goal, teacher input and autonomy must also be respected to ensure a quality curriculum is utilized in the classroom. While teachers may exert control, albeit limited, in their instructional decision-making, many others are reliant on purchased programs that do not allow even this narrow classroom influence.
Originality/value
In this study, teachers' language use demonstrated external administrative control as well as autonomous decision-making. Their assigned schedule privileged ELA and math through the allocation of time. Moreover, administrators stated that social studies is not a priority, a sentiment counter to participants' values. Therefore, while they recognized the inherent benefit of the subject to their students, hierarchical power controlled the classification and framing of instruction. A weakened classification and framing structure must be sought to allow more opportunities for purposeful integration of content through messaging systems that are more responsive to students' needs.
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Björn Remneland Wikhamn and David Knights
This paper aims to illustrate how open innovation is implemented in practice in a large multinational corporation and to discuss how masculine discourses of rational control and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to illustrate how open innovation is implemented in practice in a large multinational corporation and to discuss how masculine discourses of rational control and competition are reinforced during such a process.
Design/methodology/approach
An exploratory single case study approach has been employed. Qualitative empirical data (interviews and documents) are derived from a four year longitudinal research project on open and distributed innovation processes in the automotive industry.
Findings
Masculinity enters the discourse of open innovation through prescribed classical management ideals in line with auditing and bureaucratisation. The paper illustrates how these masculine discourses are reproduced rather than challenged by open innovation. It also highlights how the preoccupation with control and conquest tends to silence alternative (feminine) discourses which could otherwise enrich the radical and creative features of the open innovation paradigm.
Research limitations/implications
The paper is suggesting that the potential disruptive force in the open innovation paradigm tends to be watered down when appropriated by classical managerial ideals. It shows how difficult it is for managers to incorporate alternative (feminine) discourses when acting within a strong masculine hegemony.
Practical implications
The open innovation paradigm leans on aspects such as “openness”, “collaboration”, “creativity” and “intuition” – much in line with feminine discursive connotations. But when masculine norms govern the company setting, these alternative modes of organising tend to be either marginalised or appropriated and transformed in ways that ensure they are compatible with discourses and practices of masculinity.
Originality/value
This study provides insights into how discourses of masculinity play out and manifest themselves in the management of the firm. By doing so, it challenges the underlying and often uncritical assumptions of open innovation's disruptive force on contemporary managerial practice.
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Michael Price, Charles Harvey, Mairi Maclean and David Campbell
The purpose of this paper is to answer two main research questions. First, the authors ask the degree to which the UK corporate governance code has changed in response to both…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to answer two main research questions. First, the authors ask the degree to which the UK corporate governance code has changed in response to both systemic perturbations and the subsequent enquiries established to recommend solutions to perceived shortcomings. Second, the authors ask how the solutions proposed in these landmark governance texts might be explained.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors take a critical discourse approach to develop and apply a discourse model of corporate governance reform. The authors draw together data on popular, corporate-political and technocratic discourses on corporate governance in the UK and analyse these data using content analysis and the historical discourse approach.
Findings
The UK corporate governance code has changed little despite periodic crises and the enquiries set up to investigate and make recommendation. Institutional stasis, the authors find, is the product of discourse capture and control by elite corporate actors aided by political allies who inhabit the same elite habitus. Review group members draw intertextually on prior technocratic discourse to create new canonical texts that bear the hallmarks of their predecessors. Light touch regulation by corporate insiders thus remains the UK approach.
Originality/value
This is one of the first applications of critical discourse analysis in the accounting literature and the first to have conducted a discursive analysis of corporate governance reports in the UK. The authors present an original model of discourse transitions to explain how systemic challenges are dissipated.
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This purpose of this paper is to explore the discursive constructions of context and its significance in employees’ accounts of leadership practices, more specifically, discourses…
Abstract
Purpose
This purpose of this paper is to explore the discursive constructions of context and its significance in employees’ accounts of leadership practices, more specifically, discourses of communicative leadership. In doing so, it also seeks to clarify the relationship between perceptions and constructions of contexts and leadership discourses.
Design/methodology/approach
This study relies on focus group interviews conducted with nine groups and a total of 31 employees (16 males and 15 females) in a Swedish industrial organization employing 490 employees.
Findings
The findings reveal that micro-contexts were more evident influencing leadership discourses in the accounts of employees. However, macro-contexts identified as an authoritative leadership style were triggering constructions of “idealized” communicative leaders in contrast to the leadership experienced in the work environment by employees as “real.”
Research limitations/implications
The investigation presents one organizational context, but can be expanded using additional contexts that may show various leadership forms and communication needs. Findings suggest that understanding the context considered to be relevant to perceptions and constructions of leadership can be essential for identifying and confronting challenges, leading to a more communicative organization.
Originality/value
The study approaches leadership and context as dynamic and multifaceted constructs shaped locally in interaction with macro-discourses. Further, it also suggests that individuals are agents of change controlling context through being aware of their discourses.
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Denise L. Anthony and Timothy Stablein
The purpose of this paper is to explore different health care professionals’ discourse about privacy – its definition and importance in health care, and its role in their…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore different health care professionals’ discourse about privacy – its definition and importance in health care, and its role in their day-to-day work. Professionals’ discourse about privacy reveals how new technologies and laws challenge existing practices of information control within and between professional groups in health care, with implications not only for patient privacy, but also for the role of information control in professions more generally.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with n=83 doctors, nurses, and health information professionals in two academic medical centers and one veteran’s administration hospital/clinic in the Northeastern USA. Interview responses were qualitatively coded for themes and patterns across groups were identified.
Findings
The health care providers and the authors studied actively sought to uphold the protection (and control) of patient information through professional ethics and practices, as well as through the use of technologies and compliance with legal regulations. They used discourses of professionalism, as well as of law and technology, to sometimes accept and sometimes resist changes to practice required in the changing technological and legal context of health care. The authors found differences across professional groups; for some, protection of patient information is part of core professional ethics, while for others it is simply part of their occupational work, aligned with organizational interests.
Research limitations/implications
This qualitative study of physicians, nurses, and health information professionals revealed some differences in views and practices for protecting patient information in the changing technological and legal context of health care that suggest some professional groups (doctors) may be more likely to resist such changes and others (health information professionals) will actively adopt them.
Practical implications
New technologies and regulations are changing how information is used in health care delivery, challenging professional practices for the control of patient information that may change the value or meaning of medical records for different professional groups.
Originality/value
Qualitative findings suggest that professional groups in health care vary in the extent of information control they have, as well in how they view such control. Some groups may be more likely to (be able to) resist changes in the professional control of information that stem from new technologies or regulatory policies. Some professionals recognize that new IT systems and regulations challenge existing social control of information in health care, with the potential to undermine (or possibly bolster) professional self-control for some but not necessarily all occupational groups.
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Amy Mellow, Anna Tickle, David M. Gresswell and Hanne Jakobsen
Nurses working in acute mental-health services are vulnerable to occupational stress. One stressor identified is the challenging behaviour of some service users (Jenkins and…
Abstract
Purpose
Nurses working in acute mental-health services are vulnerable to occupational stress. One stressor identified is the challenging behaviour of some service users (Jenkins and Elliott, 2004). The purpose of this paper is to discuss the discourses drawn on by nurses to understand challenging behaviour and talk about its management.
Design/methodology/approach
Nurses working on acute and psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) wards were interviewed, and data were analysed using discourse analysis.
Findings
Biomedical and systemic discourses were found to be dominant. Alternative psychosocial and emotional discourses were drawn on by some participants but marginalised by the dominant biomedical construction of challenging behaviour.
Originality/value
Existing studies have not considered how discourses socially construct challenging behaviour and its management in inpatient mental-health services.
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David L. Schwarzkopf and Throstur Olaf Sigurjonsson
Disasters bring about communities of focussed discourse. We show how a segment of one such community controlled the early stages of discourse during a financial crisis as a…
Abstract
Disasters bring about communities of focussed discourse. We show how a segment of one such community controlled the early stages of discourse during a financial crisis as a variety of professionals (bankers, analysts, editorial writers and academics) made multiple types of arguments (emotional and technical) to allay citizens’ concerns about an impending banking collapse. We examine the rapid rise of this segment by mapping and analysing the responses printed in Icelandic newspapers to a Danish bank’s warning of Icelandic banking instability. Using social network analysis, we illustrate the networks of public actors and their immediate public responses, showing how close-knit both networks became after just one week of commentary in the Icelandic press. We demonstrate the power that professionals of various kinds have over an uninformed citizenry through their rapid responses and closely connected networks and underscore the obstacles awaiting those who want to alter discourse during crisis.
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Current social entrepreneurship (SE) literature advocates a critical reexamination of the core construct. As such, and based on the seemingly endless definitional debate among…
Abstract
Purpose
Current social entrepreneurship (SE) literature advocates a critical reexamination of the core construct. As such, and based on the seemingly endless definitional debate among academics, this paper seeks to empirically analyse social entrepreneurship discourse in the United Kingdom. It aims to posit that this debate is in fact detrimental to a more coherent and evenly distributed discourse. Furthermore, the ensuing ambiguities suit other, more powerful participants, and keeping this debate live allows the discourse to be shaped.
Design/methodology/approach
The author utilised critical discourse analysis (CDA) in this study, developing a personal qualitative data set (including a third sector and SE corpora containing SE policies covering 2002‐2008). This data set was then subjected to an online analysis tool WMatrix, and both sets were compared with a widely used base line corpus.
Findings
The findings show that SE discourse is now firmly attached to public policy discourse. Furthermore, this public policy concerning SE was heavily imbued with political language and ideology. Thus, the findings show empirically that SE is characterised in broader public policy debates as a politically re‐constructed concept.
Research limitations/implications
SE will continue to be a contested concept in the public sphere, however further research should explore the potential of dissensus from political reconstructions as a powerful counter‐discourse.
Originality/value
This study is among the first to utilise CDA to interrogate SE discourse, and the analysis provides novel insights for academics and practitioners to reinterpret and contest SE as more than the solution for failing public services.
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