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Multicultural leadership education may be enhanced through the use of social construction literature as a theoretical frame. Here, I present a brief overview of social construction theory and demonstrate how its tenets overlap with the goal of encouraging students’ intercultural competence. I then provide two classroom activities that illustrate how I have used social construction to explain and examine interaction across diverse groups, as well as student feedback regarding the activities’ efficacy.

This article reports the theoretical framework which has been developed as the first step of a research programmed designed to thoroughly explore the possibility that industrial attitudes and behaviour are socially developed and socially maintained constructs. The present article seeks to outline the beginnings of such an explanation and evaluate the implications of the model for industrial practice and worker behaviour problems.

The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness among tourism and business scholars and professionals to avoid using socially constructed academic artifacts (such as “Silaturrahim”), which do not describe their real meanings but reflect false realities constructed by scholars over a period of time. In the last decade, academic research on identifying false information has played a significant role to raise awareness among electronic and social media users so that they may distinguish between false and true reality. In contrast, studies on misleading devices, such as false information reporting and citations in published academic literature, and their pejorative consequences are rare and scant. This paper, therefore, viewed the underexamined and relatively obscure issues of false information reporting and citations in published business and tourism research by highlighting a wrongly perceived concept “Silaturrahim” from the theoretical lens of social constructionism. It has been established that factors like false information, false information citation chains and falsely attributed meanings of academic artifacts pave the way for myths and urban legends which in turn formulate socially constructed academic artifacts. These artifacts are impulsively entrusted by the academic community but, in reality, their meanings are socially constructed, therefore, represent false realities. This paper calls the experts to invest their time and efforts to further explore the proposed concepts of “academic social construction” and “academic social artifacts.” Lastly, it is suggested to develop strategies to minimize or eradicate the dreadful psychological impacts of “academic social construction” on academic communities.

The relationship between research pursued in sociology as an academic discipline and sociological research undertaken as a contribution toward social policy formation is a somewhat uneasy one in the USA. The author undertakes to examine the evolving relationship between the disciplinary and professional thrusts of the American sociological enterprise.

An episode in the development of accounting for Private Finance Initiative (PFI) scheme transactions is explored from a social constructionist perspective. The “carrying” of meanings between sub‐worlds of the financial accounting world through social processes, principally by means of the standard‐setting body’s conceptual framework, is shown to be implicated in the social construction, maintenance and modification of accounting meanings. The social constructionist model is developed in several ways, some of which respond to particular characteristics of the financial accounting world.

The efficacy of the processes by which social reality is created and reproduced is largely attributable to the fact that these processes are screened from scrutiny by taken‐for‐granted assumptions which are embedded in language, thought and social practices such as accounting and accounting research. A number of taken‐for‐granted assumptions which are embedded in predominant modes of accounting research, commonsense reasoning, and accounting practice, which function to protect the processes of reality construction from scrutiny, are discussed. These assumptions result in a conceptualisation of the role of accounting information as communicating a reality which exists independently of financial accounting practices. As such, these assumptions obscure, or gloss over, accounting′s sociopolitical role in constructing social reality. As these assumptions are critiqued and set aside, it becomes clear that the social practices of accounting and accounting research both play an important part in the social construction of reality.

Although the case for case studies is now well established in accounting and management research, the exact nature of their contribution is still under discussion. This paper aims to add to this debate on contribution by arguing that case studies explore not one reality but several.

This is a theoretical paper that discusses ontology using a deductive approach.

The paper argues that reality is differentiated into physical, structural, agential, cultural and mental realms.

The paper begins to draw out some of the implications of “differentiated realities” for case studies, but there is much more that could be said.

Because case studies encompass differentiated realities, the paper discusses how expectations about the contribution of case studies should be intimately linked to the nature of the differentiated realities being researched.

“Differentiated realities” provides a fresh look status of case study findings and challenges the idea of a single social reality – as portrayed by both social positivism and social constructivism.

The use of dialectics and social construction theory can help expose rationalized institutional myths used to create useable knowledge. This discussion presents a popular technique, advocated and used among public officials when establishing pay scales, called a salary survey. Salary surveys appear rational because they use logical positivist (quantitative) methods to illustrate a “truth” that is actually “symbolic.” This process is institutionalized when pay discussions and decisions are required to proceed on the basis of salary surveys. Salary surveys take on the role of myth when they become accepted by officials as an “objective reality” without a thorough examination of the biases and assumptions. This study uses the ritual, validity, reality dialectic to illustrate how administrators construct and shape reality through social interaction. Through this dialectic, some officials may want to question their acceptance of salary survey practices and consider the recommendations offered in this article.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect theoretically on a quarter-century of attempts to codify “best practice” standards related to oversight of and reporting on executive remuneration. Issues around the regulation of UK executive remuneration are analysed focussing on decision making by elite actors, informed by corporate governance codification artefacts and theoretical considerations inspired by notions of the social construction of reality.

Using documentary materials to trace evolution of executive remuneration regulation in the UK, consideration is given to the social antecedents of processes governing corporate board remuneration committee practices. The paper reconstructs the social construction of the UK Corporate Governance Code and draws on relevant theoretically inclined literature to help make sense of processes involved.

Shaping the problems, to be addressed as “legitimate problems”, is core to efforts intended to create “persuasive narratives” around how UK executive remuneration should be regulated.

The paper sketches an agenda for subsequent empirical “field” investigation to assess the social antecedents of UK executive remuneration outcomes.

Offering an alternative way of thinking about executive reward and on-going controversy as to how it may be legitimately regulated, informed by contextual considerations.

A novel look at executive remuneration from a social construction of reality perspective. Adding value to public debate on organisational effectiveness at a time of warnings from luminaries such as the Bank of England governor about the adverse social impact of “stateless companies” and calls for action against unfairness in income distribution.

This paper aims to explore articulations of how individuals internalise official demands on handling COVID-19 and the function of social media in this process, and further to discuss this from a human rights’ perspective.

A thematic analysis of qualitative data from an international survey on COVID-19 and social media. The analysis was inspired by Berger and Luckmann's theory of reality as a social construction.

Articulations expressed an instant internalisation and externalisation of the officially defined “new normal”. However, negotiations of this “new normal” were articulated, whereby everyday life activities could proceed. Resistance to the “new normal” appeared, as routines and common sense understandings of everyday life were threatened. Health-care professionals were put in a paradoxical situation, living in accordance with the “new normal” outside work and legitimately deviating from it at work. The “new normal” calls for individuals’ “oughtonomy” rather than autonomy. Social media were used to push individual’s re-socialisation into the “new normal”. The latter both promoted and challenged human rights as the individual's right to self-determination extends beyond the self as it risks threatening other people's right to life.

With the means of a theoretically based thematic analysis inspired by Berger and Luckmann, the current study shows how articulations on COVID-19 and social media can both support and challenge human rights and reality as a facticity as dictated by dominant organisations and discourses in society.