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The purpose of this paper is to present a “manifesto” exploring a methodological approach to legal analysis, relying upon a morphological understanding of ideology.

The authors explore ideology within law and legal culture. They examine one such ideology – rule of law – and consider how this can shape judicial decision-making. They suggest techniques by which such influences can be identified.

The authors make four findings. First, following Freeden, ideology can be understood as a ubiquitous form of political thinking which seeks to fix the meanings of essentially contested concepts. Second, ideology in this sense forms an important part, but is distinguishable from the wider notion of legal culture. Considering ideology in law as a sub-system of legal culture can therefore be fruitful in providing a rich understanding of interpretive disagreements among the judiciary. Third, rule of law as an ideal is itself ideological, as it comprises contested concepts such as certainty, equality, stability and legality. It can be considered to constitute an internal ideology of law and it can be analysed how the concepts are de-contested in individual decisions. Finally, understanding this can help in the analysis of judgments in areas with high levels of administrative discretion and political contestation, such as planning and environmental law, as it helps us to understand how any particular judge sees the role of the court in its wider political context.

The originality of the authors’ approach lies in the drawing together of methodological techniques and understandings of ideology in, and in relation to, law.

This paper aims to respond to the circumstances that have made hybridity both a popular term in cultural analysis and a contested, problematic concept. It promotes the need to look at what has been dismissed in discussions of hybridity, namely, mundane and un-exotic examples of cultural mix.

This study uses a conceptual and interpretive approach to theoretical and empirical work that engages with the theme of hybridity.

The findings highlight how a celebration of hybridity has limited the ways in which the concept can be used for empirical work. It proposes the paradigm of everyday hybridity to work with practical examples of cultural hybridity.

The implications are to decentre the Western bias that has theorised hybridity without exploring how the concept is relevant to other regions, such as East Asia.

The value of this work is in providing an audit of the concept of hybridity and a working paradigm for future qualitative research.

This history of the politics of moves towards school‐based management in Queensland education is located within a broader historical and political analysis of such moves across Australia since the Karmel Report. This paper specifically focuses in on developments in Queensland. The Queensland analysis traces the moves from Labor’s Focus on Schools through the Coalition’s Leading Schools and the most recent Labor rearticulation in the document Future Directions for School‐based Management in Queensland State Schools. The analysis demonstrates that the concept of school‐based management has no stipulative meaning, but rather is a contested concept. More generally, the paper provides an account and analysis of new forms of governance in educational systems and the tension between centralising and decentralising tendencies as school‐based management is adopted in order to address a number of competing policy objectives.

The purpose of this paper is first, to investigate empirically the plurality of understanding surrounding sustainability held by those working in the business sector, and second, to consider the likelihood of a dialogic accounting that would account for the plurality of perspectives identified.

The subjects of this study are those people actively working to incorporate sustainability within New Zealand business, both business people and their sustainability advisors. Participant’s subjective understanding is investigated using Q methodology, a method used widely by social science researchers to investigate typical views on a particular topic, from an analysis of the order in which participants individually sort a sample of stimuli. In this study, the stimuli were opinion statements.

Five typical understandings of sustainable development were identified, including understandings more usually attributed to business antagonists than business. Conflicts between environment and development are acknowledged by most participants. However, an agonistic debate that will create spaces, practices, and institutions through which marginalised understandings of sustainable development might be addressed and contested, is yet to be established and will not be easy.

The paper contributes to the few empirical investigations of the plurality of understandings of sustainability held by those people working to incorporate sustainability within business. It is further distinguished by the authors attempt to describe divergent beliefs and values, absent from their immediate business context, and absent from any academic priming. The paper also provides an illustrative example of the application of Q methodology, a method not commonly used in accounting research.

This paper aims to set out a new hierarchical and differentiated model of social marketing principles, concepts and techniques that builds on, but supersedes, the existing lists of non-equivalent and undifferentiated benchmark criteria.

This is a conceptual paper that proposes a hierarchical model of social marketing principles, concepts and techniques.

This new delineation of the social marketing principle, its four core concepts and five techniques, represents a new way to conceptualize and recognize the different elements that constitute social marketing. This new model will help add to and further the development of the theoretical basis of social marketing, building on the definitional work led by the International Social Marketing Association (iSMA), Australian Association of Social Marketing (AASM) and European Social Marketing Association (ESMA).

This proposed model offers a foundation for future research to expand upon. Further research is recommended to empirically test the proposed model.

This paper seeks to advance the theoretical base of social marketing by making a reasoned case for the need to differentiate between principles, concepts and techniques when seeking to describe social marketing.

This paper aims to analyse the rise and institutionalization of the discourse of strategic management. It seeks to advance an agenda for studying strategy from a sociologically informed perspective. Moreover, it aims to make a case for a critically informed, interdisciplinary approach to studying strategy.

The paper provides an overview to studying strategy critically. It is a theoretically informed paper.

The findings can be summarised as: first, strategy emerged as a major discipline in the 1970s; second, as a body of knowledge strategy has remained close to its industrial economics origins; and third, an agenda for the sociological study of strategy revolving around concerns of performativity and power is outlined.

The paper offers a sociologically informed account of strategy.

Circular Economy is a policy and practice-oriented concept drawing mainly on engineering and natural science. This paper aims to contribute a conceptual development based on social systems theory. Does the Circular Economy have the prospect to become a sustainability-enhancing feedback mechanism potentializing an evolutionary systemic rearrangement of structural couplings, and will it encounter limitations as a general approach for a sustainable development?

By using the Luhmannian theory as method, core concepts are semantics, structure and rearrangement of structural couplings. In acknowledging the social system’s operational closure, social-metabolism with nature is discussed. The research is in three stages. First, structural couplings of matter and social systems. Second, structural couplings of organizational networks closing the loop–eventually using digitalization. Third, the Circular Economy encountering multicontextuality.

The paper provides: (1) A four-stage structural coupling enacting metabolism with nature allowing measurement of circularity potentially useable for feedback “irritating” relevant social systems’ reflexion. (2) Identification of obstacles encountered in the proliferation due to paradoxes of strategic decisions in organizations, difficulties of structural couplings of organizational networks and the paradox of digitalization. (3) Help by future digitalization but simultaneously new side-effects. (4) The multicontextuality as the limitation for a broad sustainability approach.

The paper answers a call for more social science theoretical research on the Circular Economy. It develops core conceptualizations based on social systems theory. Also, advices for future research and practical implementation are suggested.

Myths matter. They are one of the ways by which we seek to make sense of the world; understanding myths helps us understand not only the world around us but ourselves as well. Governance myths – myths that we tell about the state and our relationship to it or about the structures and figures making up our government and our relationships to them – can serve as a valuable means of gaining insight into civil society and for illuminating the goals and values of good governance. Categorizing governance myths can aid in that process. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper develops a typology of governance myths, and then explores mythic types and their implications for governance.

A typology of myths facilitates systematic examination of fundamental stories told to explain and illustrate governance. Characteristics of myths at each level of governance may be used to better understand implicit expectations and assumptions about particular aspects of governance.

This typology can be used by scholars and practitioners to deconstruct stories told about governance and more effectively respond to citizens’ perceptions of the public sector.

The purpose of this paper is to set out and discuss findings from a developmental study, commissioned by the English Department of Health and the charity, Comic Relief, which was commissioned to clarify definitional issues and recommend ways of operationalising key concepts for a prospective survey of abuse, neglect and loss of dignity in the care of older people in residential care in the United Kingdom (UK).

As well as drawing upon their experience and expertise, the authors conducted a review of the literature, held consultation events with a range of stakeholders and undertook in‐depth interviews with international academics and care home residents.

Existing definitions and descriptions vary widely in form and content, are commonly subjective and imprecise and frequently make reference to abstract concepts which themselves need defining. Many of the concepts are also inherently evaluative, unspecific and open to interpretation. The study considered how, in this context, practical research definitions that are clear, unambiguous and widely acceptable to a range of stakeholders could be developed.

The study took a UK focus and the review of literature was confined to the English language. Further research might usefully extend discussion about definitions cross‐culturally. The interview samples were small and should not be considered to be representative.

The paper identifies key issues in defining the perpetrator. It focuses on the concepts of trust and intentionality, the responsibilities of the care home and multiple perpetrators and makes practical proposals for operationalising the “perpetrator” in research. Recommendations from the study were positively received and have directly informed the Government‐funded research programme in England.