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This article aims to provide a new paradigm for thinking about disability, which can be applied to other social groups, historically invisible and whose rights have been violated. The Model of Communication and Legitimate Acknowledgement of Disability (MCLAD) tries to break with the logic of continuing to add terms and euphemisms around the issue. The author proposes a new line to think about relationships in democratic societies. Taking the step from inclusion to acknowledgment does not imply another way of naming the disability, but rather addressing the problem from concrete practices of recognition. In order to arrive at the proposal of the MCLAD, the author will make a journey that addresses how disability has been understood throughout history, according to the study of different authors.

Disability has been perceived over time in many different ways, which led some authors to build models in order to explain certain social approaches to the subject. This article traces a journey from the first model to the present. In turn, it proposes a new one: the MCLAD, which is characterized by a paradigm shift: moving from inclusion to acknowledgment. To substantiate this, three categories are presented: acknowledgment, distance and vulnerability. The different theories and concepts that support the model will also be presented. The purpose of the MCLAD is to deepen the idea of empowering people with disabilities as part of today’s diverse societies and closing historically constructed gaps which are still in force.

The MCLAD proposes three categories: acknowledgment, distance and vulnerability. In turn, in each of them, there is a link between three axes: person with disability/society/state, analyzing the dynamics of these relationships presented, will provide us with the necessary elements to understand the proposed turnaround.

Although the different models will be presented according to the chronological order of definition over time, all of them still coexist today, in many cases in hybrid and naturalized ways in social practices. Recognizing what practices and conceptions are behind each model, allows us to recognize and resignify the ways of communicating toward people with disabilities (PWD) and on the issue of disability. It also allows other specific recognition practices, such as the legitimization of public policies from the laws that protect them.

To replace the paradigm of inclusion for that of acknowledgment and to recognize how the three categories (acknowledgment, distance and vulnerability) are linked with the three issues (PWD – society and state) allowing specific relationship and practises of legitimate or not acknowledgement. When the author affirms that the MCLAD implies a paradigm shift, the author means that it provides some elements from legitimate acknowledgment to complement aspects which inclusion does not address, and that the other models did not take into account. These are: the self-acknowledgment of people with disabilities and the sense of responsibility linked to empowerment; vulnerability as a category of reconciliation, which is typical of every human being; the contribution of the Phenomenology of the Among to think about how relationships and practices actually occur in society and, finally, the role of the state, which must watch over all its citizens, avoiding the distance between discourse (laws) and practices and, above all, avoiding exclusion from the system due to lack of monitoring of actions.

It should be noted that the MCLAD starts from the idea of language as a constructor of realities and conceives communication as an enabler of the acknowledgment of the other, who is also subject to rights. At the same time, it vindicates the voice of people with disabilities as protagonists (“Nothing about us without us”) and fosters the need for PWD themselves to be active in their struggles, promulgating legitimate acknowledgment. At the same time, it points out that the empowerment of PWD implies not only that they are aware of their rights but also that they themselves know and fulfill their duties within the democratic societies of which they are a part of and which, at least discursively, are regulated by laws. In other words, being empowered is also being responsible for living in society.

The main contribution that the MCLAD has to offer is to replace the paradigm of inclusion for that of acknowledgment. And, throughout the path followed in this article, an attempt has been made to establish that the turnaround is not to capriciously install a new concept (acknowledgment), but to demonstrate that the new paradigm involves three categories that sustain and support a model that seeks to be the basis for effective public policies, for a society that values diversity and for people who feel worthy and contribute to dignify others.

Central to the celebrity creation process is mass media communication and impression management (IM) behaviors of social actors. The emergence of social network sites (SNSs) such as Twitter offers a platform for social actors to engage both of these means in efforts to manage their celebrity. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of how celebrity athletes manage their celebrity status by investigating IM tactics employed by National Basketball Association (NBA) celebrities on Twitter.

A content analytic design was employed to examine the Twitter posts of the top ten most popular and influential NBA celebrity athletes (past and present) at the time of tweet acquisition.

The findings revealed the celebrity athletes used a variety of IM tactics to manage their celebrity. Defensive IM tactics (i.e. reactive measures taken) were used sparingly when compared to offensive IM tactics (i.e. proactive measures taken). Also, consistent with extant IM literature, the celebrity athletes utilized IM tactics in isolation as well as in combination.

The extant literature suggests that celebrities cultivate their relationships with the various media outlets with the potential to create (or even damage) one’s celebrity. This study offers celebrity athletes and their managers with useful insight on celebrity management.

This study is the first to examine IM in a sport business context, particularly the use of IM of athletes on SNSs.

Though trauma survivors sometimes emerge as leaders in prosocial causes related to their previous negative or traumatic experiences, little is known about this transition, and limited guidance is available for survivors who hope to make prosocial contributions. To understand what enables trauma-inspired prosocial leadership development, the transition narratives of seven trauma-inspired leaders who varied by global region, primary language, gender, ethnicity, religion, trauma type, and leadership area were analyzed. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis in an exploratory study, participants’ transitional journeys were examined through analysis of their autobiographies. Critical findings included frequent references by all participants to perspective enlargement (reframing a problem or context) and resilience to the negative, apathetic, or retaliatory responses to the mission (possibly learned through resilience to trauma itself). This study explores posttraumatic leadership conceptually and makes suggestions for leadership development among trauma-inspired survivors

This study aims to investigate the dynamic interplay between the management control system (MCS) and organizational identity (OI) in the Deepwater Horizon incident involving British Petroleum (BP). It examines how the MCS manages challenges, particularly those addressing the embarrassment stemming from identity disparities between external portrayal (frontstage) and internal operations (backstage), with a focus on the often-underestimated influence of the media.

This study builds upon the frameworks developed by Ravasi and Schultz (2006) and Malmi and Brown (2008) to construct a theoretical framework that profoundly investigates the relationship between MCS and OI. The framework developed guided the research design and incorporated a qualitative approach complemented by an illustrative case study. The research data was rigorously gathered from diverse sources, including official BP documents and influential media outlets, with a particular focus on well-established American and British newspapers.

BP’s MCS plays a dual role: it exposes discrepancies in safety, leadership and values, causing embarrassment and identity damage, yet catalyses a sense-making process leading to organizational transformation and shifts in the OI. This transformation influences sense-giving and prompts changes in MCS. The study reveals an intricate interplay in identity management between frontstage audiences (e.g. influential media) and backstage actors (e.g. BP’s senior management). It highlights interdependencies both within and between MCS and OI, emphasizing their roles in interacting within identity management. The longitudinal recovery is intricately tied to mutual political interests between BP and the USA, which are significantly facilitated by the media’s role.

This study acknowledges limitations that point future research opportunities. Interviews could provide a more dynamic understanding of MCS changes and organizational transformations. Investigating the role of leadership, particularly the new chief executive office, and the influence of political versus organizational factors in shaping identity claims is essential. Additionally, the effectiveness and historical context of interdependencies should be quantitatively assessed. Theoretical limitations in the OI and MCS frameworks suggest the need for context-specific categorisations. This research serves as a foundation for further exploration of the intricate dynamics between MCS, OI and organizational responses to crises.

This study offers valuable insights with practical implications for organizations facing identity challenges in the wake of significant incidents. Organizations can better navigate crises by recognizing the multifaceted role of MCS in identity damage and restoration. It underscores the importance of addressing both frontstage and backstage aspects of OI while managing identity discrepancies, thereby enhancing transparency and credibility. Additionally, understanding the intricate interdependencies within OI and MCS can guide organizations in implementing more effective identity restoration strategies. Furthermore, the study highlights the significance of media influence and the need to engage with it strategically during crisis management.

This study’s findings have significant social implications for organizations and the broader public. By recognizing the multifaceted role of MCS in shaping identity, organizations can enhance transparency and credibility, rebuilding trust with the public. Additionally, the study highlights the critical role of media in influencing perceptions and decision-making during crises, emphasizing the importance of responsible and ethical reporting. Understanding the intricate interplay between MCS and OI can inform better crisis management strategies and improve how organizations respond to and recover from incidents, ultimately benefiting society by promoting more accountable and responsible corporate behaviour.

This study’s distinctness lies in its innovative exploration of MCS, which transcends traditional methodologies that focus narrowly on front or backstage aspects of OI and often adhere to predetermined MCS practices. It underscores the importance of concurrently addressing both the front- and backstage audiences in managing the embarrassment caused by identity discrepancies and restoration. The research uncovers multifaceted interdependencies within MCS and OI, and these extend beyond simplistic relationships and emphasize the complex nature of identity restoration management.

As prior research has indicated, women who experience behaviors that fall under the accepted definitions of sexual harassment, do not label, acknowledge, or claim these behaviors as such. The purpose of this paper is to explore an alternative explanation for this non-labeling by arguing that apprehension in expressing sexuality, stemming from apparent subjugation of sex and sexuality by society, posited in a culturally value laden backdrop, leads to Sri Lankan women not labeling or acknowledging sexual harassment.

Employing grounded theory, in-depth, one-on-one interviews were conducted with 40 working women.

It was revealed that social construction of gender and sexuality in Sri Lankan society, with its instilled moralistic beliefs and norms such as respectability, sexual innocence, chastity, and purity among women, suppress and govern their sexuality in the workplace. The resultant self-surveillance and self-discipline lead to women evading expressing and using vocabulary denoting sexuality – including the term “sexual harassment” – mainly for fear of social censorship, self-blame, and victim blame.

The study shows how policies and procedures of sexual harassment must heed the gendered everyday realities of women in workplaces and questions the capacity and utilization of these laws and policies that employ the label “sexual” in addressing the issue.

This paper advances knowledge on sexual harassment by providing new insights on how cultural values and norms leading to social construction of gender and sexuality play an important role in non-labeling of sexual harassment. Moving further, this paper illustrates how Foucault’s treatise of “sexuality and power,” and “social construction of reality” can be employed to theorize non-labeling.

This case study describes how threats to stab people, in a client with learning disabilities, may have been inadvertently reinforced during detention in a medium secure unit by over‐looking borderline personality traits. Formulating the case from the biopsychosocial model of borderline personality disorder (Linehan, 1993), the article illustrates how an invalidating environment provided by learning disability services may have interacted with underlying difficulties in emotion regulation to reinforce challenging behaviour. Explaining threats to stab purely in terms of learning disability accidentally invalidated the client's emotional distress, so the only way he could convey how he was feeling was by escalating challenging behaviour. Risk management procedures also strengthened the client's belief that he was a dangerous person, and reinforced the challenging behaviour by gaining interpersonal attention. The need for learning disability services to be aware of how personality features contribute to learning disability presentations and to formulate from an interactive perspective is highlighted.

The human side of the job demands–resources (JD-R) model was this study's focus, examining job resources' impact on employees' co-creation intention. It considered employee satisfaction, engagement (vigour, absorption and dedication) and self-construal affect as mediators, with optimism and employee pro-social behaviour as moderators.

In total, 214 responses from a survey questionnaire among service employees in Indonesia and Singapore were analysed with the partial least squares (PLS) method. Moderation and mediation analyses used multi-group analyses and bootstrapping.

Most job resource indicators were found to be significant antecedents of employee co-creation intention. Optimism and pro-social behaviour significantly moderated the relationships between job support, vigour and absorption. A partial mediation effect was evident in the employee satisfaction–engagement relationship. Employees' self-efficacy and self-construal affect had a higher influence on employee co-creation intention than satisfaction or engagement.

The study considered only job resource-based indicators of the JD-R model and not those based on job demands. The moderation effect in the optimism–pro-social behaviour relationship considered job support but not interpersonal relationships and job autonomy.

The study's findings would assist practitioners to motivate employees' co-creation intention through job resources and the employees' self-assessed emotions, such as optimism, pro-social behaviour and self-construal affect.

This study relates the JD-R model's job resources to service employees' co-creation intention, considering self-assessed emotions as mediators, while applying optimism and pro-social behaviour as moderators.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the influence of the technology on storytelling in an organisational setting. How do we tell each other stories in projects with digital images, and how can we convince others in this project about our way of looking at things? Images represent stories and in this context are collages of pictures and words based on digital technology. To be convincing as a storyteller requires people to be in touch with themselves through this technology, as if their imagination is the ground for the whole project.

From contemporary literature, different notions can be found that explore the impact of digital technology on work processes. Based on this literature, notions around storytelling and project work are related to change in the organisation. The question for the author in this case is about imagination as a form of storytelling. Are people still in touch with the project through the representation by techno images, or are they hallucinating about their own prospects, projecting a future over which they have little control?

The practices of interactive media organisations are studied as part of identifying storytelling based on images.

This paper is based on literature studies and its findings need to be explored in a real‐life setting.

The consequences of technical images to storytelling can be used to widen the impact of storytelling as research discipline.

The application of Flusser's theory in the field of organisation studies opens up possibilities for exploring imagination in a philosophical/technological way.

Children have been recognized as an important user group for information and communication technology (ICT) and methods for involving them in ICT design have already been devised. However, there is a lack of research on children’s genuine or authentic participation in ICT design as well as a lack of critical research scrutinizing how “children” and “their participation” actually end up constructed in ICT design. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

An intervention involving children in ICT design following the research strategy of nexus analysis was implemented. A qualitative data archive of this intervention is examined through a Foucauldian lens.

The study reveals that numerous discourses were relied on when talking about “children” and “their participation” in the case project: the discourses of participation, equality, domination, segregation, rebellion, and patronization were identified. Moreover, “children” were constructed as equal partners and influential, but also as ignorant, ignored, silent, and silencing each other. Some of the findings are in line with the existing ICT literature on the matter, others even with the literature on genuine participation of children. However, children and their participation were also constructed as “problematic” in many senses.

The study contributes to and opens up avenues for critical research on genuine participation of users, especially children.

Practical suggestions for researchers interested in participation of children in ICT design are provided.

While research literature offers an abundance of best practices and an idealized view on children and their participation, this study shows the multitude of challenges involved and discourses circulating around.