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This paper presents the biography of one of Australia’s earliest female accountants, Miss Evelyn Maude West (aka Eva). The paper uses this history sub-genre to understand the significant impacts Eva West made across several fields. Eva West was not only a pioneer woman accountant but also an active philanthropist with an interest in social issues and a nature lover who promoted and encouraged an appreciation of the environment.

The paper leverages a diverse array of qualitative resources, responding to Carnegie and Napier's (1996) call to expand the concept of the accounting-based archive. Notably, rare nature study diaries and a book detailing camping adventures serve as poignant examples, illustrating Eva West's profound social and environmental engagement. Additionally, personal and business letters, digitised newspapers, pamphlets, annual reports, minute books and even poems contribute to the comprehensive exploration of Eva West's life and impact. Collectively, these varied sources offer a rich tapestry of evidence, facilitating the documentation of this unique narrative.

Throughout her life, Eva West made significant contributions as a pioneering woman in the field of accounting, a dedicated philanthropist and a passionate environmentalist. Together, these offer a multifaceted portrait of a well-rounded individual. With a solid foundation in accounting, Eva utilized her expertise to benefit numerous charitable organisations, leaving a lasting impact on the community. Moreover, her deep love for the environment is illustrated in nature study diaries and books documenting her camping adventures, highlighting the interconnectedness between her accounting pursuits and her commitment to environmental stewardship.

While previous studies briefly mention the additional contributions of early women to various organisations and movements, none provide the depth of insight seen in the portrayal of Miss Eva West. Rather than critiquing these earlier narratives, this observation presents an opportunity for further research to honour pioneering individuals for their multifaceted roles beyond accounting. Future studies could spotlight trailblazers as accountants with diverse interests and societal contributions, whether in social or environmental spheres. Additionally, this paper demonstrates how archives maintained by individuals, such as nature or travel diaries and camping books, can enrich accounting and accountability-based historical research.

Biographical studies in accounting have played a significant role in advancing historical research, yet there remains a call for additional studies to gain deeper insights into specific individuals. Few biographical narratives have explored how accountants integrate their professional careers with other interests, particularly highlighting the well-roundedness of individuals, especially women. Furthermore, this paper contributes to filling the gap in research that examines the intersection of accounting professionals and environmental concerns.

With increased remote working, employers are concerned with employees’ commitment and compliance with security procedures. Through the lens of psychological capital, this study aims to investigate whether strong organizational values can improve employees’ commitment to the organization and security behaviors.

Using Qualtrics platform, the authors conducted an online survey. The survey participants are college-educated, full-time employees. The authors used structural equation modeling to analyze 289 responses.

The results indicate perceived importance of organizational values is associated with increased organizational commitment and information security behavior. The authors find that psychological capital partially mediates these relations suggesting that employees’ psychological capital effectively directs employees toward an affinity for the organization and information security behavior. The results highlight the importance of organizational values for improving security behavior and organizational commitment. Second, the results suggest that psychological capital is an effective mechanism for this influence. Finally, the authors find that individual differences (gender, organizational level and education) are boundary conditions on their findings, providing a nuanced view of their results and offering opportunities for further investigation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore organizational values in relation to information security behaviors. In addition, this study investigates the underlying mechanism of this relationship by showing psychological capital’s mediating role in this relationship. Therefore, the authors suggest organizations create a supportive environment that appreciates innovation, quality services, diversity and collaboration. Furthermore, organizations should communicate the importance of these values to their employees to motivate them to have a stronger affective commitment and a more careful set of security behaviors.

The study aimed to listen to refugee survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and/or torture and explore what justice meant to them in exile. This study argues that what the survivors who participated in this research wanted was “viable justice”. The research was funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust.

Using a survivor-focussed justice lens combined with a trauma-informed approach, narrative interviews were held with 41 women and 20 men refugee survivors living in refugee settlements in Northern Uganda. The researchers also conducted semi-structured interviews with 37 key informants including refugee welfare councils, the UN, civil society, non-government and government organisations. Thematic analysis of the data resulted in the following themes being identified: no hope of formal justice for atrocities that occurred in South Sudan; insecurity; lack of confidence in transitional justice processes in Ugandan refugee settlements; abuse and loss of freedom in refugee settlements; and lack of access to health and justice services in refugee settlements.

This study argues that what the survivors who participated in this research wanted was “viable justice”. That is justice that is survivor-centred and includes elements of traditional and transitional justice, underpinned by social justice. By including the voices of both men and women survivors of SGBV and/or torture and getting the views of service providers and other stakeholders, this paper offers an alternative form of justice to the internationally accepted types of justice, which offer little relevance or restitution to refugees, particularly where the crime has been committed in a different country and where there is little chance that perpetrators will be prosecuted in a formal court of law.

The research findings are based on a small sample of South Sudanese refugees living in three refugee settlements in Northern Uganda. Thus, wider conclusions should not be drawn. However, the research does suggest that a “viable justice” approach should be implemented that is gender and culturally sensitive and which could also be trialled in different refugee contexts.

Improvements in refugee survivors’ dignity, resilience and recovery are dependent upon the active engagement of refugees themselves using a “survivor-focussed approach” which combines formal and community-based health services with traditional and transitional justice responses.

The provision of a “viable justice approach” ensures those who have experienced SGBV and/or torture, and their families, feel validated. It will assist them to use their internal, cultural and traditional resilience and agency in the process of recovery.

The research findings are original in that data was collected from men and women survivors of SGBV and/or torture and service providers. The empirical evidence supports this study’s recommendation for an approach that combines both formal and survivor-focussed approaches towards health and viable justice services to meet the needs of refugees living in refugee settlements. This is a response that listens to and responds to the needs of refugee survivors in a way that continues to build their resilience and agency and restores their dignity.

The abandonment of governmental development projects either after completion or midway completion at the taxpayer’s expense in Ghana could be attributed to lack of effective community engagement (CE). Thus, this study aims to assess CE in development projects by comparing government-sponsored projects to private-sponsored projects.

A qualitative approach was adopted where a multiple case study design was used as a research strategy. Data was collected from selected districts in the Central Region of Ghana by using a semi-structured interview guide and analyzed using the thematic and comparative analysis techniques.

The results reveal that CE in government-funded projects was low, while CE in projects funded by private organizations was high. Three levels of engagement (consultation, participation in decision-making and consent) were also identified. Furthermore, the roles of public participation, including knowledge sharing, collective sense of ownership, among others, were ascertained. Finally, resources constraints, competing interests, lack of information flow, public attitudes toward change and central government/political interference are challenges of CE in development projects.

This study has provided an empirical basis for government and other development agents to draft a policy on CE to serve as a guide, spell out the role of CE, mitigate the challenges of CE and ensure strict compliance to the three levels of engagement.

Sport co-produces our notions of sex, gender and sexuality. Sport policies based on inclusion demand trans athletes become visible. This creates a problem within sport's hierarchical gender order, and trans athletes' bodies become comprehensible only through mobility from one sex/gender to the other – literally the embodiment of movement through a static gendered space.

In this chapter, we examine the contradictory expectations placed on trans athletes to be visible within heterosexist, white supremacist ‘regimes of looking’ (Fleetwood, 2011). Our purpose is twofold: (1) to critically examine the construction of transness through white racial frames and (2) to grapple with the inherent harmfulness of sport. We ask why trans people would want to participate in an institution that actively limits opportunities for expansive subjectivity, ultimately concluding that the potential for queer futures lies in the very construction of limits themselves. We forward a belief in what sport could be when intentionally created through queer world building. We highlight teams, leagues and spaces that have developed processes that work against dominant forms of medicolegal recognition and visibility politics.

This chapter explores the dual, contentions spaces of consciousness the Rwandan diaspora communities navigate. First of which was created through the stories of trauma and displacement since the Rwandan genocide and is influenced by the current Rwandan government's control over narratives of identities and remembrance both socially and politically. The second originated from the younger generations' attempt to assimilate to the only country they have never lived in and personally known. In this second space, the younger generations were forced, consciously or unconsciously, to choose between their communities' attachment to the past or creating a new path or future. Most importantly, being in diaspora means accepting that the different generations will often remain at the periphery of the new country, like outsiders looking inward. This phenomenon of social exclusion is a result of different factors, such as social categorisation, collective trauma and the narratives of otherness, which shape the different generations' identity shifts and sense of belonging. Using a phenomenological research method, this study analysed how one event, the 1994 Rwandan genocide, changed the meaning of diaspora consciousness and divided the communities into social categories such as ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’. Using the experiences of Rwandan American diaspora communities, I explored the impact of the labels of ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ and how they have not only created specific narratives around remembrance and accountability but also crystallised the normative ideas of who was harmed and who was responsible for inflicting that harm. This chapter analysed the Rwandan communities' social development and assimilation, their understanding of their pasts and their members' social and political engagements in addressing their roles in their communities and nations.

People donate to charities with the aim of improving society. Yet, many charities fail to use donations efficiently or have ineffective interventions. The authors explore the strategic operational priorities and processes that enable charities to efficiently implement their interventions and have a positive impact on society.

The authors first review the literature on charities to gain a deeper understanding of the current state of knowledge on charity operations. The authors then employ the lens of paradox theory and perform a qualitative investigation of six case studies to explore various aspects of the operations of charities that are known for being cost-effective.

The authors reveal how the strategic operational decisions of charities, as well as the processes they implement, help them resolve the tensions arising from the cost-effectiveness paradox. The authors show that cost-effective charities make strategic operational decisions that help maintain two diverging priorities: prioritizing the status quo and prioritizing change in how they deliver value. Another set of strategic decisions helps balance these two diverging priorities. The authors then show how these charities create and then maintain cost-effective operations.

The authors address recent calls for research on non-profit organizations in the field of operations management. To authors’ knowledge, it is the first in-depth study of exemplary charity operations. The results can be used by charity executives as a benchmarking tool when they develop and implement their charitable interventions and by government agencies and potential donors when they select charities for their donations. Finally, the results should have implications for other organizations trying to have a positive societal impact.

Agricultural and food systems in the Mekong Region are undergoing transformations because of increasing engagement in international trade, alongside economic growth, dietary change and urbanisation. Food systems approaches are often used to understand these kinds of transformation processes, with particular strengths in linking social, economic and environmental dimensions of food at multiple scales. We argue that while the food systems approach strives to provide a comprehensive understanding of food production, consumption and environmental drivers, it is less well equipped to shed light on the role of actors, knowledge and power in transformation processes and on the divergent impacts and outcomes of these processes for different actors. We suggest that an approach that uses food systems as heuristics but complements it with attention to actors, knowledge and power improves our understanding of transformations such as those underway in the Mekong Region. The key transformations in the region include the emergence of regional food markets and vertically integrated supply chains that control increasing share of the market, increase in contract farming particularly in the peripheries of the region, replacement of crops cultivated for human consumption with corn grown for animal feed. These transformations are increasingly marginalising small-scale farmers, while at the same time, many other farmers increasingly pursue non-agricultural livelihoods. Food consumption is also changing, with integrated supply chains controlling substantial part of the mass market. Our analysis highlights that theoretical innovations grounded in political economy, agrarian change, development studies and rural livelihoods can help to increase theoretical depth of inquiries to accommodate the increasingly global dimensions of food. As a result, we map out a future research agenda to unpack the dynamic food system interactions and to unveil the social, economic and environmental impacts of these rapid transformations. We identify policy and managerial implications coupled with sustainable pathways for change.