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The paper aims to explore the relationship between accounting and racial violence through an investigation of sharecropping in the postbellum American South.

A range of primary sources including peonage case files of the US Department of Justice and the archives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are utilised. Data are analysed by reference to Randall Collins' theory of violence. Consistent with this theory, a micro-sociological approach to examining violent encounters is employed.

It is demonstrated that the production of alternative or competing accounts, accounting manipulation and failure to account generated interactions where confrontational tension culminated in bluster, physical attacks and lynching. Such violence took place in the context of potent racial ideologies and institutions.

The paper is distinctive in its focus on the interface between accounting and “actual” (as opposed to symbolic) violence. It reveals how accounting processes and traces featured in the highly charged emotional fields from which physical violence could erupt. The study advances knowledge of the role of accounting in race relations from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, a largely unexplored period in the accounting history literature. It also seeks to extend the research agenda on accounting and slavery (which has hitherto emphasised chattel slavery) to encompass the practice of debt peonage.

The purpose of this paper is to determine if companies in the modular and offsite construction (MOC) industry are agile or not and its level of application for agility principles, which allows for quick responses to the increasingly dynamic nature of industry environments.

This paper proposes an agility assessment framework for MOC that uses 48 assessment attributes organized into four categories: metrics, drivers, enablers and capabilities. A questionnaire approach was used to disseminate the framework globally in 19 countries and synthesize its relevance to the MOC industry. The questionnaire had 55 complete responses, majority of respondents work in managerial positions for MOC manufacturing facilities and onsite general contractors.

It was found that the lowest metric score for adapting to change was for cost since controlling cost would be difficult for any changes required after the design freeze stage. The top agility driver was found to be the need to respond to the wide variety of customer expectations, while the lowest driver was the existence of competing priorities. The top agility enabler was vendor partnership, which can be related to current postpandemic supply chain disruptions. Regarding technological capabilities, Europe and the USA acquired better scores compared to Asia, Latin America and Africa.

This study contributes to the MOC body of knowledge by creating an agility assessment tool for MOC firms to analyze their agile approach and environment, identifying the preliminary importance of agility assessment attributes and determining significant agile differences between the main MOC industry groups.