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Drawing on the anthropological literature, this paper aims to develop a model of taboos (morality) that applies to the marketing, consumer behaviour and consumption contexts.

The paper is mainly conceptual but illustrates the general premises of the model with a case study of “dark” tourism and the contemporary marketing of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The paper shows that even extreme taboos can be commodified and traded-off, and that not even the horrific deaths and large-scale suffering that occurred at Auschwitz are “sacred”. This can occur through reframing and seeing the same taboo through different national lens.

Questions pertaining to consumer morality are relative rather than universalistic, and even the most extreme cases of taboo can still be successfully marketed.

The paper is among the first to attempt to conceptually design a model and then explain the taboo process as it applies to a marketing and consumption context.

Technological advances have led to accounting roles shifting from transaction focussed tasks to using data generated by technology to inform stakeholder strategies, resulting in changing skill requirements. This study aims to investigate how early career accountants (ECAs) and organisations value different skills among ECAs, how technology is impacting on these skills and the preparedness of ECAs for future technological work in different organisational settings.

The research adopted a multi-stakeholder, mixed-method approach, surveying 315 ECAs and 175 managers/recruiters and interviewing 10 from each group. The sample drew from different industry sectors and organisation types in Australia, with all states represented.

There was broad agreement among ECAs and managers on requisite skills for technology. Most ECAs and managers believed new technology is influencing the skills required in accounting, yet the impact was considered greater among ECAs and effects varied by organisational setting. Overall, the research did not support ECAs as “digital natives” and illuminated the importance of exposure to technology, a change mindset and lifelong learning to better prepare them for new technology.

This study makes an important contribution to understanding how and why skills for success in accounting are evolving in the context of new technology and how prepared ECAs are for technology from both their own and managers/recruiters’ perspectives. It highlights the need for greater dialogue, benchmarking and evaluation of performance in technology-related skills among new accountants and their managers. Further, it identifies areas where ECAs would most benefit from targeted support, aiding personal career success and organisational competitiveness.

With the decentralization and deregulation of the labor market over the past decade or so, there has been considerable debate about the future of industrial relations as a discipline or field of enquiry in Australia. Much of this literature assumes a discipline in decline, or at least at a crossroads, in terms of its purpose and continued relevance. In order to both evaluate these general claims and provide a more nuanced understanding of the future of the field in Australia, this chapter examines industrial relations in terms of three major dimensions: as a field of teaching, research, and practice. This exercise reveals important differences about the situation facing the discipline. Despite advances by human resource management (HRM) in universities, the teaching of industrial relations remains important even if its separate identity is contracting slightly at the present time. In terms of research, the multi-disciplinary and policy-oriented approach has much to contribute to understanding the changing world of industrial relations in Australia and remains a strong dimension of the field. However, in the area of industrial relations practice we observe a major decline as industrial relations and human resource professionals in Australia have become less important both in the wider regulation of work and within business organizations. We conclude that the field needs to broaden its focus to ‘work and employment relations’, seek more theoretically informed ways to explain contemporary developments in labor markets and societies, while at the same time remain committed to its traditional goals of equity and efficiency.

This chapter explores how “discourse,” as a process concerned with the production and consumption of talk and text, has been embraced within the field of organizational change and development (OCD). We present six ways of thinking about the role of discourse in OCD (namely: “discourse as component,” “discourse as process,” “discourse as analysis,” “discourse as method,” “discourse as mindset,” and “discourse as style”). Although the advent of dialogic OD has raised awareness of discourse, we demonstrate that it remains a marginal and under-utilized area of interest. We conclude by making a case for a more expansive role for discursive modes of analysis and engagement within OCD.

Extending the argument made in Bushe and Marshak (2009) of the emergence of a new species of Organization Development (OD) that we label Dialogic, to differentiate it from the foundational Diagnostic form, we argue that how any OD method is used in practice will be depend on the mindset of the practitioner. Six variants of Dialogic OD practice are reviewed and compared to aid in identification of a Weberian ideal-type Dialogic Mindset, consisting of eight premises that distinguish it from the foundational Diagnostic Mindset. Three core change processes that underlie all successful Dialogic OD processes are proposed, and suggestions for future research offered.

This paper aims to examine the contribution that discourse analysis can make to understanding organizational change.

It identifies five key contributions. Discourse analytic approaches: reveal the important role of discourse in the social construction of organizational change; demonstrate how the meaning attached to organizational change initiatives comes about as a result of a discursive process of negotiation among key actors; show that the discourses of change should be regarded as intertextual; provide a valuable multi‐disciplinary perspective on change; and exhibit a capacity, to generate fresh insights into a wide variety of organizational change related issues.

To illustrate these contributions the paper examines the five empirical studies included in this special issue. It discusses the potential for future discursive studies of organizational change phenomena and the implications of this for the field of organizational change more generally.

Provides an introduction to the special issue on discourse and organizational change.

Generativity is defined in this chapter as the creation of new images, metaphors, physical representations, and so on that have two qualities: they change how people think so that new options for decisions and/or actions become available to them, and they are compelling images that people want to act on. Research and experiences that suggest “positivity,” particularly positive emotion, is not sufficient for transformational change, but that generativity is a key change lever in cases of transformational change, are reviewed. A model of different characteristics of generativity is offered and ways in which appreciative inquiry can be a generative process, increase generative capacity, and lead to generative outcomes, are discussed. Ways to increase the generativity of appreciative inquiry through generative topics, generative questions, generative conversations, and generative action are offered.

This paper examines an important, albeit neglected aspect of communication in the workplace, namely, rumour and gossip in organisations. Drawing on literature from multiple disciplines the paper provides an analysis of the role played by rumour and gossip within organisations, including, but not limited to, its meaning, hidden reasons and its management. The paper discusses both antecedent and outcome variables that are associated with organisational rumour and gossip. It is contended that the different types of rumour and gossip serve different purposes which, in turn, result in a range of outcomes. Moreover, and in spite of the tendency to ascribe rumour and gossip as morally reprehensible, not all of these outcomes are shown to be harmful within organisations. The authors use this finding to argue that scholars and managers alike should avoid making negative judgements about rumour and gossip in all such cases.

This paper aims to review the discursive formation of organizational change and to consider the possible directions that change management initiatives may take in the future.

This closing piece identifies a traditional change discourse and an emerging change discourse. This is achieved through a review of the extant literature and the contributions to the special issue.

The paper highlights a shift of emphases in organizational change due to environmental imperatives. In particular, it reveals a move from problem‐centred, discrete interventions to a focus on continuous improvements. It also draws attention to the emerging significance of discourse‐based approaches concerned with image, identity, organizational learning and knowledge management.

Provides a framework for classifying different forms of organizational change activity and posits directions for future development.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.