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Article
Publication date: 8 April 2024

Yuheng Wang and Paul D. Ahn

This paper aims to offer insight into how strategies within the accounting profession, which has been becoming more global, might be changed by the recent outbreak of the Second…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to offer insight into how strategies within the accounting profession, which has been becoming more global, might be changed by the recent outbreak of the Second Cold War between the West and the Rest of the World.

Design/methodology/approach

We explore the strategies of those who called themselves “Confucian accountants” in China, a country which has recently discouraged its state-owned enterprises from using the services of the Big 4. We do this by employing qualitative research methods, including reflexive photo interviews, in which Big-4 accountants, recognised as the most Westernised accounting actors in China, and Confucian accountants are asked to take and explain photographs representing their professional lives. Bourdieu’s notions of “economy of practices” and “vision-of-division strategy” are drawn upon to understand who the Confucian accountants are and what they do strategically in their pursuit of a higher revenue stream and improved social standing in the Chinese social space.

Findings

The homegrown Confucian accountants share cultural-cognitive characteristics with neighbouring social actors, such as their clients and government officials, who have been inculcated with Confucianism and the state’s cultural confidence policy in pursuit of a “socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics”. Those accountants try to enhance their social standing and revenue stream by strategically demonstrating their difference from Big-4 accountants. For this purpose, they wear Confucian clothes, have Confucian props in their office, employ Confucian phrases in their everyday conversations, use Confucian business cards and construct and maintain guanxi with government officials and clients.

Originality/value

This paper is the first attempt to explore Confucian accountants’ strategies for increasing their revenue and social standing at the start of the Second Cold War.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 25 April 2024

Suhair Alkilani, Martin Loosemore, Ahmed W.A. Hammad and Sophie-May Kerr

The purpose of this paper is to use Bourdieu’s Theory of Capital–Field–Habitus to explore how refugees, asylum seekers and migrants accumulate and mobilise social, cultural…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to use Bourdieu’s Theory of Capital–Field–Habitus to explore how refugees, asylum seekers and migrants accumulate and mobilise social, cultural, symbolic and economic capital to find meaningful work in the Australian construction industry.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper reports the results of a survey of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants who have either successfully or unsuccessfully searched for employment in the Australian construction industry.

Findings

The findings dispel widely held negative stereotypes of about this group by describing a highly capable workforce which could address significant skills shortages in the industry, while concurrently diversifying the workforce. However, it is found that refugees, asylum seekers and migrants face considerable barriers to finding meaningful employment in the construction industry. In circumventing these barriers, education institutions, charities and community-based organisations play an especially important role, alongside friends and family networks. They do this by helping refugees, asylum seekers and migrants accumulate and deploy the necessary capital to secure meaningful work in the construction industry. Disappointingly, it is also found that the construction industry does little to help facilitate capital accumulation and deployment for this group, despite the urgent need to address diversity and critical skills shortages.

Originality/value

Employing Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Capital–Field–Habitus, the findings make a number of new theoretical and practical contributions to the limited body of international research relating to the employment of refugees, asylum seekers and migrant workers in the construction. The results are important because meaningful employment is widely accepted to be the single most factor in the successful integration of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants into a host society and the construction industry represents an important source of potential employment for them.

Details

Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0969-9988

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 18 April 2024

Raphael Lissillour and Minelle E. Silva

Despite the growing interest in the field of supply chain sustainability (SCS), little exploration of new theories exists. Therefore, this paper aims to introduce practice…

Abstract

Purpose

Despite the growing interest in the field of supply chain sustainability (SCS), little exploration of new theories exists. Therefore, this paper aims to introduce practice theories to SCS studies through a practice turn.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a conceptual paper in nature. Hence, based on theoretical arguments, the authors elaborate on how the practice turn can arise in the SCS field.

Findings

The theoretical elaboration is rooted in the understanding that sustainability is not limited to the materiality of environmental and social issues, as often observed. Instead, there is a need to include immaterial, emotional and intangible elements to better comprehend SCS practice. The authors argue that a continuum exists for a practice turn, including practice-based view, practice-based studies and critical practice theory.

Research limitations/implications

The authors provide a research agenda with a comprehensive perspective of understanding the application and implications of practice theories to SCS.

Practical implications

The practice turn in SCS studies can support managers to better understand their practices not only through recognizing explicit activities but also mainly by reflecting on hidden elements that affect their performance.

Social implications

SCS studies can better engage with grand challenges through a practice turn, which helps increase its contribution to solving social problems.

Originality/value

Unlike previous literature, the paper elaborates on how practice theories are powerful in supporting both scholars and practitioners in moving away from an extremely economic focus to genuinely embrace sustainability practice. In doing so, the practice turn appears as an important phase for SCS field maturity.

Details

RAUSP Management Journal, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2531-0488

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 May 2022

Ibticem Ben Zammel and Tharwa Najar

Emphasis is placed on knowledge-sharing practices and their influence on the power structure influenced by the technological background of the organization. This paper aims to…

Abstract

Purpose

Emphasis is placed on knowledge-sharing practices and their influence on the power structure influenced by the technological background of the organization. This paper aims to focus on technological skills institutionalized to build organizational technological capital favoring the knowledge-sharing practices. It aims to extend the sociology literature by providing a conceptual background to explain the restructuring initiatives through the stabilizing role of technological capital.

Design/methodology/approach

Two comparative case studies have been conducted: the first study took place in a public company and the second study was carried out in a private company of telecommunication involving a documentary study, an observation and semi-structured interviews.

Findings

The findings in this paper show that the knowledge-sharing practices in the organizational field are stabilized by the technological capital. The technological capital promotes a knowledge management system and plays an important role in restructuring the established power within knowledge intensive organizations.

Practical implications

Chief executive officers are encouraged to promote sharing practices through developing an innovation culture and valuing technological skills. Relevance should be granted to the technological capital, which aligns the restructuring of a learning organization and promotes the knowledge management systems and stabilizes the organizational structure. Organizations should capitalize a set of technological skills as part of their organizational relevant capital.

Originality/value

Based on the practice theory of Bourdieu, this paper lights on the triad relation between knowledge sharing/organizational structure/technological capital through comparing between public/private management modes. A theoretical framework is proposed to overlap the ambiguity of the relation between knowledge and power.

Details

VINE Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2059-5891

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 September 2023

Sin Sin Yeung

This study aims to reveal and compare the cultural logics of university-educated Chinese mothers in Singapore and Hong Kong in their mothering practices to improvise their…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to reveal and compare the cultural logics of university-educated Chinese mothers in Singapore and Hong Kong in their mothering practices to improvise their femininities in constituting their work–family interactions.

Design/methodology/approach

This qualitative research, with the ethnographic elements, has included 32 Chinese mothers to share about their mothering experiences through semi-structured interviews. This methodological design with feminist lens embraces women’s own narratives as sources of knowledge and learns their voices to reinvent their role and bodily engagement in shaping their family dynamics.

Findings

This discussion basically reaffirms the argument where the mother’s involvement in their children’s schoolwork becomes one of the core elements in their actual everyday mothering practices. It has further reflected the dynamics of family quality time in the light of mothers’ cultural logics as much as their attentive agency capacity to present their respectable femininity in the form of mothering.

Research limitations/implications

This research process has revealed the actual experiences of the participants from their own narratives. For future research development, data collection can be extended to include the husbands’ profiles and their narratives in understanding their wives’ mothering experiences.

Originality/value

This discussion enriches the work-family literature by extending it to the Asian Chinese context. While the concepts of cultural capital and habitus have been addressed in previous studies, this discussion highlights the agency capacity of the university-educated Chinese mothers in their cultural logics to deliver their respective mothering practices. This filtering process to transmit cultural capital to their children is as much as they involve in reproducing status boundaries for the family.

Details

Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1871-2673

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 22 June 2023

Jingjing Sun, Ziming Zeng, Tingting Li and Shouqiang Sun

The outbreak of COVID-19 has become a major public health emergency worldwide. How to effectively guide public opinion and implement precise prevention and control is a hot topic…

Abstract

Purpose

The outbreak of COVID-19 has become a major public health emergency worldwide. How to effectively guide public opinion and implement precise prevention and control is a hot topic in current research. Mining the spatiotemporal coupling between online public opinion and offline epidemics can provide decision support for the precise management and control of future emergencies.

Design/methodology/approach

This study focuses on analyzing the spatiotemporal coupling relationship between public opinion and the epidemic. First, based on Weibo information and confirmed case information, a field framework is constructed using field theory. Second, SnowNLP is used for sentiment mining and LDA is utilized for topic extraction to analyze the topic evolution and the sentiment evolution of public opinion in each coupling stage. Finally, the spatial model is used to explore the coupling relationship between public opinion and the epidemic in space.

Findings

The findings show that there is a certain coupling between online public opinion sentiment and offline epidemics, with a significant coupling relationship in the time dimension, while there is no remarkable coupling relationship in space. In addition, the core topics of public concern are different at different coupling stages.

Originality/value

This study deeply explores the spatiotemporal coupling relationship between online public opinion and offline epidemics, adding a new research perspective to related research. The result can help the government and relevant departments understand the dynamic development of epidemic events and achieve precise control while mastering the dynamics of online public opinion.

Details

Library Hi Tech, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0737-8831

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 25 January 2023

Marcio Luis Vila, Silvio Eduardo Alvarez Candido, Gustavo Mendonca Ferratti and Mário Sacomano Neto

This study aims to analyze the configuration of the board of directors of the five largest banks operating in Brazil, which are members of a financial elite that directly…

89

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to analyze the configuration of the board of directors of the five largest banks operating in Brazil, which are members of a financial elite that directly influences the socioeconomic life in Latin America.

Design/methodology/approach

This assessment is inspired by Bourdieu's sociological approach and in the discussion on his work in organization studies and economic sociology. It addresses the organization as a field and investigates its associated field of power. The authors conducted qualitative research and relationally analyzed data related to the trajectory and the social properties of the councilors using the statistical technique called multiple correspondence analysis (MCA).

Findings

The results show that forms of social and cultural capital are particularly influential in the production of distinctions among banks' board members. Moreover, councils' priorities and configurations are diverse: some idealized and based on knowledge, others pragmatic and based on customs, others still anchored in a double logic of market satisfaction and family wealth preservation.

Practical implications

Understanding the objective power relations among these top agents may be crucial for effectively regulating certain aspects of their activities. Furthermore, understanding how different forms of capital affect the relative position of the board members may help us reduce representative bias in what seems today an inner circle.

Originality/value

This study is relevant because it makes an in-depth analysis of the composition of one of the most influential financial elites in Latin America, combining sociological theory and advanced statistical techniques for qualitative grouping (MCA).

Details

International Journal of Emerging Markets, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-8809

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 24 January 2023

Quang Evansluong, Lena Grip and Eva Karayianni

This paper aims to understand how immigrant entrepreneurs use digital opportunities to overcome the liability of newness and foreignness and how an immigrant's ethnicity can be…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to understand how immigrant entrepreneurs use digital opportunities to overcome the liability of newness and foreignness and how an immigrant's ethnicity can be digitally performed as an asset in business.

Design/methodology/approach

The study adopts an inductive multiple case study approach using social media content. The data consist of over 3,500 posts, images and screenshots from Facebook, Instagram and the webpages of seven successful Vietnamese restaurants in Sweden. Grounded content analysis was conducted using NVivo.

Findings

The findings suggest that digitalising ethnic artifacts can mediate and facilitate three digital performances that together can turn ethnicity from a liability to an asset: (i) preserving performance through digital ethnicising, (ii) embracing performance through digital generativitising and (iii) appropriating performance through digital fusionising. The results support the introduction of a conceptual framework depicting the interwoven duality of horizontal and vertical boundary blurring, in which the former takes place between the offline and online spaces of immigrant businesses, and the latter occurs between the home and host country attachment of the immigrant businesses.

Originality/value

This study responds to calls for understanding how immigrant entrepreneurs can overcome the liability of foreignness. It offers a fresh look at ethnicity, which has been seen in a negative light in the field of immigrant entrepreneurship. This study illuminates that ethnicity can be used as a resource in immigrant entrepreneurship, specifically through the use of digital artifacts and digital platforms.

Details

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-2554

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 21 November 2023

Victor Marchezini

The question of “why we are in disaster studies” can be essential to reflect on discourses and practices – as students, researchers and professors – in constituting an oppressive…

Abstract

Purpose

The question of “why we are in disaster studies” can be essential to reflect on discourses and practices – as students, researchers and professors – in constituting an oppressive disaster science and finding ways to liberate from it.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is based on autobiographical research and institutional ethnography to observe and analyze the discourses and practices about career trajectories as students, researchers and professors in disaster studies.

Findings

The paper provides some categories, concepts, theoretical approaches and lived experiences helpful for discussing ways of liberating disaster studies, such as public sociology of disaster.

Originality/value

Few papers have focused on professional trajectories in disaster studies, bringing insights from public sociology and questioning oppressive disaster science.

Details

Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0965-3562

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 November 2023

Iuliana M. Chitac

Romanian women migrant entrepreneurs (RWMEs) are amongst the largest EU migrant communities in the UK and make significant socioeconomic contributions to both their host and…

Abstract

Purpose

Romanian women migrant entrepreneurs (RWMEs) are amongst the largest EU migrant communities in the UK and make significant socioeconomic contributions to both their host and origin nations, but academic research and policy discussions have ignored them. Intersectionality raises complex contextual issues that require comprehensive examination and inclusive policies and programmes. This study is aimed at exploring how Romanian women migrant entrepreneurs experience their transnational intersectional journeys of belonging, as they create, negotiate and enact their intersectional identities of the country of origin, gender and being entrepreneurs in the UK and Romania.

Design/methodology/approach

This Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) draws on draws upon Crenshaw's (1991) intersectional and Social Identity theories (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) to investigate how nine interviewed RWMEs have experienced their transnational journeys of acculturative belonging in the UK and Romania.

Findings

The study findings show how RWMEs undo and negotiate their intersecting identities to adhere to socio-cultural standards in both their host and native nations. In the UK, they feel empowered as women entrepreneurs, but in patriarchal Romania, their entrepreneurial identity is revoked, contradicting the prescribed socio-cultural roles.

Research limitations/implications

This study responds to the call regarding inequalities in entrepreneurship opportunities (Vershinina et al., 2022). By focussing on the understudied community of RWMEs and exploring new intersectional and transnational contextual insights, it contributes to the literature and practice of migrant entrepreneurship. These empirical findings are essential for the development of evidence-based, disaggregated entrepreneurship programmes and policies.

Originality/value

This study responds to the call regarding inequalities in entrepreneurship opportunities (Vershinina et al., 2022). By focussing on the understudied community of RWMEs and exploring new intersectional and transnational contextual insights, it contributes to the literature and practice of migrant entrepreneurship. These empirical findings are essential for the development of evidence-based, disaggregated entrepreneurship programmes and policies.

Details

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-2554

Keywords

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