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This paper brings insights from accounting scholarship to the measurement and reporting challenges of metagovernance approaches to sustainable development. Where scholarship on metagovernance—the combination of market, hierarchical and network governance—proposes deductive approaches to such challenges, we contend that a historically informed “abductive” approach offers valuable insight into the realpolitik of intergovernmental frameworks.

The paper adopts a Foucauldian “archaeological–genealogical” method to investigate the inclusion of climate change as a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). It analyses more than 100 documents and texts, tracking the statement forms that crystallise prevailing truth claims across the development of climate and SDG metagovernance.

We show how the truth claims now enshrined in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change constrained the conceptualisation and operationalisation of SDG 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. The paper thereby reframes recent measurement and reporting challenges as outcomes of conceptual conflicts between the technicist emphasis of divisions within the United Nations and the truth claims enshrined in intergovernmental agreements.

This paper demonstrates how an archaeological–genealogical approach may start to address the measurement and reporting challenges facing climate and SDG metagovernance. It also highlights that the two degrees target on climate change has a manifest variability of interpretation and shows how this characteristic has become pivotal to operationalising climate metagovernance in a manner that respects the sovereignty of developing nations.

The purpose of this study is to explore the potential for technical accounting resources to help professional accountants exercise their performative agency.

The authors combine the integrative learning theory of truth and the concept of performativity, including two approaches to sustainability education and interventions, to construct a grid for coding the technical resources provided by the UK's Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, a pioneer in sustainability advocacy.

The findings suggest the dominance of the “predetermined and expert-determined” approach. They also reveal the emergence of three levels of performative topoi based on the relative presence of the “predetermined and expert-determined” and “process-of-seeking” approaches to professional interventions toward sustainability. The results show the profession's evolving contribution to the construction of actionable knowledge.

The main limitation of this research is that it draws on a limited corpus. In addition, the use of a binary code to represent the presence/absence of a code does not convey the code's quantitative importance.

The results are useful for those wanting to produce technical accounting resources that are more likely to help professionals build actionable knowledge and contribute to accountants' interventions toward sustainability.

Findings suggest the need for reflection on how the accounting profession can best contribute to implementing sustainability in organizations.

Few studies deconstruct professional technical resources to see how a profession can contribute to a process of societal change.

This research seeks to explain how a national government becomes capable of constructing an account of its biodiversity performance that is aimed at enabling formulation of policy in pursuit of SDG 15: Life on Land.

The research examines a case study of the construction of the UK government's annual biodiversity report. The case is analysed to explain the process of framing a space in which the SDG-15 challenge of halting biodiversity loss is rendered calculable, such that the government can see and understand its own performance in relation to this challenge.

The construction of UK government's annual biodiversity report relies upon data collected through non-governmental conservation efforts, statistical expertise of a small project group within the government and a governmental structure that drives ongoing evolution of the indicators as actors strive to make these useful for policy formulation.

The analysis problematises the SDG approach to accounting for sustainable development, whereby performance indicators have been centrally agreed and universally imposed upon all signatory governments. The analysis suggests that capacity-building efforts for national governments may need to be broader than that envisaged by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The purpose of this paper is to present reflections on the contradictions between structure and agency in theories of the Bolivian Revolution, 2000-2005. Most studies into the trajectory and outcomes of the revolutionary period in Bolivia between 2000 and 2005 tend to emphasise on the primary role of structural factors or social movements in shifting the terrain of political debate. This paper argues this represents a false dichotomy and discounts the value of this debate. In doing so, it seeks to highlight the need for research that focuses on the role of institutional variables that mediate between structure and agency.

The paper uses theories of the Bolivian Revolution, which occurred between 2000 and 2005, to highlight the way theory shapes – and is shaped by – the political organisations that espouse it. This constructivist thesis is applied to conceptions of neoliberalism and Katarismo, an ideology of indigenous liberation, based in Andean-Aymara history. The intellectual and political projects of each approach are demarcated. Theories that privilege either the intellectual project or political project in their narrative of the Bolivian Revolution are then queried.

As a consequence of this analysis, the paper concludes by emphasizing the need for political organisation and theory to be considered dialectically along the lines of Gogol (2012). It argues that further research into institutions is required to appreciate why some post-neoliberal projects flourish while others fragment.

The paper proposes a modified understanding of the interplay between structure and agency in conceptions of the Bolivian Revolution (2000-2005) and suggests an original approach to resolving the underlying questions that motivate these debates.

In years past, when life seemed simpler and the Law much less complicated, jurists were fond of quoting the age‐old saying: “All men are equal before the Law.” It was never completely true; there were important exemptions when strict legal enforcement would have been against the public interests. A classic example was Crown immunity, evolved from the historical principle that “The King can do no wrong”. With the growth of government, the multiplicity of government agencies and the enormous amount of secondary legislation, the statutes being merely enabling Acts, this immunity revealed itself as being used largely against public interests. Statutory instruments were being drafted within Ministerial departments largely by as many as 300 officers of those departments authorized to sign such measures, affecting the rights of the people without any real Parliamentary control. Those who suffered and lost in their enforcement had no remedy; Crown immunity protected all those acting as servants of the Crown and the principle came to be an officials' charter with no connection whatever with the Crown. Parliament, custodian of the national conscience, removed much of this socially unacceptable privilege in the Crown Proceedings Act, 1947, which enabled injured parties within limit to sue central departments and their officers. The more recent system of Commissioners—Parliamentary, Local Authority, Health Service—with power to enquire into allegations of injustice, maladministration, malpractice to individuals extra‐legally, has extended the rights of the suffering citizen.

This paper explores how gender-related issues are communicated in Korean family-run conglomerates (chaebols) and the roles of women within these businesses. It also addresses to what extent the communication of chaebols about female employment and career development reflects the perception of gender representation in these organisations.

By paying attention to gendered discourse in Korean chaebols, this paper examines what is said and written about gender issues in glottographic statements (texts) and non-glottographic statements (charts and other visuals) of annual reports (ARs) published by five chaebols since 2010. The paper uses a Foucauldian framework to develop the archive of statements made within these ARs.

Although there is an increase in female-employee ratios, ARs show that number of women at the board or senior management level continue to be small. ARs tend to provide numbers related to female employment and retention in their non-glottographic statements, yet these numbers occasionally differ from and frequently are not explained by glottographic statements. The strategies used by chaebols to improve career prospects for their female staff are only vaguely described and rarely evaluated.

This paper looks beyond the existing discourse analysis on “talk and text” by also investigating claims made through graphic and linear/pictorial elements and their interplay with text. This approach opens new understandings of how gendered discourses are constructed and how they (unintentionally) fail to resolve issues and perceptions related to female employment and career development in Korea.

The main purpose of the study was to investigate practices relating to informed consent for radiological procedures.

All Health Boards in Scotland (15) were included in the survey and 62 hospitals were contacted. A questionnaire was developed and sent to superintendent radiographers and radiology managers. Quantitative data were entered in to SPSS‐PC for analysis.

A response rate of 95.2 per cent (59/62) was achieved. A total of 15 hospitals described having a trust policy document on consent and six hospitals reported departmental policies. The majority of hospitals used consent forms for interventional procedures, but not for conventional procedures, although two hospitals obtained informed consent for intravenous urography, and one for barium enemas. All departments (n=25/25) using consent forms required the patient to sign the consent form and 20 departments retained the form. Nine departments placed these in the patient's medical records.

The survey demonstrated considerable diversity in hospital practices regarding informed consent for radiological procedures. The findings have significant implications for clinical governance, especially regarding risk management. Some staff may be putting themselves at risk in an increasingly litigious society. The transferability of this Scottish study needs to be established through surveys in other parts of the UK.

The study reports diversity in practice when gaining informed consent for radiological procedures and the lack of standardisation for this process.

No previous UK empirical studies on informed consent for radiological procedures has been published.

An appeal under the Food and Drugs Acts, reported in the present number of the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL, is an apt illustration of the old saying, that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. In commenting upon the case in question, the Pall Mall Gazette says: “The impression among the great unlearned that the watering of the morning's milk is a great joke is ineradicable; and there is also a common opinion among the Justice Shallows of the provincial bench that the grocer who tricks his customers into buying coffee which is 97 per cent. chicory is a clever practitioner, who ought to be allowed to make his way in the world untrammelled by legal obstructions. But the Queen's Bench have rapped the East Ham magistrates over the knuckles for convicting without fining a milkman who was prosecuted by the local authority, and the case has been sent back in order that these easygoing gentlemen may give logical effect to their convictions.”

Starting at such a nutritional and health level as probably most people accept as their norm, it is now clearly possible (1) better to ensure a normally prompt development of the young, (2) to induce a higher level of adult vitality and accomplishment, and (3) materially to improve the duration as well as the quality of life, through the guidance of nutritional knowledge in the everyday choice and use of food. Three questions may have suggested themselves: (1) How conclusive are the data supporting such statements as those of the preceding paragraph?; (2) What are the grounds for confidence in the human application of the finding of laboratory animal experimentation in this field?; and (3) With all due reverence for individual human lives, will a longer‐lived population be an advantage? Each of these questions is worthy of a much fuller answer than the space here available permits; and could be answered with much ampler evidence and explanation, but for the present need of extreme condensation. Statistical analysis of the objective, numerically recorded data of laboratory‐controlled experiments shows, at all stages of the life cycle, nutritional improvements upon the initial norms with measured differences so manifold greater than their probable errors as to establish these findings with higher degrees of scientific certainty than probably attach to most of the unquestioned facts of physiology. The least‐expected of the new findings, namely, the extension of the normal adult life‐expectation, is objectively established with 100‐fold greater degree of statistical convincingness than the accepted canons of scientific criticism call for to justify the characterisation of such a finding is “undoubted.” The basal dietary of these experiments is representative of the food supplies upon which a large proportion of our people subsist; and the animal species chiefly used for the full‐life, successive‐generation experiments above mentioned is the rat, chosen primarily because of the many and close resemblances of the chemistry of the nutrition of that species and our own. The only known significant differences are with respect to ascorbic and nicotinic acids; and toward both of these the human species is much more responsive to the level of dietary intake than is the rat. Critical study reveals no reason to discount the above‐noted laboratory findings because of species difference; but, on the contrary, shows strong scientific evidence that the indications obtained from the experiments with rats are well within the probabilities of the nutritional improvement of human lives by intelligent use of our everyday foods. Such nutritional improvement results not only in longer life but also in the living of our lives upon a higher level of health and accomplishment throughout. The “extra time” is not added to the period of senility. It is inserted in the period of the prime, making this a longer fraction of the life cycle. Thus the nutritional improvement brings, to speak in human terms, both a larger number and a larger percentage of years of full accomplishment, and economic and social value, with a smaller proportion of years of dependency. Space does not permit the discussion here of the very real advantages, to the individual, to the world of industrial affairs, and to the nation, of an earlier attainment of full capacity and also a postponement of the onset of old age. How to extend the benefits of the newer knowledge of nutrition, as widely and as promptly as possible is both an economic and an educational problem. If space permitted, an abundance of statistical evidence could be assembled to show: (1) that, independently of educational opportunities, the families with better per capita purchasing power tend to provide themselves with nutritionally better food supplies; and (2) that also, among families exercising the same purchasing power in the same markets, some provide themselves with dietaries which are nutritionally excellent, others only good, and still others only fair. Much can be (and in many places is being) gained either by direct economic measures to increase the purchasing power of low‐income families whether by increase of money income or by making available to them larger supplies of protective foods at lower prices; or by widespread teaching of the nutritive values of foods and the influence of nutritional wellbeing upon health and earning‐power. Needless to say, the communities which have good use of both of these means of improvement may expect to reap the largest benefit. In an unbiased economic view everyone can see that there is opportunity for enormous benefit in using the new knowledge of nutritive values to guide the investment of the many billions of dollars that are annually spent in this country for food; and especially when the choice of food is now known to have greater and more far‐reaching effects upon health and earning power than has hitherto been supposed. But how often bias enters to cloud the economic view! Attempts to teach a more scientific investment of money in food are apt to meet a “vested interest” attitude of resentment from many purveyors of things which science cannot recommend for a higher place in consumers' budgets. And perhaps an even larger number of people “object on principle to,” or subconsciously react against, any attempt to teach discrimination of consumer demand, and any form of governmental paternalism or further extension of “government into business.” In addition to all the bias of an economic or political sort, tradition in itself retards change, especially in matters which come so closely home as does the family food supply. And in the domain of food, as one of the wisest students of nutrition has said, tradition tends to accumulate prejudices quite as often as truths. These and other causes tend somewhat unduly to caution in public teaching of the everyday use of the newer knowledge, which in terms of foods as bought and eaten is: Give fruits, vegetables, and milk in its various forms (including cheese, cream, and ice‐cream, if desired) a larger place in the dietary and food budget. This can be done without “cutting out,” and without too drastically “cutting down,” any other articles of food. As the Nestor of the new knowledge of nutrition has consistently taught: If we cat what we should, we can at the same time eat what we like. Another question sometimes arising is, How can we feel confident of the practical application of present nutritional knowledge when we admit its probable incompleteness by recommending further research? The present writer's answer is that some findings of such far‐reaching importance that their everyday application ought not to be postponed are conclusively established, and the practical advice above suggested is based upon these and is permanently valid. More elaborate and detailed dietary recommendations may well await the findings of such further researches as are briefly suggested below. Both further research and fuller application, neither delayed by waiting upon the other, should be strongly emphasised, especially in view of the present and impending situation. There should be prompt and wide dissemination of present knowledge at all teaching levels. And nothing is so stimulating to education as that research in the same field be actively productive at the same time. The best way to get a hearing, even for the findings now conclusively established, is to have some related new findings to tell. If made in large numbers, with great care, and on a comprehensive plan, further researches with natural foods as the experimental variables might be of great value. More accurate knowledge of the quantitative distribution of certain of the mineral elements and vitamins in foods can be sought with greater assurance of clear‐cut findings, and with certainty that these data will function both in the advancement of science and in the service of human welfare. There is also a field for much valuable research in the measurement of the nutritional availabilities of the mineral and other nutrients of the different articles and types of food, more especially by experimental methods which comply with the actual conditions of normal nutrition. With more precise knowledge of the nutritive values of a wider range of foods, it becomes increasingly practicable to ensure excellence of nutrition without sacrifice either of personal preferences in food selection or of the economic advantages which market fluctuations and seasonal conditions offer. Fortunately, most seasonal food crops are at their best when they are also at their cheapest. The fuller our knowledge of nutrition, the less we need depend upon diversification, but the better we are prepared to gratify a taste for it. The newer knowledge of nutrition is friendly to the fact that “eating has a great vogue as an amusement,” and several foods formerly regarded as luxuries are now seen to be good nutritional investments. The science of nutrition does not seek the sanctification of spinach: it looks with much more favour on many of the things that we find most fun in eating. The new knowledge helps in meeting the problems of both war‐time and peace‐time food supplies; and the findings of further research will doubtless help us all still further to harmonise our appetites and aspirations—to know how to eat both what we want and what will make us most efficient. Both for completeness of scientific explanation and to establish the boundaries of advantageous practical application of the findings, further research is needed even upon two of the three factors which, as mentioned in an earlier section, have already been studied more fully than others by our recently developed methods. As opportunity permits, similar studies should also be made of the long‐time effects of different levels of intake of each nutritionally essential amino acid, mineral element, and vitamin. Meanwhile, the factors which have already been found to be of outstanding importance in experiments upon the entire life cycle should now be studied by similar methods but with starting‐points at different ages so as to ascertain the influence of initial age upon the potentialities for nutritional improvement of the life history. In the planning of all such studies the world‐wide present interest in efficiency and preparedness will tend to give priority to those researches which bear most directly upon problems of the attainment of the fullest fitness, from what‐ever initial age, and the maintenance of optimal capacity for service. Fortunately, such advances of knowledge will service both science and the nation well, however long or short the war, and whatever its aftermath may be. Studies in nutritional rehabilitation deserve also a well‐considered place in the general programme for bringing the new knowledge into the service of all the people. Between the obvious cases of specific deficiency diseases and, on the other hand, the people whose physique and efficiency are within the zone of our present norm, too many even of our American people (and doubtless a higher proportion in most other countries) are handicapped, though we may not know exactly how and why. Many of these people can be rescued from individual and family frustration, and incalculably enhanced in economic and social value to the community and nation, by “enough of the right kinds of food”; and just what this means in more precise terms, how the greatest good can be accomplished with most promptness and efficiency, are problems within the scope of the present‐day methods of research in the chemistry of nutrition. Moreover, the same general type of research reveals good scientific probabilities of improving the chemistry of the internal environment, and thus enhancing the efficiency, of people who are already quite fortunately healthy and efficient.