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This paper aims to contribute to the debate about the closure of institutional mental health-care facilities, from an experiential perspective of a former mental health inpatient, ongoing service user and campaigner for retention of such facilities. It argues that auto-ethnographic accounts of mental illness by those with multiple social identities can have a greater role in terms of future training of mental health-care professionals.

The paper offers an experiential account of the impact of mental health facility bed closures as a patient admitted to institutional mental health facilities; as a mental health campaigner, fighting for the provision of both places of safety and “safe space” within his own local community; and as an ongoing service user. The research is in the interpretivist tradition of social science in taking an auto-ethnographical methodological stance.

This paper is underpinned by two key theoretical notions. Firstly, Stuart Hall’s concept of the Familiar Stranger (2017) is used to explore the tensions of self-identity as the author SHIFTS uncomfortably between his three-fold statuses. Secondly, the notion of “ontological insecurity” offered by Giddens (1991) is used with the paper exploring the paradox that admission to a mental health facility so-called “place of safety” is in fact itself a disorientating experience for both patient and carer(s).

No positivistic claims to reliability, representativeness or generalisability can be made. It is the authenticity of the account which the reader feels should be afforded primacy in terms of its original contribution to knowledge.

This paper should have practical use for those tasked with developing educational and training curriculums for professionals across the mental health-care sector.

This paper implicitly assesses the political wisdom of the policy of mental health bed closures within the wider context of the deinstitutionalisation movement.

This paper is underpinned by original experiential accounts from the author as patient, campaigner for places of safety and onging service-user of mental health care provision.

The purpose of this paper is to explain three phases of modernisation change in the Sydney water sector from the early 1980s to 2007 and comments on how those phases of change are likely to be impacting the nascent development of water management processes in Sydney‐based water consuming organisations.

A framework of modernisation reform in the Sydney water sector has been determined through literature review.

This paper demonstrates that only moderate modernisation reform occurred in the Sydney water sector in the period from the early 1980s to 2007 tempered by water scarcity and a thrust to sustainability. As a result of these reforms, it is argued that water management processes in water consuming organisations are likely to have accelerated into the early 2000s.

This paper calls for empirical research to understand why organisations in the Sydney region have recently developed water management practices.

This paper contributes to an understanding of the impact of modernisation reform in the Sydney water sector from the early 1980s to 2007 and provides insight into the factors driving water management practices in water consuming organisations.

This paper provides public sector and environmental management researchers with an examination of modernisation reform in the Sydney water sector and relates this to the development of water management objectives in water consuming organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore how accountants can contribute to organisational sustainability initiatives.

The paper adopts a critical case study methodology, focused on a large Australian company in which senior management sought to engage accounting staff in an internal sustainability reporting initiative focused on eco-efficiency. Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capitals and field enable a relational analysis of the findings.

While accountants adapted well to early changes aligned to cost efficiency, they struggled to engage with more creative sustainability improvements. The paper explains both adaptions and constraints as interactions between accountants’ professional habitus, capitals and their broader organisational field. Prior strategies to engage accountants (e.g. training) only partially address these factors.

The accounting profession has persistently urged members to contribute to organisational sustainability initiatives. This paper provides insight into how organisations might combine professional acculturation and appropriate capitals to advance this agenda.

Although eco-efficiency is only one potential element of comprehensive organisational sustainability management, the paper’s insights into engaging accountants contributes to understanding how broader social sustainability agendas might be advanced.

The study addresses calls for empirical insights into how accountants can contribute to corporate sustainability practices. Prior studies have polarised between interpreting accountants as either enablers or barriers to sustainability change. This paper explores how shifting configurations of habitus, capital and organisational field can enable either outcome.

This article provides a review and conceptual comparison between self‐report and performance‐based measures of emotional intelligence. Analyses of reliability, psychometric properties, and various forms of validity lead to the conclusion that self‐report techniques measure a dispositional construct, that may have some predictive validity, but which is highly correlated with personality and independent of intelligence. Although seemingly more valid, performance‐based measures have certain limitations, especially when scored with reference to consensual norms, which leads to problems of skew and restriction of range. Scaling procedures may partially ameliorate these scoring weaknesses. Alternative approaches to scoring, such as expert judgement, also suffer problems since the nature of the requisite expertise is unclear. Use of experimental paradigms for studying individual differences in information‐processing may, however, inform expertise. Other difficulties for performance‐based measures include limited predictive and operational validity, restricting practical utility in organizational settings. Further research appears necessary before tests of E1 are suitable for making real‐life decisions about individuals.

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.

From the mid‐nineteenth to the early twentieth century universities and colleges were founded throughout Australia and New Zealand in the context of the expanding British Empire. This article provides an analytical framework to understand the engagement between changing ideas of higher education at the centre of Empire and within the settler societies in the Antipodes. Imperial influences remained significant, but so was locality in association with the role of the emerging state, while the idea of the public purpose of higher education helped to widen social access forming and sustaining the basis of middle class professions.

The Howard Shuttering Contractors case throws considerable light on the importance which the tribunals attach to warnings before dismissing an employee. In this case the tribunal took great pains to interpret the intention of the parties to the different site agreements, and it came to the conclusion that the agreed procedure was not followed. One other matter, which must be particularly noted by employers, is that where a final warning is required, this final warning must be “a warning”, and not the actual dismissal. So that where, for example, three warnings are to be given, the third must be a “warning”. It is after the employee has misconducted himself thereafter that the employer may dismiss.

Large accounting firms lay claim today to a broad focus on staff diversity and inclusion. Related initiatives focus on gender, culture, age and sexuality. This paper aims to seek insight from publicly available discourse provided by the “Big 4” in Australia (Deloitte, Ernst and Young, KPMG and PwC), along with two second-tier firms, into the nature and drivers of diversity initiatives for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) staff.

Web-based discourse provided as at May 2017 is examined and analysed.

All six firms provided a range of related disclosures, suggesting that a cultural shift for LGBTI staff was underway. Detail provided on actual policies and procedures was limited, and a struggle was suggested, between balancing the needs of diverse staff, with concerns for some, perhaps, more conservative clients. Some repositioning of arguments was suggested, focussed on shifting responsibility to staff and on shifting the object of celebration from staff to the firm.

This study is limited to an interpretation of carefully constructed publicly disclosed statements. Further studies could explore the lived experience of these apparent changes with staff.

Recruitment and staff retention continue to be on-going challenges within the accounting profession. This study provides insight into initiatives targeted to support LGBTI staff.

Availing space to bring ‘whole selves’ into the workplace is an important element of creating a pleasant, comfortable and engaging environment for staff. This study provides insight into the perspective of employers on the importance of such initiatives.

Little attention has been directed to exploring sexual diversity in the workplace or to sexuality within accounting studies.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal insights into the relationship between migrant communities and the hospitality industry by examining the case study of Irish migrants into nineteenth century Victoria in Australia.

The paper provides examples of the pattern of engagement with the hospitality industry as well as individual and family stories that highlight how hotel‐keeping and the service of alcohol in Melbourne and regional Victoria in the mid‐to‐late 1800s, was a key element in social improvement and mobility of Irish migrants at that time.

Although the relationship between the English and the Irish in the nineteenth century could be classified as difficult, the tensions that characterised Anglo‐Irish relations in a European context were remarkably absent in colonial Australia. This paper describes how conditions in the colonies when the majority of Irish migrants arrived allowed them to use the hospitality industry to improve their social standing and to consolidate their position in Australian society.

Migration presents an interesting interface between host communities and guest migrants, which go to the heart of hospitality. In addition, this case study suggests there are some interesting avenues to be followed by exploring cases of other migrant communities both in their relationships with hosts, but also in the opportunities offered by the hospitality industry for opportunities denied to migrants in wider community.

The opportunities offered to migrants in the hospitality industry can provide a useful means of engagement for migrants into host communities through employment, and more importantly through the cultural interface allowed through hospitality enterprises whereby the migrant as guest acts as host to host community members in hospitality entrepreneurship.

The paper has value to both practitioners and academics because it provides an example of migrant experiences and the opportunities presented by the hospitality industry for employment, entrepreneurship and ultimately community integration.

This study aims to investigate Australian claimants’ experience of the total and permanent disability (TPD) insurance claims process and documents their recommendations for improvement.

A qualitative methodology was used. In all, 12 claimants with finalized TPD claims were recruited via their superannuation fund. Data collected from in-depth interviews were thematically analyzed and reported using the COREQ checklist. Extracts from verbatim transcription were included to represent the claimant without bias.

Most interviewees described a flawed claims process in which important information was withheld or unclear, procedures were complicated and arduous, communication was poor and frequent need for “chasing up” was frustrating. The claims process undermined the well-being of many interviewees at a critical time in their adjustment to disability. Lump sum payment yielded unexpected consequences for ten interviewees. Some interviewees retained a desire to work despite serious disability.

The use of purposive sampling means that findings may not represent the experience of all claimants with finalized TPD claims. Saturation of knowledge was reached despite the relatively small number of in-depth interviews conducted. In the absence of previous research, this study identifies areas of concern in the TPD claimant experience and posits a set of important claimant issues for further investigation.

A person-centred approach is needed. Claimants would benefit from introduction of clear process information, a single point-of-contact throughout claim, advocacy/support and rehabilitation.

This inaugural study provides an understanding of challenges faced by TPD claimants. All interviewees provided suggestions for improvement in the TPD claims process.