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In this paper we narrate a story of working on a large project funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage grant the ‘Keeping Connected: Young People, Identity and Schooling’ project. The purpose of the study is to consider the social connection and schooling of young people who have experienced long‐term chronic illness. While the research involves both quantitative and qualitative elements, the qualitative component is the largest and involves the most researcher time and diversity. At an early stage of the project, three of the researchers working on the qualitative team consider why the study was framed as a series of case studies rather than as ethnography. The second issue considered in this paper is the different approaches to data collection, data analysis and truth claims we might take.

Environmental philosophies have guided cultures throughout history and continue to do so. This paper uses a framework of environmental philosophies drawn from history and the present, to analyse contemporary corporate environmental reporting. The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the philosophical underpinnings of corporate reporting allows for a nuanced understanding of the relationship between corporate activities and nature, and in so doing demonstrates the moral practices of accounting for nature.

Three themes are extracted from a historical review of western environmental philosophy: dualism, transcendence and interconnectivity. These themes are applied to a sample of corporate environmental reports through discourse analysis, enabling the illustration of otherwise obscured moral characteristics of the corporate relationship with the natural environment.

This paper uses environmental philosophies to better understand some of the implicit messaging of corporate environmental reporting. Evidence of each of the three themes is found in a sample of environmental reports, predominantly dualism and interconnectivity.

Understanding that accounting is not just a technical, but also a social and moral practice expands the way the authors can interpret the outcomes of accounting. By presenting an exemplar of how accounting practice such as the corporate sustainability report can be analysed through a moral lens, this paper offers new insights intentioned to inform a more meaningful approach to environmental reporting.

A novel framework to explore the corporate sector’s relationship with the natural environment is presented. In light of current and predicted environmental changes, much of which has been attributed to the impact of corporate activities, the importance of a detailed explication of this relationship – such as the one proposed here – becomes imperative.

This paper aims to focus on the use of job evaluation used as a mechanism to increase gender pay equality, drawing on data from the UK local government sector.

Several research methods are used to collect data, including requesting information from local councils using the Freedom of Information Act, 2000, together with document analyses and interview data.

While the paper questions the effectiveness of job evaluation in achieving pay equality objectives, within a pay and labour market that tends to favour male‐dominated jobs, it nevertheless finds some pay improvements for women resulting from job‐evaluated pay system changes and suggests the use of pay progression systems could lead to further pay advancements for women.

This research has a number of limitations and further inquiries are needed to assess the impact of the slow progress of pay and grading reviews within local government. Methodologically isolating the effect of job evaluation from that of the other pay determination factors presents a significant challenge.

Focuses on the implementation in the local government sector of the 1997 single status agreement (SSA), which has been very slow. While overall funding and resources to implement the agreement have been low, there are, it is argued in this paper, other issues, centering on assumptions about job evaluation and its use to reduce gender pay inequality, which contribute to implementation difficulties.

On the world stage, the use of e‐learning is not a new phenomenon. However, many teachers within higher education favour, and are most comfortable with, the “talk and chalk”, face‐to‐face mode of plying their trade. For them, facilitating learning within virtual learning environments (VLEs) is often alien, and technically and pedagogically challenging. This paper outlines the trials and tribulations of a higher education institution (HEI) practitioner when engaging in the design, use and development of virtual learning environments as a departmental ground breaker within his institution. A model is proposed that will help other practitioners who view conversion of their teaching and learning from the traditional “talk and chalk” mode to a VLE as perhaps daunting and frightful.

Najib Mahfuz is the first Arab‐language author to win the Nobel Prize in literature. Born in 1911 the son of a middle‐class Jamaliyah merchant, he became the most popular novelist in Egypt and the Arab countries.

The design and introduction of new pay programs may be particularly challenging for multinational corporations (MNCs) because, given their diverse employee base, they face varied employee expectations regarding pay. We offer a model of how national cultural norms affect employee expectations for, and judgments about, pay fairness. We also describe how firms can best use two international compensation strategies for MNCs (a global integration strategy and a local responsiveness strategy) to optimize employees' justice judgments regarding new pay programs. More favorable justice judgments should improve the chances of new pay program survival and, subsequently, contribute to firm competitiveness.

This paper aims to examine the role numbers play in corporate environmental reporting. To deeply examine the ontological meanings of enumeration in the context of nature, the histories of number and accounting are explored. Some key tropes emerge from these histories, namely, distancing and control.

To explore some of the implications of quantifying nature, three years of environmental reports of ten companies from the ASX200 are analysed through a Barthsian lens. Examples of enumerating nature are highlighted and explored in terms of what this means for the corporate relationship with nature. This study has focussed on some specific aspects of nature that are commonly counted in corporate environmental reporting: carbon, energy, water, biodiversity and waste. This study explores how monetisation and obfuscation are used and how this informs the myth that nature is controllable.

This study finds that quantifying nature constructs a metaphorical distance between the company and the natural world which erodes the sense of connection associated with an authentic care for nature. These findings are critical in light of the detrimental impact of corporate activity on the natural world. The reports themselves, while promoted as a tool to help mitigate damage to the natural environment, are implicitly perpetuating its harm.

Given the extent to which companies are responsible for environmental damage and the potential capacity embedded in corporate communications, better understanding the implications of quantifying nature could powerfully instigate a new but necessary approach to nature.

The insights of this paper are relevant to those aiming to improve the underpinning approaches used in corporate environmental reporting. This paper provides new understandings of the ways quantitative expression of environmental values constructs the myth that nature is controllable.

At the Royal Society of Health annual conference, no less a person than the editor of the B.M.A.'s “Family Doctor” publications, speaking of the failure of the anti‐smoking campaign, said we “had to accept that health education did not work”; viewing the difficulties in food hygiene, there are many enthusiasts in public health who must be thinking the same thing. Dr Trevor Weston said people read and believed what the health educationists propounded, but this did not make them change their behaviour. In the early days of its conception, too much was undoubtedly expected from health education. It was one of those plans and schemes, part of the bright, new world which emerged in the heady period which followed the carnage of the Great War; perhaps one form of expressing relief that at long last it was all over. It was a time for rebuilding—housing, nutritional and living standards; as the politicians of the day were saying, you cannot build democracy—hadn't the world just been made “safe for democracy?”—on an empty belly and life in a hovel. People knew little or nothing about health or how to safeguard it; health education seemed right and proper at this time. There were few such conceptions in France which had suffered appalling losses; the poilu who had survived wanted only to return to his fields and womenfolk, satisfied that Marianne would take revenge and exact massive retribution from the Boche!

America has a long history of environmental awareness which evolved as the country grew and changed during the past 300 years. Today, an environmental concern by the people of the country is mainstream and therefore has become an integral part of corporate America. Explores the development, influence and direction of the US environmental movement. Provides background information to help understand why the marketplace is currently responding to the environmental stimulus. Looks at the marketing methods by which the country is expressing this environmental concern and traces the paths taken by those who first advocated the need for an environmental consciousness. Combines historical aspects of the American environmental movement with addressing the growing challenges facing the integration of business and environmental sensitivity.

Sustainable operations are increasingly part of firms’ competitive strategies. Research widely investigates the relationship between sustainable operations and competitive advantage, considering financial performance as a dependent variable, and shows controversial results. The purpose of this paper is to operationalize competitive advantage as internal and external intangible benefits, such as human resource (HR) and customer benefits. HR benefits concern the deployment of a workforce pursuing a firm’s goals and strategy; customer benefits concern the improvement of a firm’s relationship with its customers.

Empirical results are provided in an analysis of data from a survey conducted on a sample of 107 Italian firms in the food industry. A single industry and country are selected to avoid possible differences in regulations and in operations processes. Structural equation modelling is used to test hypotheses relating sustainable operations to HR and customer benefits.

The authors distinguish between green and social operations practices. Green operations practices directly impact customer benefits but not HR benefits. Social sustainable operations practices do not directly impact customer benefits but instead have a direct impact on HR benefits. Hence, through HR benefits, they have an indirect impact on customer benefits.

The authors provide results showing to operations managers that both green operations and social operations are crucial to obtaining customer benefits. Social operations do this by enhancing HR benefits. Green operations instead are not positively related to HR benefits.

This research serves as an original contribution to the sustainable operations literature in two ways. First, from a resource-based perspective, the relationship between sustainable operations, HR benefits, and customer benefits is proposed and tested. Such benefits are also shown to be interrelated based on the service profit chain model. Second, green and social operations practices are analysed separately providing a nuanced view of benefits related to sustainable operations.