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This paper examines how accounting concepts were utilised in domestic waste collection services in Ireland over the past two decades or so. In comparison to other former “free” services in the Irish context, the prevalence of accounting concepts has been greater and delivered a more successful outcome.

Drawing on the concepts of calculation, the “economic” and economization, events around domestic waste policy in Ireland are examined, and the increasing prevalence of concepts such as price, cost and profitability in these processes are a focal point. Publicly available documents such as government policy documents, parliamentary records and media reports are utilised to draw out these concepts. The period of analysis is 1996–2018.

The findings reveal the role of accounting concepts in the economization of domestic waste policy in Ireland. The result of the economization process was a fully privatised, profit-oriented, price-monitored system.

This research provides a broad view of accounting concepts in the management of domestic waste. It highlights how waste policy in Ireland travelled through instances of being political and economic over time. The research is limited by its use of secondary data.

This study highlights how accounting concepts were used in varying ways to bring about a satisfactory solution to domestic waste disposal in Ireland, namely the privatisation of waste services.

The purpose of this research is to detect, through applying a process-based view, how to manage economisation of the maintenance and modification operations in offshore petroleum logistics operations.

A single case study of engineering services, more specifically, maintenance and modification service operations, on a Norwegian Sea oil platform reveals the dynamics of building network capabilities in a consistent network structure. Two layers of coordination are studied: the engineering process and its context, represented by its network of interconnected firms. This case study empirically grounds how engineering service involves managing reciprocally interdependent exchange processes in the network structure.

Pooled interdependencies are vital in understanding the nature of service provision and use, and sequential interdependencies are vital in narrating the timing of processes to reveal the nature of process emergence to coordinate strings of production events. Furthermore, the network structure, when characterised by multiple interdependent projects, is also dynamic but at a slower pace.

Through the case study, operations management is revealed to be associated with project emergence at two levels: the core process level regarding daily continuous change, including the changing interaction of multiple different and interdependent projects, and the contextual level, where features of interdependency and integration change, affecting engineering service production. This provides guidance as to the economisation of engineering services. They change not only interactions in the flow of production but also its context.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the sustainable development thought is one good reason why Chinese civilization is continuously developing, and it can be used as a reference for the development of Chinese agriculture today.

The paper employs a historical analysis approach to examine the sustainable thoughts concerning Chinese traditional agriculture, including view of sancai, farming season, fertility, the nature of matters, recycling, and economization.

The results reveal that the nature of Chinese traditional agriculture is akin to ecological agriculture, which is precious heritage for China and the whole world.

The originality of this paper is that it confirms the fundamental reason of the continuous development of Chinese civilization which, based on organization of sustainable development thought, lies in traditional agriculture.

This conceptual paper focusses on climate change as a social issue and therefore as a social scientific problem. According to young climate activists, Greta Thunberg being the most widely known, climate change is specifically a problem of generations. Typically, the discourse on responsibility focusses on the technical and philosophical questions posed by the study into “intra-” and “inter-generational justice”. It is the purpose of this paper to present sociological conceptual tools with which to both analyze and propose solutions to specific social problems caused by current generations that will affect future generations.

Figurational process sociology develops and tests models of long-term, unplanned developments, which produce the conditions in which short-term practices of informing and planning social interventions are bound up.

The paper reveals the significance of sociological models that can describe and explain social processes and long-term developments in human habitus that have important explanatory value for understanding contemporary social problems such as human-caused climate change.

The concepts and analytical frames of reference provided by figurational process sociology provide crucial insights into the problem of generations and can help reveal how this social dynamic contributes to challenges facing young climate activists calling for rapid “ecologization” processes and increased human restraint with regard to the natural environment.

This paper contributes to a growing literature that examines entrepreneurship with a critical perspective, arguing for a research agenda that makes entrepreneurialism as discourse visible. We define the discourse of entrepreneurialism as a style of thinking and economic intervention that invites actors to pursue their interests by drawing on a limited notion of agency that locates itself in an imaginary economic universe independent of institutions, broad social contexts, and identity considerations. Associated with the global rise of neoliberalism, entrepreneurialism provides actors with tools and competences to imagine organizations in narrow, instrumental terms and with an idealized notion of agency. We argue that seeing entrepreneurial capacity in such a limited way makes it impossible to fully understand entrepreneurship as a phenomenon. Highlighting the adverse consequences of entrepreneurialism, we map areas of inquiry that can contribute to the emergence of a more effective and comprehensive critical research agenda concerning entrepreneurialism.

Financial accounting necessarily depends on an entity assumption that shapes the way it recognizes and accounts for organizational exchanges with social environments. It thereby constructs boundaries and frames permeability in terms of what counts, is accounted for, as being inside and outside of the organization. Yet there are different possible entity concepts reflecting different values about the relationship between the organizational entity and society. This essay considers four problem areas in which these values and the entity–society relationship are at stake within financial accounting: the problem of control within group accounting; accounting for externalities; the economization of public organizations; and the construction of organizational actorhood. These four problematics suggest that financial accounting, its boundary determining assumptions, and the forms of organizational permeability it permits are deeply intertwined and subject to continuous pressure for change.

In the context of a care crisis in Germany, care work done by volunteers is increasingly being semi-formalized by the state and used in professional care work contexts to relieve families and professionals. However, voluntary care has not yet been adequately studied from a care-specific perspective. This study examines in what way voluntary care can be considered decent care from a care-ethical and empirical perspective.

Considering findings of a qualitative interview study, the study examines the special features of voluntary care, addresses its socio-political expansion, and asks about the decency of voluntary care in elder care and social work.

Care work done by volunteers is a special kind of care work, which has advantages but also disadvantages regarding care-ethical requirements of decent care. The study examines under which conditions voluntary care violates these requirements and how this can be countered in socio-political terms.

Voluntary care is an under-researched phenomenon despite its increasing socio-political importance. While its state-led expansion can informalize and deprofessionalize care work at the expense of users, professionals, and volunteers, its analysis can help to illuminate the preconditions for decent care.

This article aims to examine the negative effects of loyalty programs from the perspective of frustration theory. It seeks to develop a model of customer frustration on the basis of frustration theory and an exploratory qualitative study.

First, frustration is defined as a special form of dissatisfaction and a general model of frustration in business relationships is developed by evaluating the literature on frustration theory. Second, an explorative and qualitative focus group study among participants of a loyalty program for frequent travelers is conducted. A multi‐level iterative content analysis of the participants' statements reveals the existence of different categories of frustration incidents. Third, the findings of the study are used to develop a system of propositions that generate a specific model of customer frustration in loyalty programs.

Seven categories of frustration incidents that were triggered by the loyalty program and lead to frustration sensation and subsequent frustration behavior, like protest or avoidance, could be identified. With four categories of incidents – inaccessibility, worthlessness, qualification barrier and redemption costs – customers' frustration sensation and behavior are directed on the program itself (program‐related frustration incidents). For the other three – discrimination, economization and defocusing – frustration sensation and behavior also affect the perception of the relationship with the firm (relationship‐related incidents).

The exact differentiation of frustration from related constructs should be the topic of further research. The findings of the empirical study are of limited generalizability because the object of investigation was a single company's loyalty program in a special industry sector. Hence, the introduced propositions should be further specified and tested in a large‐scale quantitative study in different sectors and with a number of companies and programs. Further work is necessary to allow deeper insights into the relationships between the elements in the customer frustration model.

Several implications for planning and implication arise from the results of the study. Management has to make sure that program‐related and relationship‐related negative effects are avoided. That calls for offering only those benefits that represent genuine additional value to customers and for ensuring that the benefits can be claimed at any time and without any additional effort by the customer. Furthermore, the perceived quality of the program should be monitored to obtain prompt information about possible customer frustration and indications of protest (i.e. customer complaints) should be viewed with particular attention.

This paper provides new insights into the so far highly neglected negative side effects of loyalty programs. Also, innovative is the first‐time application of the frustration construct to the analysis of customer behavior in the context of loyalty programs. The contribution is of high value for all who research in the field of customer relationship management and customer loyalty.