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This study aims to articulate the conceptual foundations of the role of accounting infrastructure (calculative practice and the communicative dimension of accounting) in extractive industries (EIs) towards a sustainable orientation from an actor-network theory (ANT) perspective.

This study is a literature-based analysis of the calculative property and communicative dimension of accounting in EIs, using the concepts of calculability, assemblage and other related concepts from ANT to identify potentialities and limits of the roles of accounting in this sector.

While accounting infrastructure can influence social and environmental outcomes, it has not, as yet, led to ecologically and socially sustainable practices in EIs. Calculative properties and the communicative dimension of accounting infrastructure have capabilities to foster the phenomenon of “sustainability” in EIs by valuing, disclosing (reporting) and governing EIs towards a sustainable orientation. Conceptualizing sustainable EIs as a promissory economy, accounting infrastructure serves as a tool not only to represent past performance but also to enact the future: it helps to shape a sustainable future for the industry by informing and triggering behavioural decisions of EIs firms towards sustainable practices.

This conceptual paper is anticipated to stimulate future sustainability accounting research. The research agenda discussed in this paper can be used to enrich our understanding of the role of accounting in sustainability.

This paper charts a direction for future research by interpreting the role of sustainability accounting within networks of sociotechnical relations, using ANT concepts which attach importance to the dualism of nature and society. Conceptualizing sustainability accounting and reporting as an infrastructure, which draws more attention to the relationality characteristic of accounting, the study goes beyond the traditional interpretation of accounting as a mediation device and draws on a contemporary view of accounting by invoking the dynamic relation between accounting and society, in the context of EIs.

Analysis of Philippine society has largely turned on the collectivist/individualist binary. Taking off from this dualism and from the notion and practice of siblingship (Aguilar, 2013). This chapter looks at two contemporary Filipino family films – Kung Ayaw Mo, Huwag Mo! (If You Don’t Want, So Be It) and Four Sisters and a Wedding. These films articulate and resolve the tensions, ambivalences, and conflicts between self and family, autonomy and dependence, and individualism and collectivism. This chapter also shows how the collectivism–individualism binary has broader political resonance, touches on the relationship between family and democracy, and proposes the family as a complementary point from which to theorize democracy in the Philippines.

Burrell (2020) challenged management and organization studies (MOS) scholars to pay attention to a topic they have mostly ignored: the peasantry, those 2 billion people that work in the rural primary sector. This paper aims to address the topic to expand Burrell’s challenge by indicating that the peasantry offers a unique context to study a paradoxical condition: the coexistence of persistent poverty and vanguardist innovation.

The authors advance conceptual arguments that complement the reasons why researchers should pay more attention to the peasantry. They argue that continuation of past research into field laborers, transitioning from feudalism to industrial capitalism, still has currency, not just because of the good reasons listed by Burrell (enduring relevance of the phenomenon in developing countries; sustainability concerns; acknowledgment of common heritage) but also because some seemingly archaic practices are evident in the economically developed countries where most management and organizations scholars live.

The authors show that in advanced economies, the peasantry has not disappeared, and it is manifested in contradictory forms, as positive force contributing to sustainable productivity (in the case of digitized agriculture) and as a negative legacy of social inequality and exploitation (as a form of modern slavery).

The authors discuss contrasting themes confronting management of the peasantry, namely, modern slavery and digital farming, and propose that a paradox view may help overcome unnecessary dualisms, which may promote social exclusion rather than integrated development.

This study aims to revisit the relationship between Shariah-compliant firms and earnings management. Specifically, the authors examine whether Shariah-certified firms have lower earnings management than non-Shariah-certified firms and how often a firm must hold its certification to observe considerably reduced earnings management. This study also explores how senior management ethnic dualism affects the association of Shariah certification and earnings management.

The authors analyze the hypothesized association between Shariah certification and earnings management using a panel regression model and several robustness tests, including the Heckman selection model. The sample consists of 547 nonfinancial firms listed on the Bursa Malaysia stock exchange, with 5,478 firm-year observations over the 2001–2016 sample period.

Shariah certification is found to mitigate earnings management, particularly for firms that consistently retain their Shariah status. The longer firms retain their Shariah certification continually, the lower the earnings management. Additionally, the results indicate that the negative impact of Shariah certification on earnings management is driven by ethnic duality when a specific ethnic group dominates the top management.

Firms’ commitment to religious-based screening and continuation of certification plays a significant role in improving earnings quality. Firms are committed to abiding by the Shariah code of conduct instead of using the Shariah status for reputation purposes to attract investors.

For investors, the continuous compliance status is a crucial indicator of a firm’s commitment to comply with Shariah principles and to mitigate earnings management. Regarding policy implications, Shariah-compliance guidelines can constrain earnings manipulation, especially among firms lacking ethnic diversity.

The study shows that Shariah certification must be maintained consecutively to reduce earnings management. Shariah certification’s governance function is crucial in ethnically homogeneous firms, primarily when one ethnic group dominates the senior management.

All of us seek truth via objective inquiry into various human and nonhuman phenomena that nature presents to us on a daily basis. We are empirical (or nonempirical) decision makers who hold that uncertainty is our discipline, and that understanding how to act under conditions of incomplete information is the highest and most urgent human pursuit (Karl Popper, as cited in Taleb, 2010, p. 57). We verify (prove something as right) or falsify (prove something as wrong), and this asymmetry of knowledge enables us to distinguish between science and nonscience. According to Karl Popper (1971), we should be an “open society,” one that relies on skepticism as a modus operandi, refusing and resisting definitive (dogmatic) truths. An open society, maintained Popper, is one in which no permanent truth is held to exist; this would allow counter-ideas to emerge. Hence, any idea of Utopia is necessarily closed since it chokes its own refutations. A good model for society that cannot be left open for falsification is totalitarian and epistemologically arrogant. The difference between an open and a closed society is that between an open and a closed mind (Taleb, 2004, p. 129). Popper accused Plato of closing our minds. Popper's idea was that science has problems of fallibility or falsifiability. In this chapter, we deal with fallibility and falsifiability of human thinking, reasoning, and inferencing as argued by various scholars, as well as the falsifiability of our knowledge and cherished cultures and traditions. Critical thinking helps us cope with both vulnerabilities. In general, we argue for supporting the theory of “open mind and open society” in order to pursue objective truth.

An ecologically sustainable future calls for fruitful dialogues between spirituality, modern science and policymaking at large. What could be that connects them all? We found out that ideas about holism exist across time, space, culture and thinkers – ranging from mathematics, philosophy, sociology, medicine, education, religion and quantum physics to finding its roots in ancient Indian Vedic tradition and later usage in Greek and Roman cultures.

This chapter takes a look at the history and intricacies of two seemingly distinct but interconnected fields – spirituality and modern science, particularly quantum science – with an aim to uncover what these fields can teach us about the idea of holism. This chapter, therefore, highlights one of the most fundamental and profound spiritual principles of the unity and interconnectedness of the entire universe – encapsulated in the concept of holism – and its practical applications in approaching sustainable development. We hope to ignite further research on this topic.

Development theory in college describes and explains how students develop. This chapter explores ways to balance and consolidate differentiation and integration in this theory. First, it traces the origins, history and current development of the theory, which evolves from an integrative understanding to a differentiated one. Subsequently, it identifies the tensions between integration and differentiation in this evolution. This chapter consider two directions towards the theoretical consolidation of differentiation and integration: (1) returning to how integrative understandings were achieved and exploring research directions that further advance integrative understandings; (2) recognizing the parallel evolution of North American student development theory in theorising about learning from a critical realism perspective, and, by overlaying this theory upon such a perspective, reconstructing it towards consolidation. This chapter concludes by discussing two implications for further higher education research that draws on student development theory.

This chapter discusses conceptual links among Hazel Kyrk’s A Theory of Consumption (1923), the overall work of Thorstein Veblen, and Wesley C. Mitchell’s essays on spending and money. The three authors are concerned with transformations in production, related changes in the organization of consumption, and the effects on people. The approach is based on reading of Kyrk’s book in light of an integrated view of Veblen’s overall work. This chapter explains how Mitchell’s essays on money and spending built on Veblen’s work and discusses their relevance for understanding Kyrk’s book as conceptually linked to institutional economics. This chapter delineates the following commonalities: conception of living humans and money as an institution; distinction between business and industrial concerns; connection between distribution, waste, and consumption; and Veblen’s “machine process” of standardization in production and its relation to consumption. This chapter brings more detail in the conceptual and theoretical discussion of Veblen’s influence on Kyrk’s book.

This piece explores the philosophical origins of sense-making as defined in Brenda Dervin’s methodology.

This conceptual paper locates the origins of sense-making's rich ontological, epistemological and etymological heritage to the Classical Greece and the Pre-Socratic period. The Greek origins of sense-making‘s philosophical undercurrents surface again in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit before the idea is picked up again in twentieth century philosophy and library science.

This is a conceptual paper and no empirical findings are presented.

This paper makes an original contribution to the study of information seeking and to sense making theory and methodology.