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Purpose. To provide an update on COUNTER, the international organisation that is developing and maintaining a Code of Practice that has set standards for the recording and reporting of vendor‐generated usage statistics for online products. Design/methodology/approach. COUNTER has built on a number of existing industry initiatives. Release 1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice, focusing on journals and databases, was published in January 2003. Based on customer feedback, this Code of Practice is being refined and extended. Work has also begun on a Code of Practice covering e‐books and e‐reference works. Findings. Since it was published in January 2003, the COUNTER Code of Practice has been widely adopted by vendors. It is estimated that over 50 per cent of the annual output of articles covered by the Science Citation Index are in COUNTER‐compliant journals. On the whole, both librarians and vendors have indicated that the role of COUNTER should be to provide a core set of basic, reliable usage reports. Research limitations/implications. COUNTER is in the very early stages of implementation. The usage reports are not being audited in 2004, but from 2005 they will be, which will further increase confidence in their reliability. Practical implications. Reliable usage statistics will allow librarians to better assess the value of online publications, and will allow publishers to evaluate the effectiveness of different delivery channels. Originality/value. COUNTER is the first initiative to set practical international standards for the recording and reporting of vendor‐generated usage statistics.

From the perspective of an image‐generating department to the perspective of profitability, the meat department possesses unsurpassed importance within the US grocery store. Surprisingly, the meat department is the subject of relatively little published research. Examines one aspect of the meat department ‐ customer use of the service meat counter vis‐à‐vis the self‐service meat counter. Results indicate that customers’ use of the service meat counter appears not to be a simplistic phenomenon. When used, the service meat counter appears to be viewed as a complement to the self‐service meat counter, not a replacement. The demographic factors examined did not appear to have the potential to serve as successful segmentation factors as far as use of the service meat counter is concerned.

Purpose – The chapter explores the UK’s evolving counter-radicalization program – Prevent – and its increasing alignment with a broader Counter Extremism agenda, which it argues exemplifies not merely a concern with countering radicalization or terrorism, but a broader “civic turn” toward a narrow and restrictive conception of integration and citizenship.

Methodology/Approach – The chapter draws on a range of studies of Prevent and the governance of British Muslims, to examine the traces and impact of Prevent and Counter Extremism agendas across a range of governance domains, including urban governance, schooling, and public sector institutions and integration.

Findings – Prevent has undergone substantial conceptual and operational expansion that has meant that its purpose and efficacy as a counter terrorism strategy has become ambivalent. Its evolution into an element of a broader integration policy places limits on the terms of particularly Muslims’ citizenship. It also brings it into tension with other public sector duties and legal norms.

Originality/Value – The chapter extends existing studies of the permeation of security concerns across governance and public life, and the securitization of citizenship, to examine how these have been expressed in particular domains of governance and their implications for the inclusion and accommodation of Muslims. It also offers a caveat to the tendency in much of the literature to see such securitization as exemplifying a highly cohesive governing project.

Purpose – This chapter highlights how counter-radicalization, as a manifestation of diffuse securitizing, impacts the work of Muslim civil society organizations (CSOs) in Canada.

Methodology – The author presents how Muslim communities and their civil society representatives experience and adapt to the pressures from counter-radicalization policies. Data for the analysis are drawn from 16 semi-structured, anonymized interviews with managers and board members of prominent Muslim CSOs that are based in urban centers in Canada with high density of Muslim populations.

Findings – Though counter-radicalization policies are advanced under the rubric of community-orientedness and risk governance, security discourse and practice constructs radicalization as a problem within Muslim communities treating them as suspects who are “potentially radical.” Despite this framing, Muslim CSOs are cooperating with state security agencies in counter-radicalization efforts but are doing so cognizant of the immense power the state exerts over them in such “partnerships.” CSOs are raising questions about the selective nature of security practice which views Muslims as dangerous and violent but fails to fully acknowledge their reality as victims of Islamophobic violence. CSOs are using anti-racism, anti-oppression, and rights-based frames to call out the discriminatory treatment of Muslims under national security.

Originality/Value – The author’s study contributes to a community perspective in counterterrorism and counter-radicalization research that is dominated by analyses from “above.” By sharing the experiences of Canadian Muslim CSOs under counter-radicalization, the author illustrates the practice of “diffuse securitizing” and how it limits the work of civil society in liberal democracies.

The World Bank-sponsored public financial management reforms attempt to instil fiscal discipline through techno-managerial packages. Taking Ghana's integrated financial management information system (IFMIS) as a case, this paper explores how and why local actors engaged in counter-conduct against these reforms.

Interviews, observations and documentary analyses on the operationalisation of IFMIS constitute this paper's empirical basis. Theoretically, the paper draws on Foucauldian notions of governmentality and counter-conduct.

Empirics demonstrate how and why politicians and bureaucrats enacted ways of escaping, evading and subverting IFMIS's disciplinary regime. Politicians found the new accounting regime too constraining to their electoral and patronage politics and, therefore, enacted counter-conduct around the notion of political exigencies, creating expansionary fiscal conditions which the World Bank tried to mitigate through IFMIS. Perceiving the new regime as subverting their bureaucratic identity and influence, bureaucrats counter-conducted reforms through questioning, critiquing and rhetorical venting. Notably, the patronage politics of appropriating wealth and power underpins both these political and bureaucratic counter-conducts.

This study contributes to the critical accounting understanding of global public financial management reform failures by offering new empirical and theoretical insights as to how and why politicians and bureaucrats who are supposed to own and implement them nullify the global governmentality intentions of fiscal disciplining through subdued forms of resistance.

This study aims to investigate disclosure of asbestos-related liabilities in corporate accounts and counter-accounts to examine whether and how accounting contributes to corporate accountability for asbestos-contaminated products.

This study uses the Goffmanesque perspective on impression management to examine instances of concealed asbestos-related liabilities in corporate accounts vis-à-vis the revealing of such liabilities in counter-accounts.

The findings show counter-accounts provide significant information on liabilities originating from the exposure of employees and consumers to asbestos. By contrast, the malleability of accounting tools enables companies to eschew accounting disclosures. While the frontstage positive performance of companies served an impression management role, their backstage concealing actions enabled companies to cover up asbestos-related liabilities. These companies used three categories of mechanisms to avoid disclosure of asbestos-related liabilities: concealing via a “cloak of competence”, impression management via epistemic work and a silent strategy of concealment frontstage with strategic reorganisation backstage.

This study has policy relevance as regulators need to consider the limits of corporate disclosures as an accountability tool. The findings may also initiate academic and practitioner conversations about accounting standards for long-term liabilities.

This study highlights the strategies companies use both frontstage and backstage to avoid disclosing asbestos-related liabilities. Through analysis of accounts and counter-accounts, this study identifies the limits of accounting as an accountability tool regarding asbestos-induced diseases and deaths.

Drawing upon the third-person effect (TPE) theory, this study focuses on two types of misinformation countering intentions (i.e. simple correction and correction with justification). Accordingly, it aims to (1) assess the tenability of the third-person perception (TPP) in the face of misinformation on social media, (2) explore the antecedents of TPP and its relationship with individual-level misinformation countering intentions and (3) examine whether the mediating process is contingent on different social media usage conditions.

An online survey was conducted with 1,000 representative respondents recruited in Mainland China in January 2022 using quota sampling. Paired t-test, multiple linear regression and moderated mediation analysis were employed to examine the proposed hypotheses.

Results bolster the fundamental proposition of TPP that individuals perceive others as more susceptible to social media misinformation than they are. The self-other perceptual bias served as a mediator between the perceived consequence of misinformation and misinformation countering (i.e. simple correction and correction with justification) intentions. Furthermore, intensive social media users were likely to be motivated to counter social media misinformation derived from the indirect mechanism.

The findings provide further evidence for the role of TPE in explaining misinformation countering intention as prosocial and altruistic behavior rather than self-serving behavior. Practically, promising ways to combat rampant misinformation on social media include promoting the prosocial aspects and beneficial outcomes of misinformation countering efforts to others, as well as reconfiguring the strategies by impelling intensive social media users to participate in enacting countering actions

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-09-2022-0507.

This paper explores the historical roots of environmental accountability in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria by focusing on the campaigns for social and environmental justice by writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and the indigenous Ogoni people.

The methods consist of an analysis of books, diaries, letters and poems written by Ken Saro-Wiwa as well as books, reports and audio recordings of panel discussions which capture the Ogoni struggle, Ken Saro-Wiwa’s activism and its impacts. The authors’ approach to the data is sensitised by Foucault’s notion of counter-conduct as it enables the authors to better grasp the creative agency of Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni as they struggle and campaign for political autonomy, environmental justice and accountability.

The authors’ findings illustrate how Ken Saro-Wiwa’s books, letters, poems, diaries and articles provide early accounts of environmental injustices and the absence of accountability in the Niger Delta. They highlight how Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni movement deploy counter-conduct to subvert existing power and accountability structures through innovative strategies, effective mobilisation and communication at local and international levels. The authors’ findings also highlight how these have led to specific forms of accountability for human rights and the environment at local and global levels. They also show how Saro-Wiwa’s activism and the Ogoni struggle have inspired a new generation of environmental activists and new ways of demanding accountability.

This paper presents, for the first time, an account of the historical roots of environmental accountability practices from an African and developing country context. Its focus on the historical roots of environmental accountability is also unique as it expands the view beyond the origins of environmental accounting to look more broadly at the origins of environmental accountability practices.

Numeracy skills hinder a consumer’s ability to meet nutrition and calorie consumption guidelines. This study extends the literature on nutritional labelling by investigating how a calorie counter, which displays the total amount of calories consumers add to a shopping basket, aids them in making food choices. This study aims to ascertain whether the calorie counter affects food choices and also how individual and situational factors moderate this effect.

To test the developed hypotheses, the authors designed an online shopping experiment and administered it to a national panel of British consumers. This included a sub-sample from the general population who did not report any food-related health conditions (n = 480) and a separate sub-sample from the same population who had reported a food-related health condition or lived with someone who had one (n = 250).

The results of this study show that the calorie counter leads to a large and statistically significant reduction in calories purchased when compared to the no nutritional information condition and a small (but statistically insignificant) reduction in the number of calories chosen by consumers when compared to the nutritional information only condition. The main effect is moderated by individual factors such as whether or not the person has a health condition and shopping situations which involve time pressure.

Although the main effect of the calorie counter was not statistically significant when compared to the nutrition information only condition, the effect was in the correct direction and was statistically significant for consumers who had a food-related health condition. The conceptualisation and findings of this study are not only largely consistent with Moorman’s (1990) nutrition information utilisation process but also suggest that situational factors should be considered when understanding nutrition information processing.

The findings from this study provide the first evidence to suggest that aggregating calorie information through a calorie counter can be a useful way to overcome consumer numeracy biases, particularly for those with existing health conditions and who are most motivated to use nutritional information. Based on the descriptive statistics, the main effect was comparable to the UK’s sugar tax in its impact and the authors estimate this would lead to a reduction in calories consumed of about 5,000 per year, even for consumers who did not report a health condition. Further testing is required with different formats, but these results are encouraging and are worthy of further research.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate how consumers react to aggregated nutritional information for a basket of products, mimicking a real shopping situation. Such information has the potential to become more relevant and useful to consumers in the context of their overall diets. As technology advances rapidly, there is a need to explore alternative ways of presenting nutritional information, so it connects more easily with consumers. These results point very much to a more targeted and personally relevant approach to information provision, in contrast to existing mass communications approaches.

Using COUNTER‐compliant statistics, the purpose of this study is to conduct an in‐depth analysis of usage of online journals in a group of major UK universities.

The paper describes in detail developments, as well as other progress made on COUNTER since the 2003 Northumbria conference. It also addresses the practical challenges faced by vendors and librarians in implementing COUNTER, and concludes with future plans for the project.

The study team has successfully collected and validated a considerable set of journal usage, subscription and cost data and has assisted in the testing and validation of the “successful full‐text article request” as a possible unit of measurement of “usage” that can be applied consistently and reliably across all publishers.

The paper shows how usage relates to costs, institution profile and subject spread and develops a set of measures that are likely to be used more widely as indicators of the value of online journals.