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The purpose of this essay is to explore the opportunities and challenges that early-career researchers (ECRs) face when they seek to contribute to academic knowledge production through research activities “other than” those directly focused on making progress with their own, to-be-published, research papers in a context associated with the “publish or perish” (PoP) mentality.

Drawing broadly on the notion of technologies of humility (Jasanoff, 2003), this reflective essay develops upon the experiences of the authors in organizing and participating in a series of nine workshops undertaken between June 2013 and April 2021, as well as the arduous process of writing this paper itself. Retrospective accounts, workshop materials, email exchanges and surveys of workshop participants provide the key data sources for the analysis presented in the paper.

The paper shows how the organization of the workshops is intertwined with the building of a small community of ECRs and exploration of how to address the perceived limitations of a “gap-spotting” approach to developing research ideas and questions. The analysis foregrounds how the workshops provide a seemingly valuable research experience that is not without contradictions. Workshop participation reveals tensions between engagement in activities “other than” working on papers for publication and institutionalized pressures to produce publication outputs, between the (weak) perceived status of ECRs in the field and the aspiration to make a scholarly contribution, and between the desire to develop a personally satisfying intellectual journey and the pressure to respond to requirements that allow access to a wider community of scholars.

Our analysis contributes to debates about the ways in which seemingly valuable outputs are produced in academia despite a pervasive “publish or perish” mentality. The analysis also shows how reflexive writing can help to better understand the opportunities and challenges of pursuing activities that might be considered “unproductive” because they are not directly related to to-be-published papers.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between intellectual capital (IC) and sustainability in practice by developing and testing a management control tool to enhance sustainability through IC. The case tested is a publicly listed Italian information technology company.

Employing an interventionist research approach, the authors actively participated in a team tasked with designing a new IC reporting system. The methods of inquiry included in-depth interviews with project stakeholders and reviewing internal documents to offer a critical and performative analysis of IC practices in action. The resulting analysis led to the development of a new management control tool.

The management control tool developed in collaboration with the company not only significantly enhanced sustainability performance, it also fostered integrated thinking. Specifically, the tool helped to identify, measure and monitor firm-specific IC, including skills and competencies, knowledge and innovation, values, legitimacy, trust and reputation.

The findings contribute to the ongoing discourse on IC practices. Through new insights into the practical relationship between IC and sustainability, this paper affirms IC’s significance to businesses that want to improve their sustainability. The study also presents a methodical approach to integrating sustainability thinking into corporate practices, adding to the limited literature on how management control systems can promote corporate sustainability.