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The authors examine and compare accounting associations' identities in distinct segments of the accounting profession surrounding the 2014 merger of three Canadian accounting associations.

The authors conceive of accounting associations' magazine front covers as a setting for “identity performance” (i.e. a scenery through which identity dimensions are intentionally communicated to target audiences). The authors examine pre-merger and post-merger associations' identity performances that took place between January 2011 and December 2020 and identify 21 broad themes that the authors interpret in terms of identity logics (i.e. professionalism/commercialism) and audience focus (society/association members), underscoring (dis)similarities in identity performances pre- and post-merger.

The authors' analysis reveals distinct identity performances for the different segments of the pre-merger accounting profession and for the post-merger unified accounting association. Identity logics manifest differently: a commercial logic dominated for two of the associations and a professional logic dominated for the third. Identity fluidity was evident in the merged association's shift from commercial toward professional logic when the association ceased publishing one magazine and introduced a new one. Society rather than associations' members dominated as a target audience for all associations, but this focus manifested differently. Post-merger, identity performances continued to focus on society as the audience.

The authors highlight the Goffmanian identity performances (Goffman, 1959) taking place via accounting associations' magazines. The authors adopt a segment perspective (Bucher and Strauss, 1961) that demonstrates that commercialism does not trump professionalism in all segments of the profession. For the first time, the authors juxtapose identity logics (professionalism/commercialism) and targeted audiences to better understand how these facets of accountants' identities compare between segments.

The paper aims to analyse the meaning and extension of discretionary power of social service professionals within network-based interventions.

Empirically, the paper is based on a case study of a network-based policy involving private and public organisations in the Northeast of Italy (Province of Trento).

The paper identifies netocracy as a social policy logic distinct from bureaucracy and professionalism. What legitimises netocracy is neither authority nor expertise but cooperation, the activation of connections and involvement, considered “good” per se. In this framework, professionalism and discretion acquire new and problematic meanings compared to street-level bureaucracy processes.

Based on a case study, the research results cannot be generalised but pave the way to further comparative investigations.

The paper reveals that the position of professionals in netocracy is to some extent trickier than that in a bureaucracy because netocracy seems to have the power to encapsulate them and make it less likely for them to deviate from expected courses of action.

Combining different literature streams – street level bureaucracy, professionalism, network organisations and welfare governance – and building on an original case study, the paper contribute to understanding professionalism in welfare contexts increasingly characterised by the combination of bureaucratic, professional and network logics.

This paper aims to discuss the significance of teacher authorship (jissen kiroku) developed during jugyo kenkyu. Specifically, it explores the structural conditions of jugyo kenkyu that enabled the flourishing of jissen kiroku.

To find how jissen kiroku developed in jugyo kenkyu, this paper settled triad of authors-text-readers as the analytical perspective. Disputes through 1960s–1980s are adequate to inquire because it can elucidate how readers read jissen kiroku, which is typically challenging to observe.

Jissen kiroku is a powerful tool for semantically preserving, reconstructing and consolidating professional values and knowledge in jugyo kenkyu with deepening connoisseurship. Voluntary educational research associations (VERAs) encourage teachers to write and read jissen kiroku to develop their professionalism, which also helped develop exclusive semantics within the field. These developments were possible due to the public nature of jissen kiroku, disseminated to lesson study (LS) actors, thereby strengthening discussions both inside and outside VERAs.

The paper proposes shift in views on educational science and emphasizes authorship as authority in that professionalism of teaching can be protected and elevated through authoring.

The significant roles of writing practice have not been explored enough. This paper finds the value of authorship in terms of public nature and openness to all teachers which enable the enhancement of professionalism of the LS field.

Current research aims to investigate the relationships between Chinese national cultural values (uncertainty avoidance (UA), power distance, masculinity (MAS), individualism (IDV) and Confucian dynamism) and accounting practices (professionalism, uniformity, conservatism and secrecy).

A sample of 842 users/preparers of financial statements participated in this cross-sectional, questionnaire-based survey from China. Covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) was used to test the proposed relationship.

Results show that cultural values strongly impact financial reporting practices in China. Chinese society is characterized by low UA, high power distance, collectivism, future orientation (Confucianism) and masculine traits. These values show an overall preference for uniformity, conservatism and secrecy in financial reporting with weak professionalism. The findings show that Chinese society emphasizes law abidance, strict codes of conduct, written rules and regulations and respect for consistent orthodox measures.

This study provides valuable input for policymakers in developing regulations and accounting standards in the Chinese market. Understanding the relationship between cultural dimensions and accounting values helps to address societal challenges and align policies with cultural values to acquire desired financial reporting values. Global firm managers must consider cultural dimensions in accounting when entering Chinese markets or negotiating with partners from different cultures. Findings also suggest local managers gain self-awareness of their cultural biases and accounting values, enabling them to navigate businesses and society's financial reporting needs.

This study enriches the existing literature on cultural and accounting practice studies by validating the role of stakeholder and social contract theories in Gray–Hofstede’s framework and highlighting the influence of dominant cultural values on accounting values. The study provides a unique empirical analysis of the Chinese market by using a questionnaire survey and structural equation modeling (SEM). Further, it also opens avenues for future research on the relationship between cultural dimensions, accounting practices and their global impact. These findings emphasize the importance of cultural sensitivity and adaptability, especially in multicultural environments.

Drawing on information foraging theory and the SERVQUAL model, this study built a research model to investigate the roles of middle-aged and elderly short-video creators' online attributes in attracting short-video viewers to be their followers.

Taking Douyin (a famous short-video platform in China) as an example, this study used a sequential triangulation mixed-methods approach (quantitative → qualitative) to examine the proposed model by investigating both creators and viewers.

Viewers who clicked the “like” button for the middle-aged and elderly creators' videos are more likely to follow the creators. Viewers will believe that middle-aged and elderly creators who received more likes are more popular. Thus, middle-aged and elderly creators with more likes usually have more followers. Viewers usually believe that middle-aged and elderly creators who more frequently publish professional and high-quality videos have invested more effort and who have official verification also have a high level of authority and are recognized by the platform. Thus, middle-aged and elderly creators with more professional videos and verification usually have more followers. Moreover, verification, the number of videos and the professionalism of videos can enhance the transformation of viewers who liked middle-aged and elderly creators' videos into their followers, and thus strengthen the positive relationship between the number of likes and the number of followers; however, the number of bio words will have an opposite effect.

These findings have implications for platform managers, middle-aged and elderly creators and the brands aiming to develop a “silver economy” by attracting more followers.

This study researches short-video platforms by using a mixed-methods approach to develop an understanding of viewers' decision-making when following middle-aged and elderly creators based on information foraging theory and the SERVQUAL model from the perspectives of both short-video creators and viewers.

The current study aims at developing a conceptual framework containing original dimensions of SERVQUAL and adding two modified dimensions: patient safety and medical professionalism in healthcare service quality (HSQ) model.

An extensive review of HSQ literature pertaining to its dimensions and models with respect to content analysis and bibliometric studies of service quality in healthcare and SERVQUAL in healthcare were performed on 47 relevant studies, 4,689 and 529 documents after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria. Google Scholar and Scopus were the primary sources to find the relevant documents.

The content analysis was conducted to group HSQ dimensions into seven themes. Co-occurrence analysis of author keywords was performed in VOSviewer to find the links between service quality, SERVQUAL and proposed dimensions. Organization and analysis of different HSQ models and dimensions emerged from the literature result in a comprehensive conceptual framework comprising modified dimensions of healthcare service quality – medical professionalism and patient safety.

SERVQUAL is a widely accepted, tested and validated model in perceiving HSQ from the lenses of patients. But it does not cover the complex nature of healthcare service, thus requiring modification and the addition of new contextual dimensions. Therefore, a comprehensive conceptual framework is developed to validate and test quantitatively.

Measuring tax service quality is important as it may contribute to sustainable tax management. This study aims to develop and validate a scale that measures tax service quality for enterprises.

This study uses a mixed method consisting of three focus groups with 25 participants in charge of the management of tax service for item generation, a survey of 121 enterprises for scale purification and a survey of 362 enterprises in Vietnam for main study. The scale development is tested through three important steps including exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM).

The findings reveal that the scale of tax service quality for enterprises is represented by 13 items comprising two dimensions: responsiveness and professionalism.

This scale can be used by tax management authorities as a convenient tool to understand and measure tax service quality.

Empirical studies on the measurement of tax service quality are scarce. Most studies have focused on tax service quality for individual taxpayers. There is an absence of research on a process for the development and validation of a specific, orthodox scale of tax service quality for enterprises.

Since the early 2000s there has been increased attention on the professionalisation of the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) workforce in many OECD countries. This study focuses on what Australian early childhood educators holding the lowest level of qualification – Certificate III are experiencing in relation to their professional capital in a sector that is experiencing wide-spread and ongoing reform. The study identifies the human capital, social capital and decisional capital of these educators, then explores the interconnections.

This paper was funded by the Australian Research Council. The qualitative data consider the capabilities of certificate-qualified educators and how these are enabled or constrained within the workplace. The corpus of data for this study consists of 14 interviews with Certificate III-qualified educators from three locations across Victoria, Australia. Hargreaves and Fullan’s (2012) forms of professional capital (human, social and decisional) act as organisers for the themes identified through a thematic analysis.

Themes identified in the data speak to inequity in access to professional learning, the valuing of life experiences, clear divisions of labour that impact what knowledge is valued, and differences in educator agency in the decision-making process. Many certificate-qualified educators experience a workplace culture that lacks trust in an individual’s professional competence and does not appreciate collegial knowledge and skill building as a collective enterprise.

The conceptual framing of this study provides a unique way to explore the experiences of certificate-trained educators. The study introduces the idea of using exploratory categories and the identification of levels of human, social and decisional capital. This type of study involving this cohort of educators is unique.

The purpose of this study is to explore the plurality of logics composing an organizational field and how that plurality affects a sport governing body's (SGB) sense of self. The authors sought to determine what logics exist in a specific field and how they interact according to Kraatz and Block's (2017) types of organizational responses. Finally, the authors explore how an organization's responses affect organizational outcomes.

The authors analyzed 476 unique organizational web pages and documents and 293 news media articles from four news outlets. The authors conduct a content analysis informed by Gioia et al.’s (2013) method to explore the website data to understand the logics of the field. The authors analyze the media articles for media accounts of events and determine how logics inform an SGB's actions (Cocchairella and Edwards, 2020).

The authors find institutional plurality leads to a fractured organizational sense of self, resulting in poor outcomes. The authors' findings suggest Kraatz and Block's (2017) as well as other previously theorized strategies do not lead to an organization reconciling competing logics. Rather, the strategies employed led to outcomes harming the organization's legitimacy and financial well-being.

There are several calls within the broader management field and the sport management field to address institutional plurality (Kraatz and Block, 2017; Robertson et al., 2022). Unlike previous research studies, this study finds detrimental effects of plurality on an organization. The authors discuss the strength of the strategies employed and why the strategies failed.

This paper aims to provide a synthesis of theoretical and empirical work related to the professionalization of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from a knowledge-based perspective.

A systematic literature review consisting of three major steps of planning, conducting and reporting is conducted. Papers are identified, selected and deductively coded. Quantitative and qualitative methods are used to analyze the papers. The finalized list includes 78 papers and 48 journals, with the oldest paper published in 1980 and the most recent papers published in 2022.

The findings showed that the empirical works (n = 69) outnumbered the conceptual works (n = 9). Most papers focused on the organizational level of analysis and identified causal conditions, modes, intervening conditions and consequences. A multidimensional characteristic of professionalization emerged inductively as an additional attribute.

This paper provides a synthesis of the current literature and offers a research agenda to academics and practitioners interested in the professionalization of SMEs from a knowledge-based perspective.