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The paper advances the argument that social capital operates on both the supply and demand sides of the labor market. Organizations have significant needs for employees with social capital capacity and skills as they do with human capital. We articulate a theory on why organizations have such needs and how social capital may be differentially and strategically deployed to different positions. Specifically, three types of positions (the top positions, the edge positions, and the exchange-oriented positions) are identified with such needs. We formulated two hypotheses derived from the theoretical articulation: (1) the deploying hypothesis – organizations are expected to strategically recruit and deploy workers with social capital capacity and skills to such key internal and edge positions and (2) the institutional contingency hypothesis – organizations in the more competitive environment (e.g., the private sector) are more likely to show such differential deployment than those in the less competitive environment (e.g., the state sector). The hypotheses were subjected to an empirical examination with a set of firm data from China. Both hypotheses were confirmed. Further, we also found evidence for differential deployment of human capital (education and experience) and hierarchical capital (statuses of prior positions and organizations) in different sectors. We discuss the implications of the theory and findings for future research on organizations in different economic sectors beyond China and how a theory of deploying various types of capital – social capital, human capital, and hierarchical capital – in different economic sectors may be developed.

This chapter examines the professional identities of Brazilian journalists. It does so through an analysis of the growing professional autonomy of journalism from 1950 to 1990 through the life stories of 10 intellectual-journalists, individuals whose journalistic activities have crossed over into other intellectual fields.

This study applies a symbolic interactionist framework to understand how these actors managed their reputations and careers within the intellectual world. The narratives were taken from qualitative semi-structured interviews, and supported by additional research such as interviews, biographies, and articles which have been published about their lives.

The life stories were compared to the extensive structural changes affecting the world of journalism and the world of intellectuals in Brazil. This comparison revealed gaps between these two spheres of practice, within which the ambivalent form of journalists’ identities have been constructed.

This chapter offers two contributions to the study of Brazilian journalists. From a theoretical and methodological viewpoint, it advances beyond other studies that focus more on the prevailing representations of journalists’ professional identities and their role in society. From an empirical standpoint, it describes the complex negotiations between the worlds of journalism, culture and politics. This chapter also reexamines the current dominant explanation for the changes in Brazilian journalism. It shows that building careers and new levels of interpersonal cooperation for intellectuals and journalists has been a slow process. Ultimately, this development has left some behind, especially those actors stretched between multiple professional identities such as those who self-identify as intellectual-journalists.

This paper analyses the construction of value under the context of radical uncertainty (Keynes, 1936; Orléan, 1987) in the financialised real estate sector in France. It is based on a participant observation of valuation practices in an international real estate consulting firm and 26 in-depth interviews with professionals of the sector. We show that these practices rely on an institutional architecture that participates in the consolidation and legitimisation of the accumulation activity of asset managers and thus in the feeding of real estate bubbles in the hearts of large metropolises. Completing the conventionalist approach of value (Orléan, 2011) by focussing on the functioning of the organisations involved in the valuation process, I show that the determination of value is less the result of the emergence and autonomisation of a collective belief through market relationships than the product of power relationships between agents integrated in hierarchical professional organisations and in a specific legal framework.

The chapter seeks to reflect on the dynamics of the reconstruction of family farming and peasant agriculture in agrarian reform settlements (“assentamentos”) in Brazil, exploring the limits and potential of government food purchases from family farming, particularly the Food Acquisition Program (Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos – PAA), in the creation of alternative paths of rural development. The work analyzes the different strategies through which farmers and their organizations mobilize public policy instruments and market connections, expanding their room for maneuver and agency capacity. Research was conducted in the Baixo Sul Territory of the state of Bahia, focusing the heterogeneous web of social organizations involved in the implementation of the Food Acquisition Program in this setting.

This chapter develops a new reference for local government accountability in socioenvironmental issues based on the views of leading socioenvironmental nongovernmental Organisations (NGOs) in Indonesia. This study introduces an alternative view related to the government accountability model by focussing more on the socioenvironmental issues, which tend to be marginalised due to the dominance of [neo]liberal economic development and New Public Management paradigm in the praxis of government. A Fairclough's critical discourse analysis method has been applied to annual reports from three main socioenvironmental NGOs in Indonesia ranging from 2015 to 2018. This study found that there are three important notes for the local government's regulation, practice and accountability's activities to be in a line with the sustainable paradigm and the views of these NGOs. First and the foremost, the government's policy should give attention to public needs and ecological standards. Secondly, the rights and obligations related to the environmental issues should be transparent and accountable. Lastly, the government should release the accountability reports in full disclosure document and make the reports publicly available for various stakeholders. In particular, the accountability reports play a role as a tool for people to monitor the government's activities in socioenvironmental issues. This research implies an alternative view in the context of socioenvironmental accounting literature enrichment. It also provides valuable input to other governments, especially in developing countries and countries with economic growth that are highly reliant on the natural resources sector, in order to manage and account for their natural wealth in a more responsible and sustainable manner. Likewise, this research offers an alternative discourse of socioenvironmental accountability from the view of socioenvironmental NGOs in Indonesia.

While the steep increases in rates of incarceration seen in the United States in the late twentieth century have begun to level out, one form of incarceration has seen more drastic reductions in rates of use in the 2010s: long-term solitary confinement. Across the United States, prisons that once isolated prisoners for decades at a time stand hauntingly empty. The solitary confinement reform movement provides an important lens for examining what happens when an entrenched punitive practice faces widespread and sustained criticism and reveals the multiple paradigms through which reform operates – through politics, litigation, or charismatic leadership.

Literature has long been discussing indigenous forms of informal practices whose cultural origins are concealed. We first seek to provide a contextualization of the importance of an informal practice that is salient within the Brazilian culture – the Brazilian jeitinho. We then provide a historical background of the jeitinho, as well as an attempt to come up with a definition of the construct, which is by no means a definitive one. We explore how the jeitinho plays a role in the Brazilian organizational scenario, which may be useful for international companies aiming to do business in the country. Finally, we present a set of recommendations as how to deal with jeitinho in organizational-related occasions, drawing on the Brazilian historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's “cordial man” concept, which suggests that the roots of Brazilian culture lie in the patriarchal environment of the colonial period. We do not have in this chapter the intention of characterizing the multiplicity of Brazilian business practices, what would be an impossible task to accomplish in light of the enormous diversity of social contexts in Brazil. What we present in the chapter are some concepts and tools for working with and, fundamentally, understanding the organizational and social process the Brazilian context, which we hope may be useful for those interested in doing business in or with Brazil.

Accounting’s definition of accountability should include attributes of socioenvironmental degradation manufactured by unsustainable technologies. Beck argues that emergent accounts should reflect the following primary characteristics of technological degradation: complexity, uncertainty, and diffused responsibility. Financial stewardship accounts and probabilistic assessments of risk, which are traditionally employed to allay the public’s fear of uncontrollable technological hazards, cannot reflect these characteristics because they are constructed to perpetuate the status quo by fabricating certainty and security. The process through which safety thresholds are constructed and contested represents the ultimate form of socialized accountability because these thresholds shape how much risk people consent to be exposed to. Beck’s socialized total accountability is suggested as a way forward: It has two dimensions, extended spatiotemporal responsibility and the psychology of decision-making. These dimensions are teased out from the following constructs of Beck’s Risk Society thesis: manufactured risks and hazards, organized irresponsibility, politics of risk, radical individualization and social learning. These dimensions are then used to critically evaluate the capacity of full cost accounting (FCA), and two emergent socialized risk accounts, to integrate the multiple attributes of sustainability. This critique should inform the journey of constructing more representative accounts of technological degradation.