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The purpose of this paper is to test if activism by civil society organisations (CSOs hereafter) in successfully mobilising resistance to the Government of Ghana “collateralization” of gold resources and other mineral royalties in 2020 (dubbed the “Agyapa deal”) espouse tenets of Foucault’s (2009) “governmentality” and “counter conduct” dispositions.

This paper draws on Dean’s (1999) discussion of government analytics to highlight how CSO activism can simultaneously challenge government practice and share in it. This paper uses an evidence-based and interpretive qualitative content analysis approach. This paper relied on secondary data sources from 1 January 2020 to 21 August 2021. Data collection involved an extensive review of secondary materials concerning the Agyapa deal, relying on the author's local knowledge to identify the likely sources of information.

This paper exposes how the counteractions of CSOs, underpinned by the desire for so-called “good governance”, invariably extend governmentality and other neo-liberal ideals. In this case, CSOs' actions espoused the ideals of marketisation, extended governable spaces, engrained subjectivation and treated citizens as incapable of formulating and advancing their desires without overt help. Secondly, it provides evidence that massive deployment of accountability and other calculable practices, however wilful, complement efforts at shaping public opinion.

CSO counter-conduct is merely symbolic rather than substantive. Substantive counter-conduct requires the citizenry to actively lead the problematisation process, holding CSOs accountable for acting on their behalf. The current trajectory where CSO accountability is primarily to their international financiers, predominantly neo-liberal advocates, raises questions about “in whose interest they seek another form of governance?” Practically, the splinter of interests that may emanate from citizenry directly led counter-conduct can affect garnering the critical mass needed to force a policy change. That said, however, there is a case for citizenry “making themselves” rather than “being made” within the governmentality process.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first application of the Foucauldian and Dean framework to a data set from Ghana.

Megaprojects are seen as vehicles for delivering significant social value. However, megaproject decision-making, which is deeply embedded in networks comprising formal and informal practices involving the exercise of power, can facilitate or hinder social value delivery. Moreover, these decision-making practices are often intentionally designed and executed to remain hidden and so are not easily identifiable but have implications for maximising social value. This paper aims to identify the hidden barriers to social value delivery on megaprojects resulting from the decision-making environment.

Governmentality theory was used to deconstruct the megaproject decision-making environment. The critical realism philosophy was merged with a narrative inquiry approach to analyse the everyday, taken-for-granted practices that resulted in the decision-making outcomes. Data were collected through 22 in-depth semi-structured interviews to uncover stories highlighting the nature of power relations underpinning the decision-making environment of one megaproject in the Asia Pacific region.

Governmentality theory as a lens showed that emergent, informal governing practices blend with formal governance mechanisms, creating a complex mix of overt and covert power dynamics. The findings suggest that the exercise of covert power by project team members through deviant tactics hinders social value delivery. Therefore, understanding the power dynamics that influence the decision-making of project team members is key for maximising social value delivery.

Originality stems from the use of governmentality theory and critical realism to deconstruct and explain the megaproject decision-making environment, enabling observation of otherwise challenging-to-understand, complex and hidden barriers to the delivery of social value. This paper offers a novel way of explaining social value delivery through megaproject decision-making.

One of the characteristics of our age is urbanization and the increase in the population of cities and the development of small and large cities. In fact, the sustainable development of a city, which in its general sense means all-round growth and expansion without contradiction, with two main goals: (1) improving the quality of life in terms of the capacity of the environment and (2) responding to the needs of the present generation without restrictions for the future ones. But according to the fifth wave theory, entering the first edge of the future from 2020 to 2030, with the development of urbanization, we are witnessing instability in recent decades. Depletion of forests, thinning of the ozone layer, accumulation of greenhouse gases, noise pollution, threatening air pollution in cities are among these indicators in urban areas. Other important indicators also show the social and economic instability of the world community. The increase in poverty, economic growth without job creation, increase the gap between developed and developing countries, social disintegration, and the sense of citizenship of the residents of local communities and the class gap are among these indicators. Therefore, since 1970, with the advancement of technologies, today the realization of urban development depends on attention to the factors of innovation, digitalization, and intelligentization. In the concept of development, aspects, domains, and scales become important. This improvement of the current situation will be realized when it brings all-round intelligence without conflict and contradiction in meeting the tangible and intangible needs of this society. Growth in material and spiritual aspects, from local to global scales and in different economic, cultural, educational, social, technological, and even political fields. Therefore, paying attention to the quality makes the concept of development more effective. These qualities are aligned with the concept of sustainability. In this chapter, U-city, smart sustainable mobility through 5th Wave, i-Sustainability Plus, and doost cultural theory (DCT) will be probed as a new concept of urban living for blue-green smart city and mobility. In addition, challenges made some countries not to prefer to utilize smartness and ubiquitous idea as a tool for their problems, will be explored.

The primary objective of this study was to understand the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Employee Green Behavior, examining the mediating role played by Green Human Resource Management Practices and the moderating influence of Employee Green Culture.

To accomplish this, a careful research approach was taken, using a thoughtfully designed random sampling method to encompass 300 banking employees, ensuring a robust representation of the diverse workforce in the banking sector.

The empirical findings identified green human resource management practices as a pivotal mediator and employee green culture as a significant moderator. It elucidated how the strategic implementation of green human resource management practices can act as an amplifier, strengthening the positive effects of corporate social responsibility on employee green behavior. This insight underscores the strategic importance of aligning human resource practices with sustainability goals to further enhance the environmental consciousness of employees. It was revealed that the presence of a nurturing organizational culture, one that encourages and supports environmentally responsible behaviors can significantly bolster the association between corporate social responsibility and green behavior among employees.

These findings underscore the essential role of organizational culture as a catalyst for the successful implementation of corporate social responsibility initiatives and the cultivation of a sustainable corporate ethos. This comprehensive research underscores the profound significance of corporate social responsibility, green human resource management practices and employee green culture in fostering and promoting environmentally responsible behaviors within the banking industry. These findings hold substantial implications not only for businesses but also for policymakers.

This paper aims to explore how accounting is fostering neoliberal citizenship through the participants of Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). More specifically, this paper aims to understand how accounting discourse and the management accounting technique of budgeting, when intertwined with automated administrative processes of the NDIS, are giving rise to a pastoral form of power that directs people’s behaviour toward certain ends.

Publicly available data has been crafted into an autoethnographic case study of one fictitious person’s experiences with the NDIS – Mina. Mina is an amalgam created from material submitted to the Joint Parliamentary Standing Committee on the NDIS. Mina’s experiences are then analysed through the lens of Foucault’s concept of pastoral power to explore how accounting has contributed to marketising and digitising public disability services.

Accounting rhetoric appears to be a central part of rationalising the decision to shift to individualised disability funding. Those receiving payments are treated as self-governable, financially responsible subjects and are therefore expected to have knowledge of management accounting techniques and budgeting. However, NDIS’s strong reliance on the accounting concepts of funds, budgets, cost and price is limiting people’s autonomy and subjecting them to intervention and control.

This paper addresses calls to explore the interplay between accounting and current disability policies. The analysis shows that incorporating accounting into the NDIS’s algorithms serves to conceal the underlying ideology of the programs, subtly driving behaviours towards neoliberal objectives. Further, this research extends the Foucauldian accounting literature by revealing the contribution of accounting to reinforcing the authority of digital pastors in contemporary times.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to suggest that the growing sociocultural theorisation of risk calls for a more robust research focus on the role that information and in particular, information literacy, plays in mediating hazards and danger.

Starting by tracing how information has been conceptualised in relation to risk through technoscientific, cognitive and sociocultural lenses, the paper then focuses on emerging sociocultural understandings of risk to present a research agenda for a renewed sociocultural exploration of how risk is shaped through the enactment of information literacy.

The paper identifies and examines how information literacy shapes four key aspects of risk, including risk perception, risk management, risk-taking and “at-risk” populations. These four aspects are further connected through broader themes of learning, identity, work and power, which form the basis of the sociocultural risk research agenda.

This paper is the first study bringing together the many understandings related to how risk is informed and establishes risk as a key area of interest within information literacy research.

This study aims to propose resident-based brand equity models on green, creative and smart development themes through a multi-sample telephone survey on Hong Kong residents (n = 751).

This research adopted a quantitative approach with a round of questionnaire-based survey carried out anonymously on adult citizens who have stayed in Hong Kong for more than one year. Telephone survey was performed by a professional survey research centre with trained interviewers between May and July 2022.

The study identifies the magnitude of these city brand equity attributes and reconfigured their composition under separate samples of Hong Kong residents. The results reveal the relatively stronger brand equity for developing Hong Kong as a smart city brand compared with green and creative branding.

The research findings might carry a major limitation of varied interpretations and stereotypes of each city theme (green, creative and smart) by local residents. To minimize the expected bias, two core questions were added to provide respondents with information on each theme before the main survey questions. The questions’ wording was also simplified to ensure the constraint and inconsistency of layman effect.

The common attributes across the themes, including distinctiveness, uniqueness, confidence, positive image, liveability, long-term residence, feature familiarity and top-of-mind, indicate the most prominent aspects of brand equity formation and enhancement. Since urban sustainability does not follow a single path of strategies and infrastructure development, city brand process should also follow a selective approach, which clearly identifies a multiplicity of local interests that could create the best outcomes and the strongest brand equity for the city.

The factor allocation and regression analysis elucidate different configurations of the determining factors with a three-factor model for green city brand equity and two-factor models for the other ones. The findings encore some previous studies supporting the differentiation between common attributes and distinctive attributes, and the overlapping approach to unleash the strongest integration of attributes of brand equity.

The article explores the linkages between the type of environmental strategy (ES), the use of internal communication (IC), and the greening of organizational culture (OC). Moreover, the article empirically examines whether company size matters in the use of environmental IC practices in the green context. Additionally, the article considers differences between people employed at different organizational hierarchy levels. The basis for such a comparison is their opinions about the effectiveness of communication practices.

Empirical research employed a survey method done on 199 organizations in 2020. Statistical analyses used the chi-squared test, Kendall’s Tau-b correlation coefficient, and the Mann–Whitney U test.

The research showed that companies with a proactive green strategy more often use different communication practices related to ES and have a greener culture. The study proved that larger companies more often use the analyzed communication practices. However, we found no significant difference in opinion between middle managers and line employees about the effectiveness of these practices.

The main contribution to business practice is the exploratory model based on the empirical study, which allows organizations to successfully implement the ES.

Studies rarely combine the three organizational elements: IC, OC, and ES. This article provides new empirical evidence on relationships between features of OC, green strategy types, and communication practices.