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Just over two decades ago, Hopwood criticised accounting researchers for how little they knew of the actual functioning of accounting in organisational contexts. Recently, Parker and Roffey reminded us that this is still the case. A new wave of critical and interpretive researchers have not been able to ground their theorising in the actual practice of accounting. This paper attempts to explicate the negotiated order perspective as a social theory that may help to better understand accounting in its organisational context. The paper not only presents the theoretical constructs of the negotiated order perspective but also a case (Volta River Authority) illustration of how the perspective could help in appreciating accounting practice within organisations and society.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how negotiations between the constituencies affect the processes and outcomes of lean projects in Danish public sector organisations.

The paper is based on a qualitative analysis of interviews with managers and employees who have participated in lean projects in the Danish public sector. Negotiated order theory serves as the overarching theoretical framework for the analysis.

The paper concludes that the processes and outcomes of lean depend not only on the technology itself, but also the negotiation context in which the planning and implementation of lean projects take place. Lean implementation is not a neutral and value‐free activity; it is fluid and open for multiple interpretations, interests, and logics.

The project is based on qualitative data from lean projects in the Danish public sector. It cannot be concluded that the findings can be generalised to reflect all types of lean projects across organisational and geographical settings.

The paper adds value to the relatively scarce literature on lean management in the public sector by exploring how negotiative processes influence the planning, implementation, and maintenance/development of lean projects.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether patrol officers believe that police practices vary by precinct assignment and whether the precinct acts as a sub‐organizational level of analysis in police organizations.

The research design is a multi‐method ethnographic case study including observational fieldwork, both structured and unstructured interviews and official departmental documents.

The study finds that patrol officers overwhelmingly agree that police practices vary at the precinct level of analysis. This variation is perceived to be caused by: individual officer temperament/personality and level of experience,; culture, nature and expectations of the clientele/citizens; nature of calls for service, higher call loads and officer safety concerns; and command and precinct rules/norms. The study also finds that the precinct is a viable and important level of analysis within police organizations.

This study highlights the need to examine variation in police behavior within organizations at the precinct level of analysis.

The findings from this study have considerable practical implications because the findings indicate that to understand police patrol practices, police practitioners must investigate variation in the informal structures/cultures of police organizations at the sub‐organizational level of the precinct.

This paper is valuable because police researchers have investigated police behavior at the individual, situational, neighborhood, organizational and legal levels of analyses but have largely overlooked the intersection of these levels of analyses: the precinct.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze a data set from a brokerage firm to find possible spoofing cases in ten stocks from the Ibovespa index. The studies proposed concerned the parameters used in the search for the practice, the frequency of occurrences during the negotiation period, the impact on the price caused by the size of the spoofing order and the correlation between the stock's liquidity and the number of occurrences.

By using intraday orders flows, the authors are able to reassemble the order book and perform an analysis of potential market manipulation.

The authors found six possible cases, all of them happened in the beginning or end of the negotiation period, confirming that there is a window of opportunity for the practice when there is greater uncertainty related to the stock's price. Moreover, they found that in the less liquid stocks, it was necessary to place greater spoofing orders aiming to narrow the wider spread.

A methodology for spoofing detection that can be replicated by brokerage firms and other researchers was developed.

The study contributes to the literature of capital market regulation by suggesting best practices for regulators and self-regulatory entities to avoid a predatory market practice.

The authors present an algorithm and parameters for detecting spoofing; other papers are not practical orientated.

Evaluating and selecting the best among the offers provided by various suppliers is a complex problem that takes into account both tangible and intangible criteria, which incorporate interdependencies and feedback. The decision making is aggravated by the complexity of supply chain relationships and enterprise strategies especially within enterprise clusters. The aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive method for the evaluation and selection of suppliers' offers in parapharmaceutical industry clusters.

The proposed approach consists of two parts. The former is the comprehension of the supply chain processes within the parapharmaceutical industry in Greece, and the latter is the use of an analytic network process (ANP)‐based method for the selection of the best offer.

The proposed approach enables the decision maker to visualize the impact of various criteria on the final outcome and documents the evaluation results in such a way that they can be communicated to various stakeholders. The results indicate that quality‐related issues dominate the decision‐making process in the parapharmaceutical industry.

The outcome of the model depends highly on the inputs provided by the decision maker. Moreover, the ANP method is computational intensive, but this limitation can be alleviated by appropriate software tools.

The proposed framework is considered to be an innovative approach for the parapharmaceutical industry as well as enterprise clusters. The criteria set here may be used for nearly every similar industry consisting of active clusters (for example, the apparel industry).

Britain's merchant navy dominated the international maritime trade in the 19th century. The strong ship owners' lobby imposed on the shippers the only choice to contract either under bills of lading drafted almost totally on the ship owners' terms or not to contract. The conflict between Britain and its rival the American merchant navy precipitated a movement for the use of model contracts of shipment (carriage) and towards standardisation of the liability of International liner carriers by legislative intervention. The bill of lading through its use in international trade gained the characteristic of being the document which incorporates the contractual terms. So, the orally agreed contract of carriage gave way to the contract of carriage in the form of a bill of lading.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the discussion about how to develop a common identity of local stakeholders of places (e.g. politicians, local companies, residents). Such a common identity is regarded as an essential aspect to market a place consistently to external target groups (e.g. tourists, companies, qualified workers, students).

The paper follows a conceptual approach by transferring semiotic (symbolism) and sociological concepts (symbolic interactionism) to the concept of place branding. Moreover, a practical example of how to identify potential place symbols of cities is presented within the case study of the German town of Bremen.

Symbols are identified to be of special importance for the development of group identity of local stakeholders of places. Moreover, symbols are presented as essential aspects of a feeling of belonging to a place (place commitment).

As semiotic theory has not yet been transferred to the context of place branding this paper is opening up a new subject and needs to be understood as a first approach to constitute a theoretical framework. An empirical analyses needs to be carried out in order to proof the theories in the place branding context.

The paper explains that symbols can be established by the arrangement of public discourses like, e.g. competitions for place logos, place mascots or place songs. Moreover, it is pointed out, how already established place symbols which are not yet part of branding strategies can be identified in order to strengthen place identity.

Following the semiotic concept of symbolism the paper explains a high participation of residents as a necessity to establish and negotiate the meaning of symbols in order to strengthen place identity.

Because of being the first paper putting the semiotic theory of symbolism in the focus of the interdisciplinary discussion of branding the originality of the paper can be regarded as high.

This article presents a research framework that understands any management innovation, such as total quality management (TQM), as discursive knowledge that can have certain power effects. It may transform individuals into subjects that secure some sense of their own meaning and identity through participating either as managers or employees in the practices the knowledge embraces. But TQM can also have the opposite effect, resulting in subjects resisting or distancing themselves from, rather than embracing, the discourse. The paper reviews three interpretations of TQM, which are described as rational managerialist, critical control, and processual. It critiques each of these approaches so as to offer an alternative way of understanding TQM, which would also have application to a wide variety of other innovations. In short, it attempts to build upon earlier approaches in the anticipation that we might move beyond our present understanding of innovations such as TQM.

The concept of smart city has recently become more topical in academic and policy discussions. This idea is considered a complex, non-consensual subject since its definition has not yet been agreed upon by most authors in the relevant fields. The need to identify and measure smart city indicators has also given rise to many different evaluation procedures. However, the available frameworks have yet to overcome challenges in structuring and measuring all the evaluation parameters of the cities in question. Thus, methods still need to be developed and applied that can structure criteria used to assess smart city success.

This study sought to show cognitive mapping's tangible usefulness as an expedient tool for strategic analysis, using smart cities as a complex object of study. To this end, various cognitive maps were constructed and compared using the Strategic Options Development and Analysis (SODA) approach.

Cognitive mapping's advantages and limitations in the strategic visualization research context are analyzed and discussed.

The authors know of no prior work reporting comparative analysis of this methodological approach in the same research context.