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This paper aims to offer insight into how strategies within the accounting profession, which has been becoming more global, might be changed by the recent outbreak of the Second Cold War between the West and the Rest of the World.

We explore the strategies of those who called themselves “Confucian accountants” in China, a country which has recently discouraged its state-owned enterprises from using the services of the Big 4. We do this by employing qualitative research methods, including reflexive photo interviews, in which Big-4 accountants, recognised as the most Westernised accounting actors in China, and Confucian accountants are asked to take and explain photographs representing their professional lives. Bourdieu’s notions of “economy of practices” and “vision-of-division strategy” are drawn upon to understand who the Confucian accountants are and what they do strategically in their pursuit of a higher revenue stream and improved social standing in the Chinese social space.

The homegrown Confucian accountants share cultural-cognitive characteristics with neighbouring social actors, such as their clients and government officials, who have been inculcated with Confucianism and the state’s cultural confidence policy in pursuit of a “socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics”. Those accountants try to enhance their social standing and revenue stream by strategically demonstrating their difference from Big-4 accountants. For this purpose, they wear Confucian clothes, have Confucian props in their office, employ Confucian phrases in their everyday conversations, use Confucian business cards and construct and maintain guanxi with government officials and clients.

This paper is the first attempt to explore Confucian accountants’ strategies for increasing their revenue and social standing at the start of the Second Cold War.

This study aims to analyze the configuration of the board of directors of the five largest banks operating in Brazil, which are members of a financial elite that directly influences the socioeconomic life in Latin America.

This assessment is inspired by Bourdieu's sociological approach and in the discussion on his work in organization studies and economic sociology. It addresses the organization as a field and investigates its associated field of power. The authors conducted qualitative research and relationally analyzed data related to the trajectory and the social properties of the councilors using the statistical technique called multiple correspondence analysis (MCA).

The results show that forms of social and cultural capital are particularly influential in the production of distinctions among banks' board members. Moreover, councils' priorities and configurations are diverse: some idealized and based on knowledge, others pragmatic and based on customs, others still anchored in a double logic of market satisfaction and family wealth preservation.

Understanding the objective power relations among these top agents may be crucial for effectively regulating certain aspects of their activities. Furthermore, understanding how different forms of capital affect the relative position of the board members may help us reduce representative bias in what seems today an inner circle.

This study is relevant because it makes an in-depth analysis of the composition of one of the most influential financial elites in Latin America, combining sociological theory and advanced statistical techniques for qualitative grouping (MCA).

The aim of this study is, from the perspective of artisan entrepreneurship, to trace and analyse the artisan's profile in the sustainable development of low population density cross-border territories, using the quintuple helix innovation model.

Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with cultural and traditional artisans to achieve the proposed objective using a qualitative approach. The artisans are from Northeast Portugal (Bragança, Miranda do Douro, Mogadouro, Vimioso and Vinhais) and Northern Spain (Province of Zamora). The interviews were conducted face-to-face between May and June 2022. The interviews were manually transcribed and subjected to content and lexical analyses using IRaMuTeQ software.

An artisan was identified as an enterprising individual whose marketed handicraft pieces transmit the values and teachings of his community. Innovation, technology, sustainability and circular economy in a family environment, where dedication, resilience, happiness and hard work transmit an identity that places the artisan and his artisan practice as the driving force for the enhancement and promotion of his territory, cultural heritage and identity.

This work is the first study to address and treat the issue of artisan entrepreneurship by analysing and defining the cultural-based and traditional artisan profile in a cross-border and low population density territorial context.

The paper aims to explore the relationship between accounting and racial violence through an investigation of sharecropping in the postbellum American South.

A range of primary sources including peonage case files of the US Department of Justice and the archives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are utilised. Data are analysed by reference to Randall Collins' theory of violence. Consistent with this theory, a micro-sociological approach to examining violent encounters is employed.

It is demonstrated that the production of alternative or competing accounts, accounting manipulation and failure to account generated interactions where confrontational tension culminated in bluster, physical attacks and lynching. Such violence took place in the context of potent racial ideologies and institutions.

The paper is distinctive in its focus on the interface between accounting and “actual” (as opposed to symbolic) violence. It reveals how accounting processes and traces featured in the highly charged emotional fields from which physical violence could erupt. The study advances knowledge of the role of accounting in race relations from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, a largely unexplored period in the accounting history literature. It also seeks to extend the research agenda on accounting and slavery (which has hitherto emphasised chattel slavery) to encompass the practice of debt peonage.

Researchers, with the widespread acceptance of Web-based technologies by companies, have recently discovered a new type of social capital through these mass communication tools, but there is still limited knowledge about its formation. Therefore, this study specifically aims to conceptualize and validate brand social capital (BSC) by analyzing the role of the online brand community’s social media capital (OBCSC).

Research data was collected using a questionnaire with 39 closed-ended questions. Participants, among the 220 questionnaires distributed, only returned 140 acceptable questionnaires, indicating a response rate of 64%. The statistical population of the study included managers and employees of e-commerce companies active in social media in the field of B2C who introduce and sell their products and services on various types of social networking websites. This study performed data analysis using structural equation modeling with partial least squares.

The results showed that OBCSC has a positive and significant effect on the integration of brand knowledge, branding co-creation and sense of belonging to the brand community, and in addition, using the mediating role of these three variables, it also has a positive effect on BSC. This study rejects only hypothesis 8 among all the hypotheses formulated, which shows that the sense of belonging to the brand community has no significant effect on branding co-creation.

By conceptualizing a new phenomenon called BSC and how its conversion mechanism is, this research defines a specific and formulated path to better identify the results of the organizational use of social media. In addition, it significantly contributes to increasing managers’ understanding of the importance of online brand community activities in internalizing customer brand knowledge within the company and turning it into wealth.

A boundaryless career perspective suggests that career competencies are essential for employees who wish to advance their careers in high uncertainty. This study aims to propose an integrated conceptual model for career competencies to provide insights for employees and organizations by identifying what and how one can prepare and provide support for career development in an uncertain and complex work environment.

The integrated literature reviewed was adapted to provide a conceptual model for career competencies. All 77 studies were reviewed, guided by the intelligent career theory (ICT) and social cognitive career theory (SCCT).

The mechanisms of career competency development were examined through the interrelationship between three types of knowing; knowing-why, knowing-whom and knowing-how. Career competencies can be considered a developmental process, therefore, they could develop through various interventions and accumulate over time. Especially the results indicate that learning is an essential component of career competencies, as it increases self-efficacy and promotes a desire to achieve positive career outcomes.

This study provided a conceptual model, explored the mechanisms of career competency development and considered how career competencies influence career outcomes. Furthermore, it identified the context of the construct of career competencies by integrating the SCCT and ICT. Finally, it showed the inadequacy of existing research on negative factors of career competency outcomes and recommended further research to broaden the general context of career competency studies.

Sustainability is viewed as an encompassing perspective, as endorsed by the international policy context, driven by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We aim to examine how women entrepreneurs transform capitals to pursue sustainability, and to generate policy insights for sustainability actions through tourism entrepreneurship.

Applying qualitative approach, we have generated empirical evidence drawing on 37 qualitative interviews carried out in Turkey, whereby boundaries between traditional patriarchal forces and progressive movements in gender relations are blurred.

We have generated insights into how women entrepreneurs develop their sustainability practice by transforming their available economic, cultural, social and symbolic capitals in interpreting the macro-field and by developing navigation strategies to pursue sustainability. This transformative process demonstrates how gender roles were performed and negotiated in serving for sustainability pillars.

In this paper, we demonstrate the nature and instrumentality of sustainable tourism entrepreneurship through a gender lens in addressing some of these SDG-driven challenges.

We advance the scholarly and policy debates by bringing gender issues to the forefront, discussing sustainable tourism initiatives from the viewpoint of entrepreneurs and various members of local community and stakeholder in a developing country context where women’s solidarity becomes crucial.

Emphasis is placed on knowledge-sharing practices and their influence on the power structure influenced by the technological background of the organization. This paper aims to focus on technological skills institutionalized to build organizational technological capital favoring the knowledge-sharing practices. It aims to extend the sociology literature by providing a conceptual background to explain the restructuring initiatives through the stabilizing role of technological capital.

Two comparative case studies have been conducted: the first study took place in a public company and the second study was carried out in a private company of telecommunication involving a documentary study, an observation and semi-structured interviews.

The findings in this paper show that the knowledge-sharing practices in the organizational field are stabilized by the technological capital. The technological capital promotes a knowledge management system and plays an important role in restructuring the established power within knowledge intensive organizations.

Chief executive officers are encouraged to promote sharing practices through developing an innovation culture and valuing technological skills. Relevance should be granted to the technological capital, which aligns the restructuring of a learning organization and promotes the knowledge management systems and stabilizes the organizational structure. Organizations should capitalize a set of technological skills as part of their organizational relevant capital.

Based on the practice theory of Bourdieu, this paper lights on the triad relation between knowledge sharing/organizational structure/technological capital through comparing between public/private management modes. A theoretical framework is proposed to overlap the ambiguity of the relation between knowledge and power.

The paper frames modern slavery as a global wicked problem and aims to provide a set of international business (IB) policy recommendations for taming it. The outlined approach can also guide IB policymaking to address other kinds of wicked problems.

This is a conceptual paper that reviews existing literature on wicked problems and integrates it with an IB policy double helix framework. The paper focuseses on the role multinational enterprises (MNEs) play in moderl slavery globally, either through global value chains or within global factory modes of operation.

As a global wicked problem, modern slavery will never be solved, but it can be re-solved time and time over. Understanding the social reproduction of modern slavery can help shift the focus from labor governance and a narrow supply chain focus toward the role of transnational governance and the need to address institutional, market and organizational failures.

The paper contributes to the gap in an overarching theory of modern slavery and systematically applies the concept of wicked problems and wickedness theory to modern slavery. Drawing on an IB policy double helix framework, the paper addresses the governance nexus between modern slavery, IB and policymaking which can in turn advance IB policy research and theory.

Despite the growing interest in the field of supply chain sustainability (SCS), little exploration of new theories exists. Therefore, this paper aims to introduce practice theories to SCS studies through a practice turn.

This is a conceptual paper in nature. Hence, based on theoretical arguments, the authors elaborate on how the practice turn can arise in the SCS field.

The theoretical elaboration is rooted in the understanding that sustainability is not limited to the materiality of environmental and social issues, as often observed. Instead, there is a need to include immaterial, emotional and intangible elements to better comprehend SCS practice. The authors argue that a continuum exists for a practice turn, including practice-based view, practice-based studies and critical practice theory.

The authors provide a research agenda with a comprehensive perspective of understanding the application and implications of practice theories to SCS.

The practice turn in SCS studies can support managers to better understand their practices not only through recognizing explicit activities but also mainly by reflecting on hidden elements that affect their performance.

SCS studies can better engage with grand challenges through a practice turn, which helps increase its contribution to solving social problems.

Unlike previous literature, the paper elaborates on how practice theories are powerful in supporting both scholars and practitioners in moving away from an extremely economic focus to genuinely embrace sustainability practice. In doing so, the practice turn appears as an important phase for SCS field maturity.