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1 – 10 of 106Rafael Borim-de-Souza, Yasmin Shawani Fernandes, Pablo Henrique Paschoal Capucho, Bárbara Galleli and João Gabriel Dias dos Santos
This paper aims to analyze what Samarco and Brazilian magazines speak and say about Mariana’s environmental crime. Discover their doxa in this subject. Interpret the speakings…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze what Samarco and Brazilian magazines speak and say about Mariana’s environmental crime. Discover their doxa in this subject. Interpret the speakings, sayings and doxas through the theories of the treadmills of production, crime and law.
Design/methodology/approach
It is a qualitative and documental research and a narrative analysis. Regarding the documents: 45 were from public authorities, 14 from Samarco Mineração S.A. and 73 from Brazilian magazines. Theoretically, the authors resorted to Bourdieusian sociology (speaking, saying and doxa) and the treadmills of production, crime and law theories.
Findings
Samarco: speaking – mission statements; saying – detailed information and economic and financial concerns; doxa – assistance discourse. Brazilian magazines: speaking – external agents; saying – agreements; doxa – attribution, aggravations, historical facts, impacts and protests.
Research limitations/implications
The absence of discussions that addressed this fatality, with its respective consequences, from an agenda that exposed and denounced how it exacerbated race, class and gender inequalities.
Practical implications
Regarding Mariana’s environmental crime: Samarco Mineração S.A. speaks and says through the treadmill of production theory and supports its doxa through the treadmill of crime theory, and Brazilian magazines speak and say through the treadmill of law theory and support their doxa through the treadmill of crime theory.
Social implications
To provoke reflections on the relationship between the mining companies and the communities where they settle to develop their productive activities.
Originality/value
Concerning environmental crime in perspective, submit it to a theoretical interpretation based on sociological references, approach it in a debate linked to environmental criminology, and describe it through narratives exposed by the guilty company and by Brazilian magazines with high circulation.
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Margit Malmmose and Mai Skjøtt Linneberg
The objective of this study is to examine developments in the discursive practice of non-financial reporting in the public healthcare sector. In doing so, the authors investigate…
Abstract
Purpose
The objective of this study is to examine developments in the discursive practice of non-financial reporting in the public healthcare sector. In doing so, the authors investigate how the main reform foci of productivity and quality are represented, with a specific focus on the patient.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on critical discourse analysis (CDA), the authors conduct a longitudinal study (2007–2018) of healthcare reporting foci across the five administrative regions responsible for public hospitals in Denmark. The study analyses sixty annual reports and draws on contemporary reform documents over this period. CDA enables a micro-textual analysis, combined with macro-insights and discussions on social practice.
Findings
The findings show complex webs of presentation strategies, but in particular two changes occur during the period. First, the patient is centred throughout but the framing changes from productivity and waiting lists to quality and dialogue. Second, in the first years, the regions present themselves as actively highlighting financial and quality concerns, which changes to a passive and indirect form of presentation steered by indicators and patient legislation enforced by central government. This enhances passivity and distance in healthcare regional non-financial reporting where the regions seek to conform to such demands. Simultaneously, however, the authors find a tendency to highlight very different local initiatives, which shows an attempt to go beyond a pure automatic mode of reporting found in earlier studies.
Originality/value
Responding to the literature on both healthcare and financial reporting, this study identifies novel links between micro-level texts and macro-level social practices, enabling insights into the potentially intertwined impacts of public-sector reporting. The authors offer insights into the complexity of the construction of non-financial reporting in the public sector, which has a wider impact and different intentions than private-sector reporting.
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This study aimed to investigate the sensemaking strategies employed by early-career employees working within organizationally constrained environments.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aimed to investigate the sensemaking strategies employed by early-career employees working within organizationally constrained environments.
Design/methodology/approach
Grounded in the sensemaking-as-accomplishment framework, a longitudinal multi-case study was conducted, involving three early-career employees. These participants were interviewed multiple times concerning tasks they themselves identified as anomalous and ambiguous.
Findings
The study's findings illuminate how early-career employees utilize sensemaking strategies to accomplish anomalous-ambiguous tasks. These strategies are interwoven with deliberate efforts to mitigate organizational constraints that exist in the organization or arise during the execution of complex tasks.
Research limitations/implications
Notable limitation pertains to the time gap between task completion and the interviews. Conducting real-time interviews concurrently with task execution or immediately afterward was not feasible due to constraints in participant availability. This research has implications for organizational learning initiatives, particularly those encompassing employee-driven self-learning components. Insights derived from studies like this can inform the development of effective self-learning schemes within organizations.
Originality/value
Previous sensemaking research focused on what takes place in high-reliability organizations. This study explored sensemaking strategies in workplaces that are organizationally constrained.
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Alexandra Krämer and Peter Winkler
The climate crisis presents a global threat. Research shows the necessity of joint communication efforts across different arenas—media, politics, business, academia and protest—to…
Abstract
Purpose
The climate crisis presents a global threat. Research shows the necessity of joint communication efforts across different arenas—media, politics, business, academia and protest—to address this threat. However, communication about social change in response to the climate crisis comes with challenges. These challenges manifest, among others, in public accusations of inconsistency in terms of hypocrisy and incapability against self-declared change agents in different arenas. This increasingly turns public climate communication into a “blame game”.
Design/methodology/approach
Strategic communication scholarship has started to engage in this debate, thereby acknowledging climate communication as an arena-spanning, necessarily contested issue. Still, a systematic overview of specific inconsistency accusations in different public arenas is lacking. This conceptual article provides an overview based on a macro-focused public arena approach and decoupling scholarship.
Findings
Drawing on a systematic literature review of climate-related strategic communication scholarship and key debates from climate communication research in neighboring domains, the authors develop a framework mapping how inconsistency accusations of hypocrisy and incapacity, that is, policy–practice and means–ends decoupling, manifest in different climate communication arenas.
Originality/value
This framework creates awareness for the shared challenge of decoupling accusations across different climate communication arenas, underscoring the necessity of an arena-spanning strategic communication agenda. This agenda requires a communicative shift from downplaying to embracing decoupling accusations, from mutual blaming to approval of accountable ways of working through accusations and from confrontation to cooperation of agents across arenas.
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Helle Kryger Aggerholm and Christa Thomsen
The purpose of this paper is to: (1) identify strategies to (re)establish organizational legitimacy which dominates the literature; (2) propose and empirically illustrate an…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to: (1) identify strategies to (re)establish organizational legitimacy which dominates the literature; (2) propose and empirically illustrate an analytical framework that establishes the linkages between the dimensions of purposefulness, transparency and participation identified in this literature review as important resources in the creation of organizational legitimacy.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a review of the academic literature, we propose a three-dimensional conceptual framework for understanding and studying strategic communication in contexts of high sustainability pressure. The empirical material we use for illustration is the letters from the chief executive officer (CEO) and the chairman published in the integrated annual report of a Danish company that is well known for its focus on sustainability.
Findings
The analysis shows that all three dimensions, i.e. purposefulness, transparency and participation, are present in this data, which the authors find supportive of the theoretical argument that strategic communication needs to encompass all three concepts in order to appear legitimate in contexts of high sustainability pressure.
Originality/value
In recent years, there has been an increased focus on strategic communication of sustainability. However, there is still a lack of general consensus of what is understood by strategic communication in contexts of high sustainability pressure. Overlapping concepts and dimensions make operationalization difficult. This, for example, is a problem for corporations who are increasingly asked by their stakeholders to account for their sustainability activities and engage in conversations of strategic significance to their sustainability goals.
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The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical historical analysis of the business (mis)behaviors and influencing factors that discourage enduring cooperation between…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical historical analysis of the business (mis)behaviors and influencing factors that discourage enduring cooperation between principals and agents, to introduce strategies that embrace the social values, economic motivation and institutional designs historically adopted to curtail dishonest acts in international business and to inform an improved principal–agent theory that reflects principal–agent reciprocity as shaped by social, political, cultural, economic, strategic and ideological forces
Design/methodology/approach
The critical historical research method is used to analyze Chinese compradors and the foreign companies they served in pre-1949 China.
Findings
Business practitioners can extend orthodox principal–agent theory by scrutinizing the complex interactions between local agents and foreign companies. Instead of agents pursuing their economic interests exclusively, as posited by principal–agent theory, they also may pursue principal-shared interests (as suggested by stewardship theory) because of social norms and cultural values that can affect business-related choices and the social bonds built between principals and agents.
Research limitations/implications
The behaviors of compradors and foreign companies in pre-1949 China suggest international business practices for shaping social bonds between principals and agents and foreign principals’ creative efforts to enhance shared interests with local agents.
Practical implications
Understanding principal–agent theory’s limitations can help international management scholars and practitioners mitigate transaction partners’ dishonest acts.
Originality/value
A critical historical analysis of intermediary businesspeople’s (mis)behavior in pre-1949 (1840–1949) China can inform the generalizability of principal–agent theory and contemporary business strategies for minimizing agents’ dishonest acts.
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Rachael Millard and M. Bilal Akbar
This paper aims to understand what reflexivity means and explores which types of reflexivity could be applied within social marketing practice as a critical approach to overcoming…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to understand what reflexivity means and explores which types of reflexivity could be applied within social marketing practice as a critical approach to overcoming failures.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is a critical literature review.
Findings
The study proposes a typology for a reflexive approach to social marketing practice to overcome failures. The typology is built on self and critical reflexivity, simultaneously allowing social marketers to reflect on external and internal factors that may affect the individual's role and could negatively affect social marketing practice unless otherwise considered. The types of reflexivity discussed are not prescriptive; instead, the authors intend to provoke further discussion on an under-researched but vital area of social marketing.
Research limitations/implications
The proposed typology is conceptual; an empirical investigation to gain social marketer's views would further enhance the effectiveness of the applications of the typology.
Practical implications
Social marketers could use the proposed typology for future practice.
Originality/value
This is the first study that conceptualises various types of reflexivity within social marketing practice to overcome failures.
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Réka Tamássy, Zsuzsanna Géring, Gábor Király, Réka Plugor and Márton Rakovics
This study aims to investigate how highly ranked business schools portray ideal students in terms of their attributes and their agency. Understanding how these higher education…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate how highly ranked business schools portray ideal students in terms of their attributes and their agency. Understanding how these higher education institutions (HEIs) discursively construct their present and prospective students also shed light on the institutions’ self-representation, the portrayal of the student–institution relationship and eventually the discursive construction of higher education’s (HE) role.
Design/methodology/approach
To understand this dynamic interrelationship, this study uses mixed methodological textual analysis first quantitatively identifying different modes of language use and then qualitatively analysing them.
Findings
With this approach, this study identified six language use groups. While the portrayal of the business schools and that of the students are always co-constructed, these groups differ in the extent of student and organisational agency displayed as well as the role and purpose of the institution. Business schools are always active agents in these discourses, but their roles and the students’ agency vary greatly across these six groups.
Practical implications
These findings can help practitioners determine how students are currently portrayed in their organisational texts, how their peers and competitors talk and where they want to position themselves in relation to them.
Originality/value
Previous studies discussed the ideal HE students from the perspective of the students or their educators. Other analyses on HE discourse focused on HEIs’ discursive construction and social role This study, however, unveils how the highly ranked business schools in their external organisational communication discursively construct their ideals and expectations for both their students and the general public.
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Manuel Castelo Castelo Branco, Delfina Gomes and Adelaide Martins
The purpose of this study is to contribute to the discussion surrounding the definition of accounting proposed by Carnegie et al. (2021a, 2021b) and further elaborated by Carnegie…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to contribute to the discussion surrounding the definition of accounting proposed by Carnegie et al. (2021a, 2021b) and further elaborated by Carnegie et al. (2023) from/under an institutionalist political-economy (IPE) based foundation and to specifically extend this approach to the arena of social and environmental accounting (SEA).
Design/methodology/approach
By adopting an IPE approach to SEA, this study offers a critique of the use of the notion of capital to refer to nature and people in SEA frameworks and standards.
Findings
A SEA framework based on the capabilities approach is proposed based on the concepts of human capabilities and global commons for the purpose of preserving the commons and enabling the flourishing of present and future generations.
Practical implications
The proposed framework allows the engagement of accounting community, in particular SEA researchers, with and contribution to such well-established initiatives as the Planetary Boundaries framework and the human development reports initiative of the United Nations Development Programme.
Originality/value
Based on the capability approach, this study applies Carnegie et al.’s (2023) framework to SEA. This new approach more attuned to the pursuit of sustainable human development and the sustainable development goals, may contribute to turning accounting into a major positive force through its impacts on the world, expressly upon organisations, people and nature.
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