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This paper aims to explore how online experiential learning can help bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and real‐world competencies.

The paper is a joint opinion piece by Anne Llewellyn, Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences, Leeds Metropolitan University and Sarah Frame, EMEA Business Development Director, Toolwire. In the aftermath of several high‐profile failures in child protection in the UK, educators at Leeds Metropolitan University tasked with finding solutions have turned to immersive Digital Media Simulations. The impetus for introducing an experiential learning solution – covering the highly complex and sensitive topic of safeguarding vulnerable children – comes both from a desire to provide the most engaging and effective learning experience to students and a need to deliver competent social work professionals in line with the most recent guidelines.

The paper reveals that an increasing number of organizations are recognizing that online experiential learning sits at the intersection of several strategic learning needs of today's organizations and are prepared to make the investment in moving from traditional e‐learning to using Digital Media Simulations to help staff build these essential skills.

Experiential learning provides alternative and relevant ways of improving complex skills.

The paper aims to improve professional social work practice in child safeguarding and child welfare to improve the lives of vulnerable children.

This joint paper by Leeds Metropolitan demonstrates the value of experiential learning.

The late Nancy Jay described a striking feature of animal sacrifice: in many different cultures it functions to establish paternity. This article develops a theoretical framework for understanding just what it is about animal sacrifice that makes it so cross‐culturally well‐suited for establishing paternity. The main premise of this framework is that sacrifice communicates menace – not so much towards the domesticated animals ritually killed, but primarily towards those subordinated humans (children in particular) who are similarly disempowered vis‐à‐vis the class of male sacrificers. By demonstrating their willingness and ability to kill, sacrificing men gain a material basis for claiming credit for human reproduction, namely, that children live only by virtue of the sacrificers’ decision to kill animals in their stead. This framework is explicated through reference to Old and New Testament discourses of sacrifice.

This paper aims to explore how the introduction of new accounting information influences the understandings of cost-consciousness. Furthermore, the paper explores how managers use accounting information to shape organizational members’ understanding of changes, and how focusing on cost-consciousness influence professional culture within social services.

The paper is based on a case study, drawing on sensemaking as a theoretical lens. Top management, middle management and staff specialists at a medium-sized Danish municipality are interviewed.

The paper demonstrates how accounting metaphors can be effective in linking cost information and cost-consciousness to operational decisions in daily work practices. Further, the study elucidates how professionalism may be strengthened based on the use of accounting information.

The study is context specific, and the role of accounting in professional work varies on the basis of the specific techniques involved.

The paper shows how managers influence how professionals interpret and use accounting information. It shows how cost-consciousness can be integrated with social work practices to improve service quality.

The paper contributes to the literature on how accounting information influences social work. To date, only a few papers have focused on how cost-consciousness can be understood in practice and how it influences professional culture. Further, the study expands the limited accounting metaphor research.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

This paper examines how a public sector organization combined management control systems (MCS) to comply with increased uncertainty and conflicting objectives of tight budget control, flexibility, and quality care simultaneously. It also analyzes how middle managers interpret management control intentions and manage conflicting objectives, and how locally developed MCS are coupled with top management goals.

This paper uses a case-study approach, based on interviews with top and middle managements, as well as document studies conducted at a medium-sized Danish municipality.

Both constraining and enabling control systems empower middle managers and facilitate tight budget controls. Furthermore, middle managers play a crucial role in the use of MCS, develop local control systems, adjust existing control systems and influence the decisions and strategies of top management.

This paper is context-specific, and the role of accounting in professional work varies due to the specific techniques involved.

This paper shows how MCS, including budgeting and planning systems, can be applied in social services to help middle managements obtain tight budget controls while also improving service quality.

This paper adds to the limited extant research on the role of middle management in a control framework and demonstrates how MCS can balance conflicting goals in social services when uncertainty increases. Furthermore, this paper shows how the vertical coupling of MCS is tight when budgeting is employed for planning purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the notion that non-financial reporting is mainly about impression management or is only a superficial response to the hegemonic challenges posed by the sustainability movement. It focuses on the most recent development in sustainability reporting (integrated reporting) as an example of how accounting for financial and non-financial information has the potential to expand the scope of accounting systems, promote meaningful changes to reporting processes and provide a broader perspective on value creation.

The research focuses on an African eco-tourism company which has its head office in South Africa. A case study method is used to highlight differences in the presentation of an integrated business model according to the case entity’s integrated reports and how individual preparers interpret the requirement to prepare those reports. Data are collected using detailed interviews with all staff members involved in the preparation process. These are complemented by a review of the minutes of the company’s sustainability workshops and integrated reports.

A decision by the case organisation to prepare an integrated report gives rise to different forms of resistance which limits the change potential of the integrated reporting initiative. Resistance does not, however, preclude reform. Even when individual preparers are critical of the changes to the corporate reporting environment, accounting for financial and non-financial information expands the scope of the conventional accounting system which facilitates broader management control and promotes a more integrated conception of “value”.

Integrated reporting should not be dismissed as only an exercise in corporate reporting and disclosure; it has a transformative potential which, given time, can enable new ways of managing business processes and articulating value creation.

This study answers the calls for primary evidence on how the requirement or recommendation to prepare an integrated report is being interpreted and applied by individual preparers. The findings add to the limited body of interpretive research on the change potential of new reporting frameworks. In doing so, the research provides theoretical support for developing arguments which challenge the conventional position that integrated reporting is little more than an exercise in impression management.

The purpose of this paper is to longitudinally explore the symbolic and substantive ideological strategies located in ENGIE’s environmental discourse while considering the specific negative media context surrounding the company’s environmental activities.

Thompson’s (2007) and Eagleton’s (2007) theorizations are used to build an extended ideological framework to analyze ENGIE’s environmental talk from 2001 to 2015.

ENGIE drew extensively on a combination of symbolic and substantive ideological strategies in its annual and sustainability reports while ignoring several major issues raised in the press. Its substantive ideological mode of operation included actions for the environment, innovation, partnerships and educating stakeholders/staff, while its symbolic ideological mode of operation used issue identification, legal compliance, rationalization, stakeholders’ responsibilization and unification. Both ideological modes of operation worked synergistically to cast a positive light on ENGIE’s environmental activities, sustaining the ideology of a company that reconciles the irreconcilable despite negative press coverage.

This paper develops the notion of environmentally friendly ideology to analyze the environmental discourse of a polluting company. It is the first to use both Thompson’s and Eagleton’s ideological frameworks to make sense of corporate environmental discourse. Linking corporate discourse with media coverage, it further contributes to the burgeoning literature that interpretively distinguishes between symbolic and substantive ideological strategies by highlighting the company’s progressive shift from symbolic to more substantive disclosure.

The purpose of this paper is to map the existing patterns in the development of services innovations in financial institutions.

The data come from a dedicated survey of banks located in Luxembourg. Executives and innovation managers reported on banks’ innovation processes for the period of 2010-2012.

The study unveils four patterns of new service development (NSD) processes. The problem-driven pattern starts with problem definition and represents a bank’s response to an issue. The proactivity-driven pattern commences with idea generation to explore a variety of alternatives. The market-driven pattern emphasises a profit rationale and starts with a business analysis. The strategy-driven pattern frames idea generation within the scope of business goals and starts with the development of a service concept. Most banks keep a balance between being open and closed to cooperation with external partners in the innovation process. Service concept development is the stage most open to the cooperation for innovation, while introduction to a market is the opposite.

The national context and small sample size are the limitations of this study. Promising research avenues include the extension of findings to other settings and understanding of the effects of NSD patterns.

Banks adopt different approaches to the innovation process in order to pursue their innovation goals. Practitioners may use this knowledge in order to re-think the way they innovate.

The unveiled mapping of NSD processes contributes to the understanding of the innovation in financial services. The findings will be valuable for innovation managers, scholars, and students.

In recent years there have been increasing calls for the use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) and associated drugs to be recognized as a public health issue. In the domain of the competitive athlete and professional bodybuilder, recent decades have seen the diffusion of AAS from the hardcore gyms of the 1980s and 1990s to the mainstream exercise and fitness environments of the twenty-first century. Alongside the apparent increases in the use of these drugs, there is a growing evidence base in relation to harms – physical, psychological and (to some extent) social. But is this form of drug use a public health issue? What criteria should we use to make this judgement? What is the available evidence and has our understanding of the issue improved? By drawing on the authors' research in the United Kingdom and the wider international literature this chapter will explore these issues and attempt to answer the fundamental question – is the use of anabolic steroids a public health issue?