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1 – 10 of over 9000Benjamin Zonca and Josh Ambrosy
Government primary schools in Australia increasingly take up the International Baccalaureate's Primary Years Programme (IB-PYP) to supplement government-mandated curriculum and…
Abstract
Purpose
Government primary schools in Australia increasingly take up the International Baccalaureate's Primary Years Programme (IB-PYP) to supplement government-mandated curriculum and governance expectations. The purpose of this paper is to explore how teachers navigate and contest dual policy-practice expectations in the Victorian Government IB-PYP context.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used a narrative inquiry approach. The narratives of two teachers were generated through a narrative interview and then re-storied with participants through a set of conceptual lenses drawn out of the policy assemblage and affect studies theoretical spaces.
Findings
The stories participants told show that competing mandatory local policy expressions are experienced and contested both to stabilize a technocratic rationality and produce alternative critical-political educational futures.
Originality/value
There a few accounts of teachers' policy experience in government school settings implementing the IB-PYP. In addressing this gap, this paper directly responds to prior claims of the IB's failure to promote an emancipatory pedagogy, showing instead that when teachers who bring a more critical understanding of educational purpose to their work take up the IB-PYP policy to support the enactment of that purpose.
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Victor Meyer Jr, Diórgenes Falcão Mamédio, Alechssandra Ressetti Oliveira and Natália Brasil Dib
Understanding social organisations requires considerable effort because of their complex reality. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the performance and amateur form of…
Abstract
Purpose
Understanding social organisations requires considerable effort because of their complex reality. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the performance and amateur form of management of an organisation of scavengers, with significant results for society.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is a qualitative in-depth case study. Data were collected through ethnographic interviews, non-participant observation and document analysis. The association of scavengers in question was identified as being strongly representative of the 23 similar associations in Curitiba. The city is the first Brazilian capital to create conditions for direct disposal of selective waste collected by waste pickers, as recommended by the National Solid Waste Policy.
Findings
Three main aspects of evidence are highlighted in the proposed model: unique features, performance management and multiplicity of practices. The findings showed a strong presence of utilitarian behaviour due to the need of the members of the organisation to generate income for survival, forcing social and environmental concerns into the background. The combination of community values, informal practices, collective learning and amateur management has had a positive effect on the social organisation’s performance.
Social implications
The outcomes were identified for individuals, the community and society by contributing to social inclusion, economic growth and environmental care.
Originality/value
The differentiated approach lies in the convergence between performance and amateur management in social organisations, with relevant environmental, economic and social results. A model is proposed to demonstrate the complex relationship between unique features, multiplicity of practices and performance with regard to the amateur management analysed in this study.
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This paper aims to shed light on the complex multiplicity of domestic violence interagency work. It proposes a new conceptualisation that reflects the entangled nature of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to shed light on the complex multiplicity of domestic violence interagency work. It proposes a new conceptualisation that reflects the entangled nature of professional practice and learning.
Design/methodology/approach
The research on which this paper draws is an ethnographic study of practice in an integrated local domestic violence initiative. Data include focussed workplace observations, semi-structured interviews and key documents. The study draws on practice-based sociomaterial approaches and the conceptual framework, and methodology is informed by actor-network theory, in particular, the work of Annemarie Mol.
Findings
Findings suggest that interagency work that starts from the victim and traces threads of connection outwards is able to “hang together” as “practice multiple” in integrated service provision. I argue that the learning that happens in these circumstances is a relational effect and depends on who and what is assembled in the actor-network.
Research limitations/implications
The research has significant implications for framing understandings of domestic violence interagency work, as it firmly anchors “working together” to victims. Findings are expected to be of interest not only to practitioners, educators and researchers but also to policymakers.
Originality/value
The paper addresses a current gap in the literature, applies a novel research approach and proposes a new conceptualisation of domestic violence interagency work.
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The aim of this paper is to move beyond the market/non‐market divide and to recognise the plurality of labour practices in societies by adopting a variant of what Glucksmann calls…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to move beyond the market/non‐market divide and to recognise the plurality of labour practices in societies by adopting a variant of what Glucksmann calls “a total social organisation of labour” approach.
Design/methodology/approach
To transcend the conventional depiction of separate market and non‐market spheres, this paper adopts a total social organisation of labour approach which recognises a multiplicity of labour practices existing on a spectrum from market to non‐market practices crosscut by another spectrum from wholly monetised to wholly non‐monetised practices. This conceptual lens is employed to analyse the results of 861 face‐to‐face interviews on the labour practices used in affluent and deprived urban and rural English localities.
Findings
The outcome is to reveal the multifarious labour practices in these English localities along with how both work cultures and the nature of individual labour practices vary socio‐spatially. While affluent and rural populations draw more on an array of market‐oriented and monetised labour practices, deprived populations and urban localities are found to rely more on a range of non‐market and non‐monetised labour practices, and all labour practices are more likely to be conducted out of necessity in deprived and urban populations and out of choice in affluent and rural populations.
Research limitations/implications
The paper only provides a snapshot survey. It does not show the changes taking place over time.
Practical implications
It reveals how it is mistaken to privilege the development of labour practices in the formal market economy and displays the feasibility of, and possibilities for, alternative futures beyond market hegemony.
Originality/value
The paper transcends the market/non‐market dualism and proposes an alternative conceptual framework to capture the multifarious labour practices in societies.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the multiplicity of views on integrated reporting and to consider the possibility of, and impediments to, reconciling these multiple…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the multiplicity of views on integrated reporting and to consider the possibility of, and impediments to, reconciling these multiple rationales (“orders of worth”) and thus gain legitimacy through a compromise. This sheds light on the understanding of integrated reporting as such, as well as shows how legitimacy struggles are resolved in practice around complex accounting practices in heterogeneous environments.
Design/methodology/approach
This explorative paper empirically applies Boltanski and Thévenot's sociology of worth (SOW) framework to analyse integrated reporting in the Dutch reporting field. Data were collected using multiple methods, including 64 semi-structured in-depth interviews with a wide range of relevant actors, and documentary analysis. Data were coded for the presence of orders of worth and legitimating compromise mechanisms.
Findings
The author's analysis suggests that integrated reporting combines the disparate domains of industrial, market, civic and green order of worth. These different logics of valuation need to be reconciled in a compromise in order for integrated reporting to become a legitimate practice. Such a compromise requires a common interest, avoidance of clarification and maintenance of ambiguity. The author's analysis suggests these mechanisms are violated though, with the risk that integrated reporting gets captured by investors and accountants, leading to local private arrangements rather than durable legitimate compromise.
Research limitations/implications
First, SOW informs the understanding of integrated reporting. It highlights in particular its fragility as fundamentally different rationales need to be reconciled, which is a challenge yet also gives rise to creative frictions. Second, the SOW framework creates the possibility for scholars to look closer at the dynamics of legitimacy and at the possible mechanisms to attain legitimacy in fragmented and heterogeneous environment.
Practical implications
The SOW framework offers tools for practitioners, in particular those working within a pluralistic context. The various mechanisms of compromise discussed in this paper provide practical guidelines for how to manage this complexity and gain or maintain legitimacy.
Originality/value
This rich empirical study combines a novel theoretical approach (the SOW framework) with an analysis of the relatively unexplored topic of integrated reporting. At the same time it introduces a conceptualisation of legitimacy that highlights communicative and constitutive dialogue and goes beyond fit and compliance.
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In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of…
Abstract
In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of institutional logics which I have sought to develop as a religious sociology of institution. I examine how Schatzki and I both differently locate our thinking at the level of practice. In this essay I also explore the possibility of appropriating Heidegger’s religious ontology of worldhood, which Schatzki rejects, in that project. My institutional logical position is an atheological religious one, poly-onto-teleological. Institutional logics are grounded in ultimate goods which are praiseworthy “objects” of striving and practice, signifieds to which elements of an institutional logic have a non-arbitrary relation, sources of and references for practical norms about how one should have, make, do or be that good, and a basis of knowing the world of practice as ordered around such goods. Institutional logics are constellations co-constituted by substances, not fields animated by values, interests or powers.
Because we are speaking against “values,” people are horrified at a philosophy that ostensibly dares to despise humanity’s best qualities. For what is more “logical” than that a thinking that denies values must necessarily pronounce everything valueless? Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism” (2008a, p. 249).
Brian Anthony Burfitt, Jane Baxter and Jan Mouritsen
The purpose of this study is to characterise types of practices – or “routings” as they are denoted in this paper – that have been developed to incorporate non-financial…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to characterise types of practices – or “routings” as they are denoted in this paper – that have been developed to incorporate non-financial inscriptions, representing value-in-kind (VIK) sponsorship resources, into accounting systems.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts field-based research, utilising Latour's (1999) concept of “circulating reference”, to illustrate how VIK (non-cash) resources were managed in an Australian sporting organization.
Findings
This paper contributes to our understanding of: first, how accounting infrastructure is constituted and stabilised by a network of multiple and overlapping accounting practices; second, how VIK resources are allocated and managed via local practices; and third, the importance of “budget relief” as a method of valuation in accounting practice.
Research limitations/implications
Our paper has implications for understanding how financial and non-financial accounting inscriptions are related in practice, requiring both integration and separation within networks of multiple and overlapping routings of accounting practices.
Originality/value
Our work highlights previously unexplored accounting practices, which assist in the process of utilizing VIK resources in the context of a sporting organization.
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Knowledge has been theorized as being an elementary form of organization in the so‐called knowledge management literature. Although there are numerous analytical strengths in this…
Abstract
Knowledge has been theorized as being an elementary form of organization in the so‐called knowledge management literature. Although there are numerous analytical strengths in this literature, a reductionist view of knowledge dominates the field. From a reductionist view, knowledge is an extension from data and information. As opposed to this image of knowledge, this paper suggests that knowledge is what is inherent in practices and concepts employed and invented to denote such practices. The notion of knowledge is therefore constituted on a single plane or surface wherein practices and concepts are entangled. As a consequence, knowledge is always indeterminate and fluid because it is immanent in a multiplicity of undertakings and changing language games. In addition, data and information only represents a sub‐set of what we call knowledge. This processual and fluid view of knowledge represents an epistemological break with reductionist views of knowledge and enables for new perspectives on how knowledge is managed as an intangible resource in organizations.
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The paper has two purposes: to introduce a new perspective on power and resistance in equalities work; and to trouble either or theorisations of success and failure in this work…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper has two purposes: to introduce a new perspective on power and resistance in equalities work; and to trouble either or theorisations of success and failure in this work. Instead it offers a new means of exploring micro‐practice.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper applies/develops an “actor network theory” (ANT) analysis to a single case study of Iopia, a Black woman equalities practitioner working in a prison education context. It uses this to explore the ways in which Iopia interacts with a variety of human and non‐human objects to challenge racism in this context.
Findings
Iopia, from an initial position of marginality (as a Black woman experiencing racism) is able to establish herself (by virtue of this same identity as a Black woman combating racism) as central to a “new” network for equality and diversity. This new network both challenges and sustains narrow exclusionary definitions of diversity. Thus, Iopia's case provides an example of the contradictions, and paradox, experienced by those working for equality and diversity.
Research limitations/implications
In the future, this type of feminist ANT analysis could be more fully developed and integrated with critical race and other critical cultural theories as these relate to equalities work.
Practical implications
The approach, and, in particular, the notion of translation, can be used by practitioners in thinking through the ways in which they can use material objects to draw in multiple “others” into their own networks.
Originality/value
The article is one of the first to explore equalities workers via the lens of ANT. It is unique in its analysis of the material objects constituting both diversity workers and diversity work and thus its analysis of diversity workers and their work as part of a complex set of social and “material” relations.
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Recently, the recurring narrative that capitalism is stretching its tentacles ever moe widely and deeply into every crevice of daily life across the globe has been challenged in…
Abstract
Purpose
Recently, the recurring narrative that capitalism is stretching its tentacles ever moe widely and deeply into every crevice of daily life across the globe has been challenged in the context of Western economies and the Third World by an emerging post‐development corpus of thought. The aim here is to extend this critique of market hegemony by investigating the so‐called “transition” economies of East‐Central Europe.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper analyses the extent to which market practices penetrated the “transition” economies of East‐Central Europe in the years following the collapse of the socialist bloc, first through a review of the post‐development literature and then by examining the nature of work and trajectories of the “transition” economies.
Findings
Analysis highlights not only the shallow permeation of market practices but also the multiplicity of development trajectories being pursued at both the household and societal levels.
Originality/value
The outcome is to provide additional evidence from the post‐socialist East‐Central European bloc to support the critique of market hegemony and open up the future to alternative possibilities beyond marketisation.
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