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This paper discusses the evolution of sustainability reporting and the role of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in relation to the social and environmental accounting (SEA) literature calling for a revolution in the standardization of sustainability reporting and the inherent complexities. This paper focuses on the future role of GRI in light of the changes resulting from harmonization supported by the International Sustainability Standards Board and the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group’s draft European Sustainability Reporting Directive.

Building on Bourdieu (1983, 1992) and SEA studies, the authors adopt a critical and qualitative approach to theorize power dynamics in the sustainability reporting field. After identifying the main issues arising from the complexity of the sustainability reporting standards and practices according to SEA scholars, the authors connect them with Bourdieu’s (1992, 1983) field theory to discuss the future role of GRI.

The findings suggest two distinct but intertwined roles that GRI could play in the future, namely, power related and theoretical/technical, aimed at engendering revolutionary rather than evolutionary changes in sustainability reporting.

This study offers practical implications for GRI to strengthen its future role in sustainability reporting standardization.

The limited time available to mitigate the disastrous consequences of non-sustainable business on society and the environment calls for urgently addressing the complexities of sustainability accounting to foster a positive impact on society and the environment.

The authors’ reflections reclaim the SEA literature as central to identifying sustainability complexity and Bourdieu’s (1983, 1992) notions of power as key to understanding the role of GRI in the sustainability field. Furthermore, this paper emphasizes the intersection of different critical concepts, including power, complexity, value, capital and materiality.

In a state capitalist country such as China, an important influence on company reporting is the government, which can influence company decision-making. The nature and impact of how the Chinese government uses its symbolic power to promote corporate environmental reporting (CER) have been under-studied, and therefore, this paper aims to address this gap in the literature by investigating the various strategies the Chinese government uses to influence CER and how political ideology plays a key role.

This study uses discourse analysis to examine the annual reports and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports from seven Chinese companies between 2007 and 2011. And the data analysis presented is informed by Bourdieu's conceptualisation of symbolic power.

The Chinese government, through exercising the symbolic power, manages to build consensus, so that the Chinese government's political ideology becomes the habitus which is deeply embedded in the companies' perception of practices. In China, the government dominates the field and owns the economic capital. In order to accumulate symbolic capital, companies must adhere to political ideology, which helps them maintain and improve their social position and ultimately reward them with more economic capital. The findings show that the CER provided by Chinese companies is a symbolic product of this process.

The paper provides contributions around the themes of symbolic power wielded by the government that influence not only state-owned enterprises (SOEs) but also firms in the private sector. This paper also provides an important contribution to understanding, in the context of a strong ideologically based political system (such as China), how political ideology influences companies' decision-making in the field of CER.

The present study aims to explore how various doings, strategic actions and power relations stemming from internal agents are instrumental in (re)constituting the different forms and meanings of budgeting in a specific field.

The paper uses a single-case study method based on a Sri Lankan public university. Data are collected using interviews, documentary evidence and observations.

The empirical evidence suggested that internal agents are crucial, and they are the producers of budgetary practice as they possess practical knowledge and power relations in the field where they operate. The case data demonstrate that organisational agents do have real essence as active and acting to produce effects in budgeting practices, and the significance of exploring the singularity of multiple agents in terms of their viewpoints, trajectories, dispositions and power relations, who may form, sustain or interrupt budgetary practices in a given setting.

As the research is directed towards the selection of in-depth enquiry of specific setting infused with culture, values, perception and ideology, it might cause to diminish the researcher's analytical objectivity and independence of the research.

As budgetary practices are product of human interaction, it is important to note that practitioners should be concerned with what agents do in actual practice and their inactions, influences and power relations in budgeting practices, which might not align with the structural forces enlisted in the budgeting. It would be of interest for future empirical research to explore the interplay between the diverse interests of organisational agents and agents beyond the individual organisations.

This study contributes to the literature on management control practices by documenting the importance of understanding the “practice” through relational thinking of all three concepts is emphasised, such interrelated theoretical insights are seldom used to understand accounting practices. This research emphasises the importance of bringing out the microprocessual facets of management control to open up its non-conscious, non-strategic and non-rationalist forms.

This study aims to critically discuss and reorient the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) debate toward the idea of addressing and rectifying the pervasive structural inequalities that DEI, in its undiluted form rooted in social justice (SJ), aims to combat. Drawing on Bourdieu, the study first examines the diffusion and contestation of DEI into international business (IB). It then proposes a Bourdieu-inspired agenda to advance the transposition of SJ principles into IB.

The study interpretively reconstructs the process of DEI’s ideational diffusion. It examines how the interplay between ideas and field dynamics in IB shapes ideational processes and outcomes.

In response to rising global inequalities – to which multinational enterprises (MNEs) have significantly contributed – SJ movements have propelled DEI into the wider social and political arena, including corporate boardrooms. Within IB, a diluted version of DEI – IB-DEI – emerged as a paradigm to improve MNEs’ performance, but failed to address underlying structural inequalities. As the social impacts, utility and legitimacy of DEI have been challenged, the DEI debate has come to a flux. The study proposes conceptual and contextual extension of DEI within IB and advancing socially engaged research and practice that help reinforce DEI’s core SJ purpose – tackling structural inequalities.

The study is one of the few to openly tackle SJ-IB contradictions on DEI, while advancing the application of Bourdieu to critical studies of IB.

This paper aims to provide top-level design and basic platform for intelligent application in China high-speed railway.

Based on the analysis for the future development trends of world railway, combined with the actual development needs in China high-speed railway, The definition and scientific connotation of intelligent high-speed railway (IHSR) are given at first, and then the system architecture of IHSR are outlined, including 1 basic platform, 3 business sectors, 10 business fields, and 18 innovative applications. At last, a basic platform with cloud edge integration for IHSR is designed.

The rationality, feasibility and implementability of the system architecture of IHSR have been verified on and applied to the Beijing–Zhangjiakou high-speed railway, providing important support for the construction and operation of the world’s first IHSR.

This paper systematically gives the definition and connotation of the IHSR and put forward the system architecture of IHSR for first time. It will play the most important role in the design, construction and operation of IHSR.

In this paper, the authors examine the strategies used to reduce labour costs in three public hospitals in South Africa, which were effective and why. In the democratic era, after the revelations of large-scale corruption, the authors ask whether their case studies provide lessons for how public service institutions might re-make themselves, under circumstances of austerity.

A comparative qualitative case study approach, collecting data using a combination of interviews with managers, focus group discussions and interviews with shop stewards and staff was used.

Management in two hospitals relied on their financial power, divisions between unions and employees' loyalty. They lacked the insight to manage different actors, and their efforts to outsource services and draw on the Extended Public Works Program failed. They failed to support staff when working beyond their scope of practice, reducing employees' willingness to take on extra responsibilities. In the remaining hospital, while previous management had been removed due to protests by the unions, the new CEO provided stability and union–management relations were collaborative. Her legitimate power enabled unions and management to agree on appropriate cost cutting strategies.

Finding an appropriate balance between the new reality of reduced financial resources and the needs of staff and patients, requires competent unions and management, transparency and trust to develop legitimate power; managing in an authoritarian manner, without legitimate power, reduces organisational capacity. Ensuring a fair and orderly process to replace ineffective management is key, while South Africa grows cohorts of competent managers and builds managerial experience.

As a relatively new computing paradigm, crowdsourcing has gained enormous attention in the recent decade. Its compliance with the Web 2.0 principles, also, puts forward unprecedented opportunities to empower the related services and mechanisms by leveraging humans’ intelligence and problem solving abilities. With respect to the pivotal role of search engines in the Web and information community, this paper aims to investigate the advantages and challenges of incorporating people – as intelligent agents – into search engines’ workflow.

To emphasize the role of the human in computational processes, some specific and related areas are studied. Then, through studying the current trends in the field of crowd-powered search engines and analyzing the actual needs and requirements, the perspectives and challenges are discussed.

As the research on this topic is still in its infancy, it is believed that this study can be considered as a roadmap for future works in the field. In this regard, current status and development trends are delineated through providing a general overview of the literature. Moreover, several recommendations for extending the applicability and efficiency of next generation of crowd-powered search engines are presented. In fact, becoming aware of different aspects and challenges of constructing search engines of this kind can shed light on the way of developing working systems with respect to essential considerations.

The present study was aimed to portrait the big picture of crowd-powered search engines and possible challenges and issues. As one of the early works that provided a comprehensive report on different aspects of the topic, it can be regarded as a reference point.

This paper aims to examine the regional dynamics that further consolidated Israel’s national security in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, reflecting upon the nuclear challenge between Iran and Israel and Iran's expanding activities in the region.

To prove the central argument, the study uses a conceptual framework that centers on deterrence as the main approach used by states to consolidate their influence in the Middle East region.

Iran's nuclear progress and influence in the region has strengthened Israel’s security and fostered an unprecedented open rapprochement led by USA efforts with the Gulf regimes.

The paper draws particular attention to the Iran–Israel nuclear competency, and the Israeli preferred policy options regarding Iranian activities in the region amid turbulent Middle East. In addition, the paper offers insight to the regional dynamics that further consolidated Israel’s national security in the region while maintaining a status of Arab vulnerability and backwardness.

Critical and justice-oriented approaches to leadership are incomplete without attention to racism and racialization. This study employed basic qualitative inquiry to examine racialized legitimation within student affairs leadership education through lenses of whiteness as property and legitimacy. Findings detail how leadership educators sought to gain and/or maintain legitimacy and the ways racialization is embedded in these processes through professional experiences, leadership knowledge, and identity. Implications for research and practice are discussed.