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Focusing on critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to propose a framework for analysing the way activist anti-tourism groups construct their social action of protest. The authors argue that activist groups use different narrative strategies to construct and legitimise their discourse of protest to convey social meanings for social action practices. This study represents an attempt to explain how anti-tourism activist groups have the agency to build different paradigms of protest rooted in particular views of tourism.

As a result of the lack of research in this area, this study used a comparative case study methodology drawn on four case studies in the field of anti-tourism protest. Case study is deemed adequate to explore a complex social phenomenon, how activist groups differ from each other, in a specific socio-economic context. A critical discourse analysis method is used to study primary (interviews) and secondary sources (reports, websites and online campaigns documents) of information, which express the activist group motivations and objectives to protest against tourism.

This study’s findings provide evidence in how discourse differs among the protest groups. Three narrative paradigms of protest are identified, which guide their agency: scepticism, based on a global and ecological approach; non-interventionist transformation, rooted in local community issues; and direct transformation, based on a sectoral problem-solving approach. These differences are interpreted as the consequences of the emergence and the development of different paths of protest according to specific social contexts and power relations in which anti-tourism groups are embedded.

This paper provides a contemporary approach to anti-tourism activism within the context of social movements. This case study may be of interest to practitioners and international destination managers interested in gaining a better understanding of anti-tourism protest strategies, new anti-tourism narratives following COVID-19 and the opportunities and challenges for opening a dialogue with those involved in activism and social urban movements as part of sustainable tourism governance. Our results can also help activists to rethink how they integrate differences and particular strategic positions to avoid hindering collective action. This knowledge is especially useful for managers and authorities seeking to develop more accurate collaborative governance practices with local activists, and especially those interested in fostering participative action without marginalising the diverse range of local community perspectives.

The objective of this study is to examine developments in the discursive practice of non-financial reporting in the public healthcare sector. In doing so, the authors investigate how the main reform foci of productivity and quality are represented, with a specific focus on the patient.

Drawing on critical discourse analysis (CDA), the authors conduct a longitudinal study (2007–2018) of healthcare reporting foci across the five administrative regions responsible for public hospitals in Denmark. The study analyses sixty annual reports and draws on contemporary reform documents over this period. CDA enables a micro-textual analysis, combined with macro-insights and discussions on social practice.

The findings show complex webs of presentation strategies, but in particular two changes occur during the period. First, the patient is centred throughout but the framing changes from productivity and waiting lists to quality and dialogue. Second, in the first years, the regions present themselves as actively highlighting financial and quality concerns, which changes to a passive and indirect form of presentation steered by indicators and patient legislation enforced by central government. This enhances passivity and distance in healthcare regional non-financial reporting where the regions seek to conform to such demands. Simultaneously, however, the authors find a tendency to highlight very different local initiatives, which shows an attempt to go beyond a pure automatic mode of reporting found in earlier studies.

Responding to the literature on both healthcare and financial reporting, this study identifies novel links between micro-level texts and macro-level social practices, enabling insights into the potentially intertwined impacts of public-sector reporting. The authors offer insights into the complexity of the construction of non-financial reporting in the public sector, which has a wider impact and different intentions than private-sector reporting.

The purpose of this study was to examine the global perceptions of social equity in the fine dining business model as a result of the surprise announcement for the 2024 planned closure of the Michelin three-star restaurant, Noma.

This study used critical discourse analysis to inductively analyze 91 source documents retrieved through a lexical database search. The analysis yielded five overarching themes and six subthemes.

Findings from this study serve as a benchmark in retrospect for capturing a rapidly accelerating global conversation from January to March 2023 around the long-term viability and social sustainability of the fine dining business model.

Against the backdrop of labor challenges in the restaurant industry due to the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath, the announced closure of Noma precipitated criticism of the stage (unpaid intern) system and the intense pressures of attaining and maintaining Michelin star status.

Results from the discourse analysis suggest certification for fine dining restaurants, perhaps through the Michelin Guide, for demonstrating a commitment to social sustainability as a qualifier to achieve a Michelin star.

Findings from this research reveal a palpable change in societal tolerance for a more socially sustainable fine dining restaurant business model that advances equitable solutions for its workers while assuring the economic sustainability of restaurants.

This study drew upon a foodscape lens to reveal a juxtaposition between well-executed environmentally sustainable initiatives in the fine dining business model and the threats to the social sustainability among its workers.

This study aims to explore the range of sustainability-related discourses by the stakeholders within a particular Finnish Higher Education Institution (HEI); interaction between the discourses and the context of the HEI; and the extent to which different understandings of sustainability cause challenges for the implementation of the university strategy for sustainability. Specifically, the paper explores how the employees within the HEI make sense of sustainability in their teaching, research and daily life and the extent to which sustainability-related discourses are aligned with the university strategy.

This research draws upon collected qualitative and quantitative data. It focuses on individual discourses by executives, teaching and research staff within an HEI regarding their understandings of sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This paper illustrates the key challenges of sustainability and SDG implementation that may emerge in HEIs due to varied understandings. The results indicate a need for efficient HEI strategic vision communication and consideration of the stakeholders’ multiplicity of sustainability values.

This paper sheds light on the challenges involved in seeking to enhance sustainable development in an academic setting with multiple disciplines and categories of staff guided by academic freedom. The analysis thus advances the understanding of academic sustainability-related discourses and framings as well as mechanisms through which the implementation of sustainability-related efforts can be enhanced in such a context.

While past research has explored how opting-out enables mothers to break free from masculinist organizational cultures, less attention has been given to how they resist disciplinary power that constitutes and governs their subjectivities. This paper aims to add to the discussion of opting-out as a site of power and resistance by proposing the concept of “constructive resistance” as a productive vantage point for investigating opted-out mothers' subversive practices of self-making.

This Malaysian case study brings together the notion of constructive resistance, critical narrative analysis and APPRAISAL theory to examine the reflective stories of eighteen mothers who exited formal employment. These accounts were collected through an open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured email interviews.

The mothers in the sample tend to construct themselves in two main ways, as (1) valuable mothers (capable, tireless, caring mothers who are key figures in their children's lives) and (2) competent professionals. These subjectivities are parasitic on gendered and neoliberal ideals but allow the mothers to undermine neoliberal capitalist work arrangements that were incongruent with their personal values and adversely impacted their well-being, as well as refuse organizational narratives that positioned them as “failed” workers.

Whereas power is primarily seen in previous opting-out scholarship as centralized and constraining, this case study illustrates how the lens of constructive resistance can be beneficial for examining opted-out mothers' struggles against a less direct form of power that governs through the production of truths and subjectivities.

This paper draws on African anti-colonial thought and Black consciousness to propose critical conscious leadership (CCL) as a decolonising leadership approach appropriate for pursuing emancipation, social justice and innovation in a new African university.

I utilised the method of critical discourse analysis to study Ihron Rensburg’s language as he reflected on his leadership at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). The study engaged with Rensburg’s writings and texts on his account of leading the merger and transformation of UJ. The primary text draws from his book “Serving Higher Purposes” (2020).

Through the construction of CCL, the paper proposes alternative tenets for leading transformation towards a new African university. CCL grounds a decolonised and pluriversal new African university’s character premised on a consciously revitalised alternative thinking that will carry the communitarian spirit of Africa in knowledge production, dissemination and consumption in humanising all and serving the greater good. And it operates within the dialectical tensions of the social and economic purpose of higher education (HE), African and global relevance, African and Western paradigms, excellent performance and attainment of social justice.

The proposed CCL offers an alternative leadership approach that responds to the call to “Dethrone the Empire” by centring Blackness in HE leadership, which is crucial for authentic transformation and decolonisation.

This study aims to critically examine the effects of COVID-19 social discourses and policy decisions specifically on older adult volunteers in the UK, comparing the responses and their effects in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, providing perspectives on effects of policy changes designed to reduce risk of infection as a result of COVID-19, specifically on volunteer involvement of and for older adults, and understand, from the perspectives of volunteer managers, how COVID-19 restrictions had impacted older people’s volunteering and situating this within statutory public health policies.

The study uses a critical discourse approach to explore, compare and contrast accounts of volunteering of and for older people in policy, and then compare the discourses within policy documents with the discourses in personal accounts of volunteering in health and social care settings in the four nations of the UK. This paper is co-produced in collaboration with co-authors who have direct experience with volunteer involvement responses and their impact on older people.

The prevailing overall policy approach during the pandemic was that risk of morbidity and mortality to older people was too high to permit them to participate in volunteering activities. Disenfranchising of older people, as exemplified in volunteer involvement, was remarkably uniform across the four nations of the UK. However, the authors find that despite, rather than because of policy changes, older volunteers, as part of, or with the help of, volunteer involving organisations, are taking time to think and to reconsider their involvement and are renewing their volunteer involvement with associated health benefits.

Working with participants as co-authors helps to ensure the credibility of results in that there was agreement in the themes identified and the conclusions. A limitation of this study lies in the sampling method, as a convenience sample was used and there is only representation from one organisation in each of the four nations.

The paper combines existing knowledge about volunteer involvement of and for older adults.

The authors aim to contribute to the understanding of the enduring underrepresentation of women in the IT industry by analysing media discourse triggered by a campaign intended to encourage women to join the IT industry.

Internet media coverage of the Little Miss Geek campaign in the UK was analysed as qualitative data to reveal systematic and coherent patterns contributing to the social construction of the role of women with respect to the IT industry and IT employment.

While ostensibly supporting women's empowerment, the discourse framed women's participation in the IT industry as difficult to achieve, focused on women's presumed “feminine” essential features (thus, effectively implying that they are less suitable for IT employment than men), and tasked women with overcoming the barrier via individual efforts (thus, implicitly blaming them for the imbalance). In these ways, the discourse worked against the broader aims of the campaign.

Campaigns and organisations that promote women's participation should work to establish new frames, rather than allowing the discourse to be shaped by the established frames.

The authors interpret the framing in the discourse using Bourdieu's perspective on symbolic power: the symbolic power behind the existing patriarchal order expressed itself via framing, thus contributing to the maintenance of that order. By demonstrating the relevance of Bourdieu's symbolic power, the authors offer a novel understanding of how underrepresentation of women in the IT sector is produced and maintained.

This paper aims to explore how historical context influences the content and selection of rhetorical legitimation strategies. Using case study method, this paper will focus on how insurance companies and labor tried to defend their legitimacy in the context of enactment of Medicare in the USA. What factors influenced the strategic (rhetorical) decisions made by insurance companies and labor unions in their institutional work?

The study is empirically grounded in archival research, involving an analysis of over 9,000 pages of congressional hearings on Medicare covering the period 1958–1965.

The authors show that rhetorical legitimation strategies depend significantly on the specific historical circumstances in which those strategies are used. The historical context lent credibility to certain arguments and organizations are forced to decide either to challenge widely held assumptions or take advantage of them. The authors show that organizations face strong incentives to pursue the latter option. Here, both the insurance companies and labor unions tried to show that their positions were consistent with classical liberal ideology, because of high respect of classical liberal principles among different stakeholders (policymakers, voters, etc.).

It is uncertain how much the results of the study could be generalized. More information about the organizations whose use of rhetorics the authors studied could have strengthened our conclusions.

The practical relevancy of the revised paper is that the authors should not expect hegemony challenging rhetorics from organizations, which try to influence legislators (and perhaps the larger public). Perhaps (based on the findings), this kind of rhetorics is not even very effective.

The paper helps to understand better how organizations try to advance their interests and gain acceptance among the stakeholders.

In this paper, the authors show how historical context in practice influence rhetorical arguments organizations select in public debates when their goal is to influence the decision-making of their audience. In particular, the authors show how dominant ideology (or ideologies) limit the options organizations face when they are choosing their strategies and arguments. In terms of the selection of rhetorical justification strategies, the most pressing question is not the “real” broad based support of certain ideologies. Insurance company and labor union representatives clearly believed that they must emphasize liberal values (or liberal ideology) if they wanted to gain legitimacy for their positions. In existing literature, it is often assumed that historical context influence the selection of rhetorical strategies but how this in fact happens is not usually specified. The paper shows how interpretations of historical contexts (including the ideological context) in practice influence the rhetorical strategies organizations choose.

This research objective was to explore how Romanian IT family businesses' co-founders enable entrepreneuring through familiness practices. The authors explored what familiness practices emerge and how these are facilitated and supported by the rhetoric framework.

Drawing on Romanian IT entrepreneurs' practice from five case studies of IT family businesses and purposive revelatory cases, the authors considered the family co-founders' narratives and representations of familiness presented in 31 interviews.

The respondents' communication in entrepreneuring is a joint collaborative effort of the family co-founders to function well. Family entrepreneurs generate positive perceptions in favour of enterprising families using persuasive communication via rhetoric appeals to familiness ethos, familiness logos and familiness pathos, leading to constructive conflict management. The rhetoric of persuasion supports family entrepreneuring.

The authors conducted multiple case studies, profiling technological co-founders and family entrepreneurs in the challenging circumstances of an emerging economy.

The analysis of the use of rhetoric contributes to a better understanding of familiness practices in the family business. Through appeals to ethos, family business entrepreneurs enforce family values built on shared history, complementarity and moral exemplarity. The appeals to logos in entrepreneuring involve fulfilling complementary roles, alignment and continuous learning and coaching. The appeals to pathos are about emotions and how the family entrepreneurs' discourse enforces constructive handling of emotions.

The perceived familiness communicated through appeals to ethos, logos and pathos contributes to legitimating the family firm structures.

Theorising from family entrepreneurs' familiness practices, the authors suggest that entrepreneuring requires good communication of the representation of familiness for co-founders, employees and other stakeholders to also serve constructive conflict handling. The perceived familiness communicated through appeals to ethos, logos and pathos helps family businesses leverage their unique strengths and resources in the entrepreneuring process.