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This paper aims to demonstrate that state shareholders are confronted with contradictory logics leading to institutional contradictions that activist shareholders can exploit. The competing logics of the state as shareholder and their impact on corporate governance and shareholder activism offer fertile grounds for research advances in Coordinated Market Economies (CMEs).

Through an extensive literature review of state ownership, institutional contradictions and shareholder activism, this paper analyzes two case studies involving the French State as shareholder.

In the French context, these two cases illustrate how institutional contradictions result in opportunities for shareholder activism. By focusing on the institutional contradictions of the state shareholder, this investigation suggests a need for experimental research to observe how shareholder activists adapt to each institutional change in CMEs. This experimentation can help policymakers to avoid creating additional conditions that shareholder activists can exploit.

This focuses only on France and its state shareholdings. To generalize results, studies of other CMEs and state shareholders are needed.

Policymakers should consider all legislative proposals for their potential to deviate from corporate governance practice by experimenting with them in a laboratory setting. Shareholder activists can compare state shareholders’ actions against the state’s legislation to emphasize institutional contradictions that counter minority shareholders’ rights.

This research is the first to analyze how the state as shareholder can exploit its competing logics to resist against shareholder activism and support management or to become itself a shareholder activist.

This article aims to identify management practices that evidence how internal control have been considered essential, from the edition of the State Constitutional Amendment no. 75 of 2012, within the public administration of the executive branch of the State of Ceará, during the period 2012–2021.

The study relates the identified management practices to COSO (The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations) methodology “Internal Environment” component categories. The research is classified as basic, exploratory and bibliographic, on the theme of internal control in scientific articles published between 2015 and 2021, and documental, carried out through official documents, including the 27 Brazilian constitutions.

Existence of management practices that corroborate the essentiality of internal control in Ceará.

The study is limited to evidencing the control practices implemented in Ceará, not evaluating them as to their quality.

Contributions on control on constitutional-legal bases for other Brazilian Federation States.

Possibility of introducing the research theme into various branches of scientific knowledge, such as political science and contributing to public organizations to implement policies with the proper application of resources for the benefit of society.

The originality of the research is in demonstrating the essentiality of internal control in the State of Ceará, from the edition of management acts performed by the executive branch, based on Constitutional Amendment 75 of 2012, which did not become a dead letter of the law, enabling other states of the federation to do the same.

While it is argued that entrepreneurship provides considerable freedom, it is also underlined that it might have the potential for exclusion and oppression. The study contributes to this debate and aims to investigate how entrepreneurs with disabilities (EWD) ascribe meaning to freedom in a contested terrain informed by entrepreneurial autonomy as well as constraints due to impairments and an ableist social environment.

The study uses a qualitative approach and builds upon the critical concepts of negative, positive and social freedom as a theoretical lens for the in-depth analysis of the twenty-nine semi-structured interviews with EWD in Hungary.

Findings indicate that EWD experiences freedom in ambivalent ways. Engaging in the discourse of entrepreneurship offers a subversive discursive toolkit to debunk the constraints established by ableism, enabling both negative and positive freedom. However, individualism being at the heart of entrepreneurship results in othering and undermines social freedom. Thus, while entrepreneurship offers greater individual freedom in both a negative and a positive sense for people with disabilities (PWD), it nevertheless fails to promote collective social change.

Contributing to the critical disability literature, findings contrast the view that having an impairment only reduces a person's abilities and highlight that it also affects the very nature of liberty. Contributing to critical studies on entrepreneurship, the case of EWD provides empirical evidence for understanding the simultaneous emancipatory and oppressive character of entrepreneurship through the interplay of the subjective experience of freedom related to disability and entrepreneurship.

Education in sustainability science is largely ignorant of the implications of the environmental crisis on inner dimensions, including mindsets, beliefs, values and worldviews. Increased awareness of the acuteness and severity of the environmental and climate crisis has caused a contemporary spread of hopelessness among younger generations. This calls for a better understanding of potential generative forces of hope in the face of climate change. This paper aims to uncover strategies for fostering constructive hope among students.

This study examines, through qualitative interviews, the characteristics of constructive hope amongst proactive students enrolled in university programs related to global environmental challenges. Constructive hope describes a form of hope leading to sustained emotional stability and proactive engagement through both individual and collective actions.

The findings are presented according to four characteristics of constructive hope: goal, pathway thinking, agency thinking and emotional reinforcement. This shows how students perceive the importance of: collaboratively constructing and empowering locally grounded objectives; reinforcing trust in the collective potential and external actors; raising students’ perceived self-efficacy through practical applications; teaching different coping strategies related to the emotional consequences of education on students’ well-being.

We outline practical recommendations for educational environments to encourage and develop constructive hope at multiple levels of university education, including structures, programs, courses and among students’ interactions. We call for practitioners to connect theoretical learning and curriculum content with practice, provide space for emotional expressions, release the pressure from climate anxiety, and to foster a stronger sense of community among students.

It has been more than 20 years since the idea of binding multinational corporations directly to international law was abandoned. Since then, concerned actors have sought to manage corporate conduct through voluntary regulation. However, little is known about the instruments produced in this regard. This study aims to understand the properties of the instruments that govern or regulate corporate social responsibility at the international level.

Systematic literature review and content analysis methods were combined to compile a list of 229 international corporate social responsibility instruments (ICSRIs) produced by intergovernmental (IGOs) and international nongovernmental (INGOs) organizations. These instruments were categorized according to an adapted classification framework.

The majority of instruments from our sample are produced by INGOs, focus on management activities and are applicable to specific industries. The most common issues addressed by the instruments are related to worker protection, human rights, governance and the environment. A limited number of instruments specify stakeholders’ involvement or feature an external orientation. Instruments rarely address issues related to product quality and safety, economic contribution or social performance.

Without a comprehensive overview, it has been difficult to develop broad-based understandings about voluntary regulation as a mechanism for controlling corporate conduct internationally. This study’s findings offer valuable insights, allowing policymakers and industry practitioners to understand the effectiveness of, and make appropriate enhancements to, ICSRIs.

By enhancing ICSRIs to address the limitations highlighted in the current study, multinational corporations can be induced into contributing more productively to the sustainable development of the societies they impact and play a greater role in the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Previous research has largely concentrated on analyzing small numbers of carefully selected instruments in a conceptual or descriptive approach. In contrast, this study represents a novel approach of systematic compilation and quantitative classification for a comprehensive list of ICSRIs.

The purpose of this paper is to: describe and contextualize the aims and distinctive and common characteristics of cannabis festivals in countries with different cannabis policies; assess characteristics of participants; identify reasons to attend cannabis festivals; explore to which extent cannabis festivals contribute to the social and cultural acceptance of cannabis, as perceived by attendees.

The approach incorporates three methods of data collection in the research design; quantitative research among 1,355 participants, participant observation and interviews with the organizers.

Cannabis festivals in Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome and Athens have common features but also maintain and reproduce local, social and cultural characteristics. Cannabis festivals, as well as their attendees, represent heterogeneous categories. The style of the festival – music festival or march combined with music – affects the main reason for attendance by the participants. In cannabis festivals more similar to music festivals the majority of the respondents attended for entertainment while at the cannabis festivals in the form of a march combined with music the majority attended for protest. Furthermore, increasing age, residency and the high frequency of cannabis use are factors that led the participants to attend for protest.

The research on cannabis festivals is limited. This paper not only explores the aims of cannabis festivals in four capital cities of Europe and the characteristics of their attendees including motivations, but also offers interesting insights for understanding the ways in which political and social constructions like cannabis festivals shape attitudes, perception and behaviors around cannabis use.