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Appearance has two meanings. On the one hand, appearance is about the physical qualities of a person being of certain height, weight, complexion and having a particular hair, eye and skin colour as well as choice and style of dress and attire. On the other hand, appearance has a social dimension, as those physical qualities of a person are interpreted, rated and judged, and attributed varied meanings and values across different settings. Appearances can influence the experiences of individuals in the workplace in both positive and negative ways: Positive, when they are mobilised as a resource that increases the influence and advantage of individuals on others; and negative, when individuals are discriminated or disadvantaged on the basis of their appearance. Drawing on a Bourdieusian conceptual repertoire, this chapter delves into this duality of appearance and frames appearance both as a resource (a form of carnal capital) and a source of symbolic violence. As appearance is an aspect of an individual's self-identity in the workplace, this chapter explores appearance and intersectionality across gender, ethnicity, class and sexual orientation at work. Appearance is examined as a cross cutting category of diversity as both privilege (carnal capital) and disadvantage (symbolic violence).

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 offers a Bourdieu-oriented analysis of the tax compliance practice for indigenous entrepreneurs in New Zealand. It examines the intersection of accounting and tax for Māori entrepreneurs and their relational interactions with the Inland Revenue Department (IRD)/state/Crown and accountants by considering the contextual factors of history, culture and society of Māori.

Qualitative research was adopted using face-to-face in-depth interviews with 34 participants and reviewing government documents. The authors analyse the tax compliance practice by drawing on Bourdieu's concepts of field, capital and habitus to conceptualise the tax field as a site of struggle for power and control by the IRD, accountants and indigenous entrepreneurs.

This study demonstrates how the tax field is structured as a game between tax reporting, taxpaying and monitoring functions. The position within the field is determined by the actor's access to the relevant capitals and habitus. It identifies how accounting, given its centrality to tax compliance, facilitates the power relations between the IRD, accountants and Māori entrepreneurs. The Eurocentric accounting-based tax reporting and the contextual factors illuminate how indigenous entrepreneurs are being dominated in the tax field. They experienced cultural dissonance with conflicting responsibilities when traversing the collectivistic indigenous and tax fields. Their collectivism involves sharing resources as they cherish whanaungatanga (relationship, kinship) and manaakitanga (kindness, generosity), which are at odds and are not valued in the tax field.

It is an empirical illustration of the connection between accounting, tax and power for indigenous taxpayers and their relationship with the IRD/Crown and accountants. It has practical implications for developing and enhancing tax compliance in jurisdictions with indigenous taxpayers. Such an understanding is helpful for policymakers, government, business agencies and the accounting professions when assisting, empowering and educating indigenous groups regarding tax compliance.

This paper responds to the call for accounting research with modern-day indigenous peoples rather than historical ones. The paper fills a gap in the accounting and tax literature by examining the tax compliance practice of indigenous small and medium enterprise (SME) entrepreneurs using Bourdieu's framework. It identifies how the role of accounting creates, maintains and reinforces power structures in the tax field. Tax/accounting reporting based on Eurocentric rules disempowers and alienates indigenous entrepreneurs. They misrecognise their actions in reproducing the existing power structures in the tax field due to deeply held historical and cultural factors about the fear of the Crown/state and their practice of rangitaratanga (esteeming authorities).

This paper aims to explore Chinese female international students’ construction of global citizenship identity by examining their accumulation of cultural capital in different forms from transnational higher education in the UK.

Participant observations and in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with Chinese female international students at a British university to explore their experiences with transnational higher education, cultural identities, the construction of global citizenship and perceived future job opportunities.

In this research, participants revealed that accessing a global elite university helps them accumulate institutionalised cultural capital. Embodied cultural cultivation acquired from transnational higher education is justified by students’ experiences in the context of transnational higher education. Rising confidence is shown by the participants’ narration and global-oriented awareness, which is their ability to understand and respect people from diverse cultural backgrounds, which was developed during their studies in the UK. However, they still realise the potentially difficult conversion of cultural capital to real job competitiveness. Recognition of global citizenship identity may be complicated if students plan to return home after studying.

This study provides further insight into the single-child generation of globally mobile Chinese female international students. Participants were aware of the positive accumulation of cultural capital in its embodied and institutionalised forms obtained from the UK higher education system and its contribution to the construction of global citizenship identity. However, the newly constructed global citizenship identity remains complex. Participants question the extent to which the new identity fits into the Chinese social context if they decide to return home.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, the originality of the paper lies in expanding the global citizenship framework with the specific application of Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital to show Chinese female international students’ study experiences in UK transnational higher education, rather than addressing the Chinese international student experience in general.

This paper aims to investigate the practice of accounting in the Seventh-day Adventist church of the Pacific Islands and pays particular attention to the coexisting of two control devices: accounting and religion.

This paper implemented a qualitative field study design collecting interview data from church members from the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Fiji. Data were also collected through focus group discussions, document reviews, website analysis and participant observations. Pierre Bourdieu’s thinking on symbolic violence, doxa and capital are used to interpret the findings.

This paper’s main contribution shows that while there is a divine and profane divide, social agents, given their agency, can move back and forth from one side of the divide to the other. Accounting as a control device does not include features such as faith, which is helpful for decision-making; accordingly, religion is relied upon when it comes to decision-making. In contrast, accounting has features that are useful for stewardship purposes. Accordingly, when it comes to the church’s stewardship function accounting in the form of financial reports is relied upon.

Pacific Island culture almost permeates all facets of life, including church life; however, this study did not clarify this. Later studies can explore the implications of culture on the deployment of accounting in a religious setting.

This rich empirical study describes the control dynamics and the tension between accounting and religion in a religious organisation. Accounting needs to adapt to churches’ unique characteristics, whereby religious/doctrinal beliefs must be accounted for and respected. Unlike in the corporate world, accountants in churches cannot fully practice their training or exercise the kind of influence they usually hold in organisations due to their religious belief systems.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is one of a few studies on the religion-accounting relationship. While the focus of earlier studies was generally on a secular and sacred divide, this study looks at coexisting of accounting and religion. This study adds to the sparse literature on accounting and religion and their controlling influence.

This empirical chapter explores the case of Baltic Creative Community Interest Company (BC CIC), a creative hub that enabled and demonstrated intrapersonal entrepreneurial capitals (Pret et al., 2016) to adapt quickly and develop novel offers for their tenants during an unprecedented period of crisis and change in the wider ecosystem. BCCIC is a community-owned property development company established to regenerate an underused post-industrial area in Liverpool and support the Creative and Digital community. Over the past decade, they have become a creative hub where small, unique micro-businesses thrive alongside more established enterprises.

Using an organisational ethnographic approach, the authors highlight the complexity in the conversion of entrepreneurial capitals and how this has demonstrated resilience and adaptability in the CIC during the global coronavirus pandemic in the 2020s. During the first coronavirus lockdown in 2020, The CIC responded swiftly to tenants by providing a wide variety of business support initiatives. Regular communications on sector-specific COVID-19 operational guidance and a support programme to help tenants apply for Liverpool City Council Small Business Support grants.

The establishment of this hub for creative entrepreneurs prior to the recent disruption proved invaluable. Although they were severely tested, emerging behaviours, such as agility, adaptability, and resilience during periods of crisis, were identified. This chapter offers key insights for scholars and those leading on creative hubs and cluster policy development and economic initiatives for creative sector support regionally, nationally, and internationally.

The need to innovate and apply alternative forms of school organization is evident as the COVID-19 pandemic has generated a need to establish new conceptualizations of schools and education management. The paradigm shift in learning inexorably necessitates a corresponding paradigm shift in educational organization, administration and management in order to build organizational resilience and capital. This study proposed framework seeks to address this issue by proposing a transformation of educational organization and management, shifting away from the unilateral, hierarchical school models and towards a unique, smart collaborative school ecosystem in which residents, industries, schools, universities and research centers can create new digital knowledge and inventive products, services and solutions by enlarging their capitals.

Drawing upon Bourdieu's theory of social capital, our theoretical contribution is to present the influence of three forms of capital (social, economic and cultural) in cultivating educational capacity and resilience in the school ecosystem, with a particular focus on the role of digital capital in reinforcing the school ecosystem capitals. The authors also argue that ecosystem leaders and principals as boundary spanners play an important role in promoting capital exchange and enlargement as they balance the permeability of organizational boundaries at times of crisis by maneuvering across fields.

Achieving educational improvement and building organizational capacity and resilience through the enlargement of system (and subsystem) capitals requires that key actors develop synchronized interpretations of educational aims and functions in various contexts. The authors delineate the importance of developing a synchronization strategy in the proposed conceptualization of smart and resilient school ecosystems.

By integrating research from both non-educational and educational literature, the proposed framework provides a new perspective for educational administration, organization and management, shifting away from the unilateral, hierarchical school models toward a unique, smart collaborative school ecosystem in which members can create new knowledge by enlarging their capitals. Practical lessons for leaders and policymakers from our conceptual framework are proposed.

Public willingness to pay for extra public benefits and services may demonstrate a tension between the common good (more services) and economic motives (higher taxes for all). In this article, the authors present an analysis of this trade-off by drawing upon the Bourdieusian theory of social reproduction and habitus.

Employing the European Social Survey (2016), the authors first examine the patterns of relationships between the agents' position in the social structure and their attitudes across care regimes in Europe. The authors then analyse whether this link is mediated by agents' individual trajectories and dispositions, such as their beliefs towards equality or tradition, political orientation, or religiosity.

The findings support the importance of both sociation and individuation in habitus formation, albeit to varying degrees across the regimes. Individual attitudes are therefore shaped not only by interests of reproducing or maximising social positions but also by more reflexive propensities to think about the common good.

In this article, the authors draw upon the theory of social reproduction and habitus by Pierre Bourdieu, who has been thus far rarely employed in the study of welfare attitudes. The article also contributes to the literature that studies the trade-off between the expansion and financing of reconciliation policies.

This paper aims to examine the nature of corporate governance systems in Ghanaian Family-owned Businesses (FOBs). Specifically, the study investigates the nature of boardroom decisions structures, sources of governance regulations and family roles in corporate governance.

Drawing on Bourdieusian perspectives of the field, capital, habitus and doxa, a case study design is used to gather detailed insights about the phenomena. Purposively, the study conducts 20 interviews with participants from 15 FOBs in Ghana. The interview data are complemented with secondary sources, such as FOB handbooks, website information, legal documents and scriptures. Subsequently, data gathered were thematically analysed.

The study finds that human actors blended traditionally tacit and legally expressed boardroom decisions structures in FOBs governance. Again, traditional values, social acceptance of religious sociology and regulatory frameworks of the field dictate corporate governance practices in FOBs. In multiple family ownerships, orthodoxy of doxa is challenged; hence, power struggles and family roles in governance depend on capital possessed by social actors.

To continue as a going concern, FOBs must be mindful of traditional, religious sociology of family and regulatory frameworks within the field in which they operate. This is because, without this, the going concern of FOBs becomes suspicious and highly unlikely, especially where there are multiple family ownership and generations.

The previous literature predominantly focussed on formal boardroom structures in addressing FOBs' corporate governance issues. Notwithstanding, family governance risk of domineering and distrust associated with traditional and relational governance mechanisms remain under-represented and inconclusive, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This study aims to analyse the position of women in public relations (PR), using Bourdieu's habitus. The study also draws from works on women in journalism on the ‘bloke-ification’ or a situation where women have to behave like men to succeed, thus becoming one of the boys due to masculine habitus in mass communications organisations.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with 26 women practitioners asking questions about their experiences of working in the PR industry. The triple coding was conducted holistically and cross-referencing against answers on early socialisation of interviewed women. Thematic analysis was used to analyse and present data.

The findings show acceptance of masculine habitus with women not always challenging the usual order of things and recognising only direct sexism but not every day (masculine) practices. Women who demonstrate feminine behavioural styles are more likely to have negative working experiences than women who demonstrate masculine behavioural styles. Findings show a link between early socialisation and organisational behaviour with women who were socialised with boys reporting more masculine behavioural traits as expected for career progression as opposed to women socialised with girls who report feminine characteristics. The findings also signal that women work in a masculine culture in which they are often ostracised, and the profession as a whole is ridiculed by male managers and senior officials despite women being the majority of the workforce in the PR industry, thus showing that women also work in what Bourdieu calls a (masculine) habitus.

This study remains limited regarding its qualitative aspect of 26 interviewed women. Whilst this is a relatively large sample for a qualitative study, these findings show trends in data that can be explored in further research but cannot be generalised. In addition to that, phone interviewing presents a limitation of the study as face-to-face interviews could have enabled a better rapport and a more in-depth conversation as well as an observation of non-verbal communication, which could have led to additional sub-questions. Also, the findings are based on perceptions of interviewed women, which are personal and do not necessarily need to present the reality in the whole of the industry, however, the thematic analysis revealed common patterns which point towards the direction of a wider issue in the industry, which can be explored in further research.

Organisations should implement HR policies that regulate internal office behaviour so that no staff member or department feels unappreciated and has less influence over the organisational work. A greater focus on treating employees fairly is needed, and this change needs to include structural problems that are often hidden, such as remarks in offices and internal practice and the dynamic between different departments bearing attention to departments where senior roles are traditionally given to men (e.g. finance) and those where senior roles also have women managers (e.g. PR).

The paper contributes to studies of cultural masculinities in organisations from a sociological perspective and uses a case study of the PR industry. The paper further extends the bloke-ification framework and contributes towards the conceptualisation of this framework from the PR perspective and using a sociological approach. In addition to that, the paper drew from works conducted in journalism and advertising and showed that issues women face are very similar across industries, thus opening a question of a wider social problem, at least when mass communications industries are in stake.