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The similarities among the writings of Ralph Hawtrey, Lauchlin Currie and Milton Friedman are re‐affirmed, as is the influence of the former on what Friedman has called “the Chicago tradition” of the 1930s. The underconsumptionist analysis of Paul Douglas is not integral to that tradition.

Restates the essential economic proposals of Major Douglas, whose social (BEI) movement was a substantial political force in the inter‐war years. Refutes some common misinterpretations of his work and provides a new interpretation of his collaboration with A.R. Orage, a prominent guild socialist, between 1918 and 1922. Re‐assesses Douglas’ contributions to economic thought in the light of more recent events and of the development of the newly recognized discipline of social economics. Aims to show that Douglas’ warnings fall within the boundaries of this discipline, both in questionning the purpose of the economic system and in assessing its impact on the community in which it operates.

The purpose of this paper is to propose Neo-Durkheimian institutional theory, developed by the Durkheimian institutional theory, as developed by anthropologist Mary Douglas, as a suitable theory base for undertaking cross-cultural accounting research. The social theory provides a structure for examining within-country and cross-country actions and behaviours of different groups and communities. It avoids associating nations and cultures, instead contending any nation will comprise four different solidarities engaging in constant dialogues. Further, it is a dynamic theory able to take account of cultural change.

The paper establishes a case for using neo-Durkheimian institutional theory in cross-cultural accounting research by specifying the key components of the theory and addressing common criticisms. To illustrate how the theory might be utilised in the domain of accounting and finance research, a comparative interpretation of the different experiences of financialization in Germany and the UK is provided drawing on Douglas’s grid-group schema.

Neo-Durkheimian institutional theory is deemed sufficiently capable of interpreting the behaviours of different social groups and is not open to the same criticisms as Hofstede’s work. Differences in Douglasian cultural dialogues in the post-1945 history of Germany and the UK provide an explanation of the variations in the comparative experiences of financialization.

Neo-Durkheimian institutional theory has been used in a wide range of contexts; however, it has been little used in the context of accounting research. The adoption of the theory in future accounting research can redress a Hofstedian-bias in accounting research.

This paper aims to explore the appropriate role and approach of mediators and investigate whether mediator neutrality and party autonomy should prevail over mediators’ obligations to remain neutral where non-intervention would result in unfair settlements.

The paper arises from polarising and paradoxical opinions of the legitimacy of mediator intervention. This paper relies upon theories proposed in peer-reviewed journals, together with secondary data.

Mediator neutrality has no consistent or comprehensible meaning and is not capable of coherent application. Requirements for mediator neutrality encourage covert influencing tactics by mediators which itself threatens party autonomy. Mediator intervention ensures ethical and moral implementation of justice, removal of epistemological implications of subjective fairness and compensation for lack of pure procedural justice in the mediation process. Party autonomy requires mediators to intervene ensuring parties adequately informed of the law and equal balance of power.

Peer-reviewed journals and secondary data give meaningful insight into perceptions, opinions and beliefs concerning mediator neutrality, party autonomy and fair outcomes. These data comprised unstructured-interviews and questionnaires containing “open-ended” questions.

Mediator neutrality and party autonomy are less important than fair settlements.

Mediator neutrality should be given a contextual meaning; mediation should be more transparent affording the parties opportunity to select a particular type of mediator; transformative and narrative approaches to mediation should be further developed.

This paper exposes the myth of mediator neutrality – a popular concept demanded by and anticipated by the parties but which is practically impossible to deliver. It also shows the need for mediator intervention to ensure a fair outcome.

Using the canvas of the author’s sojourn with the Islamic preaching group Tablighi Jamaat, this study aims to exhibit reflections on how spaces can be categorized as more sacred or less sacred according to a specific religious worldview. The paper extends the conversation on Mary Douglas’s concepts of purity and danger by sharpening the focal lens on place in Douglas’s theoretics. The paper also proffers the idea of a sojourn as a vehicle of purification.

This paper depicts findings from the author’s multi-sited ethnographic field notes carried out from a 40-day sojourn with the Islamic preaching group Tablighi Jamaat in Pakistan.

The study unveils the concept of relative sacredness or how some spaces can be considered more sacred than others. The differential sacred status of these variegated spaces, each with its own etiquettes, meaning and consumption rituals is a means for purification for sojourners.

This paper prioritizes a focus on place in Mary Douglas’s arguments on purity and impurity in a religious consumption context. The thesis argues that place is a significant concept associated with metaphorical cleanliness/sacredness, which in religious terms guides consumer action.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what decisions to prosecute, sent to the local police districts from the Norwegian Bureau for the Investigation of Police Affairs (the body responsible for investigated charges against the police), can tell us about the challenges the police face in becoming a learning organization.

The data for this paper were collected in connection with the subproject that studied how the police districts handled the cases they received from the Bureau for Administrative Evaluation. This project was carried out in 2008‐2009 and is based methodically on a study of 33 (of a total of 35) different cases from 2007, which ensures a broad thematic scope.

The willingness of the leadership to take responsibility for the organization's systematic ability – and liberty – to ask fundamental questions about dominant values and norms, and thus to promote experiential learning, varied greatly. Whether the administrative cases were perceived to belong on the individual or the organizational level had great impact on how the cases were defined when they came back to the local police district, which again decided how the cases were handled. This had consequences for the degree to which the cases were the subject of individual or collective learning processes in the police district.

The role of the police as custodians of law and order may paradoxically limit the organization's ability to learn from potentially criminal events and cases that come from the Bureau for Administrative Evaluation. This contributes to a weak system focus and a strong individual focus, where individual shame bearers are created and double‐loop learning is avoided.

To ensure that the learning systems are actually used and function as intended, it might be apposite to have regular litmus tests of the development by analyzing the handling of concrete events and patterns which emerge over time. An important element in this connection is to observe how leaders deal with potentially shameful incidents, both internally and in the public light, and thus constitute the police organization's boundaries to the outside world.

The paper argues that the police's role as custodians of law and order paradoxically may contribute towards limiting the organization's ability to learn from potentially criminal events and cases that come from the Bureau for Administrative Evaluation.

In recent years in Australia, accounting regulations have been developed that require the adoption of commercial accounting and reporting practices by public‐sector organisations, including the recognition of cultural, heritage and scientific collections as assets by non‐profit cultural organisations. The regulations inappropriately apply traditional accounting concepts of accountability and performance, notwithstanding that the primary objectives of many of the organisations affected are not financial. This study examines how this was able to occur within the ideas outlined in Douglas’s (1986) How Institutions Think. The study provides evidence to demonstrate that the development; promotion, and defense of the detailed accounting regulations were each constrained by institutional thinking and, as a result, only certain questions were asked and many problems and issues associated with the regulations were not addressed. Thus, it seeks to further our understanding of the nature and limits of change in accounting and the role of institutions in promoting and defending changes to accounting practice.

Previous research has made it clear that homelessness is a social condition that finds its origins in structural causes such as poverty, lack of affordable housing, chronic unemployment, and reductions in welfare support. However, in the author's view, the exclusive focus upon these structural variables fails to provide a comprehensive account of the social forces that contribute to and shape the homeless experience. The paper's aim is to contend that homelessness can also be viewed as the result of continued subordinate institutional experiences.

The present paper examines in depth some of the inner practices of various normative institutions, namely morality, family, and the prison and uncover the ways in which they operate in producing acute states of social and moral disempowerment, and how they affect the faculties of subordinate members to competently fend for themselves in the wider society. It relies on a set of concepts coined by authors such as E. Goffman, M. Douglas, P. Boss, and M. Foucault in looking at the incapacitating nature of the aforementioned institutions. The study compares homelessness in two national contexts – that of the USA and Japan – in aiming to demonstrate that different institutional contexts tend to produce different patterns of homelessness. The research employs both secondary quantitative and secondary qualitative data. The quantitative data are used to establish the association of homelessness and subordinate institutional experience, the quantitative to illustrate the human experience of being homeless and to present cases that illustrate the “continuity chains” formed by those experiences.

The paper finds that different institutional settings will produce different patterns of homelessness. Originality/value – The institutional approach to homelessness advocated opens new avenues of concern and research in both the comprehensive understanding and the acting upon this vital problematic.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the body of logistics customer service (LCS) research published in leading logistics journals from 1990 to 2017. Specifically, the paper presents a call to arms for logistics and supply chain researchers to address new and emerging issues impacting customer service in the age of omnichannel and e-commerce retailing.

The authors reviewed academic journals to identify articles focusing on LCS from 1990 through 2017. The authors noted trends in academic research activity/focus and supplemented the findings by examining more recent trends covered in trade publication articles.

The authors observed a large amount of LCS research in the early 1990s and 2000s, but noticed a substantial decline in coverage within academic journals since the late 2000s while industry continues to give customer service issues even greater attention. The difference between the level of coverage within academic journals and the increased importance firms place on customer service represents a critical gap and opportunity for scholars. This research represents a “call to arms” to address this gap. With particular emphasis on observed customer impatience and escalating requests, within omni- and e-commerce channels of distribution, we suggest greater theoretical insights into customer service strategies and their role in successfully navigating today’s changing logistics service environment are needed.

The review serves as a call for more attention to customer service issues within leading logistics journals. Suggestions for research into new and emerging topics are offered.