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This study aims to investigate whether consumers and small businesses can transition from disposable to reusable coffee cups, using a community social marketing intervention, led by a Social Purpose Organisation.

An emergent case study approach using multiple sources of data developed an in-depth, multifaceted, real-world context evaluation of the intervention. The methodology draws on citizen science “messy” data collection involving multiple, fragmented sources.

Moving from single-use cups to reusables requires collective commitment by retailers, consumers and policymakers, despite the many incentives and penalties applied to incentivise behaviour change. Difficult post-COVID economics, austerity and infrastructure gaps are undermining both reusable acceptance and interim solutions to our dependence upon disposables.

Although the non-traditional methodology rendered gaps and omissions in the data, the citizen science was democratising and inclusive for the community.

Our practical contribution evaluates a whole community intervention setting to encourage reusable cups, integrating multiple stakeholders, in a non-controllable, non-experimental environment in contrast to previous research. This paper demonstrates how small community grants can foster impactful collaborative partnerships between an SPO and researchers, facilitate knowledge-exchange beyond the initial remit and provide a catalyst for possible future impact and outcomes.

To assess the impact at both the outcome and the process level of the intervention, we use Pawson and Tilley’s realist evaluation theory – the Context Mechanism Outcome framework. The methodological contribution demonstrates the process of citizen science “messy” data collection, likely to feature more frequently in future social science research addressing climate change and sustainability challenges.

From May 2024, Victoria (Australia) will mandatorily raise the minimum house energy rating standards from 6 to 7 stars. However, the latest data shows that only 5.73% of new Victorian houses were designed beyond 7-star. While previous literature indicates the issue’s link to the compliance behaviour of building practitioners in the design phase, the underlying behavioural determinants are rarely explored. This study thus preliminarily examines building practitioners’ compliance behaviour with 7-star Australian house energy ratings and beyond.

Using a widely-applied method to initially examine an under-explored phenomenon, eight expert interviews were conducted with building practitioners, a state-level industry regulator and a leading national building energy policy researcher. The study triangulated the data with government-led research reports.

The experts indicate that most building practitioners involved in mainstream volume projects do not go for 7 stars, mainly due to perceived compliance costs and reliance on standardized designs. In contrast, those who work on custom projects are more willing to go beyond 7-star mostly due to the moral norms for a low-carbon environment. The experts further agree that four behavioural determinants (attitudes towards compliance, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and personal norms) co-shape building practitioners’ compliance behaviour. Interventions targeting these behavioural determinants are recommended for achieving 7 stars and beyond.

This study demonstrates the behavioural determinants that influence building practitioners’ compliance decisions, and offers insight regarding how far they will go to meet 7 stars. It can facilitate the transition to 7 stars by informing policymakers of customized interventions to trigger behaviour change.

From 1979 to 2023, the takaful structure has been adopted in many jurisdictions, making the documenting of its early days of establishment relatively difficult and somewhat unreliable. This is unlike conventional insurance, where the history and legislation are well documented and archived in various research (Hellwege, 2016; Marano and Siri, 2017). The purpose of this paper is to provide a chronology for the establishment and development of takaful via the takaful establishment in each jurisdiction, documenting its first takaful operator and first takaful regulation.

This paper has used a qualitative method in the form of reviewing literature and available data such as journals, books and official resources. The data is thoroughly analysed in order to build the chronology for takaful. It adopted an exploratory research design, which is deemed suitable in situations where few works of literature have examined the subject (Neuman, 2014). The paper explores the establishment and non-establishment of takaful in 57 countries. The paper categorises the countries into seven regions starting with the GCC, Levant, Asia, Central Asia, Africa, Europe and Others.

The takaful chronology presented in this paper shows that takaful operations exist in 47 jurisdictions, starting from Sudan and the UAE in 1979, with the most recent adopters being Morocco and Iran in December 2021. It is found that 22 jurisdictions do not have takaful regulations, and the Takaful Act 1984, issued in Malaysia, is considered the first takaful regulation that sets the basis for other regulations that follow.

The paper contributes to the literature by providing a comprehensive chronology of takaful, especially as the few existing timelines have been found to be incomplete and consist of contradictory information.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the challenges relating to the integration of soft skill development with recruitment and retention strategies in small and micro businesses of a small island state. Recruitment and retention play an important role in the development of such skills, which make an impact on the effectiveness of employees in today’s workforce and the adaptability of organizations in a competitive market.

This paper uses qualitative methodology, collecting data from 14 semi-structured interviews, and uses constant comparative analysis to derive findings. The process is facilitated by MAXQDA software.

Findings indicate that organizations are faced with challenges in recruiting candidates with both technical and soft skills. Once the right candidate is recruited, efforts are made to retain staff by enhancing soft skills and their development despite challenges encountered in the process by owner-managers and human resource consultants.

The paper’s originality lies in the intensive investigation of challenges relating to recruitment and retention of employees and of the development strategies used as part of the employee lifecycle. Further, this paper studies the small and micro businesses of a small island state, which are generally overlooked in the literature.

This article describes what department directors and chiefs of staff reported when asked about the competencies they need to be effective in addressing on-the-job challenges. The study analyzed the generated data in two different ways to both understand what participants said in their own terms and to determine whether there is a fit between participants’ responses and facilitative leadership theory.

Twenty-four semi-structured interviews were conducted with five department directors and seven chiefs of staff in a US city that had a mayor-council form of government. Responses were analyzed in two ways. Initially, coding categories were developed inductively in an effort to employ what anthropologists characterize as an emic or insider perspective. Then the data were recoded from an etic perspective using the theory of facilitative leadership as a conceptual framework.

Although participants identified a wide variety of competencies, all participants emphasized the importance of working collaboratively with others, including the members of their teams, the elected official they worked with (and for) and constituents.

While most studies of facilitative leadership have focused on mayors and city managers, i.e. those at the top of the city administration hierarchy, this study’s focus is on middle managers who are not necessarily thought of as leaders but who must in fact, exercise leadership at least at times. Another relatively unique feature of this paper is its focus on a city that employs a mayor-council form of governance, a type of governance structure that has been underdiscussed in the literature to date.

The current academic publishing model, in which researchers rely significantly on multinational publishing companies to disseminate their work, has implications for knowledge enterprise both in terms of knowledge production and distribution. This study aims to provide a critical reflection on the academic publishing model and how it works, particularly in light of the rise of open access publishing and the growing analytics focus of publishing companies and discusses the impact on knowledge equity.

This exploratory essay offers a critical analysis of the impact of the current academic publishing model on research practices. The discussion provides a foundation for the argument that knowledge equity is essential to social justice.

To effectively fulfil the transformative aims of the interdisciplinary research community within social and environmental accounting, it is imperative to establish equitable access to published research.

This essay opens space for discussion of the current publishing model, given its dominance of the knowledge enterprise. It outlines some of the implications of this model for knowledge equity and suggests strategies for fostering a more inclusive and accessible dissemination of scholarly work.

By focusing on the perspective of politicians, this paper aims to question the change brought about by local government financial statements for accountability. It applies the Burns and Scapens’ (2000) framework of accounting change to explore politicians’ routines when using the accrual accounting information and which type of change was induced by financial statements on financial accountability to politicians and citizens.

Considering that accounting reforms take time to unfold their effects, this paper studies two countries that have 11 years of difference in the reform implementation and thus a different accounting maturity. A qualitative research approach was used based on 55 semistructured interviews in five Finnish and six German municipalities with 25 councilors from Finland and 30 from Germany.

Councilors with a longer period of time to adjust to the accounting reforms seem to have developed more routines in using financial statements to assess the financial situation and performance. The change induced in accountability to politicians is partly formal and more evolutionary than revolutionary. The complexity of financial statements can lead to regressive change, especially in financially distressed local governments. As for accountability to citizens, a real change is not observed, reflecting a regressive type of change.

The study contributes to the empirical studies on financial accountability in the public sector context by analyzing the use of financial statements in two-way accountability relations from the perspective of politicians. Thereby, the paper adopts a transnational comparative approach and draws on old institutional economics.

This article examines how hope for an effective partnership approach to policing is maintained in everyday policing.

Data collection involved 22 qualitative interviews, and observations with police officers and municipal employees in Stockholm, Sweden. It also includes an analysis of their documents.

Using the concept of mechanisms of hope (Brunsson, 2006, 2009), this article explores how police officers and other actors in the security landscape maintain hope in partnership policing despite having compelling reasons to be cynical and sceptical. The findings indicate that mechanism of hope is an important element in the way police handle uncertainty and maintain institutional pressures in their everyday policing practices.

By demonstrating how actors responsible for implementing a partnership approach to policing maintain hope in partnership policing, this article advances our understanding of myths in policing, as well as the institutional settings in which policing is conducted (Crank, 2003). Moreover, this article provides insight into the opportunities and challenges embedded in the social configuration of hope.

The purpose of this study is to analyze whether higher tourism development in a region is associated with lower-quality employment in that region.

The analysis is based on the last two editions of the European Working Conditions Survey and on the tourism development of European regions. Two samples were studied (2015 and 2021).

Tourism development does not affect the quality of employment in regions. The institutional regime of the country to which the region belongs is associated with the job quality (JQ) in the region.

Only subjective indicators of employment quality are considered in the analysis.

The quality of employment is related to the institutional regime. Policymakers should consider the institutional factors of social democratic countries to improve the low quality of tourism occupations.

Research on the quality of employment in tourism has mostly focused on tourism occupations without considering determinants other than industry characteristics. This research is unique because it includes both the institutional view of JQ and the overall regional employment.

分析一个地区较高的旅游业发展是否与该地区较低品质的就业有关

分析基于最近两版的欧洲工作条件调查和欧洲地区的旅游业发展。研究了两个样本, 分别为 2015 年和 2021 年。

旅游业发展不影响地区就业品质。该地区所属国家的制度体系与该地区的就业品质相关。

旅游就业品质的研究多集中在旅游职业, 没有考虑产业特征以外的决定因素。这项研究的独特之处在于它既包含了工作品质的制度观点, 也包含了整体地区就业情况。

分析中仅考虑就业品质的主观指标。

就业品质与制度体系有关; 因此, 政策制定者应考虑社会民主国家的体制因素, 以改善某些旅游职业的低品质状况。

Analizar si un mayor desarrollo turístico en una región está asociado a un empleo de menor calidad en dicha región.

El análisis se basa en las dos últimas ediciones de la Encuesta Europea sobre las Condiciones de Trabajo y en el desarrollo turístico de las regiones europeas. Se estudiaron dos muestras (2015 y 2021).

El desarrollo turístico no afecta a la calidad del empleo en las regiones. El régimen institucional del país al que pertenece la región está asociado a la calidad del empleo en la región.

La investigación sobre la calidad del empleo en el turismo se ha centrado mayoritariamente en las ocupaciones turísticas sin tener en cuenta otros factores determinantes aparte de las características de la industria. Esta investigación es única porque incluye tanto el punto de vista institucional de la calidad del empleo como el empleo regional global.

En el análisis sólo se consideran indicadores subjetivos de la calidad del empleo.

La calidad del empleo está relacionada con el régimen institucional. Los responsables políticos deberían tener en cuenta los factores institucionales de los países socialdemócratas para mejorar la baja calidad de las ocupaciones turísticas.

In this article, we highlight ways in which disability critical race theory (DisCrit) (Annamma et al., 2013), inclusive education and community-based participatory research (CBPR) can be used within professional development schools (PDS) to provide students with disabilities with more access to inclusive classrooms. At a grade 4–6 elementary school, we developed a model of a critical PDS to promote inclusive education and facilitate the transition of students of color with disabilities from self-contained to inclusive classrooms. We conducted semi-structured interviews and used action plan meetings with school administrators, teachers, professionals and students with disabilities and their parents to assess the impact of our critical PDS model. Findings suggest this model had a positive impact on administrators’ and teachers’ critical consciousness, ideological and instructional practices, students of color with disabilities’ social, academic and personal outcomes, as well as a schoolwide culture of inclusion and social justice. This study can inform tailored professional development efforts to improve educators’ inclusive practices.

We conducted semi-structured interviews and used action plan meetings with school administrators, teachers, professionals and students with disabilities and their parents to assess the impact of our critical PDS model.

The findings of this study suggest this model had a positive impact on administrators’ and teachers’ critical consciousness, ideological and instructional practices, students of color with disabilities’ social, academic and personal outcomes, as well as a schoolwide culture of inclusion and social justice.

This study can inform tailored professional development efforts aiming to improve educators’ inclusive practices.

We developed a model of a critical PDS to promote inclusive education and facilitate the transition of students of color with disabilities from self-contained to inclusive classrooms.