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Since the 1970s the Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) have gradually expanded their role as external controllers of the public administration. Instead of merely controlling whether accounts are according to standards they have taken on a role as evaluators with a mandate to assess whether the public administration works economically, efficiently and effectively. With this new regime of external control, the question arises whether the SAIs’ control, in practice, contributes to a more efficient and effective public sector. Whether this external control will be effective depends, in the end, on the extent to which the organisations learn from the control they are subjected to and make actual changes. The chapter uses theories of cultural differences and theories on control within public administration to understand civil servant perceptions of SAI results. Data on civil servants’ reactions to the SAIs’ performance audit in four countries are analysed to see whether performance audits have any impact on the audited entities. The research is based on 696 responses to questionnaires sent out to civil servants in three different Nordic countries plus one new democracy in northern Europe, Estonia.

The current study examines public accountants' professionalism and professional commitment (PC) and their effect on job performance. Results provide support for four of five dimensions of Hall's (1968) professionalism framework (beliefs in professional affiliation, professional dedication, self-regulation, and social obligation) and Meyer et al.'s (1993) three-dimensional PC framework (affective, continuance, and normative professional commitment) for modeling public accountants. Support was also found for most of the hypothesized relationships between professionalism and PC. Beliefs in professional affiliation, professional dedication, and self-regulation positively influenced affective professional commitment (APC). Belief in professional affiliation was negatively influenced by continuance professional commitment (CPC) but positively influenced by normative professional commitment (NPC). Belief in social obligation was also positively influenced by NPC. As expected, professionalism and PC were associated with job performance. Professionalism had an incremental effect beyond PC on job performance and as well, PC had an incremental effect over professionalism on job performance. Identifying relationships between professionalism and professional commitment with desirable outcomes is important for justifying future investments in the public accounting profession. Understanding these issues will assist in determining the types of professional attributes and commitments that are and should be fostered by the accounting profession.

Using experimental scenarios, the current study suggest that the management accountants’ professional attributes social obligation, professional autonomy, professional affiliation, and professional dedication are associated with three ethical rationales that have been identified as playing important roles in ethical judgment, the perception of the ethicality of an action; moral equity, contractualism, and relativism. Understanding these issues will assist in determining the management accounting professional attributes that should be fostered in encouraging the ethical judgments of management accountants since research indicates that the moral equity and contractualism rationales are consistent with individuals at the post-conventional stage of ethical development and more ethical judgments while the relativism rationale is consistent with the conventional stage of moral development and less ethical judgments.

In this chapter, I study athlete activism as practices of collective care in the context of football communities in Kerala, India. This particular collective is formed through a network of football players, fans, organizers of tournaments, team managers, and families of these actors. I look at these practices through two different yet interconnected “events.” One event is the public discussion of a form of care represented in the Malayalam movie titled Sudani from Nigeria (2018). The movie shows the acts of care centered on the mothers of a local football team manager and an African player who plays for a local team in Malabar. The other event that I seek to study is a campaign not yet fully articulated nor has generated significant discussions in the public sphere possibly because of its emerging nature. A local team manager organized a campaign during the initial months of the COVID-19 lockdown to facilitate the safe return of African players in the Malabar tournament circuit. The campaign led to the establishment of a network of care that is invested in the welfare of migrant athletes. Through these two events, I will look at what constitutes athlete activism at a translocal level in South India. I argue that such practices of care reconstitute the relationships among the people across the region as well as the people's relationship with the state. These practices of care recognize the inequalities in terms of race, class, and nationality and encourage action toward social change.

This chapter explores some of the complexities involved when undertaking research at an international level in the area of “inclusive” education and “special needs” education. The complexities encountered by researchers working in these fields, mirror many of the challenges that comparativists in education studies find themselves addressing. Drawing from earlier investigations and from reports by international organizations, this chapter highlights some of the dilemmas and challenges that researchers face when considering inclusion and special needs education in different countries. Differing interpretations of “inclusion” are discussed and then contrasted with thinking around “special needs” practices. The chapter moves forward to analyze how the adoption of differing theoretical frameworks can influence the way that “disability” is conceptualized and therefore how inclusive and special needs education are interpreted and then put into practice. The chapter argues that cross-cultural work opens up opportunities for further development and learning in this field. We further argue that such cross-cultural work can become a mechanism to instigate fundamental change in education.

A recent study reported Black women are frequently labeled unprofessional due to hair presentation, 1.5 times more likely to be sent home citing “unprofessional hair,” and 80% likely to alter their natural hair texture (Dove, 2019) through chemicals or heat to fit into organizational norms. Meanwhile, conversations about hair discrimination and bias remain whispers in The Ivory Tower. Despite this study, contemporary research regarding higher education and the politics of Black women, Black hair, and hair texture is sparse. The lack of representation in higher education organizations and lack of literature suggest that Black, higher education professional women are at risk of experiencing chilly work environments that could impact belonging, career trajectory, and earning potential. Some individuals outside the African Diaspora may consider the notion of a physical characteristic, like hair, to be insignificant, let alone a salient identity for Black women. However, my experience as a higher education practitioner and scholar states differently. I assert higher education institutions continue to perpetuate and reproduce oppressive dynamics that specifically target Black women and Black hair when hair discrimination and bias are left out of the conversation to address diversity and inclusion concerns. This chapter introduces a historical context of Black hair discrimination; explores my lived experiences navigating Black hair, hair texture, and professionalism in higher education; outlines challenges for higher education institutions and prioritizes Black women alongside diversity and inclusion efforts.

Purpose: In this chapter, we develop a concept of social biographies which draws on social network and life course theories to examine how a diverse set of social relationships impacts health of sexual and gender minority (SGM) people over time.

Design/methodology/approach: We provide an overview of several decades of research on SGM people's social relationships, organizing this research within a social biographies framework.

Findings: We theorize about the importance of both the structure and content of SGM people's social networks for health, how these social relationships interact with each other, how these social biographies and their impacts shift across SGM cohorts and over the life course, and how they further are shaped by the intersection of a range of factors (e.g., race/ethnicity, social class).

Social biographies can remain constant or change over time, and relationships of all types and durations have the power to significantly improve or undermine health. This is in part because social ties both buffer and exacerbate the inimical effects of stress on health.

Originality/value: Traditional conceptualizations of relationships fail to reflect the diversity of relationships in SGM lives. Studying this diversity deepens our view of how social biographies influence health and how health inequities between SGM and cisgender and heterosexual (cishet) populations emerge. Studying social biographies of SGM people using theoretical and methodological tools from life course and social network perspectives reveals existing voids in the current literature, enabling researchers to better understand the shifting nature of social relationships in the twenty-first century.