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Companies documents such as annual reports incorporate narratives of repetitive rhetorical strategies as effective mechanisms adopted by companies' boardrooms to promote strategic change and strategic choices. These mechanisms can be viewed as persuasive appeals to facilitate boardrooms’ discourses. Despite the contribution of previous research through narrative analysis domains, conceptualization of narrative practices remains a relatively neglected area in the extant accounting literature.

The analytical framework is rooted in Aristotle's three pillars of rhetorical proofs: ethos (credibility/trustworthiness), pathos (emotion/identification through cultural domains) and logos (reason/rationale) in investigating narrative extracts regarding persuasive appeals adopted by Carillion's board through annual reports that facilitate discourse regarding Carillion’s strategic choices. Further, the authors emphasis on repetitive rhetorical slogan strategies embedded in the annual reports regarding Carillion's acquisitions strategy. We viewed acquisitions narratives as rhetorical communication artefacts and analyzed the repetitive rhetoric slogans in these corporate documents.

Findings of this study show how persuasive strategies and repetitive slogans trigger the discourses of Carillion's annual reports by drawing on perspectives from upper echelon theory, impression management and communication patterns. Findings reveal that Carillion’ board strategically use repetitive rhetoric slogans to shape optimistic corporate future performance which might be different from the feasible reality. Finally, the authors argue that corporate executives are striving to construct an alternative reality stem from their initial unrealistic aspiration to lead their sector of less controlled market share. Findings of this study have theoretical and managerial implications.

The key limitation of this study lies with the case study as the research methodology. Subjectivity remains inherent in interpreting the findings of this study. Future studies may adopt or adapt the authors’ analytical framework to examine other domains underpinning corporate reporting practices.

The findings of this study have practical implications for boardrooms and policymakers. Findings of this study have theoretical and managerial implications. The level of optimism has its impact on the mood of financial decision-makers, and when there is a high level of optimism, managers may consider making more investment decisions and therefore making many acquisitions. Managerial overconfidence has been widely documented in the literature. Overconfident managers systematically overestimate the probability of good outcomes (and correspondingly underestimate the probability of bad outcomes) resulting from their actions.

Managerial overconfidence refers to overestimation of managers' own abilities and outcomes relating to actions which are under their control. Executives believed that they have ultimate control over outcomes, which leads them to underestimate the probability of failure generally. According to self-attribution bias, many people tend to excessively credit their own skills for good results and overly credit external factors for bad outcomes.

The study explores the repetitive rhetorical slogan strategies embedded in the annual reports regarding Carillion's acquisitions strategy. Further, the study reveals how Carillion's board engaged through the early report with discourse and repetitive slogans to maintain their legitimacy. Findings reveal that Carillion’s board strategically uses repetitive rhetoric slogans to shape optimistic corporate future performance, which might be different from the feasible reality. Finally, the authors argue that corporate executives are striving to construct an alternative reality stem from their initial unrealistic aspiration to lead their sector of less controlled market share.

Managing diversity requires an understanding of culture. The majority of businesses have realised that competitiveness no longer stems from formal organisational structures but rather from the mindsets, competencies, and functioning of individuals who create, develop, and support the organisation and who frequently come from different cultural backgrounds. Understanding the essence of a culture, its components, variations, and how all these things effect the business and the managerial process is very beneficial for international managers. Businesses in global value chains need cross-cultural management practices to obtain a competitive advantage. Global value chains make it possible to benefit from the comparative advantages of other nations, and without cross-cultural management, these multinational corporations would be unable to carry on with their business operations. Although there are many explanations on global value chains in the literature, there is no study on the effect of different cultures in value chain management and how different cultures can be managed in global value chains.

In this chapter, the definition of the concept of culture, which is comprehensive and crucial in managing differences, will be depicted. Then, the concept of cross-cultural management will be emphasised and what cross-cultural management means and why and to what extent it is important will be explained. In addition, the impact of cross-cultural management in the inclusive global value chain will be discussed, emphasising the value chain analysis, how it emerged, its basic concepts, and its importance in the international context.

Industrialization has contributed to global environmental problems, especially in developed countries, but increasingly so in developing ones as well. Leveraging on the natural resource-based view theory, this study aims to examine the mediating role of environmental consciousness (EC) on the relationship between green intellectual capital (IC) and environmental performance among manufacturing firms in Ghana against a backdrop of increasing national drive towards greater industrialization.

This study used a cross-sectional survey design to obtain data from 245 manufacturing firms using purposive sampling technique. Structural equation modelling was used to test for the hypothesized relationships among variables.

Evidence suggests that green IC has a significantly positive effect on environmental performance. Furthermore, it was found that green IC has a positive and significant effect on EC, but EC only mediated the relationship between green IC and environmental performance.

Manufacturing firms within emerging economies like Ghana can improve on their green practices by incorporating these findings in their business models, while research could be guided to focus their inquiries on this and related genre of scholarly work.

This study is an early-stage study to identify EC as a variable which mediates the relationship between green IC and environmental performance among manufacturing firms in an emerging economy like Ghana.

The paper aims to explore the relationship between accounting and racial violence through an investigation of sharecropping in the postbellum American South.

A range of primary sources including peonage case files of the US Department of Justice and the archives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are utilised. Data are analysed by reference to Randall Collins' theory of violence. Consistent with this theory, a micro-sociological approach to examining violent encounters is employed.

It is demonstrated that the production of alternative or competing accounts, accounting manipulation and failure to account generated interactions where confrontational tension culminated in bluster, physical attacks and lynching. Such violence took place in the context of potent racial ideologies and institutions.

The paper is distinctive in its focus on the interface between accounting and “actual” (as opposed to symbolic) violence. It reveals how accounting processes and traces featured in the highly charged emotional fields from which physical violence could erupt. The study advances knowledge of the role of accounting in race relations from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, a largely unexplored period in the accounting history literature. It also seeks to extend the research agenda on accounting and slavery (which has hitherto emphasised chattel slavery) to encompass the practice of debt peonage.

Agricultural and food systems in the Mekong Region are undergoing transformations because of increasing engagement in international trade, alongside economic growth, dietary change and urbanisation. Food systems approaches are often used to understand these kinds of transformation processes, with particular strengths in linking social, economic and environmental dimensions of food at multiple scales. We argue that while the food systems approach strives to provide a comprehensive understanding of food production, consumption and environmental drivers, it is less well equipped to shed light on the role of actors, knowledge and power in transformation processes and on the divergent impacts and outcomes of these processes for different actors. We suggest that an approach that uses food systems as heuristics but complements it with attention to actors, knowledge and power improves our understanding of transformations such as those underway in the Mekong Region. The key transformations in the region include the emergence of regional food markets and vertically integrated supply chains that control increasing share of the market, increase in contract farming particularly in the peripheries of the region, replacement of crops cultivated for human consumption with corn grown for animal feed. These transformations are increasingly marginalising small-scale farmers, while at the same time, many other farmers increasingly pursue non-agricultural livelihoods. Food consumption is also changing, with integrated supply chains controlling substantial part of the mass market. Our analysis highlights that theoretical innovations grounded in political economy, agrarian change, development studies and rural livelihoods can help to increase theoretical depth of inquiries to accommodate the increasingly global dimensions of food. As a result, we map out a future research agenda to unpack the dynamic food system interactions and to unveil the social, economic and environmental impacts of these rapid transformations. We identify policy and managerial implications coupled with sustainable pathways for change.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the implementation of a performance management system comprising some traditional management practices (management process and organizational behavior modification) lead to an ethical organizational environment and improved employee performance.

A structural model is theorized and assessed using data from samples of full-time employees in the USA and Brazil. Partial least squares–structural equation modeling is used.

The findings of this study suggest that management process and organizational behavior modification directly and positively impact the ethical environment, and the ethical environment directly and positively impacts employee performance. The management process and organizational behavior modification indirectly impact employee performance through an ethical environment.

Although this theorized model was tested and provided significant results for implementing the management practices suggested, it is strongly recommended that other random data samples be used to analyze the theorized model and assess to reconfirm the results. In addition, incorporating the ethical environment construct within a larger model that includes other potential antecedents, such as management principles, and other potential outcomes, such as organizational commitment, job satisfaction and workplace optimism, is recommended.

This study provides management practitioners with empirical evidence that implementing a performance management system consisting of the management process and organizational behavior modification will enhance both the ethical environment and organizational trust, which, in turn, will lead to improved individual employee performance. Based on the theoretically and statistically supported framework, managers can improve the performance of their subordinates. The results further support the assertions that managers must implement the management process along with organizational behavior modifications to improve employee performance through an ethical environment and organizational trust

The general conclusion from this study is that good management practices in the form of the management process and organizational behavior modification are inherently ethical. Furthermore, when implemented and consistently maintained by managers, these practices will result in an organizational environment that supports ethical behavior and engenders a high level of trust. The results of this study demonstrate a significant contribution to the existing literature, in that good management is tied, in fact, directly to ethics and trust.

The results provide evidence that good management in the form of the management process and organizational behavior modification yields both a positive ethical environment and improved employee performance. Practitioners are provided with evidence that reaffirms the need to define expectations for employees and to provide the necessary resources and positive reinforcement to fulfill the expectations. This study is one of the first to directly assess the impact of traditional management practices on an ethical environment.

Why is it that highly trained and seasoned executives fail? On the surface, this doesn’t make sense because they are very successful; yet research in the organization sciences provides no shortage of evidence to prove just that. From the classic Mann Gulch fire disaster of Weick’s famous collapse of sensemaking study, to studies of myopia of learning, escalation of commitment, threat-rigidity, dominant logic, the architecture of simplicity, the Icarus Paradox, to core competencies turning into core rigidities, and navigating new competitive markets using “old” cognitive maps, and many more such examples point to a ubiquitous phenomenon where highly trained and experienced professionals find themselves “stuck” in the heat of battle, unable to move and progress. On the one hand, for some, there is a desperate need for change, but are unable to do so, due to their trained incapacities. On the other hand, some simply cannot see the need for change, and continue with their “business as usual” mentality. For both, their visions of the world shrink, they have a tendency to cling onto their past habitual practices and oversimplify the complexity of the situation. In moments like these: DROP YOUR TOOLS and UNLEARN! This book chapter introduces a framework (grounded in clinical psychology) that has had consistent success in helping seasoned executives and key decision-makers open up the alternatives whenever they find themselves stuck with complexity.

Drawing from interviews with individuals on parole, this chapter explores experiences of and responses to penal misrecognition. It documents that participants feel fundamentally misrecognised by the parole agency and penal state. They believe that the penal state views them as dangerous, defective and incapable of virtuous self-governance. Yet this is not how they perceive themselves. This leads to a delicate balancing act where participants refuse certain aspects of the penal state while accommodating others. On the one hand, individuals refuse parole’s misrecognition of them and reject the state’s authority to define who they are. On the other hand, they largely acquiesce to parole’s authority to supervise and regulate conduct. Turning to the concept of refusal highlights that individuals do not just attempt to resist penal power; rather, they flatly reject the state’s epistemic constructions. They do this by turning away from parole and by turning towards other forms of sociality beyond the penal state. This creates material and affective distance from parole and opens up space for self-recognition and for receiving positive recognition from others. In this way, individuals seek to minimise, move away from and/or bypass a penal intervention that is ostensibly designed to assist and support them.