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Business has a critical part to play in transforming the global economy and society to achieve sustainable development. Many granular sustainability accounting and management tools have been offered. To systematize these piecemeal developments, this paper aims to develop a framework for analysis of the potential role of sustainability management accounting (SMA). The key challenge addressed is how SMA could be extended to support future-oriented, long-term, pro-active management of multiple issues to contribute towards strong sustainable development at the macro-economy level.

This conceptual paper examines SMA within a multi-level, context-action-transformation framework which can move organizations and society towards sustainability. Based on normative stakeholder theory, including concern for mainstreaming marginalized stakeholders, the paper discusses the role of SMA and how it can contribute necessary information to sustainable development of the company and beyond its boundaries.

Guided by a SMA framework linking context, action and transformation and normative stakeholder theory, which considers all stakeholders, the paper shows how the present lack of progress towards macro-level sustainable development can be addressed. This requires a focus on measuring and assessing positive impacts and forward-looking, long-term and proactive management of multiple sustainability issues as typified by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The paper distinguishes between two aspects of SMA – a focus on reducing unsustainability and a focus on transformations towards sustainability. It is observed that there is insufficient emphasis on the latter at present if SMA is to provide comprehensive support to achieving the SDGs. A set of supportive tools is presented as a guide to practice and future developments.

The paper considers how SMA can enable and support transformations towards sustainability at the macro- and meso-level. Different transformational challenges and opportunities are discussed. In particular, the need to balance consideration of time, proactivity and multiplicity, as highlighted in the SDGs, is identified as the central way forward for SMA.

First-generation college students in the United States are a unique demographic that is often characterized by the institutions that serve them with a risk-laden and deficit-based model. However, our analysis of the transcripts of open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 22 “first-gen” respondents suggests they are actively deft, agentic, self-determining parties to processes of identity construction that are both externally imposed and potentially stigmatizing, as well as exemplars of survivance and determination. We deploy a grounded theory approach to an open-coding process, modeled after the extended case method, while viewing our data through a novel synthesis of the dual theoretical lenses of structural and radical/structural symbolic interactionism and intersectional/standpoint feminist traditions, in order to reveal the complex, unfolding, active strategies students used to make sense of their obstacles, successes, co-created identities, and distinctive institutional encounters. We find that contrary to the dictates of prevailing paradigms, identity-building among first-gens is an incremental and bidirectional process through which students actively perceive and engage existing power structures to persist and even thrive amid incredibly trying, challenging, distressing, and even traumatic circumstances. Our findings suggest that successful institutional interventional strategies designed to serve this functionally unique student population (and particularly those tailored to the COVID-moment) would do well to listen deeply to their voices, consider the secondary consequences of “protectionary” policies as potentially more harmful than helpful, and fundamentally, to reexamine the presumption that such students present just institutional risk and vulnerability, but also present a valuable addition to university environments, due to the unique perspective and broader scale of vision their experiences afford them.

The purpose of this study is to explore the strength and value-relevance of social capital in an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) provides a new perspective to explaining the configurations and interactions that shape entrepreneurial outcomes in regions. Research on the nature of interactions in EEs is still an ongoing debate. The authors draw from “organisational fields” studies to critically examine the interactions among actors in a non-transparent EE using the case of the Lagos region.

The methodology is based on a qualitative study of 40 semi-structured interviews with various ecosystem actors in the Lagos region, including financiers, government officials, universities, founders and venture capitalists. Additionally, data from the semi-structured interviews were triangulated with data obtained from a two-day focus group discussion Summit where Lagos’ EE issues were raised. This study analysed both data using thematic analysis.

This study suggests that in a non-transparent EE, four types of interactions are apparent: collaborative, stratified, clustered and unleveraged. Authors argue that in a non-transparent EE, there are blockages and distortions in the flow of resources to entrepreneurs and a higher proportion of entrepreneurs are unable to plug into the ecosystem to extract value for their businesses without a strong social capital.

The authors argue that entrepreneurs require deliberate effort to improve structural and relational social capital to plug into their ecosystem to extract value for their businesses.

The focus on interaction in a non-transparent EE is a novel approach to studying interactions within EEs. In addition, the study is an early attempt to explore entrepreneurial interactions within the Lagos region.

This study aims to examine how teacher candidates (TCs) in Türkiye and the USA navigate their intercultural communication skills in a telecollaboration project.

Forty-eight TCs participated (26 in Türkiye and 22 in the USA) in the study. TCs discussed critical issues in multicultural education on an online learning platform for six weeks. Their discussions were analyzed using content and discourse analysis.

The findings indicated that TCs approached the telecollaborative space as a translingual contact zone and positioned themselves and their interlocutors in the discourse by using the personal pronouns; I, we, you and they. When they positioned themselves using we (people in Türkiye/USA), they spoke on behalf of everyone included in the scope of we. Their interlocutors responded to these positionings either by accepting this positioning and responding with a parallel positioning or by engaging in translingual negotiation strategies to revise the scope of we and sharing some differences/nuances in beliefs and practices in their community.

When TCs talk about their culture and community in a singular manner using we, they frame them as the same across every member in that community. When they ask questions to each other using you, the framing of the questions prime the respondents to sometimes relay their own specific experiences as the norm or consider experiences from different points of view through translingual negotiation strategies. A singular approach to culture(s) may affect the marginalized communities the most because they are lost in this representation, and their experiences and voices are not integrated in the narratives or integrated with stereotypical representation.

Teachers and teacher educators should first pay attention to their language choices, especially use of pronouns, which may communicate inclusion or exclusion in intercultural conversations. Next, they should prepare their students to adopt and practice language choices that communicate respect for cultural diversity and are inclusive of marginalized populations.

Speakers’ pronoun use includes identity construction in discourse by drawing borders around and between communities and cultures with generalization and particularity, and by patrolling those borders to decide who is included and excluded. As a response, interlocutors use pronouns either to acknowledge those borders and respond with corresponding ones from their own context or negotiate alternative representations or further investigate for particularity or complexity. In short, pronouns could lead the direction of intercultural conversations toward criticality and complexity or otherwise, and might be reasons where there are breakdowns in communication or to fix those breakdowns.

This study shows that translingual negotiation strategies have explanatory power to examine how speakers from different language backgrounds negotiate second and third order positionings in the telecollaborative space.

This study of job advertisements for internal communication practitioners aims to investigate the signals that organisations are sending the profession about what is required of these roles. The concept of corporate voice – the “voice” of the organisation – is problematised to explore tensions in vocality. The aim is to support communication practitioners to navigate multi-vocality in the evolving professional context of digital communication technologies and changes in the workplace.

This qualitative study considers the role of voice in corporate communication practices and offers insights into “digital disruption” and the discursive pressure of employers' priorities on the profession and its practices. Job advertisements for internal communication practitioners were examined during 6-month periods in 2018, 2020 and 2022, which was a significant time of change for the profession with the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Qualitative content analysis of 514 internal communication job advertisements identifies that control and consistency are valorised, and continue to dominate descriptions of internal communication skills and responsibilities. The digital affordances that communication practitioners rely on has not changed significantly and a preference for “broadcasting” is evident.

This study provides insights into how Australian organisations shape and sustain univocal corporate communication practices, and the incompatibility of narrow configurations of voice with emerging organisational challenges such as social connectedness.

Gender-diverse people experience unique cultural and interpersonal stigma in mainstream society and sometimes within their own communities; they face allegations of inauthenticity based on their nonconformity to either cisnormative or transnormative gender regimes. Based on 21 in-depth life history interviews, we unveil the intricate interactional process of negotiating identity and authenticity in the biographical work of gender-diverse individuals. In this study, gender-diverse people engaged in a “gender audit” with their gender-diverse interviewer. Gender audits yield verbal performances of gender with oneself and others. Ambiguity was “accounted for” or “embraced and created” in their biographical work to organize their life stories and undermine binary essentialism – a discourse that was “discursively constraining.” Gender audits took place in participants' day-to-day lives, either through self-audits, questioning from others, or both. In the final analysis, we assert that we all engage in gender auditing. Gender audits are intersubjective sites of domination, subordination, resistance, and social change. Gender diversity, then, can be viewed as a product of gender in flux.

This paper highlights an assignment in a combination upper-division undergraduate and graduate civic leadership class at a Midwestern state comprehensive university. The three-part assignment challenges students’ critical thinking skills and research capabilities while simultaneously necessitating the exploration of contrasting viewpoints on contentious issues.

Intentionally exposing students to diverse perspectives in a controlled environment.

We posit that the severity and frequency of these issues can be mitigated through focused efforts.

Students are better prepared to engage in civil debate on controversial topics, which continuously divide our communities, after completing a class using this pedagogical strategy.

This article argues the value of integrating pragmatism in applying behavioural science to complex challenges. We describe a behaviour change-led knowledge co-production process in the specific context of climate change in Australia. This process was led by an interdisciplinary research team who struggled with the limitations of the prevailing deterministic behaviour change paradigms, such as the “test, learn, adapt” model, which often focuses narrowly on individual behaviours and fails to integrate multiple interpretations from diverse stakeholders into their knowledge co-production process.

This article uses collaborative reflection as a method of inquiry. We document the team’s experience of a recent challenge-led, programatic research initiative that applied behaviour change strategies to reduce climate vulnerabilities. We demonstrate the necessity of critical reflection and abductive reasoning in the face of the complexities inherent in knowledge co-production addressing complex problems. It underscores the importance of accommodating diverse perspectives and contextual nuances over a one-size-fits-all method.

The article shares lessons learnt about integrating collaborative and critical reflection throughout a project cycle and demonstrates the capacity of abductive reasoning to ease the challenges arising from the tension between behaviour change paradigms and knowledge co-production principles. This approach allows for a more adaptable and context-sensitive application, acknowledging the multiplicity of understandings and the dynamic nature of behavioural change in relation to climate adaptation.

This reflection contributes original insights into the fusion of pragmatism with behaviour change strategies, proposing a novel framework that prioritises flexibility, context-specificity and the recognition of various stakeholder perspectives in the co-production of knowledge.

Racism occurs in many ways and varies across countries, evolving and adapting to sociocultural history, as well as contemporary economic, political and technological changes. This chapter discusses the multilevel dimensions of racism and its diverse manifestations across multiracial societies. It examines how different aspects of racism are mediated interpersonally, and embedded in institutions, social structures and processes, that produce and sustain racial inequities in power, resources and lived experiences. Furthermore, this chapter explores the direct and indirect ways racism is expressed in online and offline platforms and details its impacts on various groups based on their intersecting social and cultural identities. Targets of racism are those who primarily bear the adverse effects. However, racism also affects its perpetrators in many ways, including by limiting their social relations and attachments, and by imposing social and economic costs. This chapter thus analyses the many aspects of racism both from targets and perpetrators' perspectives.

The paper aims to describe the positive and negative effects of night lights in historical sites, as well as the most salient challenges faced by the visitors of these sites and determine ways to address them. The study aims to suggest several light-and-shadow approaches and designs to enhance the experience of visiting historical sites.

This study identifies problems of nightlife in historical sites with an online international questionnaire to determine the preferences and difficulties faced by visitors of historical sites during day and night. After that Egypt was determined as a sample case of a developing country; its archaeological sites need to be improved. The main problems of historical Egyptian sites were investigated and approaches in developing historical sites with interactive lighting design were presented after an online questionnaire to the Egyptian society.

The paper shows that archaeological sites need some development, especially in their technological and lighting aspects, to overcome visitors’ low night-time interest in archaeological sites. Research has found certain limitations in the effects of constructing artificial illumination. The study provides modern sustainable solution for some light challenges in historical sites with approaches and solutions to solve it.

The results of that research could be applied in developing countries, but with larger specific studies to the historical urban locations according to the politics of the country.

The paper includes sustainable approaches in developing historical sites with technological lighting design required to enhance historical sites at night-time and make visits more interactive and interesting.

This paper presents an identified need of historical sites visitors’ to study applying modern approaches in enhancing urban historical sites.