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Social movements are not monolithic entities. Activists and organizations disagree about the goals of the movement and the tactics to achieve these goals, including their framing tactics. Cultural sociologists have questioned the idea that tactical choice is rationally and strategically oriented, arguing that tactics are morally and emotionally grounded in the activists' lives. We follow this insight, though suggesting that activists make constant efforts to experience their action as rational, claiming a strategic status and a sense of efficacy for their lines of action. By studying framing resonance disputes in interactions between animal rights activists and mass media in south Brazil, we found that, to make their tactics accountable and justifiable, activists mobilize different folk theories on social transformation which allow their actions to be experienced as the best means to achieve the movement's ends.

Interprofessional collaboration and coordination are critical to developing solutions to complex problems, and many workplaces engage in coordination and collaboration across organizational boundaries. This development changes work conditions and workplaces for many people. The ethnographic study of workplaces needs to re-configure the toolbox to adjust to such changes. The purpose of this study was to explore how the ethnographic study of dispersed workplaces can benefit from the analytical concept of boundary work.

A multi-sited ethnographic study was conducted in two health promotion programs, introducing new collaborative relations across sectors and professions. The concept of boundary work was applied as the conceptual frame and introduced the diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) as a boundary object.

Professional boundaries are key to understanding interorganizational and interprofessional collaborations. The ethnographic study of complex, multi-sited settings using boundary work as a conceptual framework can enrich workplace ethnographies by demonstrating how professions position themselves through framing. Such framing strategies are used to construct, defend or contest boundaries. Boundary objects may potentially bridge devices connecting people across boundaries.

The traditional ethnographic notion of “following” an object or a subject is difficult in a workplace environment dispersed across multiple sites and involving many different actors. This suggests that workplace ethnographies studying interorganizational workplaces would benefit from a shift in focus from place-based or group-based ethnography to a field-level ethnography of relations using boundary work as an analytical frame.

This paper shows the benefits of multi-sited ethnography for global migration studies in management, in particular when cosmopolitan self-initiated expatriates meet a local setting.

The author conducted a multi-sited ethnography to trace how a local East German research organization’s well-intended approach to integration becomes condescending.

Highly skilled non-Western migrant employees who represent English-language cosmopolitanism are framed as negatively “foreign” by corporate discourses and practices. This phenomenon can only be understood if one follows the interconnections of language power, White subalternity and compressed modernity and if one considers the immediate surroundings, the historical context of East German identity and wider migration frames in Germany.

Multi-sited ethnography, if power-sensitive and historically-aware, is suitable for understanding the multi-level phenomenon of global migration and identifying limiting framing-effects on management and organizations. Researcher standpoint is both its strength and its limitation.

Managers and companies can “imagine otherwise” and move beyond the unquestioned dominant frames limiting their problem analyses and, consequently, their strategies and actions.

Managers and companies are enabled to move beyond individual- and corporate-level approaches to managing migration at work and can thus take up full social responsibility in the sense of good corporate citizenship on a global level. Global mobility researchers can work towards an inclusive migration theory.

Multi-sited ethnography, in particular, one that is power-sensitive and historically aware, is an approach not yet applied to migration in the context of management and organization. By means of an example, this paper illustrates the value of this approach and enables researchers to understand its main principles. Compressed modernity and White subalternity are introduced as novel concepts structuring migration, and language power emerges as relevant far beyond the scope of the multinational corporation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the reform of initial teacher education (ITE) policy in Australia over a 25-year period from 1998 to 2023. It examines policy shifts and movements over this timeframe and aims to better understand the ongoing reforms in the changing contexts of their times.

The paper engages a critical policy historiography approach, focusing on four “policy moments” each linked to a review commissioned by the Commonwealth government of the day. It draws upon the reports and government responses themselves, along with media reports, extracts from Hansard, and ministerial speeches, press releases and interviews related to each of the four policy moments, asking critical questions about the “public issues” and “private troubles” (Gale, 2001) of each moment and aiming to shed light on the complexities of these accounts of policy and the trajectory they represent.

The paper charts the construction of the problem of ITE in Australia over time, highlighting the discursive continuities and shifts since 1998. It traces the constitution of both policy problems and solutions to explain the current policy settlement using a historical lens.

Its value lies in offering a reading of the current policy settlement, based on a close and systematic historical analysis. Where previous research has focused either on particular moments or concepts in ITE reform, this analysis seeks to understand the current policy settlement by taking a longer, contextualised view.

In December 2022, the Taliban announced that women were banned from attending higher education institutions in Afghanistan, which was met with concerns, condemnation, and a call to action. Social media platforms have presented Afghans and others from around the world with a free, public, and relatively safe space to voice their opinions and connect with others to discuss the ramifications of the Taliban education policies. The study conducted a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of 186 English-language posts published on the Twitter social networking site in September 2021 and December/January 2022 in response to the Taliban’s announced decisions concerning women’s access to higher education. Six discursive strategies were identified that use hashtags, negatively represent the Taliban, represent Afghan women as victims, report on acts of advocacy, condemn the Taliban’s restrictions and ban, and call to action to advocate for women’s right to higher education. While the ban has triggered more condemnation and calls for resistance than the restrictions enforced in the previous year, the findings suggest that the response to the restrictions imposed in September 2021 was mostly that of indifference compared to the posts that comment on the education ban in December 2022. Questions are raised concerning the role and effectiveness of the analyzed Twitter posts in mobilizing serious measures to reclaim women’s rights to access quality higher education in Afghanistan within the confines of the English-language Twitter sphere.

The study aims to highlight and understand, and bring the human agency into the debate on the theory of normative control. While, the previous literature has highlighted the problem of the missing subject. However, the actual human agency in terms of agential properties has not been seriously addressed. This study is an attempt to overcome this problem of the missing subject.

A two-phase design inspired by retroductive inference was adopted for this study. In the first phase, abduction was used to explore the literature on normative control to highlight the forces of attraction, which may pull the employees to participate willingly within normative control systems. In the second phase, following retroductive inference, agential explanations of the forces of attraction identified in the first phase were explored by venturing into other related fields, e.g. psychology and sociology.

The study highlights four strategies used by organizations using normative control, i.e. comfort zoning, relational bonding, moral trapping and elitist appeal. These strategies rely on attractive forces. These forces of attraction pull employees to participate in the normative control system. The attractive element in the identified strategies is due to the fact that these strategies target specific agential properties, i.e. the need for comfort, sense of belonging, moral agency and pride. Overall, the findings suggest that individuals drive their concerns from culture but in relation to their capacity as needy beings for being enculturated.

Theoretically, this study adds conceptual strength to the explanations of normative control. It is suggested that neglect of human agency renders explanations conceptually weak. The study fills this gap in the research. Practically, this study would be beneficial for better design and implementation of normative control. Several studies have pointed out that normative control does not yield the intended results. Out of many reasons, a lack of understanding of human agency is a major cause of unsuccessful attempts to normatively control employees. This study provides some basis to understand the human subject for better design of soft systems of control.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research study that explores agential properties with reference to normative control systems. This study is important for researchers and practitioners.

This paper aims to explore the market dynamics that led to a shift in Swedish consumers' alcohol preferences from schnapps to wine. Specifically, the study investigates how the Swedish state influenced consumers' alcohol habits and highlights the role of governance units in shaping consumer culture.

The study reconstructs the historical memory of the “Operation Vin”, a strategic marketing campaign implemented by Systembolaget from 1957 to 1985, to conceptualize the past and to uncover the structures and change dynamics of the Swedish alcohol market system. Following this approach, the research contrasts historical data from multiple sources with market-oriented ethnographical data and traces the trajectory of how the consumption of alcohol has changed as a consequence of the Swedish state’s initiatives.

The study offers two contributions to the literature in marketing and consumption history. Firstly, it uncovers the lines of actions (framing and settlement) involved in creating marketing systems and shaping consumer culture. Secondly, it explores how the state strategically leveraged its social skills to promote a specific type of alcohol consumption (wine) and to induce the Swedish consumer to cooperate in the refashioning of the alcohol field.

The authors aspire for this paper to offer valuable insights into how a state, as a governance entity, can shape consumer culture through a strategic blend of various regulatory measures, both gentle and forceful. The authors emphasize the pivotal role of social skills in fostering cooperation during the implementation of a new alcohol policy.

This paper provides valuable insights into the role of the Swedish state in shaping consumer culture and explores the strategic actions and marketing systems involved, contributing to marketing and consumption history literature.