Search results

The purpose of this paper is to consider the challenges, advantages and limits of ethnographical approaches to the study of parliament. Challenges in the study of political institutions emerge because they can be fast-changing, difficult to gain access to, have starkly contrasting public and private faces and, in the case of national parliaments, are intimately connected to rest of the nation.

Ethnography usually tends to be difficult to plan in advance, but especially so when parliament is the focus.

Research in parliament requires clear questions but an emergent approach for answering them – working out your assumptions, deciding on the most appropriate methods depending on what wish to find out, and continually reviewing progress. Its great strengths are flexibility, ability to encompass wider historical and cultural practices into the study, getting under the surface and achieving philosophical rigour. Rigour is partly achieved through reflexivity.

One implication of this is that not only will each study of parliament be different, because each is embedded in different histories, cultures, and politics, but the study of the same parliament will contain variations if a team is involved.

Ethnographical research is a social and political process of relating; interpreting texts, events and conversations; and representing the “other” as seen by observers.

A policy of surveillance which interferes with the fundamental right to a private life requires credible justification and a supportive evidence base. The authority for such interference should be clearly detailed in law, overseen by a transparent process and not left to the vagaries of administrative discretion. If a state surveils those it governs and claims the interference to be in the public interest, then the evidence base on which that claim stands and the operative conception of public interest should be subject to critical examination. Unfortunately, there is an inconsistency in the regulatory burden associated with access to confidential patient information for non-health-related surveillance purposes and access for health-related surveillance or research purposes. This inconsistency represents a systemic weakness to inform or challenge an evidence-based policy of non-health-related surveillance. This inconsistency is unjustified and undermines the qualities recognised to be necessary to maintain a trustworthy confidential public health service. Taking the withdrawn Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between NHS Digital and the Home Office as a worked example, this chapter demonstrates how the capacity of the law to constrain the arbitrary or unwarranted exercise of power through judicial review is not sufficient to level the playing field. The authors recommend ‘levelling up’ in procedural oversight, and adopting independent mechanisms equivalent to those adopted for establishing the operative conceptions of public interest in the context of health research to non-health-related surveillance purposes.

Employability skills have transformed from the acquisition of university degrees to possessions of cognate skills other than only degrees that can help employees secure employment in contemporary work environments. This study evaluates essential skills that will prepare millennia of youths and graduates for employment in the present job market. The study investigated four major hypotheses to underscore the employability opportunities of graduates in challenging 21st-century work environments.

To clearly gain an understanding of women’s disparity in society, the study employed a qualitative approach to evaluate the incidence of gender prejudice in a men’s dominant world. The study utilised two distinguished sampling strategies, purposive and snowballing sampling techniques, which were deemed suitable and useful due to the nature of the study. The study recruited 42 participants by conducting semi-structured interview sessions for the study. The study employed a deductive approach to analyse the data obtained from participants. A thematic content analysis was used to take away prejudice and establish an overarching impression of the interviewed data. Atlas.ti was used to analyse the transcribed interview data from the participants to establish common themes from the surveyed informants.

The results of this investigation indicated that there is a deep-rooted trend of institutionalised men’s dominance in politics and religious leadership. Women perceived less representation and men dominated the two domains of existence in their local environment. The study established that women are optimistic about a turnaround narrative on gender equality in politics and religious leadership. They expressed their concern about strengthened public debate and campaigns on women’s representation, and against gender discrimination. The study further shows that women are influencing the ethical and moral sense for change against women’s neglect in society. They expressed their concerns against the selection of people into political offices for elected political posts and observed the peculiarity of political godfathers fixing their favourite men into those offices.

The study discovered that women are leading campaigns for their representation in politics as well as church leadership today. The novelty of this study bothering around two domains of women’s lives – politics and religion, in particular, church leadership. These have not been evidence before in a study.

This chapter focusses on the ethical issues raised by different types of surveillance and the varied ways in which surveillance can be covert. Three case studies are presented which highlight different types of surveillance and different ethical concerns. The first case concerns the use of undercover police to infiltrate political activist groups over a 40-year period in the UK. The second case study examines a joint operation by US and Australian law enforcement agencies: the FBI’s operation Trojan Shield and the AFP’s Operation Ironside. This involved distributing encrypted phone handsets to serious criminal organisations which included a ‘backdoor’ secretly sending encrypted copies of all messages to law enforcement. The third case study analyses the use of emotional artificial intelligence systems in educational digital learning platforms for children where technology companies collect, store and use intrusive personal data in an opaque manner. The authors discuss similarities and differences in the ethical questions raised by these cases, for example, the involvement of the state versus private corporations, the kinds of information gathered and how it is used.

In the early 1930s, Nicholas Kaldor could be classified as an Austrian economist. The author reconstructs the intertwined paths of Kaldor and Friedrich A. Hayek to disequilibrium economics through the theoretical deficiencies exposed by the Austrian theory of capital and its consequences on equilibrium analysis.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The integration of capital theory into a business cycle theory by the Austrians and its shortcomings – e.g. criticized by Piero Sraffa and Gunnar Myrdal – called attention to the limitation of the theoretical apparatus of equilibrium analysis in dynamic contexts. This was a central element to Kaldor’s emancipation in 1934 and his subsequent conversion to John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). In addition, it was pivotal to Hayek’s reformulation of equilibrium as a social coordination problem in “Economics and Knowledge” (1937). It also had implications for Kaldor’s mature developments, such as the construction of the post-Keynesian models of growth and distribution, the Cambridge capital controversy, and his critique of neoclassical equilibrium economics.

The close encounter between Kaldor and Hayek in the early 1930s, the developments during that decade and its mature consequences are unexplored in the secondary literature. The author attempts to construct a coherent historical narrative that integrates many intertwined elements and personas (e.g. the reception of Knut Wicksell in the English-speaking world; Piero Sraffa’s critique of Hayek; Gunnar Myrdal’s critique of Wicksell, Hayek, and Keynes; the Hayek-Knight-Kaldor debate; the Kaldor-Hayek debate, etc.) that were not connected until now by previous commentators.

This study aims to examine the over 60-year evolution of behavioral accounting research (BAR), with the main aim of critically and accurately tracing its past, present and future.

This study used Scopus and Google Scholar databases to collect 2,263 articles of BAR published on relevant accounting journals. Thus, this study used Bibliometrix to provide a temporal overview of articles and a temporally oriented network co-occurrence analysis of BAR topics.

This study retraces the history of BAR since its origins and, also on the basis of triggering events inside (e.g. Nobel Prizes for behavioral economics studies) and outside (e.g. accounting scandals) the academic debate, this study critically discusses the evolution and interconnections of BAR topics. Then, future research is addressed toward main promising avenues, thus integrating recent technological applications into the behavioral accounting experimental designs to improve their external validity, exploring the potential positive effects of professionals’ heuristics in performing accounting tasks under certain environmental conditions, exploiting behavioral accounting frameworks to analyze and improve sustainability reporting and sustainability performance management.

Although BAR is rich of contributions, including subfields and contaminations, it lacks a holistic evaluation of its origins, development and future perspectives. In this vein, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to use a bibliometric analysis to evaluate the evolution of BAR.

This paper aims to unravel the puzzle that the United Kingdom’s high-quality government accounting and fiscal architecture is associated with low-quality outcomes, including poor productivity growth, high public debt, public services which do not meet citizen expectations and historically high levels of taxation. It contributes to public sector accounting research in the fields of fiscal transparency and governance.

This paper uses Miller and Power’s (2013) economization framework and Dunsire’s (1990) concept of collibration to explain why being a global leader in public sector accounting reform and in fiscal and monetary architecture has not protected the UK from weak governance. The intersection of economization’s roles of accounting with modes of government accounting clarifies the puzzle.

Whereas accruals government accounting contributes to fiscal transparency, this is not a sufficient condition for well-judged policy and its effective application. Collibration is the dominant mechanism for mediation in the fiscally centralized UK, but it has failed to deliver stable outcomes, in part because Parliament is limited in its ability to hold back inappropriate behaviour by the Executive. Subjectivization has disrupted adjudication because governments at all levels resist constraints on their behaviour, with unpredictable and often damaging consequences.

This paper provides insights through the combined lens of economization and modes of government accounting, demonstrating the practical value of this conceptualization. Although some causes for unsatisfactory outcomes are specific to the UK, there are cautions for accounting and fiscal reformers in other countries, such as Member States of the European Union.

The purpose of the study is an in-depth exploration of the processes through which a leader develops their leader identity in strength, meaning and integration, with resulting enrichment outcomes.

Using multi-domain leader identity theory, this study provides an in-depth exploration of the processes through which a leader develops their leader identity. Set in a healthcare context, 26 participants took part in an 18-month multi-domain leadership development program.

Findings indicate a typology of leader identities, capturing the dynamic nature of leader identity based on combinations of strength and meaning. Our research also suggests that as the leader develops, their leader identity can change from a differentiated identity as a leader to a more integrated leader identity, with resulting enrichment outcomes.

The results suggested value in inherently multi-domain focus using event-based reflection and, as such, are useful in leader identity development programs. We recommend future research generalize to other settings and a larger population.

By taking a multi-domain approach to leader identity development, the leader has the opportunity to learn and develop in a more holistic way. They are encouraged to reflect on and learn from leadership experiences throughout their entire lives, adding breadth and depth that are often overlooked in development programs.

Developing leaders who understand who they are and are capable of critical self-reflection and learning is a fundamental requirement for the positive advancement of society.

The value of the study lies in the first longitudinal, work-based empirical study taking an explicitly multi-domain approach to leader identity development.

A critical issue in organizations concerned with cybersecurity is how to motivate personnel to engage in safety and security behaviors to counter potential threats. For these organizations to be effective, they must rely upon their members who are motivated to engage in behaviors to assure various forms of cybersecurity.

A conceptualization is described outlining the factors and processes involved in motivating cybersecurity behaviors. The theoretical starting point is the reasoned action approach (Fishbein and Ajzen, 2010), which provides a strong and parsimonious basis for considering the processes and factors that predict safety and security behaviors (intentions, perceived behavioral control, subjective norms, attitude toward the behavior and beliefs).

The conceptualization presented goes beyond the reasoned action approach to consider factors involved in cybersecurity behaviors that might not be reasoned (work routines and habits and motivating emotions). This more integrated conceptualization describes how personal factors such as anticipated affect, attitude toward the process and personal norms can be seen as contributing to motivated behavior.

The beyond reasoned action conceptualization is of value to organizations for which motivated safety and security behaviors contribute to their effectiveness, with the conceptualization providing practical recommendations for enhancing cyber safety and cybersecurity. A research agenda based on this beyond reasoned action conceptualization articulates numerous avenues for further investigation.

In recent years, a number of privileged individuals have entered the music industry in Zimbabwe, either as performers or entrepreneurs. The economic challenges in the country may have prompted these individuals to invest in music as a means of diversifying their income or exploring new business opportunities. To determine whether their interest in music is driven by entrepreneurship or genuine passion, a scholarly examination was deemed necessary.

A qualitative research approach with semi-structured interviews was used as the data collection technique. Narrative analysis was conducted on a sample of musicology students in Gweru, Zimbabwe.

The findings revealed the nepo babies’ interest in music is driven by legacy continuation – the responsibility to carry on with the name of the parent – harsh economic conditions, capitalizing on Internet and digital opportunities and mechanisms for psychological satisfaction during hardships.

Although there is a wide range of literature on musicpreneurship, there are gaps in studies that have examined whether a nepo baby's interest in music is motivated by musicpreneurship or a genuine passion for it. Therefore, the aim of this research is to contribute to the existing body of literature on African musicpreneurship, with a specific focus on Zimbabwe.