This article discusses two main themes: why choose a package approach for distribution software? and — how do you select the right one for your company? The purpose of this paper…
Abstract
This article discusses two main themes: why choose a package approach for distribution software? and — how do you select the right one for your company? The purpose of this paper is to provide an objective way of guiding companies through the jungle of the distribution software market. It is an abridged version of a paper presented to the Warehouse & Distribution Software Conference put on by the National Materials Handling Centre, in London in February.
Adrian Wilkinson and Hugh Willmott
Quality initiatives have become widespread in recent years. However, the diverse meanings attached to quality initiatives make it a seductive and slippery philosophy of management…
Abstract
Quality initiatives have become widespread in recent years. However, the diverse meanings attached to quality initiatives make it a seductive and slippery philosophy of management and an elusive topic of study. Many books champion the cause of quality management but few address its meaning or reflect on its practical implementation or social significance. Attempts to introduce a fresh perspective to open up a different research agenda for those investigating quality initiatives and to stimulate discussion and debate between the “gurus” of quality and those who have studied its theory and practice.
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Martin Carlsson-Wall, Peter Hirner, Kalle Kraus and Adrian von Lewinski
This paper aims to analyse how a multinational organisation uses technocratic and socio-ideological controls to manage tensions arising when integrating its international…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyse how a multinational organisation uses technocratic and socio-ideological controls to manage tensions arising when integrating its international subsidiaries.
Design/methodology/approach
Through interviews and company documentation, the authors analyse how a global German family business firm integrates its international subsidiaries into the corporate context.
Findings
The findings suggest that technocratic and socio-ideological controls in combination help the firm manage three tensions – vertical vs lateral relations, standardisation vs differentiation of practices and centralisation vs decentralisation of decision-making – arising in the course of internationalisation. These results have important analytical implications for the understanding of how a high level of compliance to technocratic control initiatives is achieved. Prior work has, in the main, focussed on the resistance to technocratic controls without paying much attention to compliance. Specifically, the authors show how managers can use socio-ideological control to achieve a high level of compliance among employees when implementing technocratic controls.
Practical implications
The results suggest that managers in multinational firms need to pay careful attention to the tensions that are created when they internationalise and to apply a combination of technocratic and socio-ideological controls to manage these tensions.
Originality/value
There is limited knowledge of how managers use socio-ideological control to enact a particular form of experience for their employees and to create a highly valued sense of purpose. The findings suggest that these controls, in combination with technocratic ones, serve important roles when organisations expand internationally.
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Daniel Torchia, Simone Domenico Scagnelli and Laura Corazza
The purpose of this paper is to extend research on boundary making and breaking through alternative football clubs. These entities have borne out of the disappointment caused by…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to extend research on boundary making and breaking through alternative football clubs. These entities have borne out of the disappointment caused by the neoliberal turn of the football industry, which excluded traditional fans from being active actors and therefore call for study and generalization of specific forms of alternative accountability.
Design/methodology/approach
The study looks at emerging trends in the accounting and sport literature by drawing on two concepts that emerged in critical scholarship: critical performativity and critical dialogical accountability, with the aim of better understanding how these elements are developed and shaped within an alternative form of football organization. The focus on Football Club United of Manchester drives the ethnographic approach with data collected via participant observation, field-notes, documental analysis and semi-structured interviews.
Findings
The research shows that the pillars of the club's ethos, pushing its critical performative interventions toward setting new boundaries, are democratic governance and accountability, favoring participation and inclusion, and strictly linked to this, a responsibility to local communities. However, the study also highlights the difficulties of maintaining these boundaries when core values are threatened by degeneration.
Originality/value
The study makes a novel contribution to the field of accounting and sport, showing how an alternative football club adopts inclusive accountability systems that go beyond mainstream neoliberal practices. Such an inclusive approach can stimulate critical performativity, moving away from means-end rationality.
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Milind Tiwari, Adrian Gepp and Kuldeep Kumar
The purpose of this study is to review the literature on money laundering and its related areas. The main objective is to identify any gaps in the literature and direct attention…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to review the literature on money laundering and its related areas. The main objective is to identify any gaps in the literature and direct attention towards addressing them.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic review of the money laundering literature was conducted with an emphasis on the Pro-Quest, Scopus and Science-Direct databases. Broad research themes were identified after investigating the literature. The theme about the detection of money laundering was then further investigated. The major approaches of such detection are identified, as well as research gaps that could be addressed in future studies.
Findings
The literature on money laundering can be classified into the following six broad areas: anti-money laundering framework and its effectiveness, the effect of money laundering on other fields and the economy, the role of actors and their relative importance, the magnitude of money laundering, new opportunities available for money laundering and detection of money laundering. Most studies about the detection of money laundering have focused on the use of innovative technologies, banking transactions or real estate- and trade-based money laundering. However, the literature on the detection of shell companies being explicitly used to launder funds is relatively scarce.
Originality/value
This paper provides insights into an area related to money laundering where research is relatively scant. Shell companies incorporated in the UK alone were identified to be associated with laundering £80bn of stolen money between 2010 and 2014. The use of these entities to launder billions of dollars as witnessed through the laundromat schemes and several data leaks clearly indicate the need to focus on illicit financial flows through such entities.
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Matthew Jones, Dara Mojtahedi, Nadia Wager and Adrian West
Reports from 2016 to 2017 suggest that approximately 870 cases of non-familial child abduction (NFA) are recorded in England and Wales per year. Yet, empirical knowledge of the…
Abstract
Purpose
Reports from 2016 to 2017 suggest that approximately 870 cases of non-familial child abduction (NFA) are recorded in England and Wales per year. Yet, empirical knowledge of the victims, offenders and offence characteristics is limited in comparison to other forms of child victimisation. Furthermore, much of the available knowledge is constrained by a lack of clarity around the differences between acquaintance and stranger abductors. This systematic literature review aims to develop a comprehensive overview of acquaintance and stranger child abductions, focussing on the similarities and differences in offending behaviours.
Design/methodology/approach
Research databases (PsycArticles, Google Scholar, Science Direct, PsycINFO, Criminal Justice Abstracts, MEDLINE and ERIC) and the Grey Literature (ETHOS and EBSCO) were screened for peer-reviewed research published between 1995 and 2021. Sixteen articles met the inclusion criteria and were critically appraised using a modified version of the Joanna Briggs Institute Checklist for Case Reports.
Findings
Six key areas within NFA offences and their characteristics were identified as offering potential for differentiating acquaintance and stranger abductors: victim–offender relationship, number of victims and offenders, motives, modus operandi, victim injury, sexual assault and mechanism of death (in fatal cases). The results of this review are discussed with consideration given to investigative implications, limitations and directions for future study.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to systematically review the current NFA literature, from which pragmatic recommendations for practice and future academic enquiry are drawn.
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Adrian N. Carr and Philip Hancock
The paper aims to introduce the manner in which management and organization theory have viewed space and time as significant resources and to put forward a number of more…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to introduce the manner in which management and organization theory have viewed space and time as significant resources and to put forward a number of more contemporary views as to how space and time is both managed and experienced.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper adopts a postmodern approach in assembling what it regards as “fragments” from a variety of disciplinary discourses on space and time. Each fragment presents, putatively, a different voice, theme or motif which are intended to help the reader better understand the trajectories contained in the other papers in the volume.
Findings
The paper finds that conceptions of space and time are fundamental to the manner in which organizations are managed and organized and are a symbolic order inter‐related to themes of power and control. The manner in which we experience space and time is open to manipulation and specifically a form compression that displaces critical reflection and may make individuals prone to external locus of control. The manner in which time and space are linked to the suppression of human agency and the imperatives of capitalism cannot be overestimated and require reflexive consideration.
Originality/value
The paper, and the volume as a whole, recognises time and space as social constructions and thus open to “reconstruction”. Space and time are not simple a priori categories that are fixed, immutable absolutes and knowable entities. The recognition of the intersubjective “nature” of space and time is shown to help us better appreciate the different manner in which space and time is experienced and the manner in which space and time are used in the management of change.
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The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the usage of the word critical in the social sciences, to review how being critical is a process through which criticism…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the usage of the word critical in the social sciences, to review how being critical is a process through which criticism is a positive act, and to highlight the relevance of such a perspective in relation to international business.
Design/methodology/approach
International business is viewed through the critical optic of the work of a group of scholars, collectively known as the Frankfurt School. Critical logic is shown to be a “destructive” and “disrobing” act to reveal buried presuppositions. It is argued that a form of negation occurs that carries an important reflective function through a modality of estrangement – it is destructive, but the destruction is revealed to re‐emerge in a positive act.
Findings
The term critical is revealed as a constructive processual activity. The pretentious nature of positivism that seems to pervade thinking in international business is disrobed as being some kind of science and instead revealed to be a discourse firmly in the realm of values.
Originality/value
A paper that is among few that rigorously interrogates the meaning of being critical in relation to international business.
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Stephen Hill and Adrian Wilkinson
While quality management practices have spread in recent years,academic investigation of the phenomenon has lagged behind. Discusseswhat TQM comprises and whether there are…
Abstract
While quality management practices have spread in recent years, academic investigation of the phenomenon has lagged behind. Discusses what TQM comprises and whether there are partial or contingent forms; employment practices and relations, including the links with HRM and the issues of incentives, empowerment and political barriers; the themes of incrementalism and innovation including the relationship of TQM with BPR and the concern with bureaucratization; and how TQM fits with other management paradigms.