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This paper aimed to explore the main strategies and approaches to innovation in professional service firms (PSFs), with a specific focus on accounting firms.

The paper relied upon a systematic literature review of previous studies to identify and reconcile the different approaches to innovation processes in accounting firms and further advance a conceptual framework for their discussion.

The findings, based on the review of 38 papers, revealed four main strategies around two main dimensions: the focus on internal/external features of the firm and the main source of innovation (technology and knowledge). The strategies may enable PSFs finding new opportunities and improving organizational performance.

The paper provides a conceptual framework in the form of a “strategy-innovation” matrix where four strategies emerged to support PSFs identifying possible approaches to innovation for new opportunities and improving their performance and services. In doing so, the paper bridges the main sources of innovation, knowledge and technology with key organizational features, considering structural/organizational aspects, cultural aspects, HR practices, collaborative behaviors, professional autonomy, service diversification and the role of professional networks and external actors.

The paper contributes to the literature by deepening understanding of innovation processes in PSFs, suggesting the need to develop a strategic orientation to innovation in these firms. In doing so, the paper also provides useful practical implications for the management of PSFs, suggesting an “innovation/strategy” matrix that might support the positioning of PSFs with reference to its approach to innovation.

Recent changes in university systems, debates on academic freedom, and changing roles of knowledge in society all point to questions regarding how higher education and research should be governed and the role of scientists and faculty in this. Rationalizations of systems of higher education and research have been accompanied by the questioning and erosion of faculty authority and challenges to academic collegiality. In light of these developments, we see a need for a more conceptually precise discussion about what academic collegiality is, how it is practiced, how collegial forms of governance may be supported or challenged by other forms of governance, and finally, why collegial governance of higher education and research is important.

We see collegiality as an institution of self-governance that includes formal rules and structures for decision-making, normative and cognitive underpinnings of identities and purposes, and specific practices. Studies of collegiality then, need to capture structures and rules as well as identities, norms, purposes and practices. Distinguishing between vertical and horizontal collegiality, we show how they balance and support each other.

Universities are subject to mixed modes of governance related to the many tasks and missions that higher education and research is expected to fulfill. Mixed modes of governance also stem from reforms based on widely held ideals of governance and organization. We examine university reforms and challenges to collegiality through the lenses of three ideal types of governance – collegiality, bureaucracy and enterprise – and combinations thereof.

This chapter on anti-racism struggles applies an anti-racist activist framing, both critically examining and recognising the milestones achieved through centuries of pro-justice and anti-racism struggles. It delves into the arduous journey that the global fight for racial equity has undergone and highlights the significant progress as well as setbacks experienced during this lengthy struggle. The earliest history of the fight against racial oppression and domination goes back to anti-slavery and anti-colonial movements. Scholars have analysed the emergence, development and state of global anti-racism struggles in a variety of ways. I approach this subject from a sociological perspective, highlighting the role of social structures, groups and institutions that have contributed to shaping the outcomes of anti-racist initiatives. While recognising the role of individuals and leading political activists, this chapter emphasises anti-racism as a collective social justice struggle. To do this, I explore various local and global anti-racism endeavours and examine how they may influence discussions on race, racism and racial equity and their evolving trajectories across different societies.

This study aims to use organizational fashion to underscore a novel phenomenon in which products, services and practices fade in and out of the tourism/hospitality setting within a specific time frame. Drawing from the fashion theoretical strands in organization research, this paper studies how fashion has been conceptualized, operationalized and then diffused among tourism/hospitality enterprises.

A qualitative case design was used. A total of 37 semistructured in-depth interviews with executives of innovative tourism/hospitality companies (e.g. restaurants, hotels, theme parks and travel agencies) were conducted. This paper focuses on the organizational fashion phenomenon in which organizational trendsetters with creative, “hot” products/services have emerged prominently in the marketplace.

This inquiry illustrates a social phenomenon concerning the organizational fashion setting process by integrating existing production practices among different organizational suppliers in the hospitality sector. Different cases in the study show that fashion consists of a series of hybrid, paradoxical processes. These include conceptualization (conventionalization vs novelty, and personalization vs conformity), operationalization (bundling vs unbundling, and learning vs relearning) and diffusion (framing vs co-framing, and adaptation vs alteration).

Throughout the three continuous processes, service design and identity development for consumption, as well as value creation and knowledge transformation for production, are carried out according to the decision of what is “hot” and what is “out” at a particular time. In essence, fashion helps to explain why hospitality institutions imitate specific innovations to take advantage of popular trends in the consumer market, as well as how such trends vanish eventually.

This research contributes the insight that organizations use fashion as a managerial initiative to translate their organizational goals and improvise nascent products and services. The fashion processes can be triggered by microlevel individual organizations and are spread through a series of social interactions to become macrolevel phenomena in a recurring manner.

In this study, the authors investigate how institutions influence the adoption and implementation of a quality management practice (QMP) that was originally developed for Western developed countries but is being used in sub-Saharan African firms. The authors’ aim is to contribute to the literature on how local and broader institutions in sub-Saharan African firms impact the adoption of QMP (specifically ISO 9001:2015) and how the firm's situated rationalities shape the associated change in management accounting practices.

The authors applied the extended Burns and Scapens framework and employed a case study research approach. The authors collected empirical data through semi-structured interviews and secondary sources and used direct content analysis to analyse the data.

The authors’ findings suggest that although personal values and commitments to modernising the business are the main drivers of change, the continued dominance of traditional accounting logic restricts the necessary change in management accounting to support effective QMP implementation.

This study emphasises the importance of aligning institutional logics to fully realise the benefits of new strategies and identifies technical competencies, access to information and communication technology, and clarity about the role of management accounting in modernising management practices as critical success factors.

This study is original in that it provides insights into the impact of contextual factors in less developed countries on institutionalising QMP and management accounting change, demonstrating the importance of aligning management accounting change with proposed organisational strategies to fully realise their benefits.

The purpose of the study was to explore and articulate how Socratic seminar might be considered more completely as part of justice-focused social studies classroom disciplinary practices.

The authors reviewed the literature on Socratic seminar and developed a model for its practical use. The authors used the model to demonstrate its use in teaching civil rights history, as an example for implementation.

Socratic seminar is an instructional method that layers several disciplinary literacy skills within social studies that have the combined potential to create a transformative dialogue within the classroom and communities, especially when leveraged in more complex multi-text ways. Through the seminars, students can better understand what the authors name horizontal historical analysis, the perspective on concurrent social justice movements and vertical curricular analysis or how social justice movements experience continuity and change over time.

The authors provided an accessible model for teachers and students to use Socratic seminars as part of transformational social studies practices.

The authors demonstrate how the Socratic seminar model can provide students with the intellectual foundation for considering social action as more critically informed civic agents.

The authors examine and offer a model of how Socratic seminar can engage students in vertical and/or horizontal historical analysis for transformational purposes. Further, the authors identify how Socratic seminar can build the skills and dispositions of social studies, provide space for knowledge creation through critical historical inquiry and help reframe how teachers and students understand learning and human relationships by shifting the classroom power and promoting student agency through dialogue.

The purpose of this study is to scrutinize the influence of individual learning styles on the effectiveness of augmented reality (AR)-based learning in structural engineering. There has been a lack of research examining the correlation between learning efficiency and learning style, particularly in the context of quantitatively assessing the efficacy of AR in structural engineering education.

Using Kolb’s experiential learning theory (ELT), a model that emphasizes learning through experience, students from the construction management department are assigned four learning styles (converging, assimilating, diverging and accommodating). Performance data were gathered, appraised, and compared through the three dimensions from the Knowledge, Attitude and Practices (KAP) survey model across four categories of Kolb’s learning styles in both text-graph (TG)-based and AR-based learning settings.

The findings indicate that AR-based materials positively impact structural engineering education by enhancing overall learning performance more than TG-based materials. It is also found that the learning style has a profound influence on learning effectiveness, with AR technology markedly improving the information retrieval processes, particularly for converging and assimilating learners, then diverging learners, with a less significant impact on accommodating learners.

These results corroborate prior research analyzing learners' outcomes with hypermedia and informational learning systems. It was found that learners with an “abstract” approach (convergers and assimilators) outperform those with a “concrete” approach (divergers and accommodators). This research emphasizes the importance of considering learning styles before integrating technologies into civil engineering education, thereby assisting software developers and educational institutions in creating more effective teaching materials tailored to specific learning styles.