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The purpose of this paper is to develop the lifecycle and teleology process theory illustrations by uniting processes and their outcomes based on their being bounded in time.

The study combines objective and subjective ontological approaches to organisational development and change processes. The narrative data of corporate rebranding among small B2B companies were gathered through a multiple case study and analysed in relation to flow of time. The illustrations of teleology and lifecycle process theory are modified based on empirical data.

The underlying logic of the lifecycle and teleology illustrations is found to be the same. The historical processes follow the logic of the lifecycle processes and emphasise the outcomes; the lifecycle process theory illustration is modified by adding outcomes. The current processes are in line with the literal description of the teleology. Teleology processes are illustrated using double-headed arrows between all processes.

Employing the objective and subjective ontological view in the same study might be questioned. The modifications to the process theory illustrations are only one view on the issue and the study does not take a stand on how the imagined future processes might be described.

The study helps researchers and managers better understand the lifecycle and teleology process theory and the role of outcomes in process research. The study should encourage researchers and managers to incorporate the role of process outcomes into their future (business) planning more efficiently, and combine different ontological views.

The study is a rare attempt to develop process theory illustrations.

The purpose of the paper is to define a range of entrepreneurial concepts and provide a critical review of their content in order to map the forms of the entrepreneurial actions within their teleological context.

Based on the authors' definition of teleology as the process of heading towards an end, entrepreneurship was categorized into a three‐item typology, namely subject, process and object. The latter served as a platform for the analysis, which reveals some key qualities about research in entrepreneurship.

The paper provides a categorization of entrepreneurship both at the distinction (subject, process, object) and the contextual level and the commonalities and differences among entrepreneurship's different teleological approaches are analyzed and the potential is offered for further avenues of research to emerge. Additionally, it is demonstrated that the teleological approaches represent distinct approaches to interpret diverse aspects of the entrepreneurial phenomenon and provide insights into the way in which the entrepreneurial process itself unfolds.

The paper provides an innovative categorization of entrepreneurship as subject, process and object while discussing a variety of various entrepreneurial forms through their teleological nature within each of the three categories. The paper is valuable to scholars seeking to further advance their understanding in the various fields of entrepreneurship, understand the function of the particular set of activities to be undertaken, the role of particular individuals/agents involved in the entrepreneurial process, the opportunity identification/exploitation process as well as the particular objective that each entrepreneurial form aims at fulfilling.

In the current digital era where online content is riddled with fabricated metrics and rankings, this research aims to investigate the underpinning mechanisms of the calculative practices which actors engage with to evaluate digital platform content in the absence of well-defined performance measures.

The paper focuses on the online, photo-sharing platform Instagram which is devoid of common performance measures such as rankings, ratings and reviews. The authors applied netnographic methods to capture users' actions and interactions at the Greek Instagram community. The authors adopt a practice lens as informed by Schatzki's ‘site ontology’ to capture actors' calculative practices as organised by rules, teleoaffective structures and general and practical understandings.

Platform actors engage in aesthetic and palpable evaluations of other user profiles and their posted content. They employ permissible (e.g., using third-party apps) and illicit (e.g., lobbying and procuring engagement) tactics to measure and manage digital platform performance, fabricate metrics and blur others' evaluations, in pursuit of prestige and material teleologies. Their calculative practices are conditioned by an implicit social etiquette, which permeates the platform both horizontally and vertically.

First, the paper captures and theorises the mechanisms which underpin actors' calculative practices for performance measurement in the absence of robust judgement devices. Second, it demonstrates how ambiguous assemblages of material and prestige teleologies, aesthetic and palpable evaluative regimes and implicit rules and practical expertise collectively invoke platform actors' calculative practices and the construction of performance measures. In doing so, it contributes to performance measurement literature via demonstrating how management accounting is implicated in the evaluation of digital platform outputs.

The paper provides insight on how platform actors fabricate performance metrics, what they perceive as ‘good’ online content and what constitutes an ‘impactful’ user account or a ‘successful’ social media campaign. Such findings are valuable to management accountants, entrepreneurs and practitioners who seek to evaluate digital platform performance.

This study aims to investigate the hybridization practices that medical managers engage with to promote accounting and performance measurement in the hybrid setting of healthcare. In doing so, the authors explore how medical managers enact and become practitioners of hybridity.

The authors adopt a practice lens to conceptualize hybridization as an emergent, situated practice and capture the micro-activities that medical managers engage with when they enact hybridity. The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with medical managers, business managers and coding professionals and collected documents at an English National Health Service (NHS) hospital over the course of five years.

The findings accentuate two emergent practices through which medical managers instill hybridity to individuals who are hesitant or resistant to hybridization. Medical managers engage in equivocalizing and de-stigmatizing practices to broaden the understandings, further diversify or reconcile the teleologies of clinicians in non-managerial roles. In doing so, the authors signal the merits of accounting in improving care outcomes and remove the stigma associated to clinical engagement with costs.

The study contributes to hybridization and practice theory literature via capturing how hybridity is enacted in practice in a healthcare setting. As medical managers engage with and promote accounting information and performance measurement technologies in their practice environment, they transcend professional boundaries and hybridize the professional spaces that surround them.

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).

The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding of how change in environmental practices occurs in business networks. The study examines what types of network change processes occur in bringing about environmental change. Further, the basic change process theory types (life-cycle, teleology, dialectics and evolution) involved in the change processes are analyzed.

A multiple, embedded, network case study was undertaken in the Australian agrifood sector, focusing on the pork and dairy industries.

Change was found to occur through the interaction of multiple network processes operating simultaneously and sequentially over time. Thirteen network process categories were identified, grouped further into legislative, business case and altruistic overarching motivations. Legislative change processes emphasize the need for continued government intervention through enforced legislation. Teleology and dialectics were common at the beginning of many change processes, followed by life-cycle theory types.

The study brings together change process conceptualizations from prior unconnected literatures into a comprehensive change process categorization framework. Examining changes in the activity dimension adds to network dynamics literature previously focusing on changes in the actor and resource dimensions. Contributions are made to processual research methods by theoretically and empirically clarifying connections between events, activities and processes. Analyzing the underlying change process theory types at the network level adds to both management and business network literature. Finally, the study answers calls to study sustainability issues at a network level.

This paper aims to examine the influence of individual internal principles and perceived external factors on the ethical attitudes toward environmental practices, on the part of Taiwanese environmental business managers.

The analysis of 295 pretest samples, moral intensity on environmental issues was divided into “perception of environmental harm” and “perceived immediacy and stress”. Following this, a questionnaire survey of environmental managers from the top 1,000 enterprises was conducted with 203 valid samples analyzed by a structural equation model.

The research findings demonstrated that moral intensity concerning environmental issues is not as significant as expected, and had less influence than environmental ethics. Assuming that part of the reason for this is that moral intensity is generally based on a viewpoint of teleology, the paper proposes some discussion and suggestions.

Some limitations existed during this research, especially in the data collection or analyzing process. However, besides teleology, there are many other viewpoints of moral philosophy.

Environmental ethics is regarded as an internal principle, whereas the perceived moral intensity of managers on environmental issues is treated as an external factor. People's ethical decisions might be based on different views of moral philosophy such as teleology, deontology, or virtue ethics.

Since there was no suitable questionnaire related to moral intensity on environmental issues in the past, the paper presents a new questionnaire which used exploratory factor analysis to allocate moral intensity concerning environmental issues into two components: “perception of environmental harm” and “perceived immediacy and stress”.

The paper seeks to provide a theoretical contribution to the current phase of the knowledge creation theory of knowledge management (KM) by addressing the need for a paradigm shift and having more ontological and epistemological discussions.

The proposed “becoming to know” framework builds on the KM literature review and on the study of learning, knowing and becoming concepts from several perspectives. Both conceptual and empirical research papers contribute to the framework.

The paper presents the challenges of KM; it identifies five phases of the knowledge creation theory development through 1995‐2008; it summarizes the main criticism against the theory; and it proposes the “becoming epistemology” concept and the “becoming to know” framework. The main elements of this framework are: engaging, exploring, experiencing, emerging, enabling and evolving.

Study of the KM literature reveals several other challenges that are not addressed here and could provide opportunities for researchers. The paper calls for more discussions regarding the paradigm shift and for more attention to the participative research paradigm, as well as action and case study research in KM.

Drawing on the participative paradigm, epistemology of practice, extended epistemology, transformative teleology, becoming ontology and on concepts of learning, knowing, and becoming, the proposed framework illustrates the dynamic, iterative, interactive interplay and evolution of ontological and epistemological knowledge creation spirals that is the essence of the knowledge creation theory.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the concept of “transformative business sustainability”. “Business sustainability” refers the total effort of a company – including its demand and supply chain network – to reduce the impact on the Earth's life‐ and eco‐systems –, i.e. the total e‐footprint. “Transformative” highlights the need for an open minded, dynamic and flexible approach to “business sustainability” not governed by blinkers.

This paper discusses a conceptual development of transformative business sustainability, derived from a frame of reference. The essence is the introduction of a multi‐layer model of units (i.e. different businesses or other stakeholders), a network of e‐footprint sources and a “recovery pool and redistribution buffer” at the interface.

Transformative business sustainability is both a theoretical and managerial concept. It could also be seen as a roadmap to plan, implement and evaluate business sustainability.

Transformative business sustainability provides opportunities for development. Suggestions for further research are presented.

E‐footprint sources in business, applying an Earth‐to‐Earth approach, are described. The concept of transformative business sustainability contributes by achieving genuine and continuous business sustainability and awareness at strategic, tactical and operative levels of business, avoiding use of buzzwords and window dressing.

Well‐being of the planet Earth has to be at the core of business sustainability. The authors contend that the “recovery pool and redistribution buffer” is crucial in the planning, implementation and evaluation of transformative business sustainability.

From a micro-macro perspective, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the welfare-related criteria reported by the heads of political parties’ youth wings in Mexico, the implicit and explicit religious beliefs that inform some of those criteria and the (Foucauldian) pastoral genealogy of both the criteria and beliefs.

The paper draws on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with a group of 32 heads of three political parties’ youth wings in Mexico. The interpretation of the data builds on a previous genealogical analysis of Foucauldian pastoralism in colonial Mexico.

The respondents’ criteria on a state that should aim at procuring “material-spiritual” and “material-transcendental” types of well-being and politics as “help,” are partly informed by religious values. Such criteria and religious values have been partly constructed out of a pastoralism which was deployed during the Spanish colonial regime and included “temporal” and “spiritual” teleologies of government and the practice of charity as (self-)governmental technique.

The literature on welfare/social policies of Latin American countries like Mexico tends not to problematize issues of secularity other than the religions’ undesirable intrusions in the political field. Governmentality studies also tend to bypass Foucault’s discussion of pastoralism. An empirical study of the pastoral genealogy of contemporary political rationalities in a constitutionally secular country such as Mexico can prompt further research on the gaps above and comparative analyses of pastoral and welfare governmentalities across Latin American and other world regions.