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Accountants’ involvement in environmental and sustainability management has merely been investigated to date. With the continuous take-up of sustainability issues by companies and with the growing experience companies gain in dealing with this topic, this chapter raises the question whether accountants are involved in a way different than previously reported and if yes, what their role is in social accounting practice.

Based on 58 interviews with corporate practitioners, this chapter firstly explores the roles involved in the social accounting practice in companies which are considered to be leading in sustainability reporting in the United Kingdom and Germany. Secondly, the role of professional accountants is analysed from a power theory perspective.

The main findings suggest that professional accountants are partially involved in social accounting practice but mainly exert a gatekeeping role between sustainability managers and higher management.

Investigating the observed behaviour empirically can help improve social accounting. Should it turn out that the accountants have no other option but to act like gatekeepers, accounting education will play a major role in overcoming this deficiency in the pursuit of improved sustainability knowledge and performance. If, on the other hand, it is the defensive stance of accounting professionals and the fear of losing power in corporate structures which motivates them to act as gatekeepers, mechanisms to motivate them to cooperate should be researched.

The chapter empirically investigates and discusses the accountant’s contribution to sustainability information management. This can help overcome organisational challenges impeding companies to successfully implement sustainability measures.

Weak organizational actors can overcome the consequences of their dependence by securing the control of valuable resources or by embedding dependence relationships into social networks. While these strategies may not eliminate the underlying dependence, they can curtail the ability or the willingness of the stronger party to use power. Embedding strategies, however, can also have unintended consequences. Because the network structures that confer power to the weak are inherently more stable, they can persist beyond the point of being beneficial, trapping weak actors into unsuitable network structures. The power of the weak can thus become the weakness of the strong.

This article assesses the ability of Boyer's (1990) four-function definition of scholarship to address critiques of business schools. Boyer's definition of scholarship is presented as the foundation for a paradigmatic shift in higher education in business.

The authors developed this conceptual paper by considering information from three sources: 1) Ernest Boyer's Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, 2) articles by four well-known pundits of business education as well as critiques appearing in the Academy of Management Learning and Education Journal and 3) articles in which Boyer's work was the focal point of the article found by searching Google Scholar, two well-known education journals, a prominent database of education articles and the International Handbook of Higher Education (Forest and Altbach, 2007).

A four-function framework based on Boyer's definition of scholarship is proposed to help improve the operations of business schools. The authors also forward ideological and practical implications related to each of Boyer's four functions.

For several decades now, a number of highly respected business scholars have criticized American business education in its current form. These criticisms, although plentiful, have not fueled the magnitude of change needed to have a significant, sustainable impact on business education. The authors suggest that this lack of change is due, in part, to institutional practices and to the absence of a unified framework for how higher education in business should be executed. The authors argue that Boyer's four-function definition of scholarship could provide such a framework.

This paper seeks to argue that when managing strategically it is important for leaders to view situations from multiple perspectives, one of which is the political point‐of‐view.

The paper discusses and gives examples to illustrate how one can consider situations from the political vantage point.

It is helpful for library directors to consider situations from the political perspective.

This provides one point of view that should be considered when a leader contemplates what actions to take.

This paper will help librarians better manage their libraries by considering the political perspective when assessing situations.

We develop the argument that organization network structures that yield positive social capital in some task situations convey social liability in other situations. Using the distinction between exploration and exploitation tasks among teams, we show that the network position that conveyed positive social capital for teams engaged in exploration tasks was a social liability for teams pursuing exploitation tasks. Results of an analysis of 67 new product development teams showed that exploratory teams completed their projects more quickly if they had a social network structure composed of many strong external ties that were non-redundant. In contrast, teams pursuing tasks that exploited existing expertise took longer to complete if they had this type of social network structure, mainly because external ties had to be maintained but were not much needed for the task. We propose that organization network theories of tie strength and structural holes need to be broadened to reflect the effects of task differences, network costs, and difficulties in getting others to help.

Collegiality is the modus operandi of universities. Collegiality is central to academic freedom and scientific quality. In this way, collegiality also contributes to the good functioning of universities’ contribution to society and democracy. In this concluding paper of the special issue on collegiality, we summarize the main findings and takeaways from our collective studies. We summarize the main challenges and contestations to collegiality and to universities, but also document lines of resistance, activation, and maintenance. We depict varieties of collegiality and conclude by emphasizing that future research needs to be based on an appreciation of this variation. We argue that it is essential to incorporate such a variation-sensitive perspective into discussions on academic freedom and scientific quality and highlight themes surfaced by the different studies that remain under-explored in extant literature: institutional trust, field-level studies of collegiality, and collegiality and communication. Finally, we offer some remarks on methodological and theoretical implications of this research and conclude by summarizing our research agenda in a list of themes.

In many western, industrialised countries, the shrinking role of governments in providing direct services is manifested by the transfer of traditional government services to voluntary, non‐ profit organisations. An additional stage is marked by a significant reduction in government contributions to these non‐ profit organisations.

Scepticism about organizations has become an integral part of the field organizational theory. This article aspires to develop through historical analysis a taxonomy of organizational scepticism. Though scepticism of all types have generic traits, there are three distinct types of scepticism: premodern, modern and postmodern scepticism. Premodern scepticism attacks the modern organizational by stressing concepts grounded in nature and tradition. Modern sceptics attack the optimism of managerialism about organizations. Postmodern sceptics stress that technological developments, economic self interest, and irrationality will be the eventual undoing of modern organization. Organizational scepticism is now so pervasive that it should be treated as an integral part of the field.