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This paper aims to better understand how accountability for sustainability takes shape within organisations and specifically, what makes employees act in a Swedish local authority. This aim moves beyond the prevalent external face of accountability in social and environmental accounting research by observing how employees understand and act upon their multiple accountability demands.

This paper adopts a single case study approach within a Swedish local authority, drawing from qualitative data including semi-structured interviews, site visits and governing documents.

Sustainable action is not only the product of hierarchically enforced structural accountabilities and procedures but often must be reconciled with the personal perspectives of the public sector employees involved as part of an accountability dynamic. Additionally, the findings reveal that hierarchical accountability, rather than serving to individualise and isolate employees, acts as a prompt for the more practical and personal reconciliations of accountability with the ethics and experiences of the individual involved.

Greater consideration to employee socialisation processes in public sector organisations should be given to reinforce organisational governance systems and controls, and thus help ensure sustainable behaviour in practice.

Employee socialisation processes are important for the development of sustainable practices both within and beyond organisational boundaries.

This study considers the interrelatedness of hierarchical and socialising accountability measures and contributes towards the understanding of the relationship between these two accountability forms, contrary to previous understandings that emphasise their contrasting nature and incompatibility.

Through this reflexive, theoretically informed polemical piece, this paper aims to seek to reflect on the role of accounting education in United Kingdom Higher Education (UKHE). The authors reignite an old, but pertinent debate, whether accounting graduates should be educated to be accountants or receive a holistic, critical education.

The authors adopt a theoretical position drawing on the work of Slavoj Žižek and Mark Fisher, and their fusion of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxism, in particular Fisher’s (2009) conceptualisation of “capitalist realism” to take a critical standpoint on the effects that UKHE marketisation is having on the teaching of accounting and other business-related disciplines.

The authors outline four key aspects of where accounting education in UKHE is influenced by capitalist realism, as a result of the marketisation of UKHE.

The paper is a reflexive polemic and so is limited by this written style and presentation.

The authors argue that capitalist realism is a dominant theme that influences accounting education. They propose that universities now, more than ever, must focus on their societal duty to foster critical viewpoints in their graduates and dispose of a model that is subject to capitalist realism ontology.

The theoretical stance allows for a potentially deeper consideration of issues surrounding marketisation of higher education, from the micro level of social interaction (that of the accounting academic and their impact/perceptions of the reality).

We discuss the beneficiary accountability implications that arose due to the COVID-19 pandemic (and resultant social distancing restrictions) for a branch of a religious non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in mainland Spain, whose main beneficiaries are homeless individuals.

We utilise a singular case method to observe accountability implications in the case organisation. We also utilise two sources of primary data: eight semi-structured interviews with volunteers of the NGO branch, supported by auto-ethnographic data recorded in forty-six diary entries throughout the period of research.

As the main mechanism for the discharge of beneficiary accountability for the case organisation is through action, this was affected greatly by the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing measures. Beneficiary accountability (discharged through action) changed rapidly, resulting in neglect of previous beneficiaries, carrying profound implications for charitable actors, beneficiaries and the organisation.

Our case focuses on that of a small organisation, and therefore the generalisability of findings will be somewhat limited and context specific. The number of interviews (eight) is also relatively small.

Insights can be drawn for the management of volunteers, alignment of personally held accountabilities of internal actors with those of organisations and emotional aspects of accountability for NGO managers and organisers.

NGO accountability theorisation is enhanced via the use of Levinas' Judaic writings concerning the importance of the ritual practice of ethics for the individual involved in charitable action. The intertwined nature of personal accountability of volunteers and beneficiary accountability for the organisation is emphasised.

In this article, we discuss an innovative audience research methodology developed for the AHRC-funded “Beyond the Multiplex: Audiences for Specialised Film in English Regions” project (BtM). The project combines a computational ontology with a mixed-methods approach drawn from both the social sciences and the humanities, enabling research to be conducted both at scale and in depth, producing complex relational analyses of audiences. BtM aims to understand how we might enable a wide range of audiences to participate in a more diverse film culture, and embrace the wealth of films beyond the mainstream in order to optimise the cultural value of engaging with less familiar films. BtM collects data through a three-wave survey of film audience members’ practices, semi-structured interviews and film-elicitation groups with audience members alongside interviews with policy and industry experts, and analyses of key policy and industry documents. Bringing each of these datasets together within our ontology enables us to map relationships between them across a variety of different concerns. For instance, how cultural engagement in general relates to engagement with specialised films; how different audiences access and/or share films across different platforms and venues; how their engagement with those films enables them to make meaning and generate value; and how all of this is shaped by national and regional policy, film industry practices, and the decisions of cultural intermediaries across the fields of film production, distribution and exhibition. Alongside our analyses, the ontology enables us to produce data visualisations and a suite of analytical tools for audience development studies that stakeholders can use, ensuring the research has impact beyond the academy. This paper sets out our methodology for developing the BtM ontology, so that others may adapt it and develop their own ontologies from mixed-methods empirical data in their studies of other knowledge domains.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between social and gender inequalities and how they have been studied over the last 30 years. What have we learned, as academic sociologists in higher education, about how the socio‐cultural context, policies and global social transformations in the UK, and North America influence social stratification? The key focus is on how gender differences influence forms of social stratification through complex relations between “work”, family and education.

The paper reflects on changing research methodologies from their origins in sociology and second wave feminism by addressing three international studies about the troubled question of mothers’ work. All three studies reflexively address the question of changing knowledge and methodologies about social inequality or stratification.

The paper finds that while all three studies are from a feminist perspective and consider methodologies in the light of the so‐called “neo‐liberal project” and the knowledge economy, they come to rather divergent conclusions. The three studies illustrate the complexities of knowledge and methodologies about social stratification and gender inequalities.

The paper demonstrates how alternative methods contribute to our knowledge and the rich diversity of sociological work as an academic practice.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

This is the first study of its kind to explore the relationship between studentsʼ year of education and their intention to start a business once they have completed their undergraduate studies. The article also examines studentsʼ cumulative grade point average and their intention to start a business once they have completed their undergraduate studies.These pioneering findings are based on an extensive title review (including their summaries) of hundreds of articles related to these factors listed in EBSCO.

This paper describes the findings from 89 focus groups held with 505 young (13‐39 years) and middle‐aged (40‐59 years) adults in the UK, Ireland, Spain, France, Slovakia and Sweden.There were many similarities across all countries and most differences were between the different age groups, rather than the different countries. Five major themes were identified from the comparative data: views of dignity; old age and ageing; views of older people's lives; across the generations and adding dignity to older people's lives. Many of these findings confirmed those of the focus groups with older people and health and social care professionals. Dignity was important to people of all ages but particularly to older people. Being treated as an individual was critical for the maintenance of dignity. In the participating countries older people were generally treated negatively and undervalued and seen as vulnerable, second‐class citizens.Old age was perceived as a time of physical and mental deterioration, poverty and dependency. Intergenerational activities were important for both individual self‐esteem and the ability to participate fully in society. Suggestions for enhancing dignity included greater public awareness about the dignity of older people and about existing care and support services for them. Health policies should tackle ageism in service provision and the development of standards in health and social care for older people could do much to improve dignity.

This paper describes the creation of the educational materials developed as part of the Dignity and Older Europeans Project. Following a discussion of the development process, the materials themselves are described. The materials includes a poster of the dignity balance, which contains five core messages and illustrates the impact of both enhancing and violating individual dignity. The second product is a leaflet that also includes the dignity balance and lists of actions and approaches that will promote dignity or result in indignity. The final product to date is a multidisciplinary workbook which is described in some detail. The workbook Educating for Dignity provides a brief outline of the theoretical model of dignity, and four different sections based on the empirical findings:• understanding dignity• old age ‐ what is it like to be an older person?• dignity in care• the impact of the system.In each section quotations from participants, supplemented with images and cartoons, are used to illustrate various aspects of dignity. Readers are then set exercises to promote reflection about the issues raised. The workbook also contains a discussion of the exercises, an extensive bibliography and some policy implications. Finally, dissemination and use of the materials are explored.