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Article
Publication date: 14 February 2024

Rafael Borim-de-Souza, Yasmin Shawani Fernandes, Pablo Henrique Paschoal Capucho, Bárbara Galleli and João Gabriel Dias dos Santos

This paper aims to analyze what Samarco and Brazilian magazines speak and say about Mariana’s environmental crime. Discover their doxa in this subject. Interpret the speakings…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to analyze what Samarco and Brazilian magazines speak and say about Mariana’s environmental crime. Discover their doxa in this subject. Interpret the speakings, sayings and doxas through the theories of the treadmills of production, crime and law.

Design/methodology/approach

It is a qualitative and documental research and a narrative analysis. Regarding the documents: 45 were from public authorities, 14 from Samarco Mineração S.A. and 73 from Brazilian magazines. Theoretically, the authors resorted to Bourdieusian sociology (speaking, saying and doxa) and the treadmills of production, crime and law theories.

Findings

Samarco: speaking – mission statements; saying – detailed information and economic and financial concerns; doxa – assistance discourse. Brazilian magazines: speaking – external agents; saying – agreements; doxa – attribution, aggravations, historical facts, impacts and protests.

Research limitations/implications

The absence of discussions that addressed this fatality, with its respective consequences, from an agenda that exposed and denounced how it exacerbated race, class and gender inequalities.

Practical implications

Regarding Mariana’s environmental crime: Samarco Mineração S.A. speaks and says through the treadmill of production theory and supports its doxa through the treadmill of crime theory, and Brazilian magazines speak and say through the treadmill of law theory and support their doxa through the treadmill of crime theory.

Social implications

To provoke reflections on the relationship between the mining companies and the communities where they settle to develop their productive activities.

Originality/value

Concerning environmental crime in perspective, submit it to a theoretical interpretation based on sociological references, approach it in a debate linked to environmental criminology, and describe it through narratives exposed by the guilty company and by Brazilian magazines with high circulation.

Details

Safer Communities, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1757-8043

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 25 November 2019

Omar Lizardo

The author distinguishes between state, process, and object perspectives on institutions and institutionalization. While all-purpose process approaches dominate the literature…

Abstract

The author distinguishes between state, process, and object perspectives on institutions and institutionalization. While all-purpose process approaches dominate the literature, the author argues that these are analytically insufficient without theorizing the nature of “institutional objects.” Building on recently developed analytic disaggregations of the culture concept in cultural sociology, the author argues that doings, sayings, codes, and artifacts exhaust the broad classes of potential objects subject to institutionalization processes. The proposed approach provides a coherent ontology for future empirical work, features robust microfoundations, places institutional routines and practices in a material context, and acknowledges the importance of semiotic codes and vocabularies in organizational fields.

Details

Microfoundations of Institutions
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-123-0

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 6 November 2015

David Norman Smith

Max Weber called the maxim “Time is Money” the surest, simplest expression of the spirit of capitalism. Coined in 1748 by Benjamin Franklin, this modern proverb now has a life of…

Abstract

Purpose

Max Weber called the maxim “Time is Money” the surest, simplest expression of the spirit of capitalism. Coined in 1748 by Benjamin Franklin, this modern proverb now has a life of its own. In this paper, I examine the worldwide diffusion and sociocultural history of this paradigmatic expression. The intent is to explore the ways in which ideas of time and money appear in sedimented form in popular sayings.

Methodology/approach

My approach is sociological in orientation and multidisciplinary in method. Drawing upon the works of Max Weber, Antonio Gramsci, Wolfgang Mieder, and Dean Wolfe Manders, I explore the global spread of Ben Franklin’s famed adage in three ways: (1) via evidence from the field of “paremiology” – that is, the study of proverbs; (2) via online searches for the phrase “Time is Money” in 30-plus languages; and (3) via evidence from sociological and historical research.

Findings

The conviction that “Time is Money” has won global assent on an ever-expanding basis for more than 250 years now. In recent years, this phrase has reverberated to the far corners of the world in literally dozens of languages – above all, in the languages of Eastern Europe and East Asia.

Originality/value

Methodologically, this study unites several different ways of exploring the globalization of the capitalist spirit. The main substantive implication is that, as capitalism goes global, so too does the capitalist spirit. Evidence from popular sayings gives us a new foothold for insight into questions of this kind.

Details

Globalization, Critique and Social Theory: Diagnoses and Challenges
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-247-4

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 March 2020

Kwok Wah Ronnie Lui and Sarojni Choy

This paper aims to report on a study that used the practice theory lens to understand how Chinese ethnic culture influences restaurant workers' learning through engagement in…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to report on a study that used the practice theory lens to understand how Chinese ethnic culture influences restaurant workers' learning through engagement in everyday work practices.

Design/methodology/approach

A multiple case study approach was used. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews and site observations. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify how workers learnt the sayings, doings and relatings in their workplaces.

Findings

The findings show that the ethnic culture of the participants influences and enriches their learning in practice settings such as small Chinese restaurants.

Research limitations/implications

The understandings presented here need to be verified through more research in different regions and nations. In addition, cross-cultural studies on other ethnic restaurants may contribute to deeper understandings of the influences of ethnic culture on practice-based learning.

Social implications

The research contributes to understanding the influence of ethnic culture on practice-based learning.

Originality/value

The understandings gained from the findings of this study form a useful basis for curriculum development and instructional design of training programmes for practice-based as well as work-integrated-learning components of vocational curriculum. Furthermore, awareness of the strengths of the ethnic culture is of interest to owner/managers of small Chinese restaurants to afford supportive learning environments for workers.

Details

Journal of Workplace Learning, vol. 32 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1366-5626

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 12 January 2021

Roger Friedland

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).

Details

On Practice and Institution: Theorizing the Interface
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-413-4

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Leading with Presence: Fundamental Tools and Insights for Impactful, Engaging Leadership
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-599-3

Article
Publication date: 1 February 1981

Most of the managers I meet (and I reckon to have met a few thousand over the last ten years) are dissatisfied with their lot. Many have an ambition to “retire at forty‐five” (or…

Abstract

Most of the managers I meet (and I reckon to have met a few thousand over the last ten years) are dissatisfied with their lot. Many have an ambition to “retire at forty‐five” (or thirty‐five, depending on their age); a perceptible minority “drop out”, watched more or less wistfully by many of their colleagues; most of all, they tell you they want to do their own thing, to work for themselves.

Details

Management Decision, vol. 19 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0025-1747

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1977

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that…

2050

Abstract

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).

Details

Managerial Law, vol. 20 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0558

Book part
Publication date: 26 April 2021

A. Lin Goodwin

There is always great interest in leadership – What are key qualities? What makes a great leader? Can leadership be learned? This piece will not answer these questions because I…

Abstract

There is always great interest in leadership – What are key qualities? What makes a great leader? Can leadership be learned? This piece will not answer these questions because I don't believe leadership can be boiled down to a list of characteristics or steps. And even when it can, as in the ample literature on leadership, without context and story – what happened and how – the lists are not instructive. So, this piece is simply anecdotes, framed by some lived experiences, reflections about be(com)ing a leader. It's personal and idiosyncratic, but it is one illustration of leadership, one story from one woman.

Book part
Publication date: 28 September 2015

Md Shah Azam

Information and communications technology (ICT) offers enormous opportunities for individuals, businesses and society. The application of ICT is equally important to economic and…

Abstract

Information and communications technology (ICT) offers enormous opportunities for individuals, businesses and society. The application of ICT is equally important to economic and non-economic activities. Researchers have increasingly focused on the adoption and use of ICT by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as the economic development of a country is largely dependent on them. Following the success of ICT utilisation in SMEs in developed countries, many developing countries are looking to utilise the potential of the technology to develop SMEs. Past studies have shown that the contribution of ICT to the performance of SMEs is not clear and certain. Thus, it is crucial to determine the effectiveness of ICT in generating firm performance since this has implications for SMEs’ expenditure on the technology. This research examines the diffusion of ICT among SMEs with respect to the typical stages from innovation adoption to post-adoption, by analysing the actual usage of ICT and value creation. The mediating effects of integration and utilisation on SME performance are also studied. Grounded in the innovation diffusion literature, institutional theory and resource-based theory, this study has developed a comprehensive integrated research model focused on the research objectives. Following a positivist research paradigm, this study employs a mixed-method research approach. A preliminary conceptual framework is developed through an extensive literature review and is refined by results from an in-depth field study. During the field study, a total of 11 SME owners or decision-makers were interviewed. The recorded interviews were transcribed and analysed using NVivo 10 to refine the model to develop the research hypotheses. The final research model is composed of 30 first-order and five higher-order constructs which involve both reflective and formative measures. Partial least squares-based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is employed to test the theoretical model with a cross-sectional data set of 282 SMEs in Bangladesh. Survey data were collected using a structured questionnaire issued to SMEs selected by applying a stratified random sampling technique. The structural equation modelling utilises a two-step procedure of data analysis. Prior to estimating the structural model, the measurement model is examined for construct validity of the study variables (i.e. convergent and discriminant validity).

The estimates show cognitive evaluation as an important antecedent for expectation which is shaped primarily by the entrepreneurs’ beliefs (perception) and also influenced by the owners’ innovativeness and culture. Culture further influences expectation. The study finds that facilitating condition, environmental pressure and country readiness are important antecedents of expectation and ICT use. The results also reveal that integration and the degree of ICT utilisation significantly affect SMEs’ performance. Surprisingly, the findings do not reveal any significant impact of ICT usage on performance which apparently suggests the possibility of the ICT productivity paradox. However, the analysis finally proves the non-existence of the paradox by demonstrating the mediating role of ICT integration and degree of utilisation explain the influence of information technology (IT) usage on firm performance which is consistent with the resource-based theory. The results suggest that the use of ICT can enhance SMEs’ performance if the technology is integrated and properly utilised. SME owners or managers, interested stakeholders and policy makers may follow the study’s outcomes and focus on ICT integration and degree of utilisation with a view to attaining superior organisational performance.

This study urges concerned business enterprises and government to look at the environmental and cultural factors with a view to achieving ICT usage success in terms of enhanced firm performance. In particular, improving organisational practices and procedures by eliminating the traditional power distance inside organisations and implementing necessary rules and regulations are important actions for managing environmental and cultural uncertainties. The application of a Bengali user interface may help to ensure the productivity of ICT use by SMEs in Bangladesh. Establishing a favourable national technology infrastructure and legal environment may contribute positively to improving the overall situation. This study also suggests some changes and modifications in the country’s existing policies and strategies. The government and policy makers should undertake mass promotional programs to disseminate information about the various uses of computers and their contribution in developing better organisational performance. Organising specialised training programs for SME capacity building may succeed in attaining the motivation for SMEs to use ICT. Ensuring easy access to the technology by providing loans, grants and subsidies is important. Various stakeholders, partners and related organisations should come forward to support government policies and priorities in order to ensure the productive use of ICT among SMEs which finally will help to foster Bangladesh’s economic development.

Details

E-Services Adoption: Processes by Firms in Developing Nations
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-325-9

Keywords

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