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This paper analyses the establishment and evolution of a public oversight body (POB) – the Egyptian Audit Oversight Unit (AOU) – and its implications for local auditing firms and practices.

Primary data were gathered from 34 semi-structured interviews (including follow-up ones) between 2014 and 2020. Secondary data was obtained through publicly available documents and internal memos. Drawing on Debord's (1967) Society of the Spectacle, the insights focus on the POB's conception, materialisation and evolution in a context characterised by weak regulatory structures.

Through a series of acts, the findings reveal how the AOU first accepted the image of “international best practice” oversight (the “metaphorical”), followed by the construction of the local structure and décor replicating a United States (US) style POB archetype (the “transformational”) by primarily relying on visible processes/procedures. Yet, these mechanisms emphasised the spectacular nature of oversight, with little improvement for practice and limiting itself to “cracking down” on smaller local firms. A final stage (the “performative”) reveals how the AOU seeks to expand its activities beyond its original mandate without challenging the image-driven nature of its oversight.

The paper offers two key contributions. First, it reveals how actors, through a combination of symbolic and tangible measures, create a new performative reality of public oversight. Second, it advocates Debord's “spectacle” to complement other theoretical lenses, with a view to illuminating the materialisation stages that bridge the gap between proclaimed oversight policies and actual practices (including conscious and unconscious omissions) within a given political economy context.

Existing literature has begun to identify the agonistic and contested aspects of the ongoing development of accountability systems. These “contests” are particularly important during periods of change when an accountability “deficit” has been identified, that is, when existing accountability systems are deemed inadequate and requiring revision. The purpose of this paper is to explore one such set of contests in the case of large technology and social media firms: the so-called “big tech”. The authors focus specifically on “big tech” because of increasing societal concerns about the harms associated with their products, services and business practices.

The authors analysed four US Congressional hearings, in which the CEO of Facebook was held to account for the company's alleged breaches and harms. The authors conducted a discourse analysis of the dialogue between the account giver (Mark Zuckerberg) and account holders (Members of Congress) in the oral testimony at the four hearings.

Two areas of contestation in the dialogue between the account giver and account holders are identified. “Epistemic contests” involved contestation about the “facts” concerning the harms the company had allegedly caused. “Responsibility contests” involved contestation about who (or what) should be held responsible for these harms and according to what standards or criteria.

The study advances critical dialogical accountability literature by identifying two areas of contestation during periods of change in accountability systems. In so doing, they advanced the theory by conceptualising the process of change as underpinned by discursive contests in which multiple actors construct and contest the “problem” with existing accountability systems. The outcomes of these contests are significant, the authors suggest, because they inform the development of reforms to the accountability system governing big tech firms and other industries undergoing similar periods of contestation and change.

This chapter offers an autotheoretical account of my experiences as a trans man training for my first amateur bout – one that has yet to come but borne out of a never-ending fight. My chapter is in conversation with autobiography (McBee, 2018), journalistic (Oates, 2006) and ethnographical scholarship addressing the intricacies of pugilistic violence as a response to systemic gender, racial, sexual and economic oppression (Beauchez, 2017; Rutter, 2007).

Boxing draws fighters from marginalized communities. As a trans man, I have fought intense ‘negative’ feelings most of my life – emotions culminating into rage. I joined an amateur boxing club in Ottawa after trying to instigate a street altercation with a stranger. Feeling out of control, I sought refuge with others who also believe fighting solves problems.

Influenced by Oates' observations that boxing is ‘primarily about being, and not giving, hurt’ (2006) and sharing McBee's experience of ‘loving those men even as I hit them in the face, and knowing that they love[] me back’ (2018), I explore boxing as intimate and affective grounds for bearing witness to the pain and injury of the other shaping their daily lives. Amateur boxing as an embodied and affective space exceeds the oft reductionist (mis)understanding of the sport as a violent spectacle of individual bravado and the emphasis scholars and the mainstream media place on the ‘heroic body’ (Woodward, 2007); instead, I offer glimpses into the healing justice as social justice that witnessing the pain, vulnerability and resilience of oneself and other boxers can provide.

The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and extended reality (XR, including virtual reality [VR], augmented reality [AR], and mixed reality [MR]) on marketing in Industry 5.0 and Society 5.0 is explored with systematic literature review in this chapter. AIXR is becoming a necessary aspect of marketing, driven by efficiency, productivity, and innovation. Despite AI's capabilities, the human touch in marketing is preferred due to superior adaptive, creative, and innovative abilities. The use of fully automated marketing systems is limited to specific tasks. This research will benefit both practitioners and academics focusing on AIXR in marketing and is limited by the number of included literature.