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This study explores citizen activism in the articulation of a politicised counter-account of Aboriginal rights. It aims to uncover the enabling factors for a successful challenge to established political norms and the obstacles to the fullest expression of a radical imagining.

Laclau and Mouffe's theory of hegemony and discourse is used to frame the movement's success in challenging the prevailing system of urbanised healthcare delivery. Empirical materials were collected through extensive ethnographic fieldwork.

The findings from this longitudinal study identify the factors that predominantly influence the transformational success of an Yaṉangu social movement, such as the institutionalisation of group identity, articulation of a discourse connected to Aboriginal rights to self-determination, demonstration of an alternative imaginary and creation of strong external alliances.

This study offers a rich empirical analysis of counter-accounting in action, drawing on Aboriginal governance traditions of non-confrontational discourse and collective accountability to conceptualise agonistic engagement. These findings contribute to the practical and theoretical construction of democratic accounting and successful citizen activism.

Political Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), based on ideas about deliberative democracy, have been criticised for increasing corporate power and democratic deficits. Yet, deliberative ideals are flourishing in the corporate world in the form of dialogues with a broad set of stakeholders and engagement in wider societal issues. Extractive industry areas, with extensive corporate interventions in weak regulatory environments, are particularly vulnerable to asymmetrical power relations when businesses engage with society. This paper aims to illustrate in what way deliberative CSR practices in such contexts risk enhancing corporate power at the expense of community interests.

This paper is based on a retrospective qualitative study of a Canadian oil company, operating in an Albanian oilfield between 2009 and 2016. Through a study of three different deliberative CSR practices – market-based land acquisition, a grievance redress mechanism and dialogue groups – it highlights how these practices in various ways enforced corporate interests and prevented further community mobilisation.

By applying Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony, the analysis highlights how deliberative CSR activities isolated and silenced community demands, moved some community members into the corporate alliance and prevented alternative visions of the area to be articulated. In particular, the close connection between deliberative practices and monetary compensation flows is underlined in this dynamic.

The paper contributes to critical scholarship on political CSR by highlighting in what way deliberative practices, linked to monetary compensation schemes, enforce corporate hegemony by moving community members over to the corporate alliance.

The article aims at exploring the challenges and possibilities of cooperation of higher education in a Latin American social, political and cultural context that faces historical difficulties of integration, as well as the potential contribution of academic cooperation for global citizenship.

The paper presents a general overview of networks and international centers of academic cooperation of higher education in Latin America. The analysis comprises objectives, countries, stakeholders, activities, projects and scope. The study is based on literature on internationalization, regional integration and the development of higher education, as well as on empirical gathered with networks/centers and key actors in the field. This study was carried out as a mixed qualitative method design. Firstly, a systematic review of a literature corpus of studies produced by Latin-American scholars was performed. Semi-structured interviews were then carried out with a group of scholars who are members of networks.

The findings include a review of the role of higher education in a politically fragmented reality, a panorama of major networks and international centers of academic cooperation with emphasis on internationalization of higher education, as well as their connections. The are highlighted examples of successful initiatives of cooperation and, based on interviews, there is presented a preliminary view on cooperation and trust building from professionals in higher education in Latin America.

In the last decades, with the growing interest and need for internationalizing higher education, many universities have organized or joined networks and international centers. The article will contribute for mutual knowledge of these spaces, their shortcomings and potentials, thus creating conditions for dialogue among them, as well as with universities in other continents.

This study explores the relevance of film texts in Indian social studies classrooms for students at the upper primary level. It examines how different types of visual texts can facilitate awareness, critical thinking, discussion and action.

Using multimodal discourse analysis (MDA), this paper critically evaluates five selective films from regional cinemas in India and explores their teaching implications for social studies. The study argues that films are vital multimodal resources that can challenge the prevailing narratives in social studies pedagogy. It conveys how the suggestive revised taxonomy could benefit the students. It proposes a classification system for film analysis with discussion and states how films can bring out interrelated themes and encourage deeper, critical inquiry within the curriculum. The study finds discourse around the films and qualitatively stresses dialogue exchange with sentiment analysis using MAXQDA software. Developed by VERBI software, MAXQDA is a product whose name is inspired by the German Sociologist Max Weber, while the ‘QDA' stands for Qualitative Data Analysis.

The films act as multimodal texts, navigators, metaphors, communicative circuits and catalysts. The paper concludes that films can improve and expand multimodal learning of social studies in three ways: films help learners connect emotionally with the concepts, films make the learning process more appealing and extend it beyond classroom boundaries and films offer a unique insight into the socio-cultural subtleties that are often limited in textbooks.

This research pioneers an intersectionality-driven framework for film analysis in the curriculum for Indian upper primary social studies, offering innovative pedagogical tools to enrich Indian curriculum insights and bridge existing knowledge gaps.

The World Bank-sponsored public financial management reforms attempt to instil fiscal discipline through techno-managerial packages. Taking Ghana's integrated financial management information system (IFMIS) as a case, this paper explores how and why local actors engaged in counter-conduct against these reforms.

Interviews, observations and documentary analyses on the operationalisation of IFMIS constitute this paper's empirical basis. Theoretically, the paper draws on Foucauldian notions of governmentality and counter-conduct.

Empirics demonstrate how and why politicians and bureaucrats enacted ways of escaping, evading and subverting IFMIS's disciplinary regime. Politicians found the new accounting regime too constraining to their electoral and patronage politics and, therefore, enacted counter-conduct around the notion of political exigencies, creating expansionary fiscal conditions which the World Bank tried to mitigate through IFMIS. Perceiving the new regime as subverting their bureaucratic identity and influence, bureaucrats counter-conducted reforms through questioning, critiquing and rhetorical venting. Notably, the patronage politics of appropriating wealth and power underpins both these political and bureaucratic counter-conducts.

This study contributes to the critical accounting understanding of global public financial management reform failures by offering new empirical and theoretical insights as to how and why politicians and bureaucrats who are supposed to own and implement them nullify the global governmentality intentions of fiscal disciplining through subdued forms of resistance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on doctoral education. Pandemics throughout history have generated new educational theories and practices, accelerated some trends and signalled the abrupt end of others. The unpredictable effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have particularly impacted upon First Nations and transcultural communities and People of Colour throughout the globe. A second significant recent global trend that occurred at the height of the pandemic was the reignited #BlackLivesMatter (#BLM) protest campaign. This campaign drew attention to the vast inequities faced by black, transcultural (migrant, refugee, culturally diverse and international) and Indigenous peoples and triggered rapid action in higher education institutions against racism and unconscious bias.

This conceptual paper draws upon postcolonial/decolonial theory to demonstrate how the COVID pandemic and #BLM movement prompts us to revitalise doctoral education.

These two issues have created renewed urgency around the need to decolonise higher education and a desire to transform the “business-as-usual” geopolitical power dynamics that continue to privilege Northern knowledge over culturally diverse knowledge systems from First Nations and transcultural contexts. A key site where special opportunities exist to effect this transformation lies in doctoral education. Doctoral education is a significant location of new knowledge creation and the development of the world’s future researchers.

Applying post/decolonial theory enables one to rethink how doctoral education should be changed to work towards greater decolonisation.

This study applies Santos’ ideas about “the sociologies of emergence” in the global South to think about how doctoral education should be reconstructed as a liberated zone of decolonisation and epistemic justice.

This paper aims to provide authorities managing free trade zones, business enterprises, financial institutions and dedicated free zone customs, police and immigration command assigned to deal with aspects of movement of goods and persons in and out of the free zones with a clear understanding of the cross-border financial crime risks associated with the African Continental Free Trade Area and the risk control measures that combines human intelligence with advanced technology to combat cross-border financial crimes in the African Continental Free Trade Area.

A range of research activities would be used in this study. In addition to a sweeping literature review of academic, official studies and media writings, the main focus is on critically evaluating and analysing primary data by searching and collecting statutes, court cases, administrative rules and regulations and policy documents.

This paper identified bribery and corruption; modern slavery; and trade-based money laundering as the financial crime risks that are of priority concern to African Continental Free Trade Areas and demonstrated how countries can assess and mitigate these risks through adequate policies, procedures and controls including appropriate compliance management arrangement and adequate screening procedures to ensure high standards when hiring employees; corporate transparency; training on managing incidents of modern slavery, forced labour and third-party exploitation; and appropriate monitoring framework for trade-based money laundering activities.

While many authors have written research papers on intra-African trade, none of those research papers explained how countries can assess and mitigate financial crime risks in free trade zones. This research paper describes the ways in which cross-border financial crime risks can be assessed and adequately addressed by the authorities managing free trade zones. This research paper analyses the risk assessment topic in line with the African Continental Free Trade Area with a focus on free trade zones in Nigeria. This research paper would help authorities managing free trade zones, commercial organisations and business enterprises to identify, prevent and mitigate cross-border financial crime risks. Zone managements and business enterprises that implement the risk-based approach, in line with the guidance given in this research paper, will be well-placed to avoid the consequences of inappropriate de-risking behaviour.

This study examines the transformation of labour non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating in Mainland China since the enactment of the 2017 Overseas NGO Management Law, which aims to regulate foreign concerns functioning outside the direct control of the state. It focuses on the extent to which these organisations have responded to the rapidly changing political and social environment by altering their goals and strategies in support of migrant workers. It also considers the relevance of Western social movement theories (SMTs) to China's grassroots labour movement in the 2020s. 

The research is based on case studies of ten labour NGOs operating in Beijing, Tianjin and Yunnan. It draws upon fifteen semi-structured interviews with the founders, leaders and activists affiliated with those organisations, as well as records and documented information of each of those organisations.

While the power and influence of labour NGOs markedly diminished, most have been able to adapt their goals and the strategies remain sustainable amidst both China's changing political and social climates and the global pandemic. It suggests that conventional SMTs can still offer valuable insights into understanding the development of labour NGOs in China, although they might not fully interpret the specific conditions and challenges faced by these organisations.

This study stands out as one of very few to offer empirical evidence on the inner workings of China's labour NGOs over the last six years. It also contributes to our understanding of social movements in a non-Western context.

Scholarly interest in the business effects of organised crime (OC) has recently increased. This study aims to conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) on the conditions under which OC could pose a threat to or take control of firms within a particular context.

We use narrative synthesis and thematic analysis, with a sample of 46 theoretical and empirical studies published over the past 30 years on the relationship between OC and firms within the disciplines of Business, Management and Accounting (BMA).

SLR and thematic analysis show that scholarly interest has focused on four key domains: OC as a firm, the impact of OC on firms, firms’ efforts to counter OC’s influence and governmental interventions. Using medical metaphors, we also develop a diagram depicting the interplay between OC and firms within the BMA literature.

This study contributes to the literature shaping an agenda to steer future research towards these four key themes. The effectiveness of anti-OC tools and measures depends on a thorough understanding of local norms, behaviours and business practices. In addition to measurement and methodological challenges, several grey areas remain, including the distinction between criminal enterprises and legitimate businesses. Ambiguities also surround the circumstances under which the OC preys upon firms or employs them to establish dominance over a territory.

Fake news stories have become a central element of crises that corporate public relations practitioners have confronted. Whether such stories are rumors, outright lies or deliberate attempts to discredit corporations, they have the same impact and require specific strategies for public relations practitioners to effectively respond. The purpose of this study is to uncover strategies to manage crises that arise from fake news and if and how these strategies differ for other corporate crises.

In this multi-method study of 21 in-depth interviews and a 8-person focus group with senior-level corporate public relations practitioners, authors explored decision-making strategies for responding to fake news crises. Transcripts of interviews and the focus group were thematically analyzed.

Results reveal insights regarding how public relations practitioners determine if and when to respond to fake news crises in corporations; what response strategies public relations practitioners have the autonomy to employ for fake news crises in corporations, and how public relations practitioners control media narratives during fake news crises in corporations.

The findings guide public relations practitioners to craft an autonomous decision-making process and effective online listening strategies—establishing a watchful waiting approach—and determine if the fake news issue is a passing moment or movement swirling into a crisis.

Few studies have examined the perspectives of crisis communication experts about minimizing and managing fake news crises. The study identifies opportunities for future research focused on crises originating from fake news and disinformation.