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Article
Publication date: 4 May 2012

Christine Cooper and Joanne Johnston

The purpose of this paper is to critically reflect upon the use of the term accountability in the twenty‐first century and its role in “remaking the world in favour of the most…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to critically reflect upon the use of the term accountability in the twenty‐first century and its role in “remaking the world in favour of the most powerful” using the theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Lacan.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper examines the notion of accountability by analyzing a case study of the hostile takeover of Manchester United Football Club by the Glazer family. The field of football presents an interesting arena in which to study accountability because of its extremely interested and active fans who search for information on every aspect of their clubs. Lacanian theory is drawn upon to add to understanding of the psychopathology which the demands for accountability and transparency place on individuals. Bourdieu's work on illusio is drawn upon to understand the motivations of the field of football.

Findings

The paper finds that calls to “hold the most powerful to account” in practice lack political force. Thus the case study demonstrates the common (mis)recognition of the term of accountability. The ability to correct the abuses of the most powerful requires power.

Originality/value

The conflation of Bourdieu and Lacan adds to understanding of accountability as an empty cipher with performative power.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 25 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Content available
Article
Publication date: 12 November 2018

Loizos Symeou and Yiasemina Karagiorgi

In this paper, the authors focus on a professional development programme in Cyprus aiming to enhance teachers’ intercultural understanding, awareness and competencies. This paper…

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Abstract

Purpose

In this paper, the authors focus on a professional development programme in Cyprus aiming to enhance teachers’ intercultural understanding, awareness and competencies. This paper aims to focus on trainers’ and teacher trainees’ reflections upon a teacher professional development programme in the primary school in Cyprus with the largest number of Roma children.

Design/methodology/approach

The training was provided by a small team of six trainers. Immediately after each training session, each trainer participated in an interview, while three of the trainers participated also in a focus-group interview at the end of the training. The trainers’ data were complemented by semi-structured interviews with a number of trainees either before or after the training. All interviews were transcribed, while interview questions comprised the framework for the qualitative analysis. The findings are presented by means of content analysis which formed the basis for emerging themes.

Findings

The authors claim that trainee teachers appeared culturally aware and sensitive, as well as knowledgeable about intercultural education; furthermore, they seemed to implement different teaching methodologies and curriculum interventions to support Roma children’s inclusion in the local school community. At the same time, they seemed to adopt instrumental approaches towards the content and purpose of the programme, seeking explicit instructional guidelines, plans and heuristics to deal with Roma inclusion. Considering the mis-recognition of teachers’ efforts by stakeholders outside the school and the expectations of the educational authorities – voiced via their school inspectors – teachers desperately asserted the need for tangible strategies to help them cope with difference in their classrooms.

Research limitations/implications

The authors argue that such professional development programmes should aim at facing, deconstructing and bringing to the fore prejudices and discrimination against the Other/s by valuing teachers, first, as reflective individuals and, second, as professionals with their own cultural backgrounds and identities, on which any training programme, of the kind presented in this paper, could start from and build on.

Practical implications

Even though there is no tailored magic recipe to make teachers’ daily professional enterprise in multicultural settings easy, to help teachers master the necessary knowledge, skills and confidence, the authors suggest that training should be directly linked to classroom practice and acknowledge stress and helplessness that accompany work in multicultural school settings.

Social implications

The inclusion strategy in many educational systems needs to become more comprehensive to cope with varying sources of social exclusion, faced by vulnerable groups of a different cultural background, such as Roma. Teacher training thus needs to meet the challenges of working in a diverse and multicultural environment in general and with Roma children in particular. In view of the multicultural character of local societies, a more critically oriented humanistic education is needed based on tolerance and understanding.

Originality/value

The limited participation of Roma in the school system could be related to teachers’ (mis)conceptions about the Roma culture and that the widely different ways in which Roma relate to schooling are often disregarded by the school.

Details

Journal for Multicultural Education, vol. 12 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2053-535X

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 17 March 2010

Kathleen Birrell

This chapter is concerned with the question that is indigeneity, and its situation within literary and juridical imaginaries. As a persistently unsettling presence, indigeneity…

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with the question that is indigeneity, and its situation within literary and juridical imaginaries. As a persistently unsettling presence, indigeneity appears outside the law, before the law and beyond the law – indeed, in Derrida's terms, as an evocation of the unconditional. Whereas the law determines indigeneity to recognise it, I propose that its expression in Indigenous literature evokes a Derridean unconditional to which the law must perpetually, if momentarily, respond. This chapter elaborates a conception of indigeneity, as expressed in Indigenous literature, as disruptive and deconstructive of non-Indigenous law, opening its narratives to transformation.

Details

Special Issue Interdisciplinary Legal Studies: The Next Generation
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-751-6

Article
Publication date: 1 February 2007

Maggie O'Neill

This article argues that there are two main barriers preventing imagining and actioning an inclusive, holistic strategy for prostitution reform in the UK. It identifies five key…

Abstract

This article argues that there are two main barriers preventing imagining and actioning an inclusive, holistic strategy for prostitution reform in the UK. It identifies five key tenets needed to improve the situations for men and women involved in selling sex. Findings from innovative research methods are used to explore how community safety may be improved.

Details

Safer Communities, vol. 6 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1757-8043

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 14 August 2017

Gabrielle Hesk

Based on a performance of a conversation between my white mother and myself – her mixed race black daughter – the purpose of this paper is to deconstruct the complexity of the…

Abstract

Purpose

Based on a performance of a conversation between my white mother and myself – her mixed race black daughter – the purpose of this paper is to deconstruct the complexity of the intersection of migration, racism, sexism, disability, and class within the space and place of the dynamics of our relationship. “Migration” and “borders” metaphors explore the “in between space that is neither here nor there” addressing key issues such as “migratory subjectivity” or, in other words, the translation of the process of inclusion and exclusion across the borders of oppressive social constructions to the lived emotional experience of being a mother and a daughter.

Design/methodology/approach

I explore my lived experience as black woman raised by a white Mum. My decision to use intersectionality as a tool with which to explore my personal experiences was based on me finding it enabled me to fully engage with the freedom of exploration, without feeling the need to “fit” with what was expected, in other words to be free to be able to express the “[…] lived experience of a presumed ‘Other’ and to experience it viscerally” (Orbe and Boylorn, 2014, p. 15).

Findings

A truthful account to aid the understanding of the complexities faced in the lived experience of a white mother and her black daughter.

Research limitations/implications

This piece has no limitations, and contains far reaching implications for social work practice and research methods.

Practical implications

This piece is embedded in social education and can be used as a research tool for best practice in anti-racist, black feminist practice.

Social implications

Social implications include a potential impact on diverse communities, with relevance to community engagement, social work practice placements, and critical reflection, and also education of the young to help them understand their own journeys.

Originality/value

This is an original report of an evidence-based lived experience, integrating theory to practice.

Article
Publication date: 28 June 2013

Alexis Downs and T. Beth Stetson

The question of whether the words “American Dream” point to something of substance is at the heart of the authors' inquiry. James Truslow Adams coined the term in his 1933 book…

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Abstract

Purpose

The question of whether the words “American Dream” point to something of substance is at the heart of the authors' inquiry. James Truslow Adams coined the term in his 1933 book The Epic of America as a way to re‐establish a sense of optimism decimated by the Great Depression. Adams' contribution was to move the public discourse from that of individual effort to a sense of a collective identity. The American Dream is an element of the “cultural stuff” whose singularity (“dream”) rapidly breaks down into a variety of interpretations about the American nation (“dreams”). The popular press suggests that the Dream proposes to balance collective membership in a national identity with the individual freedom to achieve prosperity and success. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Dream and the construction of an American identity by examining the accounts of men who surely represent the American Dream: US Presidential candidates.

Design/methodology/approach

In order to analyze the candidates' accounts of themselves as committed to their American identity and to the American Dream, the authors view the tax returns and speeches of Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney through the lens of the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan and locate the American Dream as a construct of the imaginary and symbolic orders, as they are defined by Jacques Lacan. The inspirations for the authors' analysis are twofold. One is a 1953 report in which Lacan said, “The unconscious of the subject is the discourse of the other”. The authors argue that the American Dream is the “discourse of the other” and suggest that the American identity is decentered: i.e. a signifying construct (the American Dream) substitutes for identity. The second inspiration is a 2009 paper titled “No one is perfect” by John Roberts, who argues, “The ideal of a transparency pretends to a mere making visible […] [But] transparency works to advertise an ideal against which we will always fail”.

Findings

It was found that the candidates' efforts to be transparent advertise an ideal: in this study, the ideal is the ideal of a “perfect‐able” American who lives the American Dream. It is an ideal against which the candidates fail because it is the “discourse of the other”.

Research limitations/implications

This study has limitations. The subjects are two American citizens and the authors' interpretation might not be appropriate to other American citizens and residents.

Originality/value

The authors are aware of no other study that uses Lacanian psychoanalytic views to examine the American Dream.

Details

Journal of Organizational Change Management, vol. 26 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0953-4814

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 February 2024

Victoria Stephens, Amy Victoria Benstead, Helen Goworek, Erica Charles and Dane Lukic

The paper explores the notion of worker voice in terms of its implications for supply chain justice. The paper proposes the value of the recognition perspective on social justice…

Abstract

Purpose

The paper explores the notion of worker voice in terms of its implications for supply chain justice. The paper proposes the value of the recognition perspective on social justice for framing workers’ experiences in global supply chains and identifies opportunities for the advancement of the worker voice agenda with recognition justice in mind.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper adopts a conceptual approach to explore the notion of worker voice in supply chains in terms of the recognition perspective on social justice.

Findings

Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) scholarship has considered worker voice in terms of two key paradigms, which we term communication and representation. To address recognition justice for workers in global supply chains, the worker voice agenda must consider designing worker voice mechanisms to close recognition gaps for workers with marginalised identities; the shared responsibilities of supply chain actors to listen alongside the expectation of workers to use their voice; and the expansion of the concept of worker voice to cut across home-work boundaries.

Originality/value

The paper offers conceptual clarity on the emerging notion of worker voice in SSCM and is the first to interrogate the implications of recognition justice for the emergent worker voice agenda. It articulates key opportunities for future research to further operationalise worker voice upon a recognition foundation.

Details

International Journal of Operations & Production Management, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-3577

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 2 May 2023

Natalie Glynn

Abstract

Details

Youth Transitions Out of State Care: Being Recognized as Worthy of Care, Respect, and Support
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-487-8

Article
Publication date: 6 February 2007

Stephen Cummings

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the limitations of what the field of strategic management sees as its military foundations.

1932

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the limitations of what the field of strategic management sees as its military foundations.

Design/methodology/approach

Categorizes and synthesizes the critical historical approach of Michel Foucault and uses this to interrogate assumptions made about military approaches to strategy in the strategic management literature.

Findings

Suggests that there is a much broader range of military approaches to strategy than that which has been seen as a foundation stone of strategic management, and that drawing on this broader range of perspectives can encourage new thinking about strategic management.

Research implications/limitations

While the historical survey upon which this hypothesis is developed is by no means exhaustive, it should encourage further investigation of different approaches to military strategy and how these might be applied to think differently in business settings.

Practical implications

This paper should encourage practitioners to question their often overly simplistic views of military strategy and to see this arena as a potentially rich seam of ideas that could be applied in business.

Originality/value

This is the first journal article to develop a clear method that draws on the many strands of Foucault's historical approach and apply this to fruitfully deconstruct a particular aspect of the field of management's assumed heritage.

Details

Critical perspectives on international business, vol. 3 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-2043

Keywords

Content available
Article
Publication date: 16 September 2013

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Abstract

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 26 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

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