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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamics of social positioning and interpersonal conflicts in management teams. This paper utilizes positioning theory to analyze team conflicts by combining microlevel interaction analysis and explicit, meso-level team research in the context of managerial work.

This research is based on an analysis of 34 conflict episodes that occurred during management board meetings conducted by two Finnish public research institutions. By analyzing naturally occurring interactions and video material, this paper presents a discursive analysis of conflict from the perspective of positioning theory, focusing on local moral orders, social positions and the construction of dialogue.

This study’s findings illuminate how team conflicts may be understood in terms of positioning theory, as well as how positioning is connected to managing conflicts and constructing either degenerative or generative dialogue in teams. The present study indicates possibilities for applying positioning theory as a methodological tool when studying team interactions and dialogue.

The study offers practical implications regarding team conflict management. By developing an understanding of the positioning dynamics of managers and other team members, one can help create constructive and generative dialogue in teams.

From a methodological perspective, this paper presents a novel approach to the study of team conflicts and outlines several suggestions regarding the theoretical approach in the analysis of team interaction and dynamics.

Whenever the news media feature brand-related moral struggles over issues such as ethicality, fairness, or sustainability, brands often find themselves in the position of the culprit. However, brands may also take the opposite position, that of a moral entrepreneur who proactively raises and addresses moral issues that matter to society. In this chapter, the authors present a case study of the Austrian shoe manufacturer Waldviertler, which staged a protest campaign against Austria’s financial market authorities in the wake of the authorities demanding that the company closes its alternative (and illegal) consumer investment model after 10 years of operation. In response to this demand, the company organized protest marches, online petitions, and press conferences to reclaim the moral high ground for its financing model as a way out of the crunch following the global credit crisis and as a way to fight unfair administrative burdens. The authors present an interpretive analysis of brand communication material and media coverage that reveals how this brand used protest rhetoric on three levels – logos, ethos, and pathos – to reverse moral standards, to embody a rebel ethos, and to cultivate moral indignation. The authors also show how the media responded to protest rhetoric both with thematic coverage of context, trends, and general evidence, and with episodic coverage focusing on dramatic actions and the company owner’s charisma. The authors close with a discussion of how protestainment, the stylization of a leader figure, and marketplace sentiments can ensure sustained media coverage of moral struggles.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how four styles of “morally ambiguous” leadership could have a philosophical basis, while relatively contributing to efficiently prevent bribery and extortion in the organizational life.

The paper identifies four styles of morally ambiguous leadership in taking philosophically based representations of “sociopolitical saviors” into account: “occasionally cruel saviors” (Niccolò Machiavelli); “occasionally compassionate saviors” (Adam Smith),; “socially conformist and compassionate” saviors (David Hume); and “revolutionary and implicitly compassionate” saviors (Hannah Arendt). Morally ambiguous leaders choose paradoxical ways to assume their moral responsibility. They use paradoxical strategies to prevent bribery and extortion in the organizational life.

The philosophical basis of those styles of morally ambiguous leadership unveils two basic antagonisms: the antagonism between cruelty and compassion; and the antagonism between social conformism and revolutionary spirit. The axis of power (Machiavelli) does not allow any connection between both antagonisms. The axis of self-interest (Smith) shows an intermediary positioning in both antagonisms (relatively compassionate, implicitly revolutionary). The axis of social conformism/compassion (Hume) and the axis of revolutionary spirit/compassion (Arendt) make leaders deepen their paradoxical positionings about moral issues.

The four styles of morally ambiguous leadership have not been empirically assessed. Moreover, the analysis of Eastern and Western philosophies could allow decision-makers to identity other philosophically based and morally ambiguous positionings about moral issues. Other philosophies could also unveil further kinds of antagonisms that could be applied to prevention strategies against bribery and extortion schemes.

The paper presents a philosophically based analysis of morally ambiguous leadership and its potential impact on prevention strategies against bribery and extortion schemes.

Purpose – Within the growing field of interactional research on children's interactions, the present study explores how social and moral order are established through embodied practices in a multilingual kindergarten classroom. It explores the interactions of immigrant children (with very limited knowledge of Swedish as a second language) and the systematic formats of teachers’ questions employed during children's disputes and tattling (children's reports of peer group conflicts and accusations of untoward behaviour).

Methodology – The study is based on a video-ethnography (50 hours of recordings) in a multilingual kindergarten class for 6-year-olds in Sweden. The analytical approach combines Conversation Analysis (CA) with analysis of multimodally mobilized actions.

Findings – The analyses highlight how interactional meaning-making in conflict situations is accomplished with very limited linguistic resources. Children's tattle telling cornered teachers into the position of being a neutral authoritative agent who acted on their responsibility to resolve the conflict. Teachers reorganized tattle telling into a multiparty interrogation. Different interrogative formats were employed to establish a ‘factually correct’ description of the event. Teachers used open questions (‘what happened?’), ‘why’ and ‘yes/no’ interrogative formats. ‘Why’ questions were lexically designed to implicitly confirm the culpability of the accused child. ‘Yes/no’ questions invited the child's ratification of the teacher's version of the event.

Research implications – It is argued that research on children's social order will gain from understanding that conflict resolution in educational settings is a multilayered social practice that both presents a locus where the institutional order is (re)established and a locus where children's peer group concerns are played out.

In the months leading up to, and during, the 2021 legislative session – the most dangerous for trans athletes in the history of the United States – 1,224 news articles, public statements and opinion pieces were published through online sources about trans people having access to sport. Conducting a textual analysis of those mediated articles, we conclude that trans athletes are being used by conservative political forces to instigate a social, moral panic. We identified three primary framings being used to instil a moral panic in articles published between 1 December 2020, and 1 June 2021, inflaming the debate over trans athletes. First, trans athletes have been positioned as spectres haunting the future of sport. Second, narratives of fear frame trans women as psychologically malevolent. Finally, conservative politicians are creating a moral panic to paint themselves as protectors of cisgender girls in sport. We conclude by describing the ways fears about trans athletes are being politicized by larger conservative forces that may have especially harmful ramifications for both trans athletes and cisgender women athletes.

The purpose of the paper is to discuss particular features of the public debate around the COVID-19 pandemic and its mitigation strategies in Croatian media from the beginning of 2020 to mid-September of the same year.

The discussion is theoretically grounded on Luhmann’s concept of moral communication combined with the key assumption of critical discourse analysis that language reflects a position of power of social actors. Based on these premises, the analysis of a sample of articles in a chosen online media was conducted to uncover the moral codes in the public debate concerning the corona outbreak and connect them with specific moral discourses of particular social actors.

The findings clearly indicate that the communication about the pandemic is considerably imbued with moralization and that moral coding is profoundly used to generate preferred types of behaviour of citizens and their compliance with the imposed epidemiologic measures. In conclusion, Luhmann’s claim of moralization as a contentious form of communication is confirmed as the examined public discussion fosters confrontations and generates disruptions rather than contributing to a productive dialogue among diverse social actors.

The novelty of the approach lies in the combination of Luhman’s conceiving of moral communication with critical discourse analysis that, taken together, entails a pertinent research tool for analysing relevant attributes of the ongoing vibrant debate on the coronavirus outbreak.

One of the key contributions of feminist criminology has been to recognise the cultural significance of the concepts of sex and gender, bodies and social practices in order to conceptualise men’s engagement with crime, including the dominance of men as perpetrators of crimes of violence against women.

This chapter focusses on the #MeToo movement which has revealed the stark contrast between women’s experiences of sexual assault and sexual harassment, and the extent of men’s perceived entitlement to women’s bodies. By theorising the regulatory processes by which different bodies are ‘moralised’, it is possible to see how cultures are created by reference to the values ascribed to different bodies as well as what different bodies do. The author considers the applicability of moral regulation theory to show how processes of sexualisation, including sexual assault and harassment, constitute identity formation and considers whether resistance in the form of the #MeToo movement amounts to a powerful enough challenge to introduce cultural and structural changes.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and explore the factors and conditions of moral leadership that affect the potential for teacher retention among Alternative Route Certification teachers.

Alternative Route Certification teachers participated in a single focus group. Participants' dialogues were recorded and analyzed for themes. These themes were triangulated with external data from a related study.

Not only are Alternative Route Certification teachers drawn to the profession due to their own moral ideals, findings reveal that they are simultaneously responsive to principals' moral leadership. The praxis of moral leadership is expressed through relationships between principals and teachers and is defined by dispositions as well as actions. Three themes from this study define moral leadership as: a respect for teachers as professionals; relationships with teachers; and focusing on the right things.

This paper lays out a theoretical framework and low cost implications for the development of a leadership praxis toward sustaining teacher retention, particularly among Alternative Certification Route teachers working in urban schools.

Research on Alternative Route Certification teacher retention is underdeveloped, at best. This project adds to this body of research by exploring the specific traits, attitudes, dispositions, and actions that define the moral leadership needed to foster teacher retention.

This chapter analyses the character of Mrs Coulter in BBC/HBO TV show His Dark Materials (2019–ongoing). Mrs Coulter shows clear links with traditional fairy tale figures; in the words of actor Ruth Wilson, ‘She's fairy godmother and she's the nasty queen. She's like Snow White, and she's the Wicked Witch’ (HBO, 2019). Keeping in mind these intertextual references, but focusing on the text, I am going to study the ways in which Mrs Coulter's ‘being evil’ is constructed: are any motivations provided to account for her becoming evil?

Are we supposed to feel sympathy for her – a woman struggling for power in a patriarchal society? How do her interactions with other characters modify the ‘traditional’ roles she evokes and her perceived evilness? To answer these questions, I will employ theoretical tools stemming from queer theory and positioning theory. While arguing for the usefulness of such theoretical outlook for the study of villains, I aim to prove that Mrs Coulter is depicted as a thwarted good character, ruined not only by societal sexist norms, but also by the internalization of ideals typical of toxic masculinity.