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Brand image remains a “nebulous” construct with very few frameworks dedicated to understanding the process of uncovering brand image. This is supported by explicit calls for greater clarity on how to examine brand image, particularly in different settings. Political branding is one setting that has received some attention, however, research has focused on “party” political brands and neglected “non-party” brands (independent candidates). Therefore, this study aims to examine how young citizens interpret independent non-party brands through the theoretical lens of brand image in the context of Guernsey and develop a systematic brand image framework that provides greater clarity to this topic area.

A qualitative interpretivist approach using focus group discussions was adopted to investigate the phenomenon from the perspective of young voters 18–24 years of age. Focus group discussions ceased upon reaching theoretical saturation and a six-staged thematic analytical strategy was adopted to analyse the findings.

This study revealed deep insight into the political brand image of non-party brands from the perspective of young voters in an under-explored context. More specifically, this study uncovered that Guernsey’s political brands were seen as “accessible”; however, there was little differentiation, identification and connection between young voters and politicians. Further, this study uncovered a series of opportunities for strategists such as the desire for a younger generational view and younger representation in the Guernsey Parliament and greater clarity, distinction and authenticity related to political brand image.

This study addresses explicit calls for further research on brand image with a distinct focus on non-party political brands. Further, this study concludes by presenting the “consumer brand image schema”; a systematic framework which can be used to uncover brand image within and beyond the setting of politics. Further, the framework operationalises the complex concept of brand image and provides a three-stage process to examine and develop brand image. This will enable strategists to develop targeted strategies and adopt appropriate tactics to manage brand image to ensure brands are differentiated and interpreted as authentic, relatable, engaging, accessible and identifiable.

Culturally responsive and equitable evaluation (CREE) is a methodological paradigm that intertwines the principles of ethnography with community-centered approaches to amplify the authenticity and efficacy of program evaluations. This chapter explores the integration of ethnographic inquiry and methods to enhance evaluators' engagement with diverse stakeholders through a foundation of mutual respect, co-learning, and capacity building. Ethnography contributes depth to CREE by facilitating sustained participatory engagement, open-ended interviewing, and immersive observation, capturing the intricate cultural dynamics that inform context-specific recommendations. A crucial element of this integration is reflexivity concerning evaluators' privilege and positionality. By maintaining proactive transparency about their insider–outsider status and actively balancing power dynamics, evaluators can mitigate cultural blind spots and extractive biases. This approach not only foregrounds marginalized voices but also emphasizes critical self-interrogation, advancing the evaluation's potential to enact social change. However, without relentless anti-oppressive reflexivity, there is a risk of merely appropriating ethnographic methods for cosmetic purposes, thereby undermining the humanistic and authenticity aims of CREE. For program evaluators committed to adhering to the guiding principles of cultural competence, continuous professional development in ethnographic and CREE methodologies is essential. This chapter describes the meaningful integration of these methods, fostering more respectful, authentic, and equitable engagements with communities. Future directions for evaluation practice should focus on developing ethnographic, participatory, and community-based methods training, integrating critical theories to address power dynamics and promote reflexivity, and ensuring that evaluations not only meet technical standards but also achieve profound societal impact through a committed, collaborative, and authentic approach.

Public scepticism is becoming more prevalent surrounding organizations' corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation and communication. Management research has tended to over-fixate on the strategic paybacks of CSR, and less attention has been devoted to examining why CSR is under siege due to the pervasive issue of scepticism coming from a plethora of stakeholders. This study provides a scoping review to appraise the status quo of CSR vis-à-vis scepticism scholarship and examine how the two concepts have been contextualized in relation to one another in the extant literature in question. The findings illustrate that the process nature of CSR scepticism is complex, given that CSR can yield both a buffering and boomerang effect on CSR practitioners. The qualitative content analysis performed on 58 studies, published from 2007 to 2022, elaborates on CSR scepticism as a multidimensional construct with three distinctive typologies of research approaches identified, explicating how the CSR and scepticism topicalities have been cross-examined in relation to one another: “Typology 1: Dispositional Scepticism and the Buffering Effect of CSR on Scepticism”; “Typology 2: Situational Scepticism and the Boomerang Effect of CSR on Scepticism”; “Typology 3: Centrality of CSR Scepticism and CSR Scepticism Mitigation.” This study offers a conceptual insight into the prevalent issue of scepticism in the CSR context, while also informing marketing, communication, and public relations professionals about the necessity of mitigating CSR scepticism, which poses a barrier to effective CSR implementation and communication processes.

This concluding chapter provides a historical reflection of my bridging theories of ethnography and evaluation and the mentor guides who influenced this initial work from Charlottesville, VA, to Baltimore, MD, to Pittsburgh, PA. In reflecting on these Sankofa reflections by looking backward and forward, just as the Adinkra bird symbol illustrates, I highlight key lessons learned in doing ethnography as a doctoral and postdoctoral student, which sparked my initial conceptual and bridging work in public health, anthropology of education, and evaluation. My nascent ideas were fostered with advisors and mentors, Dell Hymes and Michael Agar, who themselves were bridging and leveraging theories and concepts from vast (inter)disciplinary networks and experiences in the field. The featured manuscripts below were meant to illustrate the ethnography-evaluation connections that I thought were so necessary then for my own understandings and lay fodder for the coalescing transformative, intersectional, and comparative themes of the book. Fast forward 25 years and the themes that I garnered as a “fair-haired youth” in the field are now more mature as reflected by the authors of this important and timely book. The beauty of the volume of chapters that preceded this conclusion is their conceptual depth toward notions, especially positionality, criticality, authenticity, and reciprocity. As such, I take these overarching concepts that are embedded in the chapters like the Sankofa bird's feet – with an eye toward the future. The concepts illustrated in the book do not reside in only one chapter but reflect a commonality across chapters and common concepts discussed in the overall volume.

This study aims to better understand the emotional challenges that inexperienced accounting researchers may face in conducting ethnographies. To do so, the authors use Arlie Russell Hochschild’s (1979, 1983) notions of “feeling rules” and “emotion work” to shed light on the possible nature and impact of these challenges, and how her ideas may also become fruitful for academic purposes.

The authors take a reflective approach in sharing the raw observation notes and research diaries as first-time ethnographers in the area of management accounting. The authors use these to analyze “unprocessed” experiences of emotional challenges from the fieldwork and how the authors learned to cope with them.

The authors illustrate how emotional challenges in conducting ethnographies can be rooted in a clash with prevalent feeling rules of certain study situations. The authors explore the conditions under which these clashes occur and how they may prompt researchers to respond through means of emotion work to (re-)stabilize those situations. Based on these insights, the authors also discuss how wider conventions of the accounting academy may contribute to emotional challenges as they stand in contrast to principles of ethnographic research.

There remains a tendency in the accounting domain to largely omit emotional challenges in the making of ethnographies, especially in writing up studies. In this paper, the authors are motivated to break this silence and openly embrace such challenges as an asset when the authors talk about the process of creating knowledge.

The purpose of this study is to provide evidence to support an emerging theory that interpersonal conflict is the primary cause of workplace stress among a self-selected sample of Irish construction managers.

Eighteen construction managers working in Ireland were recruited for this study. Using semi-structured interviews and interpretative phenomenological analysis as the research methodology, the causes of their workplace stress were investigated.

Participants reported that the principal cause of their workplace stress was high levels of interpersonal conflict between colleagues. The effects of this interpersonal conflict included avoidance behaviour, ill health, absences from the workplace and loss of productivity issues. Deadlines, penalty clauses, lack of appreciation, cliques, costs, communication, temporary contracts and delays were also reported stressors.

A limitation of the study is the small sample of 18 construction managers and the limited geographical area.

The social implications of this study could be to clearly identify that interpersonal conflict may be under reported in the construction industry, and there is a possibility that it is being misclassified as other workplace behaviours such as bullying, harassment and workplace violence. If this is so, this could aid future researchers in addressing this challenging workplace behaviour.

The current consensus in the literature is that the three main causes of workplace stress are bullying, harassment and violence. However, the role and importance of interpersonal conflict as reported in this study, with the exception of North America and China, is not reflected in the wider health and safety research literature. In addition, interpersonal conflict and its reluctance to be reported is largely absent from construction safety research. The findings of this study may be explained if the workplace stress research community is currently misclassifying interpersonal conflict as a manifestation of bullying, harassment or violence. If this is the case, interpersonal conflict needs further research. This is to establish if this cause of construction-related workplace stress needs to be reconsidered as a standalone phenomenon in the wider family of challenging workplace behaviours.