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In recent years, the field of comparative and international education (CIE) has experienced an outburst of self-reflective papers wherein comparativists study the nature of the field and map its content. This study contributes to this trend by drawing attention to a previously unstudied aspect of CIE: its purpose. Using Arnove’s dimensions as a starting point to create five new purpose categories, four prominent CIE journals are surveyed to test whether the pragmatic history of CIE is evident in its current body of research. In this process, a complete and clear genetic mapping of the journals is created, which explores their similarities and differences, as well as the changes in their content over time. Findings indicate that the pragmatic purpose of CIE dominates, though it is primarily emancipatory and transformative in its prescription. Furthermore, articles rooted in specific situational contexts were more prominent than expected considering the comparative and international nature of the field.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the appropriateness of a general‐purpose financial reporting model derived from a “decision‐useful” framework for government departments.

This research in this paper uses a survey methodology to access users of government department general purpose financial reports and is innovative because it has directly studied actual users across the entire public sector.

The findings of this paper indicate that general‐purpose financial reports are used to satisfy financial accountability and public accountability rather than decision making – indicative of users having an accountability focus rather than a “decision‐useful” focus. This provides systematic empirical evidence against the current financial reporting model used internationally in the public sector.

The paper has important implications for policy makers since the choice of an accounting framework has the capacity to affect the information content of reports – what is reported and how it is measured, and thus have a direct impact on the operations of government. The paper argues that it is crucial that public policy regulators re‐examine the financial reports provided to stakeholders.

The research in this paper is original in that it has, for the first time, systematically reviewed all of the three elements of the public sector general‐purpose financial reporting model as well as directly accessing users. The authors can categorically argue for the abandonment of the model in favour of one, which is better suited to the public sector.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

This research investigated the reuse of Video Records of Practice (VRPs) – i.e. a type of qualitative data documenting teaching and learning in educational settings. It studied how reusers' purposes and experience-level with VRP reuse influence the importance of various VRP selection criteria and how these differ depending on whether the main goal for reuse was research or teaching. It also examined whether two different dimensions of qualitative research – reflexivity and context – were factors in VRP reuse.

The study reports on surveys of reusers at four VRP repositories. Questions were based on the literature and interviews with VRP reusers. The response rate was 20.6% (180 of 872 distributed surveys). This paper focused on 126 respondents who affirmatively responded they reused VRPs from a repository.

Researchers using VRPs were primarily interested in examining a broad range of processes in education and studying/improving ways to measure differences and growth in education. Reusers with teaching goals were commonly interested in VRPs to engage learners in showing examples/exemplars of – and reflecting on – teaching and learning. These differences between research and teaching led to varied expectations about VRPs, such as the amount of content needed and necessary contextual information to support reuse.

While repositories focus on exposing content, understanding and communicating certain qualities of that content can help reusers identify VRPs and align goals with selection decisions.

Although qualitative data are increasingly reused, research has rarely focused on identifying how qualitative data reusers employ selection criteria. This study focused on VRPs as one type of qualitative data and identified the attributes of VRPs that reusers perceived to be important during selection. These will help VRP repositories determine which metadata and documentation meet reusers' goals.

This study aims to investigate the role of marketing agencies in aligning brand purpose with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the post-pandemic era. This study explores whether and how marketing agencies delineate and execute brand purpose in a way that supports sustainable consumption and marketing models.

Data were gathered from semi-structured interviews with 35 senior managers at UK-based marketing agencies. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed using NVivo software for inductive coding.

The study reveals that brand purpose in the post-pandemic era is increasingly aligned with the SDGs. Marketing agencies play a pivotal role in this alignment, as they not only help to delineate and execute the brand purpose but also do so in a way that amplifies perceived authenticity in the eyes of the brand stakeholders.

This research underscores the significance of marketing agencies in delineating and executing brand purpose that aligns with the SDGs. It enriches the literature by illustrating how agency expertise contributes to the evolution of brand purpose, guiding businesses towards responsible marketing practices and consumption patterns that support a sustainable future.

A policy of surveillance which interferes with the fundamental right to a private life requires credible justification and a supportive evidence base. The authority for such interference should be clearly detailed in law, overseen by a transparent process and not left to the vagaries of administrative discretion. If a state surveils those it governs and claims the interference to be in the public interest, then the evidence base on which that claim stands and the operative conception of public interest should be subject to critical examination. Unfortunately, there is an inconsistency in the regulatory burden associated with access to confidential patient information for non-health-related surveillance purposes and access for health-related surveillance or research purposes. This inconsistency represents a systemic weakness to inform or challenge an evidence-based policy of non-health-related surveillance. This inconsistency is unjustified and undermines the qualities recognised to be necessary to maintain a trustworthy confidential public health service. Taking the withdrawn Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between NHS Digital and the Home Office as a worked example, this chapter demonstrates how the capacity of the law to constrain the arbitrary or unwarranted exercise of power through judicial review is not sufficient to level the playing field. The authors recommend ‘levelling up’ in procedural oversight, and adopting independent mechanisms equivalent to those adopted for establishing the operative conceptions of public interest in the context of health research to non-health-related surveillance purposes.

The world needs to pave a path towards sustainable development to solve global poverty and inequality, thereby ensuring that no one is left behind. The transformative changes brought about by the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), encompassed by the new world of work (NWOW), pose a significant threat to the displacement of jobs, especially in developing contexts, where many jobs are susceptible to automation. This results in a tension between the stakeholder and shareholder perspectives, which results in the phenomenon referred to in this study as the People Versus Profit Paradox. The purpose of this study is to determine business leaders’ perceptions of this paradox by generating an in-depth understanding of its nature and potential consequences. This study generated insights through a generic qualitative research design based on 10 semi-structured interviews with business leaders from multiple industries in developing countries. This study’s major contribution is the development of an up-to-date understanding of business leaders’ perceptions of sustainable development with respect to the 4IR and the People Versus Profit Paradox in developing countries. The two main findings of the study reveal that organisational purpose has changed towards a more inclusive stakeholder perspective, and that business leaders’ perceptions reveal a relative state of bias regarding the current impact of the 4IR in developing contexts. This study aims to inspire business leaders in developing contexts to embrace sustainable development and the disruptive changes brought about by the 4IR, to usher in a sustainable future where no one is left behind.

This paper aims to organise, in a general typology, the different purposes of performance management systems and processes (PMSPs) that are discussed across the performance management literature in different functional areas.

The typology is developed based on a traditional review of the performance management literature from three types of functional areas, represented by operations and production management, management accounting and human resource management.

The cross-functional typology illustrates how the different types of purposes discussed in the literature can be organised in a hierarchical structure. In this way, the basic purpose of organisational value creation for PMSPs can be decomposed into two layers of sub-purposes, the first specifying the domain and the second outlining the specific managerial use of PMSPs.

The presented typology may help managers across different functional areas map the purposes of their PMSPs; this mapping will not only provide the basics for understanding a PMSP's potential value for an organisation but also serve as an important input for PMSP design.

The presented typology has a broader scope than existing typologies of purposes in research and, consequently, better interrelates and tracks the various types of purposes discussed across different functional areas. This contributes not only to our understanding of performance management as a cross-functional field but also to research on the use and design of PMSPs in organisations.

The purpose of this research is to measure the economic and social/environmental/cultural activity of the social enterprise sector at a provincial level in Canada.

The research was implemented in three phases. In phase one, the structure and content of the mapping instrument was developed and tested. In phase two, the survey was circulated to all verified social enterprises in the sample frame to achieve a large and fully representative probability sample of social enterprises in both provinces. Data were subsequently collected for cleaning, entry, and analysis. Phase three involved the circulation of the survey results to social enterprise‐related networks in both provinces through both participant feedback and de‐briefing workshops.

Social enterprises surveyed had a number of non‐exclusive purposes. Eight (22 percent) Alberta (AB) social enterprises focused on employment and related activities while 51 (51 percent) of social enterprises in British Columbia (BC) had a similar focus. A total of 39 percent in AB and 47 percent of social enterprises in BC generated income for their parent organization. The highest percentage of social enterprises in both provinces (92 percent in AB/71 percent in BC) described themselves as having a social mission while 25 percent of social enterprises in AB and 35 percent in BC had a cultural mission. Environmental activities were pursued by 22 percent social enterprises in AB and 38 percent in BC.

Notwithstanding the inclusion of the non‐profit corporate form in the paper's definition, social enterprise organizational form and legal structure tell us little about the activities or the impact of the organization. This is a tentative finding; it is indicative perhaps of the current, “pre‐institutionalized”, phase of social enterprise development, but more research needs to be conducted to fully examine and to elaborate on this proposition.

Measuring the size, strength and scope of social enterprises contributes to the important constellation of evidence, policy options, and political will that is necessary to put a policy on the political agenda. In BC, the survey results provided policy advocates with the first empirical evidence of the scope, size, and capacity of social enterprises in the province. This, together with existing anecdotal information, case stories, and stakeholder events, helped to convince policy makers that social enterprises are a viable and legitimate entity, worthy of serious policy support.

The aim of this research was to provide relevant and timely information, not to define social enterprises as an end in itself. The operational definition of social enterprise was thus developed with the explicit purpose of conducting this investigation and as such, the authors are confident that it served its purpose. To this end, the authors trust that this survey, and its embedded structural‐functional definition, will contribute to the ongoing exploration of the number and nature of social enterprises in Canada and elsewhere.

This research set out to take stock of the structure, purpose, and operational activity of social enterprises in BC and AB. This was undertaken using a structural‐functional definition of social enterprise as “a business venture, owned or operated by a non‐profit organization that continuously sells goods or provides services in the market for the purpose of creating a blended return on investment; financial, social, environmental, and cultural”.

This paper presents the results of a participative psycho‐biographical study that investigated the effect of spirituality on career behavior. This study shows that spirituality influences career purpose, sense‐making and coherence. Spirituality was found to inspire four purposes of “developing and becoming self”, “unity with others”, “expressing self”, and “serving others”. Spirituality was also found to influence an ongoing process of sense‐making through discovering, prioritizing and balancing the four purposes over a lifespan, in response to ongoing tensions between “being” and “doing” as well as “self‐ versus other‐orientation”. Spirituality furthermore influences perceived career‐coherence as individuals align their careers with perceived spiritual orderings outside of themselves. The paper concludes with suggestions for practice and future research.