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This chapter starts from the issue of debt in the context of a national economy by contrasting two opposed views: policy prescriptions based on the Washington Consensus prioritize low public debt and a limited role of the government in the development process whereas a more heterodox view considers debt as logical, necessary, and helpful in order to allow the government to pursue an ambitious growth and development strategy. However, things change when the economy is considered in its international context: foreign debt is different from domestic debt and while the same heterodox analysis still rejects the Washington Consensus' demand for trade and financial liberalization, its own ambitious development strategies for the domestic economy get constrained by trade deficits, the threat of capital flight, and exchange rate instability. The question arises how the government can still significantly contribute to economic development beyond the limits of a purely private sector–driven approach. This is why this chapter reviews proposals to relax or overcome the balance-of-payments constraint. Finally, it considers a reform of international payments, which can be implemented by a single country unilaterally, and which enables it to stabilize its current account, avoid foreign debt accumulation, and support domestic development strategies.

The paper extends the organizational learning framework: Structural-Functional (SF)-single-loop or Conflictual-Radical (CR)-double-loop learning to the management accounting literature. The sociological approach of organizational learning is utilized to understand those contingent factors that can explain why management accounting innovations succeed or fail in organizations.

We view learning as enhancing an organization’s strategic competitive advantage by making it better able to adopt and diffuse innovation in respond to changes in its environment in order to manage improved performance. The success of management accounting innovations is contingent upon whether its learning process involves SF-single-loop or CR-double-loop learning to adopt and diffuse process innovation.

The paper suggests that the learning strategy that the organization chooses is the reason why some management accounting innovations are more successfully adopted than others and why some innovations are easily diffused in some organizations but not in others. We propose that the sociological approaches to learning provide an alternative framework with which to better understand the adoption and diffusion of process innovations in management accounting systems.

It has become evident that management accounting researchers need to pay particular attention to an organization’s approach to adoption and diffusion of innovation strategies, particularly when they are designing and implementing process innovation programs for an organization. According to Schulz (2001), there are two interrelated stages of the learning that can shape the outcome of the innovation process in an organization. The first stage is related to the acquisition/production (adoption) of knowledge that results in gathering information, codification, and exploration. This is followed by the second stage which is the distribution or dissemination (diffusion) processes. When these two stages – adoption and diffusion – are applied within an accounting context, they address issues that are commonly associated with the successes and/or failures of management accounting innovations.

Although innovation involves learning, the nature of the learning process does not completely describe the manner in which an innovation affects the organization. Accordingly, we suggest that the two interrelated organizational sociological dimensions of innovations processes, namely, (1) the adoption and diffusion theories of Rogers (1971 and 1995), to approach organizational learning, and (2) the SF (single loop) and CR (double loop) approaches to learning be used simultaneously to describe management accounting innovations.

When an innovation is implemented, it initially can be introduced as an incremental change, one that can be limited in both in its scope and its breadth of administrative changes. This means that situations which are most likely to benefit from its initiation can serve as the prototype for its adoption by the organization. If successful, this can be followed by systemic accounting innovations to instituting broader administrative changes within the existing accounting reporting and control systems.

When questioning the relationship between media, development, and democracy, especially in the ill-defined “Global South,” it’s important to go beyond the commonly held meta-narratives that frame these concepts as common sense. In a quest to investigate alternative characterizations of these terms, this chapter uses Ghanaian political economist Lord Mawuko-Yevugah’s (2014) theoretical framework of “developmentality” to explain how development has been used as an ideological instrument to promote the Western liberal media model in the “Global South.” Using a case study of Malawi, which is heavily dependent on foreign aid from the same countries who have defined and promoted this liberal media model aboard, raises important questions about a media model that is characterized by high objectivity and political neutrality on one side, but subjects countries to high levels of competition and free market principles on the other. By outlining the temporal sequence of events that have unfolded since the arrival of missionary media in the 1800s, the presence of international donors and the rise in non-governmental organizations, this chapter reveals how certain ideologies and practices have been legitimized through development to preserve the unequal balance of power between the “Global South” and their former colonial powers.

The chapter is based on the Social Foundation project: ‘Digital Pathways to Growth: Competency’ conducted in the region of Zealand in Denmark. The process of creating a multifunctional semantic – a competency model – is unfolded. Informed by social system theory the semantic required to enable dialogue in a polycentric network is analysed. The participants are various small and medium-sized enterprises, across many occupations and tasks, different types of educational and training organisations as well as process consultants from various knowledge institutions, labour unions and industrial interest organisations. The model is designed through a participatory process to help this polycentric network of organisations to build competencies for the digitalisation ahead.

We argue that design thinking and engaged scholarship in the construction of a multifunctional semantics – such as the competency model – is useful both as a practical method and as a semantic research strategy informed by social system theory. The role played by design thinking when developing the competency model as a multifunctional semantic is concluded and the future research outlined.

The research generates knowledge of practical value for networked collaboration in educational ‘ecologies’ as the need increases for stronger links between education, business and research, as well as the involvement of social partners and civil society to increase Europe’s innovation capacity as advised by both the OECD and the EU.

A study conducted by UN Habitat (2020) revealed that financing of investment in African growing cities has become an impediment amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Close to USD 93 billion is needed to finance urban development in Africa. The prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic impacted negatively on the independence of African cities to raise revenue or incur long-term debt to finance their development. Several local governments in African cities are not positioned enough to ensure quality standards of living for their people. This is because many local authorities in African cities cannot intervene in various emergencies or crises which pose a danger to people given the COVID-19 pandemic era where strategic government interventions are essential to save the lives of the people. Burdened by the need to respond to COVID-19, many African governments have diverted their attention from the smart city ideology which demands stable financial revenues and redirected their efforts towards mitigating the scourge of the pandemic. Drawing from this background, therefore this chapter reports on the three selected African cities (Johannesburg, Lagos and Accra) because of their experiences regarding COVID-19, and their responses to the pandemic towards achieving a smart city in Africa. The chapter is guided by the following specific objectives: To examine the unintended consequences of COVID-19 on the achievement of Smart Cities in three African Cities; to assess the opportunities and challenges of achieving smart cities amid COVID 19 in three African Cities; and to determine how rapid urbanisation affects the achievement of Smart Cities amid COVID-19 in three African Cities. Qualitative thematic analysis was used to analyse data acquired from secondary sources.