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This paper focuses on the role of theory in the process of doing qualitative accounting research. It discusses the role of theory in qualitative accounting studies, and provides and example of how theory can be reflected upon, reassessed and refined during a research process.

This paper provides an illustrative account of theorizing during the process of qualitative accounting research. The paper places specific emphasis on an abductive approach to theorizing. An abductive theoretical framework is used to reflect on the theorizing process.

The “findings” reflect on the use of theory and the process of theorizing during a research process. The paper finds that abduction may be a useful way of theorizing in qualitative accounting research because it encourages the researcher to remain open to alternative explanations of data, which may promote theoretical development. This paper does not report the accounting practices of an organization in the traditional sense, but illustrates how the empirical findings led to an initial theoretical framework being developed.

The paper is intended to be informative in showing how theory can be used and developed during research. It may be of value and interest to new and emerging researchers. It may also interest established researchers seeking to reflect on their use of theory in research.

There are few contributions that focus exclusively and explicitly on how theory is used and developed during the process of qualitative accounting research. Moreover, the abductive approach has received limited attention in accounting. This paper aims to address these gaps.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the implementation of a new accounting system in the accounting department of a large retail company. The paper seeks to understand and explain how management accounting change can be shaped by the identity and image of particular groups in an organisation.

This paper reports the findings of a longitudinal explanatory case study. An institutional framework was initially used to inform the research, but was subsequently extended using the concepts of identity and image.

By changing existing accounting systems, the accountants “inside” the accounting department sought to challenge their current “negative” identity and image. However, the case shows that the new accounting system was not well received by accountants “outside” the accounting department. The case illustrates that the differing identity and image of the two groups of accountants were crucial factors underlying the different perceptions of the accounting change.

The conceptual framework developed in this paper highlights the role which identity and image can play in shaping processes of change, and it enriches the understanding of the reasons for change, stability and resistance to change.

This study examines the discursive accounts of civil society in a rural English village to understand what these reveal about contemporary political discourses. It employs a critical discourse analysis of the conversational interactions of Ambridge residents. The sample comprised all recorded conversations referencing charities, volunteering and civic action drawn from the two-week period corresponding with the change in UK Prime Minister (July 2019). Using three analytical tools derived from extant theory, it considers the salient political ideology underpinning these social interactions. These tools are illustrated with earlier examples of individual civil activities such as the oat-based civil disobedience of a respected older resident. This analysis scrutinises the philanthropic nature of Peggy Woolley's Ambridge Conservation Trust. The fraught process of village fete planning is cited as exemplifying conventional decision-making mechanisms. Problems of staffing a community shop are considered in the light of an increasing political reliance on community volunteers replacing paid staff. Thus, the relative impact of Thatcher, Blair, Cameron and May are considered in exchanges between Ambridge residents from Lynda and Robert Snell to Jazzer McCreery and Jill Archer. The aim is to explore what Ambridge's civil society tells us about Boris Johnson's Britain.

Power relations affect all aspects of our lives. MacGregor Burns states that “Power is ubiquitous; it permeates human relationships … Power shows many faces and takes many forms”. The purpose of this paper was to explore women principals’ experiences with power relations in the schools during times of increase in decentralization and accountability. The findings of this phenomenological study were that the six principals viewed power as an enabling, and a positive energy for change and growth in schools rather than a source of “top‐down” domination. Their descriptions of power also asserted that “power is not reducible to any one source”, and that an understanding of poststructuralist and structuralist theories of power will be essential for school leaders facing the dilemmas and challenges of the twenty‐first century.

Given the widespread popularity of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, understanding consumer-brand engagement behavior within social media is fundamental for retail firms. Yet, little is known about how consumers engage with retail brands through social media. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap and extend previous research by examining factors that influence consumers’ attitudes and intentions to engage with retail brands through Facebook, and ultimately purchase products and services.

This study draws on the theory of reasoned action and the technology acceptance model to develop a model of consumer-brand social media engagement and purchase intentions. Specifically, the model tests the influence of five antecedents of attitude on consumer intentions to engage with retail brands through the brands’ Facebook pages as well as intentions to make purchases through this social media. The hypotheses of the model are tested using structural equation modeling.

The findings provide an understanding of the main drivers of consumer-brand engagement that can lead to purchase intentions. Results show that consumers’ attitudes toward engaging with retail brands through Facebook are influenced by peer communication, compatibility and credibility, and that attitude has a strong influence on intentions toward this behavior. Furthermore, there is a strong relationship between intentions to engage and the likelihood of purchasing through a retail brand’s Facebook page.

This study is cross-sectional and was conducted at a particular point in time. Thus, results are not purported to make any inferences to causal relationships. Further, the measures of intentions to engage are attitudinal and not objective measures. Future longitudinal studies may help avoid this limitation by testing causal relationships.

The study contributes to the important area of consumer engagement with retail brands through social media in ways that may lead to making purchases. Findings can provide retailers with reference points through which to engage their brands with consumers through their Facebook pages in ways that may lead to more direct returns on their investment in social media sites.

Retailers are noticing the power of social media sites as a platform for engaging with consumers and extending this relationship to purchases. However, scant research has addressed this topic. The proposed model and findings of this study can extend prior research.

Traffic came to a halt recently in Shoreham, near Brighton, when a printing press arrived at the works of Design and Print. Imported from Germany, the £21,000 Koenig and Bauer Rapida two‐colour offset‐litho rotary press weighed five and a half tons. The machine was acquired to meet the growing demand for high quality full colour sales brochures and other printing requirements from both industry and commerce. The company hope that the new machine will boost its turnover to £250,000 a year. The Design and Print (DAP) company is a wholly‐owned subsidiary of Evershed & Son Ltd, a food distribution group centred in Shoreham. There are 35 employees, 25 engaged in production and ten in management and administration. DAP was acquired by the Evershed Group in 1940, mainly to satisfy its own printing requirements, eg simple letterpress, point‐of‐sale leaflets, posters and price lists. Today, apart from the two‐colour Koenig and Bauer, they have a number of Heidelberg presses and, with artist facilities in‐house, DAP can offer a wide range of high‐class colour work,mainly in the small booklet, brochure and house magazine market.

According to the meteorological office the last day of my stint in dockland was the hottest day of this year. I certainly feel that if one does have to slave on such fine days one should do so outdoors and preferably near the water. That at Millwall Dock proved to be as clean as any of the water found in London's East End, and if I couldn't be outdoors, at least I could place myself at a long conference table which had running parallel to it one massive sun‐window enabling me to look out to see two of the huge multi‐purpose ships of the Fred. Olsen Lines discharging their cargoes. I happened to be sitting in the Divisional Manager's office of Fred. Olsen Limited, waiting to join a meeting of the works committee. Gordon Morris, the Divisional Manager, is as stream‐lined and modern as the terminal he looks after. The terminal is the most modern in the Port of London and prides itself on first‐class productivity and efficiency, which, says Gordon Morris, is due to the high standard of industrial relations which exists at the terminal. My reason for joining the works committee meeting was to find out if this was true!

THE ECONOMIC GOALS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF SWEDEN ARE much the same as those for the UK and indeed for any other member of the EEC. Full employment, a more equal distribution of the country's income, rapid economic growth, reasonably stable prices, and a balanced foreign payments policy.

The purpose of this study is to test the mechanism of visionary leadership on subordinates' work withdrawal behavior through cognitive strain and psychological contract violation, and also to reveal the possible dark side of visionary leadership. The moderation effects of subordinates' facades of conformity and leader behavioral integrity in the cognition–affect dual-path process are also discussed.

This study conducted a three-wave longitudinal survey. The data were collected from 574 employees and their superiors in several Chinese enterprises. The authors used Mplus 7.4 and adopted a bootstrapping technique in the data analysis.

Visionary leadership has positive effects on cognitive strain and psychological contract violation; cognitive strain and psychological contract violation mediate the relationship between visionary leadership and work withdrawal behavior, respectively. Subordinates' facades of conformity and leader behavioral integrity moderate the positive effects of visionary leadership on cognitive strain and psychological contract violation, as well as the indirect effect of visionary leadership on subordinates' work withdrawal behavior through cognitive strain and psychological contract violation.

This study reveals the underlying mechanism of visionary leadership's negative impact on job outcome through the cognition and affective reaction of subordinates to visionary leadership, and broadens the scope of visionary leadership research. It also provides some practical suggestions on how to transmit the organizational vision effectively and reduce subordinates' work withdrawal behavior.

It is almost one hundred years to the day that G W Hunt wrote these words. Apart from writing these words and the fact that Hunt was a close friend of Keats and Shelley, I can find no trace of anything else exceptional in this man's life. Yet, almost 100 years later, his words bear so much truth that they have been resurrected, not only for the purpose of my article, but as a slogan for the shipbuilding industry in the UK. For years in this country the shipbuilding industry has seldom had ships, always had men and never had money. Profits in the industry have declined more than in any other, and relationships within the industry deteriorated to such an extent that the business of building ships as far as the UK goes might just as well be buried — at sea. It has always proved to be a newsworthy industry, whether it be the birth of UCS or the survival of Harland & Wolff in Belfast despite the environmental trauma outside its gates. In the past few years we have seen dock sides become dormant and the employees, far from sleeping, have become militant to the point of defying the law. All through the furore of containerisation, when economic arguments were the main consideration, the saddest and most costly of these factors was played down: the greatest jackdaw industry in the land — pilferage.