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Big 4 professional services firms increasingly lay claim to recruiting and including staff of diverse genders, cultures, ages and sexualities. Drawing on Foucauldian insights, this study explores how LGBTIQ+ staff navigated shifting technologies of client power, at the time marriage equality was legislated in Australia.

This article explores changing experiences of LGBTIQ+ staff and allies, through 56 semi-structured interviews undertaken through 2018–2019.

Technologies of client power were central to shaping workplace experiences for LGBTIQ+ staff. However, each firm was also keen to carve unique and bold responses to changing societal attitudes regarding sexuality and gender. These progressive moves did not sit comfortably with all clients, and so this article provides insight into the limitations of client privilege within professional services firms. For staff, this increasing complexity of sometimes opaque, contradictory and shifting technologies of client and firm power, enabled agency to explore a sense of self for some, but continued to exclude others.

Little attention has been directed to exploring challenges for staff of sexual and gendered diversity within professional services firms, or to exploring how staff navigate changing perceptions of client power.

To investigate the influence of logistics and transportation workers’ perceptions of their management’s simultaneous safety and operations focus (or lack thereof) on related worker safety and operational perceptions and behaviors.

This multi-method research consisted of two studies. Study 1 aimed to establish correlational relationships by evaluating the impact of individual-level worker perceptions of operationally focused routines (as a moderator) on the relationship between worker perceptions of safety-related routines and workers’ self-reported safety and in-role operational behaviors using a survey. Study 2 aimed to establish causal relationships by evaluating the same conceptual relationships in a behavioral-type experiment utilizing vehicle simulators. After receiving one of four pre-task briefings, participants completed a driving task scenario in a driving simulator.

In Study 1, the relationship between perceived safety focus and safety behavior/in-role operational behavior was strengthened at higher levels of perceived operations focus. In Study 2, participants who received the balanced pre-task briefing committed significantly fewer safety violations than the other 3 treatment groups. However, in-role driving deviations were not impacted as hypothesized.

This research is conducted at the individual (worker) level of analysis to capture the little-known perspectives of logistics and transportation workers and explore the influence of balanced safety and operational routines from a more micro perspective, thus contributing to a deeper understanding of how balanced routines might influence worker behavior when conducting dynamic tasks to ensure safe, effective outcomes.

The purpose of this study is to investigate if a firm's exchange complexity profile (that is, the linkages between the firm and its environment) influences investor behavior at the negotiation table where a firm valuation is derived.

The authors utilize Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Specifically, the authors utilize fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), a QCA variant that allows the researcher to assign graduated membership in sets.

When the authors dichotomize their positions as either higher stakes that favor the seller (high capital, low equity, high valuation) or lower stakes that favor the buyer (low capital, high equity, low valuation), and when the authors focus primarily on the equity outcome, the authors find that investors adopt a reductionist stance that adheres to a transaction cost economics logic under conditions of lower stakes and higher complexity as well as higher stakes and lower complexity conditions. The authors interpret this to mean that equity serves as a counter-balancing lever for a firm's exchange complexity configuration.

On a theoretical level, the authors showcase the exchange complexity framework and differentiate its position within the extant frameworks that address a firm's competitive advantage. More generally, the authors note that this framework brings the discipline of micro-economics and the field of strategic management closer together, providing scholars with a new tool enabling research across industries for the portfolio level of analysis.

As human resource development (HRD) seeks to develop organizations and unleash human expertise (Swanson and Holton, 2009), leaders should be encouraged to consider every employee as a complex individual with unique needs and aspirations. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of equity leadership (EL), which identifies individual employees’ personal and professional resource, relationship and opportunity needs in an effort to support employees in reaching their fullest potential in the workforce, therefore increasing positive organizational outcomes.

The theoretical foundations of EL are social exchange theory (SET; Saks and Rotman, 2006) and the ERG theory of motivation (Alderfer, 1969). SET recognizes the give-and-take relationship between leaders and employees, while ERG theory of motivation considers an individual’s personal and professional existence, relatedness and growth needs. The theories provide a foundation for EL’s definition.

EL posits that leaders’ attention to employees’ resource, relationship and opportunity needs in the workplace could result in a positive effect on the social exchange between leaders and employees. EL provides a framework for these exchanges to occur and for employee needs to be considered, thus resulting in increased employee engagement, productivity and retention.

EL can take a significant amount of time, especially when starting with new employees; however, the relationships and positive organizational outcomes provide justification for engaging in the leadership style.

This paper seeks to advance the field of HRD by defining EL, exploring the theoretical underpinnings of EL and providing actionable steps for leaders to put EL into action.

The nuanced theory of EL encourages organizations to evolve from the factory model of expectations to a model that considers the unique needs of individuals in organizations. Grounded partly in SET, EL promotes positive relationships between leaders and employees.

There are many leadership theories; however, EL, unlike any other leadership theory, uniquely considers the individual needs of each employee through consistent one-on-one conversations between the leader and individual employees to discover employee needs and also strives for positive organizational outcomes as a result of the social exchanges.

This paper aims to identify and evaluate resolutions to key learning and teaching challenges in very large courses that involve practical mathematics, such as foundational finance.

A design-based research approach is used across three semesters to iteratively identify practical problems within the course and then develop and evaluate resolutions to these problems. Data are collected from both students and teachers and analysed using a mixed-method approach.

The results indicate that key learning and teaching challenges in large foundational finance courses can be mitigated through appropriate consistency of learning materials; check-your-understanding interactive online content targeting foundational concepts in the early weeks; connection points between students and the coordinator to increase teacher presence; a sustained focus on supporting student achievement within assessments; and signposting relevance of content for the broader program and professional settings. Multiple design iterations using a co-design approach were beneficial to incrementally improve the course and consider multiple perspectives within the design process.

This paper develops a set of design principles to provide guidance to other practitioners who seek to improve their own courses.

The use of design-based research and mixed-method approaches that consider both student and teacher perspectives to examine the design of very large, foundational finance courses is novel.

This research investigates the challenges and benefits of working from home and the needs that organisations should understand when adopting working from home practices.

Self-determination theory was used to understand the drivers of motivation when working from home, to provide a deep understanding of how organisations may support employees working from home. A cross-sectional qualitative survey design was used to collect data from 511 office workers during May and June of 2020.

Employees' needs for competence were thwarted by a lack of direction and focus, unsuitable work environment, work extensification and negative work culture. Employees' experiences and needs for relatedness were more diverse, identifying that they enjoyed spending more time with family and having a greater connection to the outdoors, but felt more isolated and suffered from a lack of interaction. Employees' experiences of autonomy whilst working from home were also mixed, having less autonomy from blurred boundaries between home and work, as well as childcare responsibilities. Conversely, there was more freedom to be able to concentrate on physical health.

Employee’s needs for competence should be prioritised. Organisations must be conscious of this and provide the support that enables direction and focus when working at home.

Swathes of research were conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, but overwhelmingly focused on quantitative methods. A qualitative survey design enabled participants to answer meaningful open-ended questions, better suited to explain the complexity of their experiences, which allowed for understanding and richness not gained through previous studies.

Given the persistent receptive skills challenges faced by language learners and the numerous merits of using technologically-enhanced learning in the form of mobile-assisted language learning in language teaching, this study decides to incorporate a context-analysis-practice-exploration lesson-planning framework with mobile learning to improve the receptive skills of learners. This step is necessary on the recommendation by scholarly research that while implementing technology, teacher training, digital literacy and expertise, incorporating good teaching practices and lesson planning frameworks may assist in yielding positive results.

This study decides to utilize a mixed-method research design through an experimental approach to elicit information from 90 EFL students concerning the effectiveness of incorporating the context-analysis-practice-exploration framework in a mobile-leaning mode instructional delivery to improve their reading and listening skills.

After collecting and analyzing data, the study found that while the participants perceived enhanced-mobile learning to make lessons enjoyable, integrating this framework and m-learning improved their reading skills. This study used notable findings to make pedagogical conclusions on the objective of this study.

This study contributes through empirical evidence on the effectiveness of incorporating mobile learning and a responsive lesson planning framework towards improving English as a foreign language learners' learning outcome. Besides, this study is the first to probe and unpack the effectiveness of a responsive lesson-planning framework in language education.

This study examines potential ways to break the inequality reproduction circle faced by ethnic minority health workers and sustained by key performance indicators (KPIs)-centred management in the National Health Service (NHS) in England. It does so through the lens of signalling theory.

Three years panel data for 2018–2020 covering 207 hospitals was compiled from the annual NHS staff survey and matched with relevant administrative records. Structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed hypotheses at the organisational level.

The moderated mediating model reveals that persistent racial discrimination by managers and coworkers can disadvantage the career progression of ethnic minority health workers, which in turn reinforces and reproduces economic and health inequalities among them. More importantly, we show how the collective agreement that the senior management team acts (SMTA) on staff feedback can break this vicious circle.

While our research focuses on the not-for-profit health care sector, it opens important opportunities to extend the proposed model to understand organisational inequality and how to address it.

Perceived SMTA can send strong signals to reduce deep-rooted discrimination (race, gender, age, etc.) through resource allocations and instrumental functions. This is also a way to address the current staff burnout and shortage issues in the healthcare sector.

This article reveals why the purpose of organisations that provide public service to reduce social inequality was comprised during their business-like operations and more importantly, how to reflect their foundational purpose through management practice.

This study offers a way forward to resolve one of the unintended consequences of KPI-centred management in the not-for-profit sector through unpacking the process of inequality reproduction and, more importantly, how it is possible to break this vicious circle.

This paper aims to review corporate fraud, as a concept, and the emerging research trends in corporate fraud research from 1957 to 2022 using bibliometric analysis techniques.

A total of 7,750 publications from the Scopus database were first assessed using performance analysis to explore the descriptive nature of the bibliographic data, and subsequently, citation, co-citation, co-occurrence and bibliographic coupling analyses were conducted using the VOSviewer software.

The results indicate there has been increasing growth in fraud research over the years, especially since the global corporate scandals of 2008. Although fraud is a global issue, the results suggest that most extant studies originate from developed economies, with a high level of collaboration amongst scholars in these countries. In addition, the co-occurrence analysis indicates that research into corporate fraud has largely focused on its determinants and corruption. The determinants identified are further clustered in the paper as individual, organizational and national-level factors.

The findings should inform practitioners and policymakers of the state of knowledge on corporate fraud which could be useful in developing strategies and policies to mitigate its occurrence.

The study points to the need for research collaborations among scholars in developing economies to increase investigations into the occurrences of fraud.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to holistically assess the intellectual structure of corporate fraud studies from its inception and the trends over time.

The paper’s purpose is to consider, using a transaction cost economics (TCE) framework, the mechanisms used by space agencies to encourage private investment in the commercial spaceflight sector.

The authors conducted a content analysis of 554 pages of news articles, relating to issues pertaining to partnerships between national government-based space agencies and private space travel providers, published over a 20-year period. Leximancer was used to initially screen the data and then the authors manually analysed the content to identify themes.

The data analysis revealed three themes, relating to: the uncertainty of space travel; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) stimulating innovation in the private sector; and risk, insurance and regulation. These themes informed by TCE reveal the “hierarchical” organisational forms used to achieve human spaceflight and then the “hybrids”, insurance and regulations used to stimulate private sector investment and innovation.

This paper contributes to the accounting literature by answering the calls of Alewine (2020) and Tucker and Alewine (2022a, b) for more research into accounting in the space context. Specifically, the paper contributes by identifying mechanisms used by NASA to stimulate private investment in the space travel sector, as well as issues that have affected the implementation of these mechanisms. The paper also contributes to the literature by, based on the analysis, identifying a series of reflections designed to stimulate further management accounting research in the space context.