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The purpose of this paper is to offer a response to expressions in the literature concerning the limitations of critical reflection, using Rancière’s exposition of the role of values and reasonableness to examine how forms of negotiated work-based learning can support learners’ pathways to impact in their organisation. The implications for work applied management in terms of enabling these employees to make an impact are considered.

Vignettes illuminate and articulate Rancière’s (1991, 2010) ideas, the vignettes constructed through events experienced and narrated, perhaps imagined, tutorial conversations, assignments and work practices. Such construction of “multiple layers of fiction and narrative imaginings” draws on Sparkes (2007, p. 522). They consider individuals’ negotiation of working practices using ideas developed during their studies, and personal and professional development prompted by unexpected insights into their capabilities, interests, and possible roles.

Negotiated work-based learning appears to offer the individual opportunity to take responsibility for action in his/her learning and in his/her workplace, but effect depends on several factors, and can be perceived in different ways. Students’ encounter with autonomy in their studies resonates with Rancière’s belief in equality. In the workplace (becoming “citizens” alongside “reasonable” individuals) their agency might, at best, lead to “reasonable moments”, as they encounter both negative and positive challenges of work applied management.

Successful utilisation of agency in learning prompts expectations of responsibility and equality in the workplace. Such equality can lead to diverse, unpredicted insights and consequent opportunities for changes in practice.

This is the first paper to utilise Ranciére’s ideas to offer a critical consideration of both learning provision and workplace practice. Consideration of his profound stance on individuals’ freedom and agency provides rich (but challenging) prompts for analysis of one’s own practice, and the potential for impact when the manager is “ignorant”.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of creativity in work-based research and practice to yield deeper understanding of practice situations. Unexpected insights can lead one (or a team) to identify new approaches, tackling workplace issues differently, leading to unexpected outcomes of long-term impact.

This paper draws on work conducted for a doctoral thesis, investigating the impact of work-based learning for recent masters graduates of a work-based learning programme. Fiction was incorporated into analysis of the data, creating play scripts to represent key aspects of the researcher's perceptions and interpretations for each participant.

Research participants experienced personal, professional and organisational impact, although there was considerable variability between individuals. Additionally, societal impact was wished for and/or effected. The approach to representation of analysis, which involved fictionalising participants' experiences, created a strong Thirdspace liminality. This appeared to deepen awareness and understanding.

Such approaches can transform the researcher's perspective, prompting insights which lead to further adventure and development in work-based research and practice.

Managers and employees taking creative approaches in the workplace can prompt wide-ranging development and, with professional judgement, be constructive.

Managers and employees taking creative approaches in the workplace can prompt wide-ranging development and, with professional judgement, be constructive.

The creation of play scripts, representing an interpretation of participants' stories about their work-based learning experience, is an innovative feature of this work.

Over the past two decades, pro bono has become increasingly integrated into the structure of large law firms across the United States. The institutionalization of pro bono should conceivably have important consequences on firm practices, but few studies have examined this relationship directly. In this study, I examine the effect of formal pro bono programs on firm-level pro bono commitment. Through a cross-sectional analysis of large law firms, I find that a variety of pro bono policies – such as the presence of a coordinator and having a formal written policy – positively affects how much time a firm commits to pro bono work. In addition, I find that the content of a firm's pro bono policy can also affect pro bono commitment. This effect remains after controlling for organizational slack (economic performance and firm size) and firm diversity. These findings have implications for issues of access to justice and organizational theory.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of involving students and staff on school action groups, and staff and student experiences of reviewing local data and initiating school-level changes, to address bullying and other aggression.

The authors draw on qualitative, process data collected at four purposively sampled pilot intervention schools in England via semi-structured interviews with school managers, action group members and facilitators (n=33), focus groups with students (n=16) and staff (n=4), and observations.

School staff used multiple methods to recruit a diverse range of students onto school action groups. Locally tailored data reports were an important catalyst for action groups to identify priorities and plan whole school change – both through the process of “validation” (whereby existing concerns were confirmed) and “discovery” (whereby new problems were identified). An unexpected benefit of providing schools with these data was that it triggered analyses of other data sources, including routine monitoring data. External facilitators were important in promoting student voice and ensuring the intervention retained integrity as a whole-school restorative approach.

It was feasible to involve young people using action groups, and there was evidence of school-level actions led by students, including in disadvantaged school contexts. Future Health Promoting Schools interventions could incorporate this approach to support locally appropriate, school-level change.

The micro-level processes that were observed, whereby action groups interrogated feedback reports and collected additional data, suggest the responsiveness of such youth-involvement interventions to local needs. Contrary to many public health interventions, implementation appeared to be facilitated rather than hindered by features of the secondary-school “market” whereby parents have some choice between schools.

Volumes 70 and 71 of Research in the Sociology of Organizations combine to comprise cutting edge theory and empirical scholarship at the interface of practice and institution in organization studies. As we highlight, this interface has spurred particularly generative conversations with many open questions, and much to explore. We provide a review of scholarly developments in practice theory and organizational institutionalism that have given rise to this interest in building a bridge between scholarly communities. As signaled by recent efforts to construct a practice-driven institutionalism, we highlight how connecting practice theory with the institutional logics perspective provides a particularly attractive focal point for scholarship at this interface due to a variety of shared ontological and epistemological commitments, including the constitution of actors and their behavior. Collectively, the papers assembled unlock exciting opportunities to connect distinct, but related scholarly communities on practice and institution, seeding scholarship that can advance our understanding of organizational and societal dynamics.

Volumes 70 and 71 of Research in the Sociology of Organizations combine to comprise cutting edge theory and empirical scholarship at the interface of practice and institution in organization studies. As we highlight, this interface has spurred particularly generative conversations with many open questions, and much to explore. We provide a review of scholarly developments in practice theory and organizational institutionalism that have given rise to this interest in building a bridge between scholarly communities. As signaled by recent efforts to construct a practice-driven institutionalism, we highlight how connecting practice theory with the institutional logics perspective provides a particularly attractive focal point for scholarship at this interface due to a variety of shared ontological and epistemological commitments, including the constitution of actors and their behavior. Collectively, the papers assembled unlock exciting opportunities to connect distinct, but related scholarly communities on practice and institution, seeding scholarship that can advance our understanding of organizational and societal dynamics.

In a knowledge-based global economy driven by the sciences and engineering (S&E), the most valuable resources are human resources. Traditionally, the United States met shortages of S&E talent by importing it from abroad; however, this solution has been rendered no longer viable by geo-political changes coupled with other nations' successfully competing for S&E talent. The decrease in the availability of external S&E talent coupled with changing demographics of the US population overall have been the catalysts for shifting focus to developing internal talent – especially from groups that have historically under participated in the S&E workforces – African Americans, Mexican-Americans, Native Americans/Native Pacific Islanders, and Puerto Ricans. It is important not to fall prey to the illusion of inclusion – that is to assume that the increases in the numbers of S&E degrees earned by African Americans are reflected in the composition of the S&E professoriate. The purpose of this chapter is to provide compelling arguments for increasing and enhancing African American participation on S&E faculties; systematically analyze differences by gender and broad field in the rates of participation of African Americans on science and engineering faculties of colleges and universities in the United States; and to discuss the implications of these differences for policy, programs, and practices that seek to enhance the participation of African Americans on S&E college and university faculties.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how centres of calculation, now emerging in connection with social media, impact on the process of acting on distant customers. Specifically, the authors are interested in exploring how the distance between the organization and its customer is affected and how knowledge is accumulated within this centre.

A case study in an Italian telecommunication company was conducted over a time horizon of two years, analysing data sources in the form of interviews, documents and reports, corporate website, social media platforms and participants’ observations. With the adoption of social media, the company configured a new centre of calculation, called monitoring room, in the attempt to accumulate knowledge about its customers. The authors unpacked the activity of the centre of calculation discussing its ability to perform action upon a distant periphery and the process of knowledge accumulation inside the centre itself.

The results highlight the implication of social media for “action at a distance”. On the one hand, social media blurs the distinction between the centre and a periphery giving rise to a de-centring, and stimulating a joint control activity between the customer and the organization. On the other hand, social media was found vulnerable in providing a unique knowledge about customers: accumulation cycles that exploit social media data can be replicated by users with skills in data analytics and the knowledge they provide might conflict with knowledge provided by traditional data.

The authors contribute to an emergent stream of literature that is investigating accounting implications derived from social media, by underlying the controversial effects connected with centres of calculation enacted by social media data. The authors suggest that, while social media data provide the organization with huge amount of information real time, at the same time, it contributes to de-centring allowing customers and external actors to act upon the organization, rather than improving knowledge inside the centre.