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The purpose of this paper is to explore the effective taxonomies of airline green operations strategy.

To this end, a sample of 23 airlines from five regions (North America, South America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East) was surveyed. The annual sustainability reports of the surveyed airlines for the period 2013‒2016 were retrieved from the Global Reporting Initiatives website. K-means clustering analysis was used to generate taxonomic clusters of airline green operations strategy. A special data analysis technique, called rank analysis, was also adopted to identify the significant green actions and develop indicative models.

This study revealed that three effective taxonomies were adopted by airlines: a low-effect strategic pattern, a low-to-moderate effect strategic pattern and a high-effect strategic pattern. A different combination of green operation actions characterized each strategic pattern.

The research contribution of taxonomies of green operations strategy has so far been limited, country focused and concentrated on the manufacturing sector. This study reported the taxonomies and performed an in-depth analysis of the categories of effective actions taken to promote green performance. Moreover, this study developed indicative models for the relationship between categories of action and green performance for each strategic pattern, an action that has seldom been reported by previous studies of green operations strategies for airlines.

This paper explores practices of foresight within the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) program Futures Literacy, as a form of transnational governmentality–founded on the interests of “using the future” by “emancipating” the minds of humanity.

The paper draws on ethnographic material gathered over five years within the industry of futures consultancy, including UNESCO and its network of self-recognized futurists. The material consists of written sources, participant observation in on-site and digital events and workshops, and interviews.

Building on Foucault's (1991) concept of governmentality, which refers to the governing of governing and how subjects politically come into being, this paper critically examines the UNESCO Futures Literacy program by answering questions on ontology, deontology, technology and utopia. It shows how the underlying rationale of the Futures Literacy program departs from an ontological premise of anticipation as a fundamental capacity of biological life, constituting an ethical substance that can be worked on and self-controlled. This rationale speaks to the mandate of UNESCO, to foster peace in our minds, but also to the governing of governing at the individual level.

In the intersection between the growing literature on anticipation and research concerning governmentality the paper adds ethnographically based knowledge to the field of transnational governance. Earlier ethnographic studies of UNESCO have mostly focused upon its role for cultural heritage, or more broadly neoliberal forms of governing.

This paper shows the accounting, accountability and calculative practices associated with emergency food allocations by the City of Turin through a program to feed the vulnerable during COVID-19.

This is a single case study framed by Foucault's governmentality concept. The data was collected through interviews with key institutional actors and triangulated against decrees, circulars, ordinances and other publicly available documents.

The accounting tools of governmentality are always incomplete. Sometimes unique situations and crises help us to revise and improve the tools we have. Other times, they demand entirely new tools.

Accounting needs both things to count and a context to count them. In the case of food assistance, what is counted is people. In Turin's case, many people had never been counted – either because there was no need or because they were unaccounted for by choice. Now, the government was accountable for the welfare of both. Thus, new classification systems emerged, as did organisational and accounting solutions.

Although the accounting-for-disasters literature is diverse, studies too often favour the macro social, economic and political issues surrounding crises, neglecting the micro issues associated with governmentality and calculative practices.

This study aims to investigate how sustainability has been incorporated – or mainstreamed - in a school at one university through techniques of responsibilization and accountabilization.

Inspired by the extended case study methodology, the authors participated, observed and analyzed two audit-inspired processes, whose aims included ensuring that sustainability was integrated into the educational process.

By following two audit-inspired processes, the authors show how teachers were asked to respond to open-ended survey questions and by doing so emerged as responsibilized subjects. Although the teachers were given lots of space to interpret the concept of sustainability and show how it was translated into the programs and courses offered, the teachers were made accountable as established organizational hierarchies were reproduced when responsibilization was formalized through techniques of accountabilization.

The analysis moves beyond the instrumental epistemologies characterizing much of the positivist-oriented research in higher education. As with all studies, the authors study also has methodological limitations, such as involving a single higher education institution. There is a general need for more empirical research in this area in order to build theory and to understand whether the concepts of responsibilization and accountabilization can also be applied in other higher education contexts.

The study shows that higher education administrators engage in processes of responsibilization and accountabilization through formalized processes of interpellation, as documents and self-assessment exercises tie teachers to organizational contexts.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that introduces the concepts of responsibilization and accountabilization as social relationships in higher education governance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how public/private hybrid and ambiguous organizations played pivotal roles in a governmental programme of housing reconstruction following a major earthquake in central Italy in 2009. Venturing beyond the boundaries of institutional isomorphism and using a Foucauldian approach, the longitudinal analysis seeks to illuminate accounting and performance challenges and provide insights to the calculative techniques associated with evacuee housing.

In “act 1” this paper investigates the role of a consortium created during the recovery stage of the disaster to construct temporary housing. In “act 2” attention shifts to consortia established for the reconstruction of buildings in devastated communities. The total observation period is 11 years. 31 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 key-actors. A broad range of official documents was also consulted.

In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake a comprehensive reporting system was established to facilitate the construction of 19 new towns for 15,000 evacuees. The mix of accountants, engineers and architects who developed the system and a building prototype evidences the assembly of diverse calculative techniques by different experts and the de-territorialization of subject disciplines. During reconstruction technologies of government included the introduction of standardised systems and vocabularies that homogenised administrative procedures among diverse experts.

This paper provides academics and policymakers with insights to accounting, performance management and accountability in hybrid organizations in the largely unexplored realm of post-disaster evacuee housing. Further studies are needed to examine the politics of calculation in similar contexts.

This paper fills a gap in the literature by exploring the role played by individual experts working for hybrid organizations. Further, by exploring actual practices over an extended period of post-disaster recovery and reconstruction, the study highlights how experts intervened to solve problems at the meso-political level and at the micro-organizational level.

The Italian government addressed the first wave of its COVID-19 outbreak with a series of social restrictions and calculative practices, all branded with the slogan #istayathome. The hashtag quickly went viral, becoming both a mandate and a mantra and, as the crisis played out, we witnessed the rise of the Italian social movement #istayathome. This study examines how the government's calculative practices led to #istayathome and the constituents that shaped this social movement.

The authors embrace social movement theory and the collective identity perspective to examine #istayathome as a collective action and social movement. Using passive netnography, text mining and interpretative text analysis enhanced by machine learning, the authors analysed just over 350,000 tweets made during the period March to May 2020, each brandishing the hashtag #istayathome.

The #istayathome movement gained traction as a response to the Italian government's call for collective action. Thus, people became an active part of mobilising collective responsibility, enhancing the government's plans. A collective identity on the part of the Italian people sustained the mass mobilisation, driven by cohesion, solidarity and a deep cultural trauma from COVID-19's dramatic effects. Popular culture and Italy's long traditions also helped to form the collective identity of #istayathome. This study found that calculative practices acted as a persuasive technology in forming this collective identity and mobilising people's collective action. Numbers stimulated the cognitive, moral and emotional connections of the social ties shaping collective identity and responsibility. Thus, through collective identity, calculative practices indirectly influenced mass social behaviors and the social movement.

This study offers a novel theoretical perspective and empirical knowledge to explain how government power affects people's culture and everyday life. It unveils the sociological drivers that mobilise collective behaviors and enriches the accounting literature on the effects of calculative practices in managing emergencies. The study contributes to theory by providing an understanding of how calculative practices can influence collective behaviors and can be used to construct informal networks that go beyond the government's traditional formalities.

Contrasting two countries with different gender regimes and welfare states, Sweden and Tanzania, this paper aims to analyse how the institutional context affects the ways in which a neo-liberal reform agenda is translated into institutional changes and propose how such changes impact the preconditions for women’s entrepreneurship.

This study uses document analysis and previous studies to describe and analyse the institutions and the institutional changes. This paper uses Scandinavian institutional theory as the interpretative framework.

This study proposes that: in well-developed welfare states with a high level of gender equality, consequences of neo-liberal agenda for the preconditions for women entrepreneurs are more likely to be negative than positive. In less developed states with a low level of gender equality, the gendered consequences of neo-liberal reforms may be mixed and the preconditions for women’s entrepreneurship more positive than negative. How neo-liberalism impacts preconditions for women entrepreneurs depend on the institutional framework in terms of a trustworthy women-friendly state and level of gender equality.

The study calls for bringing the effects on the gender of the neo-liberal primacy of market solutions out of the black box. Studying how women entrepreneurs perceive these effects necessitates qualitative ethnographic data.

This paper demonstrates why any discussion of the impact of political or economic reforms on women’s entrepreneurship must take a country’s specific institutional context into account. Further, previous studies on neo-liberalism have rarely taken an interest in Africa.

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.

In accordance with Latour, this paper aims to respond to the call for a “down-to-earth” post-learning organization approach to sustainability, which is critical of Senge’s conception of learning organization (LO).

“Gaia storytelling” is used to define a LO that is “down-to-earth”.

Gaia is understood through the notion of a critical zone, which foregrounds the local and differentiated terrestrial conditions in which life on Earth is embedded.

Gaia storytelling implies perceiving LO as a network of storytelling practices enacted and told by unique creative citizens. Such an organization sustains and grows through several entangled storytelling cycles that allow Gaia to shape learning.

The article distinguishes five different storytelling cycles as a way to explore how the Gaia theater cycle connects to other cycles. The four other cycles are: Gaia thinking, explorative, creative and Gaia truth-telling.

A Gaian LO is a new beginning for LO.