Search results

This paper seeks to pinpoint the importance of critical research that gets to problematise social entrepreneurship's self‐evidences, myths, and political truth‐effects, thus creating space for novel and more radical enactments.

A typology mapping four types of critical research gets developed. Each critique's merits and limitations are illustrated through existing research. Also, the contours of a fifth form of critique get delineated which aims at radicalising social entrepreneurship through interventionist research.

The typology presented entails myth‐busting (problematisation through empirical facts), critique of power‐effects (problematisation through denormalising discourses, ideologies, symbols), normative critique (problematisation through moral reflection), and critique of transgression (problematisation through practitioners' counter‐conducts).

The paper makes it clear that the critique of social entrepreneurship must not be judged according to what it says but to whether it creates the conditions for novel articulations and enactments of social entrepreneurship.

It is argued that practitioners' perspectives and viewpoints are indispensible for challenging and extending scientific doxa. It is further suggested that prospective critical research must render practitioners' perspective an even stronger focus.

The contribution is the first of its kind which maps critical activities in the field of social entrepreneurship, and which indicates how the more radical possibilities of social entrepreneurship can be fostered through interventionist research.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a reflective discourse about a particular interventionist research project utilising a critical framework.

The paper uses Alvesson and Deetz's tasks of critical research to analyse the application of interventionist research methodology and address the issues of access, data collection and ethnographical concerns.

Access issues are expanded to consider the concerns of the researcher and the researched. Interventionist research needs to develop a methodological approach moving beyond the concept of triangulation and to develop the concept of “catalytical” processes, expanding the emic and etic functions of interventionist research. The paper identifies that skills of the researched and the researcher need to be developed and recognises that the skills required are different to those currently possessed by academic researchers.

The paper examines only a single application of an interventionist research project conducted over a short period of time with a specific outcome in mind.

This paper provides a discussion of a working example of an interventionist research project and highlights to researchers and practitioners some of the advantages and disadvantages of undertaking such an approach to solving organisational problems.

The reflective critical discourse as outlined in this paper contributes to the practice of interventionist research by opening up further the discussion of how it can be implemented in practice and what are some of the considerations from both the perspective of practice and the skills base of the participants.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the underperformance problem of four UK-based small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from management's and employees' perspectives in order to advance knowledge on a neglected area in small business and management studies.

Based on performance management's theoretical frame of managerial/entrepreneurial, market shaping and system-wide resource (re)organisation and the microstories obtained from 85 surveyed employees and managers, the data are analysed using an interpretivist paradigm.

The key findings of the study highlighted the adoption of tough performance implementation measures by management, the development of learning initiatives, the adaptation of roles, the redefinition of what a performing employee meant and three areas for performance improving in all four SMEs. This study reveals the crucial role of personal, conversational agency and implementation attributes, which are neglected aspects in current performance management in small firms.

The drawbacks of the study centre on the limited nature of the survey sample and the fact that it is solely based within the UK. This suggests that the findings are not to be generalised to other contexts.

The study identifies key employee and management behaviours, attitudes and lived experiences that need to fundamentally change in order to resolve the four SMEs' underperformance. In addition, an innovative environment encouraging inter-departmental agency collaborations and grassroots implementation are needed to effectively and holistically revive the four companies' performance.

The study's results highlight the impact of manager/entrepreneur/employee relations on the social aspects that could either facilitate or hamper micro- and macro-level performance. It is therefore critical that owner entrepreneurs are mindful of the impact that their actions/activities and practices could have on the social lives of their employees and partners and on the ultimate bottom line of business success or failure.

Studies focussing on small businesses' underperformance in the UK are a rarity. The paper advances the traditional performance management literature by proposing employee learning and skills' developmental as non-tangible resources to complement managerial attempts. In addition, a “can do” attitude and a more holistic, organisational and individual approach to performance resolution is proposed to fill the performance implementation and theoretical gap faced by academics, employees, managers and owner entrepreneurs.

The dual purpose of this paper is to locate the contribution of Argyris and Schon to the field of organisational learning, and to discuss aspects of their work which are particularly distinctive or controversial. There are two distinct strands of research on organisational learning. The descriptive strand, with its roots in social and cognitive psychology, seeks to understand the processes by which organisations learn and adapt. The normative strand, which is sometimes referred to as research on the “learning organization”, is concerned more with how organisations can direct their learning in ways that bring them closer to an ideal. While Argyris and Schon, with their emphasis on intervention and improvement, belong to the latter normative strand, they have also contributed greatly to the descriptive strand because their normative theorising is grounded in detailed empirical study of organisational processes. The article contrasts Argyris and Schon’s account of learning as the manipulation of symbolic representations of organisational life, with the non‐symbolic, feedback‐driven account of learning offered by many descriptive researchers. It suggests how these two accounts could be integrated by recognising that differing tasks or problems require different learning processes and different types of expertise. This more differentiated approach casts doubt on the notion of a generically capable “learning organisation”. The paper concludes with a call for more researchers to bridge the divide between the descriptive and normative strands of research on organisational learning.

Believes that green accounting should be rendered open and accountable and be properly subject to a democratic process to avoid shrouding it in a mystifying expertise. Offers a timely and substantive contribution to the debate about how green accounting might be regulated. Believes the accounting profession will stop some distance short of recommending a substantive interventionist regulation. Feels that a voluntarist and market‐based stance is likely to be advocated or preferred. Makes out the case for a substantive interventionist form of regulation and points to the need in practice for something better than the status quo. Seeks to justify an interventionist stance in terms consistent with critical theory.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the approaches to consumer protection in UK financial services before and after the global financial crisis.

This paper reviews the literature on behavioural economics and psychology, and uses it as the basis for a critique of the UK's approach to the supervision of financial services firms and the protection of their consumers.

Non‐interventionist approaches to consumer protection, which are based on the traditional theories of the law and economics movement, have failed. As a result, there is now a shift in thinking towards more interventionist approaches.

By understanding the likely impact of the regulatory reforms the academic research community can assist the regulator to understand the best way to ensure desirable outcomes for users (consumers) of financial services.

The moves to reform UK financial regulation after the crisis have only recently got under way and a lot of the reforms have not been widely debated or written on.

This paper aims to offer an insight into the emergent qualitative methodological profile and its distinctive contribution to accounting and management scholarship, particularly reflecting upon the contribution of Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management (QRAM).

It examines the range of qualitative methodologies employed in the research published across the ten years of QRAM and analyses the methodological discourse and its contribution to the armoury available to qualitative researchers. In association with these methodological developments, the paper offers a critique of the articulated role of theory in contemporary accounting and management qualitative research.

A wide range of qualitative methodologies are found to be in evidence, with considerable scope for further adoption and development of some. Methodological exposition papers are found to be a significant contribution in the past decade and include methodological framework building, methodological applications, methodological critiques, and methodological development exemplars. Alongside methodology, the dual role of theory as either informing or reflecting methodology is presented.

The paper provides a critical analysis and consideration of qualitative methodological literature development in the last ten years of accounting and management research literature, particularly reflected in QRAM. It identifies dominant methodologies in use, as well as opportunities for expanding the methodological menu in accounting and management research. Furthermore, it classifies groups of methodological papers and their contributing perspectives, as well as addressing the often-vexed relationship between theory and methodology.

This study aims to provide a critical assessment of developments in the field of voluntary corporate non-financial and sustainability reporting and disclosure (VRD). The assessment is grounded in the empirical material of a three-year research project on integrated reporting (IR).

Alvesson and Deetz’s (2021) critical management framework structures the arguments in this paper. By investigating local phenomena and the extant literature, the authors glean insights that they later critique, drawing on the empirical evidence collected during the research project. Transformative redefinitions are then proposed that point to future opportunities for research on voluntary organisational disclosures.

The authors argue that the mainstream approaches to VRD, namely, incremental information and legitimacy theories, present shortcomings in addressing why and how organisations voluntarily disclose information. First, the authors find that companies adopting the International IR Council’s (IIRC, 2021) IR framework tend to comply with the framework only in an informal, rather than a substantial way. Second, the authors find that, at times, organisations serendipitously chance upon VRD practices such as IR instead of rationally recognising the potential ability of such practices to provide useful information for decision-making by investors. Also, powerful groups in organisations may use VRD practices to establish, maintain or restore power balances in their favour.

The paper’s limitations stem directly from its aim to be a critical reflection. Even when grounded on empirics, a reflection is mainly a subjective effort. Therefore, different researchers could come to different conclusions and offer different lessons from the two case studies.

The different rationales the authors found for VRD should make a case for reporting institutions to tone down any investor-centric rhetoric in favour of more substantial disclosures. The findings imply that reporting organisations should approach the different frameworks with a critical eye and read between the lines of these frameworks to determine whether the purported normative arguments are achievable practice.

The authors reflect on timely and relevant issues linked to recent developments in the VRD landscape. Further, the authors offer possible ways forward for critical research that may rely on different methodological choices, such as interventionist and post-structuralist research.

Introduces diversity management as managing the increased diversity of issues that confront humankind in contemporary organizational and societal affairs. Defines triple loop learning as being about the increase in the fullness and deepness of learning about the diversity of issues and dilemmas faced. Presents the contours of diversity management and triple loop learning. Sees the latter as the dénouement of single loop learning and of double loop learning. Provides a “quickmap” of the contours of diversity management and triple loop learning.