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Sleep apps installed on smartphones are increasingly being used to help people overcome sleep problems. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the discourses that underpin discursive constructions of the potential sleep app user in sleep app marketing communication. According to critical marketing theory, discursive constructions of the potential consumer in marketing communication promote the potential consumer’s identification and alignment, priming the potential consumer to consider positively the product being marketed. In that sense, marketing (of sleep apps, or indeed anything) is culturally significant, as it provides templates for forms of identity, and affects the meanings and objects that circulate within a culture.

A data set consisting of the promotional material that was used to market acclaimed sleep apps was analysed using Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA). The following discourses were identified in the data: disempowerment, pathologisation, ignorance, behaviourism, responsibilisation, mindfulness, seduction, convenience or common sense, empowerment and individualisation. These discourses indicate how sleep apps are legitimised as technical appendages to be installed into people’s phones and integrated into their lives. They also underpin the discursive identities that summon potential consumers into alignment. This chapter contributes to our understandings of the discursive mechanisms that lie behind the growing uptake of sleep apps. It also demonstrates the value of combining discourse analysis with relevant critical theory to gain insights into the emerging phenomenon of app culture.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the construction/reproduction of capitalist discourse through social and environmental reporting (SER) and, from this, to consider the implications that this may have for the function that SER serves.

The paper employs the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe to frame SER as a hegemonic practice. Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory is also used as a lens by which to interpret the findings of an empirical study exploring managerial perceptions of SER motivations and organisational‐socio‐environmental interactions.

The paper finds that both SER and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are driven by numerous motivations, although these motivations essentially form part of a business case. In turn, the necessity of this business case appears to shape and constrain the ideologies that underpin and are communicated through SER.

The debate within the SER literature around which set of motivations best explains the existence of SER is challenged here by the notion that the vast majority of these motivations may be understood as falling into some sort of business case. Moreover, this business case is one that constrains the perceived function of practices such as SER and CSR. One limitation of the study relates to the importance of SER in wider processes of ideology construction and dissemination. SER may be peripheral in this regard.

A practical implication of this paper is the recognition of the structural and ideological impediments to fuller accountability that are faced by corporate managers.

The paper explores SER combining both critical theory and qualitative fieldwork. It is one of very few papers to interpret SER explicitly through the lens of discourse theory.

This article starts from the assumption that economic sociology, including Karl Polanyi’s work, can contribute fresh perspectives to regulation debates because it opens up new understandings of the nature of economic activity, a key target of legal regulation. In particular this article examines Polanyi’s idea that society drives regulation. For Polanyi the “regulatory counter-movement” is society’s response to the disembedding – in particular through the proliferation of markets – of economic out of social relationships. Section One of the article identifies three key challenges that arise from this Polanyian take on regulation for contemporary regulation researchers. First, Polanyi focuses on social norms restraining business behavior, but neglects social norms embedded in law as also shaping regulation. Second, he seems to imply a clear-cut conceptual distinction between “economy” and “society.” Third, his analysis sidelines the role of interest politics in the development of regulation.

Addressing the first of these three key challenges, Section Two of this article therefore argues that a Polanyian vision of “socialized” legal regulation should build on contemporary accounts of responsive law and regulation, which focus attention on social norms informing legal regulation. Section Three of this article tackles the second key challenge raised by Polanyi’s work for contemporary regulation researchers, that is, how to transcend a modernist perspective of “economy” and “society” as clearly demarcated, distinct fields of social action. It argues that discourse theory is an important alternative theoretical resource. Drawing on Laclau and Mouffe, the article suggests that understanding “economy” and “society” as performed by open and relationally constructed discourses helps to capture interconnections between “economy” and “society” that become particularly visible when we analyze how specific regulatory regimes work at a medium- and small-scale level. These points are further brought to life in Section Four through a discussion of the European Union (EU) regulatory regime for trade in risky, transgenic agricultural products, and in particular the current reform debates about the consideration of the “socioeconomic impacts” of such products.

This chapter explores the use of critical discourse analysis (CDA) within higher education research. CDA is an approach to studying language and its relation to power, ideology and inequality. Within CDA, texts are not analysed in isolation, but as part of the institutional and discoursal practices in which they are embedded. Within the broad field of educational research, CDA has been increasingly used to explore the relationship between language and society; higher education research appears to be experiencing a similar turn to CDA. The chapter begins with an overview of CDA, outlining its origins, and discussing its position as both a theory and a method. A review of CDA-related higher education research follows. The review aims to show the scope and potential of CDA in the study of higher education. The chapter closes with recommendations for future work to develop and extend the use of CDA within higher education research.

This study aims to discover the role of accounting and media in hegemonic discourse for divestment valuation of PT Freeport Indonesia shares.

This study employs data from 608 news articles from 5 national media. This study uses Gramsci's concept of hegemony and Laclau and Mouffe's hegemonic discourse to explore the ideological role of accounting in the formation of historical blocs and investigate the contestants' discursive strategies through the chains of equivalence and difference.

The incumbent presidential candidate, by involving political and intellectual actors, has succeeded in taking over and shifting PT Freeport Indonesia's hegemony to maintain its power, through the ideology of divestment and accounting. The media played a role in the victory of the pro-divestment bloc in the hegemonic divestment discourse contest. The pro-divestment bloc's discursive strategy uses more formal and technical language styles than the anti-divestment bloc, which uses informal language styles. The pro-divestment bloc uses the key signifiers of low price, improved financial performance, nationalization and welfare, as opposed to the anti-divestment bloc, with the key signifiers of high price, declining financial performance and neoliberalist colonization.

The implications of this research may encourage accounting academics to contribute to emancipatory social movements in the struggle for hegemony. The implication for policy makers is the importance of involving the public, intellectual actors, political actors and the media in supporting diverse state strategic policies in the national interest.

This paper contributes to Gramsci's theory of hegemony and Laclau and Mouffe's hegemonic discourse to understand the role of accounting and media in a nationalization project as an emancipatory social movement, as well as a hegemonic shifting political movement.

This paper seeks to interrogate the international business and management studies (IBMS) discourse via postcolonial theory. It demonstrates the value of applying postcolonial theory as a critical practice with respect to that substantive domain.

The approach is to draw on the critical and intellectual resources of postcolonial theory and apply them in an interrogation of IBMS.

The paper shows the value of applying postcolonial theory to open up the discourse of IBMS, which is revealed to deploy similar types of universalistic, essentialising and exoticising representations to colonial and neo‐colonial discourse. It is revealed to rely on functionalist orthodoxy, realist ontology and neo‐positivist epistemology. Furthermore, it masks its own power effects, fails to make explicit its research commitments, especially its political and ethical ones, and remains deeply unreflexive.

The use of postcolonial theory in relation to organisation studies is in its infancy with only a limited number of studies directly related to that critical practice. This paper, then, is a contribution to an important, but emergent arena of scholarship. The interrogation mounted here points to a radical reconfiguration of the field and indications as to where that might take us are made.

Jürgen Habermas is one of the most important authors in contemporary philosophy. In this chapter, we analyse his contribution to the philosophical debate on universalism and relativism and consider its implications for organization studies and organizations operating in an intercultural environment. We briefly describe the critique of a universal concept of reason that has been forwarded by sceptical and postmodern philosophers. As a response to this critique, we outline the contribution of discourse ethics and analyse the theories of Jürgen Habermas and his colleague Karl-Otto Apel. We explore the justification of discourse ethics and point out some problems in its argumentative logic. In the light of this critique, we outline some characteristics of an intercultural ethics that is based on constructivist philosophy and point to some encouraging prospects on the consolidation of the debate between relativistic and universalistic philosophers.

Over the past two decades, scholars have noted an increasing global convergence in the policy and practice of education that predominantly contains Western ideals of mass schooling serving as a model for national school systems (Bieber & Martens, 2011; Goldthorpe, 1997; Spring, 2008). A number of transnational organizations contribute disproportionately to global educational discourse, particularly the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) through its international comparative performance measure, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This study conducted a critical discourse analysis of the OECD document PISA 2012 Results: Excellence through Equity (OECD, 2013) to examine the ways that PISA and the OECD conceive of educational equity in a global context. Given the growing convergence of global educational policy, the way that transnational educational organizations address equity has crucial implications for the ways that the world intervenes in schooling to promote or diminish equitable outcomes. Analysis revealed that the OECD and the PISA foreground economistic notions of educational equity, which diminishes the role of other factors (i.e., race/ethnicity, gender, immigration status, language) that mediate equity in schools. Findings and implications are discussed.

There has been considerable recent discussion about the relevance of critical theory to management discourse and its implications for the education of managers. Within this debate, marketing, and by implication, marketing academics, have been extensively criticised by those outside the discipline for failing to embrace more critical theoretical approaches in their work. Unfavourable parallels have been made with management accounting which has a similar academic/practitioner profile but where critical theory was embraced over two decades ago. The objectives of this paper are threefold: to attempt to account for the lack of critical theory in the discipline; to provide a critical evaluation of the usefulness of critical theory in marketing discourse; and to assess some of the practical implications associated with the implementation of critical theoretical approaches in teaching, research and publishing.

This paper aims to examine the accountability practices of large United Kingdom (UK) charities through public discourse.

Based on the ethical model of stakeholder theory, the paper develops a framework for classifying not‐for‐profit (NFP) accountability and analyzes the content of the annual reports and annual reviews of a sample of large UK charities using this framework.

The results suggest that contrary to the ethical model of stakeholder theory, the sample charities' accountability practices are motivated by a desire to legitimize their activities and present their organizations' activities in a positive light. These results contradict the raison d'être of NFP organizations (NFPOs) and the values that they espouse.

Understanding the nature of accountability reporting in NFPOs has important implications for preparers and policy makers involved in furthering the NFP agenda. New research needs to examine shifts in accountability practices over time and assess the impact of the recent self‐regulation developed to enhance sector accountability.

This paper contributes to the NFP accountability literature by: first, developing a framework of NFP accountability through public discourse using the ethical model of stakeholder theory; and second, advancing the understanding of the accountability practices of large UK charities.