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1 – 10 of 29Kolawole Yusuff, Andrea Whittle and Frank Mueller
Existing literature has begun to identify the agonistic and contested aspects of the ongoing development of accountability systems. These “contests” are particularly important…
Abstract
Purpose
Existing literature has begun to identify the agonistic and contested aspects of the ongoing development of accountability systems. These “contests” are particularly important during periods of change when an accountability “deficit” has been identified, that is, when existing accountability systems are deemed inadequate and requiring revision. The purpose of this paper is to explore one such set of contests in the case of large technology and social media firms: the so-called “big tech”. The authors focus specifically on “big tech” because of increasing societal concerns about the harms associated with their products, services and business practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors analysed four US Congressional hearings, in which the CEO of Facebook was held to account for the company's alleged breaches and harms. The authors conducted a discourse analysis of the dialogue between the account giver (Mark Zuckerberg) and account holders (Members of Congress) in the oral testimony at the four hearings.
Findings
Two areas of contestation in the dialogue between the account giver and account holders are identified. “Epistemic contests” involved contestation about the “facts” concerning the harms the company had allegedly caused. “Responsibility contests” involved contestation about who (or what) should be held responsible for these harms and according to what standards or criteria.
Originality/value
The study advances critical dialogical accountability literature by identifying two areas of contestation during periods of change in accountability systems. In so doing, they advanced the theory by conceptualising the process of change as underpinned by discursive contests in which multiple actors construct and contest the “problem” with existing accountability systems. The outcomes of these contests are significant, the authors suggest, because they inform the development of reforms to the accountability system governing big tech firms and other industries undergoing similar periods of contestation and change.
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This paper aims to investigate how narrative is constructed to create connections with fat readers, how books function to envision spaces of fat liberation for young readers and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate how narrative is constructed to create connections with fat readers, how books function to envision spaces of fat liberation for young readers and to highlight the incredible importance of providing bigger mirrors (Bishop, 1990) for fat representation in children’s literature.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper analyzes and reflects on two texts that contain counternarratives of fatness: The (Other) F Word: A celebration of the fat and fierce edited by Angie Manfredi (2019) and Big by Vashti Harrison (2023) to interrogate how these two narratives intentionally disrupt anti-fat bias.
Findings
Body size and fatness are identities that need to be included in diversity efforts within education. Books like The (Other) F Word: A celebration of the fat and fierce (Manfredi, 2019) and Big (Harrison, 2023) offer positive representations of fatness, disrupt biases around body size and provide spaces that allow fat students to find joy, hope, connection and, more than anything, imagine a way toward liberation.
Research limitations/implications
This paper highlights the need to include more narratives of positive fat representation within children’s literature and calls for educators to interrogate their own anti-fat biases and practices.
Originality/value
There is a lack of research on fat representation specifically within children and young adult literature. This paper provides an analysis of two pieces of literature with fat representation that brings attention to the need for this type of future research.
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The paper draws extensively from Aristotle’s Poetics, a classical work on the aesthetics of drama. Drawing from symbolic and thematic elements from folklore and mythology, this…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper draws extensively from Aristotle’s Poetics, a classical work on the aesthetics of drama. Drawing from symbolic and thematic elements from folklore and mythology, this paper aims to illustrate how the Poetics can be referenced as an allegorical device in the design of culture-building strategies and interventions.
Design/methodology/approach
This exploratory paper examines Aristotle’s “Poetics” and the range of creative expression this literature provides as a conceptual design framework for the development of a culture map in creating a distinctive organisational mythology. The Poetics articulates an Aristotelian perspective on theatre which infuses itself as a new language in offering structural and archetypical plot devices in the development of an organisational narrative.
Findings
Findings from this explorative study can provide a creative roadmap to culture practitioners and leaders, to be used as a determining reference point in developing culture maps and change management interventions.
Practical implications
Poetics has its detractors, notably Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal. Boal examines how Poetics promotes a narrative that suppresses free thinking and encourages a cult of feudal personality, therefore encouraging industrial and cultural oppression, which he rebelled against through the development of his “Theatre of the Oppressed”. This new kind of theatre discarded the Aristotelian model of thinking. Ideas proposed in the Poetics may also lend verisimilitude to the propagation of obsessive consumerism through the definitive symbolism it offers in the development of institutionalised personality cults.
Originality/value
The Poetics as a creatively driven reflexive study provides a forward movement in the study of culture design templates. Its definitive allegorical devices and metaphors act as action principles through which an enterprise culture and its value system can be examined and developed.
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Social sciences have discussed the host–guest relation from many theoretical lenses and perspectives. Violence as well as local crime has been studied as one of the major risks…
Abstract
Purpose
Social sciences have discussed the host–guest relation from many theoretical lenses and perspectives. Violence as well as local crime has been studied as one of the major risks concerning tourism security. Anyway, less attention was given to homeless people and their interaction with foreign or local tourists. The purpose of this paper is oriented to explain how globalization has winners and losers, in which case, as noted, thousands of persons are excluded from the formal labor marketplace or the economic system year by year.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper that discusses critically not only the recent advances of sociology in urban tourism but also the connection between homeless people and tourists.
Findings
There is an urban underclass formed by those who have been excluded from the economic system. What is more important, such an underclass situates nearby luxury hotels and tourist destinations creating serious contradictions or zones of disputes. These contradictions have been approached by different sociologists since the turn of the 20th century.
Research limitations/implications
The question of sustainability, as well as the idea of liveable cities, and the efficient organization of the city, have occupied a central position in the academic debate, above all after the COVID-19 pandemic. In the present paper, the authors put in dialogue the contributions of Marc Auge with Zyggy Bauman toward a new understanding of this postmodern phenomenon.
Originality/value
Based on the metaphor of vagabonds and tourists, we give a snapshot of the problem of homelessness in Buenos Aires city and its effects on the tourism industry. Unlike other English-speaking countries where the cities are actively organized by the state, Buenos Aires city lacks a planned program to regulate and relocate homeless people. They dwell in nonplaces nearby tourists sleeping in the streets near luxury hotels (but for sure escaping any planning or governmental control).
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Andrew Ebekozien, Clinton Aigbavboa, Zinhle Mohlasedi, Opeoluwa Akinradewo and Emmanuel Bamfo-Agyei
Studies showed that stakeholders want the construction sector’s organisations to be more accountable and transparent regarding social and environmental issues through corporate…
Abstract
Purpose
Studies showed that stakeholders want the construction sector’s organisations to be more accountable and transparent regarding social and environmental issues through corporate social responsibility (CSR). There is a paucity of literature regarding CSR implementation in the construction sector, especially in developing countries like South Africa. Hence, the study evaluated CSR’s merits and hindrances and suggested solutions to enhance its implementation in the South African construction sector of Mpumalanga Province.
Design/methodology/approach
The researchers employed a questionnaire survey method to collect data from 68 useable respondents in the South African construction sector of Mpumalanga Province. The main section of the questionnaire was divided into three parts, each addressing an objective mean item score ranking technique.
Findings
Findings show management lacks willingness, absence of recognition for implementing CSR at tender adjudication, professionals regard CSR as a “soft issue,” inadequate ability to carry out CSR initiatives and lax CSR knowledge emerged as the key issues hindering construction stakeholders, especially construction companies, from participating in CSR in South Africa. The research suggests initiatives to enhance CSR in the construction industry.
Originality/value
The study shows that the findings can be used to improve the implementation of CSR engagement and possibly enhance a policy to stimulate friendly CSR in the South African construction sector.
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Kawther Mousa, Zhenglian Zhang and Eli Sumarliah
The scarcity of literature related to the PPP (public-private partnership) barriers in construction projects within war areas, and hence the dearth of information to deliver…
Abstract
Purpose
The scarcity of literature related to the PPP (public-private partnership) barriers in construction projects within war areas, and hence the dearth of information to deliver viable and effective strategies to those barriers, are the primary causes for the failures of PPP schemes in such areas, particularly in Palestine. Financial and non-financial investments are more problematic in war zones than non-war nations and may escalate barrier for projects' success. The investigation purposes to discover proper answers to the barriers of PPP infrastructure schemes and highlight the execution of barrier reactions.
Design/methodology/approach
Specialists were asked to deliver approaches to alleviate 21 barriers and recommend the period needed for applying them. Later, the relevance of alleviation events was examined through prioritization according to the results attained from three elements, i.e. the impact of every barrier and the strategy's viability and efficacy.
Findings
While the most unfavorable barrier was finalized to be the unfeasibility of delivering physical security, the most valid answer was associated with the lack of government cohesiveness and responsibility to perform its duties. The discovered barriers are typical within warring nations, but the paper concentrated on Palestine.
Originality/value
This study is an initial effort to examine PPP barriers in Palestinian infrastructure projects. The presented strategies can be applied as a novel set for barrier reaction improvement in occupied nations such as Palestine. Moreover, the results can develop the usage of PPP and enhance the barrier sharing in this scheme.
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Shabnam Khan, Saqib Rehman and Adeel Nasir
This study aims to explore the role of green motive (GM) and green dynamic capabilities (GDC) in green innovation (GI) through green value co-creation (GVC). Moreover, this study…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the role of green motive (GM) and green dynamic capabilities (GDC) in green innovation (GI) through green value co-creation (GVC). Moreover, this study investigates the moderation of top management support (TMS) to strengthen the mediation of specific constructs; GM, GDC, green value co-creation (GVC) and green innovation (GI).
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 337 respondents (executive level/chief executive officer (CEO)) of service organizations were approached using a convenience sampling technique to collect the data through the survey method. Of these, 294 (87% response rate) duly filled responses were used in the final data analysis. In SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) v-23, the Process Macro-Hayes was used to evaluate the study's conceptual framework empirically.
Findings
The study revealed that TMS strengthened the mediation framework of GM, GDC, GVC and GI. Moreover, all hypotheses related to direct and indirect associations of specific constructs used in the theoretical framework were statistically significant and proved.
Originality/value
The comprehensive framework for GI of service organizations, primarily in the context of developing countries like Pakistan, is deficient in literature. This study helps service organizations by providing a comprehensive GI model to put a central focus on the transformation of management philosophy and working approach for achieving GI in the services structure.
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The purpose of this paper is primarily methodological. This paper aims to complement the novel sociological argument of Hendrik Vollmer’s paper on tacit coordination of accounting…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is primarily methodological. This paper aims to complement the novel sociological argument of Hendrik Vollmer’s paper on tacit coordination of accounting practices with a more familiar theory of accounting practice nexuses that has been stimulating an emerging stream of accounting research. The intention is to suggest some ways in which Vollmer’s ideas can be given traction, especially in field studies of accounting.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory to explore some of the ways in which elements of tacit coordination might be researched in accounting field studies.
Findings
Tacit coordination can be understood as a background practice that could operate as a dispersed practice in Schatzki’s sense. A practice theory perspective on tacit coordination is suggestive of a number of ways of studying the meaningful cultural contexts as part of which accounting operates. It emphasises, in particular, the active nature of silent, tacit coordination; attending to general knowledge practical know-how, rules and teleoaffectivity as four determinants of practices as specified by Schatzki; and the materiality of coordination.
Research limitations/implications
It has implications for field research insofar as it heightens the researcher’s awareness of tacit coordination as a potentially important set of practices and suggests a number of approaches for studying them. The main suggestions address some of the ways in which tacit coordination can be identified in field research.
Originality/value
This study reflects on the dispersed or integrated nature of tacit coordination practices in accounting.
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İrem Taştan and Zeynep Ozdamar Ertekin
This study aims to explore how a postmodern tribe enacts and re-interprets ideologies as a part of consumers’ collective experience, to enhance our understanding of consumer…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how a postmodern tribe enacts and re-interprets ideologies as a part of consumers’ collective experience, to enhance our understanding of consumer communities in conjunction with ideological capacities.
Design/methodology/approach
The community of “presenteers” is conceptualized as a self-organized tribe with heterogeneous components that generate capacities to act. Netnographic observation was conducted on 18 presenteer accounts and lasted around six months. Real-time data were collected by taking screenshots of the posts and stories that these users created and publicly shared. Data were analysed by adopting assemblage theory, combining inductive and deductive approaches. Firstly, a qualitative visual-textual content analysis of the tribe’s defining components was conducted. Then, the process continued with the thematic analysis of the ideological underpinnings of the tribe’s enactments.
Findings
Findings shed light on the ways in which consumer communities interpret the entanglement of religious, political, and cultural ideologies in shaping their experiences. In the case of the presenteers tribe, findings reflect a novel ideological interplay between neo-Ottomanism, post-feminism and consumerism.
Research limitations/implications
The study offers a deep dive into a unique tribe that is being organized around the consumer-created practice of “presenteering” and investigates consumer communalization in alignment with the ideological turn in culture-oriented interpretative research on consumers, consumption, and markets. This exploration helps to bridge the research on the communalization of consumers with the recent discussions of ideology in the postmodern market.
Originality/value
The study offers a deep dive into a unique tribe that is being organized around the consumer-created practice of “presenteering” and investigates consumer communalization in alignment with the ideological turn in culture-oriented interpretative research on consumers, consumption, and markets. This exploration helps to bridge the research on the communalization of consumers with the recent discussions of ideology in the postmodern market.
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Ana Catarina Coutinho and Wilker Ricardo Nóbrega
Studies examining public insecurity and tourism tend to develop their research from the tourist's perspective, thereby focusing on its consequences, which insufficiently and…
Abstract
Purpose
Studies examining public insecurity and tourism tend to develop their research from the tourist's perspective, thereby focusing on its consequences, which insufficiently and poorly contribute to the development process. With that in mind, the purpose of this study is to discuss the root causes of public insecurity and the urban development process surrounding tourism dynamics in Brazil's northeast region.
Design/methodology/approach
The complexity method was used to collect both documentary and normative data to understand the reality beyond the data on accommodations and vertical real estate developments over time. These data were organized in ArcGIS (version 10.5) and are discussed within the context of urban development, public insecurity and tourism theories.
Findings
The results of this study demonstrate that the relationship between tourism and public insecurity is rooted in discussions surrounding the urban development process, remodeled by the physical and symbolic dimensions surrounding the production of space. Nevertheless, the symbolism of tourism is not a constant when it comes to socio-spatial changes but rather acts as a physical and secondary dynamic throughout the entire reconfiguration process.
Originality/value
The findings of this study indicate that this study can be used for the elaboration of security policies in tourist destinations in Latin America that present high levels of violence, considering the discourses at implementing urban legislation.
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