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The purpose of this paper is to examine the disempowering and/or empowering role of accounting in the context of Indigenous Australians.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the disempowering and/or empowering role of accounting in the context of Indigenous Australians.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 31 interviewees participated in this study, which included 18 self-identified Indigenous Australians and 13 non-Indigenous Australians. A qualitative research methodology, and in particular an oral history method, was chosen because of its ability to support a deeper and richer form of inquiry. Bourdieu’s concepts provide the framework for mobilizing and analyzing the findings of this study.
Findings
The damaging role of accounting in the context of Indigenous peoples has largely stemmed from non-Indigenous peoples providing accounting services for Indigenous peoples. The evidence and analysis provided by this study postulates a constructive way forward of accounting’s role in contributing to the empowerment of Indigenous Australians.
Research limitations/implications
Limitations include being a non-Indigenous researcher conducting research in an Indigenous context, which may have prevented some interviewees from feeling comfortable to openly share their experiences and insights.
Practical implications
As this study’s findings have supported the theory that accounting skills can be used in an empowering way when used “by” Indigenous peoples, Indigenous Australians should be actively supported by the accounting bodies to gain the qualifications needed for membership of the accounting profession.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the expanding accounting literature that locates the role of accounting in the context of Indigenous peoples by proposing accounting as a tool of empowerment.
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Matthew Valasik and Matthew Phillips
The purpose of this paper is to use nearly a century’s worth of gang research to inform us about modern terrorist groups, specifically the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to use nearly a century’s worth of gang research to inform us about modern terrorist groups, specifically the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Design/methodology/approach
A case study approach is employed, comparing and contrasting the competing theoretical frameworks of gangs and terrorist organisations to understand group structure, demographics, patterns of behaviour (e.g. territoriality, strategic, and instrumental violence), goals, and membership patterns of ISIS.
Findings
The qualitative differences of ISIS make them more comparable to street gangs than other terrorist groups.
Practical implications
ISIS, while being qualitatively different from other terrorist groups, actually has many similarities with street gangs allowing for the adaptation of effective gang prevention, intervention, and suppression strategies. This paper highlights how the expansive literature on street gangs is able to inform practical interventions to directly target ISIS and deradicalise potential recruits. By introducing a gang-terror nexus on the crime-terror continuum, this paper provides a useful perspective on the decentralised but dynamic nature of modern era insurgencies. This paper urges similar case studies of terrorist organisations to determine the extent to which they conform to street gang characteristics.
Originality/value
Terrorist groups are often compared to street gangs, yet it has not been until the last few years that gang researchers (Curry, 2011; Decker and Pyrooz, 2011, 2015a, b) have begun to compare and contrast these two deviant group archetypes. The goal of this paper is to use nearly a hundred years of gang research to better equip scholars and practitioners with a broader understanding of terrorism and insurgency in the era of globalisation by presenting a case study of ISIS using a street gang perspective.
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Luis M. Romero-Rodriguez, Sabina Civila and Ignacio Aguaded
This study aims to review the theory based on «otherness» as a form of social exclusion and symbolic violence from the constructions of realities of the media, with particular…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to review the theory based on «otherness» as a form of social exclusion and symbolic violence from the constructions of realities of the media, with particular emphasis on the ethics and aesthetics of language and its role in materializing identity differences.
Design/methodology/approach
A search for specific criteria and boolean algorithms is carried out in Web of Science and Scopus on «otherness» [AND] «social exclusion», to then submit the emerging results to a co-occurrence matrix by citations with VOSViewer v. 1.6.13. From the relation tree of the most cited documents [min = 7] of the downloaded articles, a critical/analytical reading is made.
Findings
«Otherness» is reviewed to a greater extent from a Western perspective, and more specifically, from a Eurocentric one. This implies that the study of «otherness» is not sufficiently analyzed by Asian or African authors, who are excluded from the analysis. In this sense, «otherness» is understood as a theoretical construct and as any symbolic construction of the other (phenotypically, but also in ideology, values and customs), but which carries a load of stereotypes that can become polarization, demonization, ergo and violence.
Originality/value
Revisiting «otherness» as an informative construct becomes imperative in light of the emergence of extremist groups and xenophobic parties, as well as separatist policies such as Brexit or the Catalan split in Spain. Few articles contribute to elaborating a complete conceptual construct on «otherness» as an epistemological category of communication and information, so this research effort attempts to compile its theoretical discussion.
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Ibticem Ben Zammel and Rim Hachana
By positioning this study within the theoretical lenses of Bourdieu’s practice theory, this paper aims to provide a more contextual understanding of training transfer (TT) with a…
Abstract
Purpose
By positioning this study within the theoretical lenses of Bourdieu’s practice theory, this paper aims to provide a more contextual understanding of training transfer (TT) with a particular focus on the duality between objectivity and subjectivity that characterize social structures within two different fields (a public post office company and a multinational evolving in the ICT high-tech sector).
Design/methodology/approach
Multiple case study.
Findings
The findings demonstrate that TT cannot be dissociated from social interaction dynamics in the workplace, where objective and subjective structures play a strategic role. In fact, capital dispatching, power disparities and cultural imperatives influence TT practice in both cases. However, this influence differs from one field to another.
Practical implications
Top management team should pay more attention to power and particularly to symbolic power as it can influence TT intentions and effectiveness. They must be aware that not only the economic capital is sought after but also the cultural and the symbolic capital.
Originality/value
This study aims at lessening the gap between theory and practice on the TT problem, in an effort to increase comprehension of the social roots of the transferring process. This research deepens the analysis of the complexity of socialization structuring TT practice in two different fields.
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This paper aims to explore the gendered narratives of change management at Marks and Spencer (M&S) and uses them as a lens to consider the gendered nature of the change process…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the gendered narratives of change management at Marks and Spencer (M&S) and uses them as a lens to consider the gendered nature of the change process itself.
Design/methodology/approach
Two extant stories: Sleeping Beauty and the Trojan War are taken, along with the cultural archetype of the American West gunslinger to explore the gender aspects of change. The Marks and Spencer case is analysed using the corollary patriarchal narrative of Sleeping Beauty, a story whose organising logic is revealed as one of concern for patriarchal lineage, and legitimate succession. The paper, draws on the Marks and Spencer principals' memoirs and biographies.
Findings
Sleeping Beauty is shown as a narrative saturated in misogyny, aggression and violence. This violence, which is shown to characterise the Marks and Spencer case, is amplified in the second narrative, the Trojan War, in the highly personalised battles of the über‐warriors of The Iliad. The paper concludes that violent, hyper‐masculine behaviour creates and maintains a destructive cycle of leadership lionisation and failure at the company which precludes a more feminine and possibly more effective construction of change management.
Originality/value
Demonstrates how M&S, gendered from its birth, its development through the golden years, the crisis, its changes in leadership and its recent change management has attempted to respond to its changing environment.
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Laure Célérier and Luis Emilio Cuenca Botey
– The purpose of this paper is to explore how accountability practices can enable sociopolitical emancipation.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how accountability practices can enable sociopolitical emancipation.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors explore the emancipatory potential of accountability from a Bourdieusian perspective. The study is informed by a two-month socio-ethnographic study of the participatory budgeting (PB) process in Porto Alegre (Brazil). The field study enabled us to observe accountability and participatory practices, conduct 18 semi-structured interviews with councillors, and analyze survey data gathered from budgeting participants.
Findings
The paper demonstrates how PB both strengthened the dominants in the Porto Alegrense political field and changed the game played in this field; was characterized by accountability practices favouring the election of councillors with distinctive capitals, who were “dominated-dominants dominating the dominated”; brought emancipatory perspectives to councillors and, by doing so, opened the path to social change but also widened the gap with ordinary participants.
Research limitations/implications
The research supports Shenkin and Coulson’s (2007) thesis by demonstrating that accountability, when associated with participative democracy, can create substantial social change. Significantly, by investigating the emancipatory potential of accountability, the authors challenge the often taken-for-granted assumption in critical research that accountability reinforces asymmetrical power relations, and the authors explore alternative accountability practices. Doing so enables us to rethink the possibilities of accountability and their practical implications.
Originality/value
The authors study the most emblematic example of participatory democracy in South America; and the authors use Bourdieu’s theoretical framework to approach accountability at a community level.
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Stacy Banwell, Lynsey Black, Dawn K. Cecil, Yanyi K. Djamba, Sitawa R. Kimuna, Emma Milne, Lizzie Seal and Eric Y. Tenkorang
In this paper, the aim is to present an historical analysis to account for the association between prostitution, disease, and victimization. It also seeks to examine how…
Abstract
Purpose
In this paper, the aim is to present an historical analysis to account for the association between prostitution, disease, and victimization. It also seeks to examine how stigmatization and rejection are currently focused on the immigrant sex worker.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis is based on historical data about regulations in Portugal, in a recent ethnography carried out with street prostitutes and in a current study on immigrant sex workers and health care.
Findings
Sex workers have been recognized as a group “at risk” both because they are associated with sexually transmitted diseases and because they are acknowledged as victims of traffic and sexual exploitation. This label “group at risk” justifies some state policies often expressed in sanitary and social control measures, as regulations. Because migrant sex workers are simultaneously immigrants and sex workers they are perceived as a threat to social order and a sign of moral disorder and, so, they experience processes of rejection and stigmatization more significantly than local sex workers.
Originality/value
The knowledge of the negative consequences experienced by migrant sex workers implies an effort to produce changes in the policies and practices towards them. All those involved in research or intervention with migrant sex workers have the responsibility to be aware of the discrimination, violence, and control they are subjected to and must be committed enough to challenge them. This paper can be a contribution to that.
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