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We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

Numerous firms in the automotive industry, to improve their competitiveness, have recently adopted mergers and acquisitions (M&As) strategies, particularly those in which a multinational enterprise from a developed country (DMNE) or a multinational enterprise from an emerging market (EMNE) acquires a DMNE. However, DMNEs in the industry typically do not acquire emerging market firms. In response, this paper aims to analyze that uncommon M&As process by focusing on the relationship between modes of post-acquisition acculturation and project management (PM) maturity. Because the literature addressing M&As does not correlate the acculturation process with project team maturity, this study seeks to partly fill that gap by proposing a framework for the relationship that draws upon Nahavandi and Malekzadeh’s (1988) research and Holmes and Walsh’s (2005) model.

This paper present qualitative research based on a case study in the automotive industry of a DMNE’s acquisition of a Brazilian firm. For data collection, this research conducted 14 in-depth interviews with managers, the transcripts of which were analyzed using content analysis.

Content analysis revealed differences between modes of acculturation perceived by the acquired and acquirer firms, as well as a gap between PM teams from both types of firm. A direct relationship emerged between the mode of acculturation and PM team, which constituted a factor driving the evolution of PM practices within the company. In recognizing that relationship, this research proposes and elucidates a framework that relates the mode of acculturation following the M&A process to PM maturity.

No previous research in the literature on M&As has analyzed post-acquisition acculturation and PM maturity in conjunction. For managers in post-acquisition companies, the proposed framework of this study is useful for understanding good management practices and, for project teams, for understanding the acculturation process.

How can people with lived experience of homelessness actively participate in contesting their marginalisation? The purpose of this paper is to suggest that involving people who are homeless in participatory action research (PAR) is one such strategy. This paper shows that such an approach can have a significant impact on empowering people with direct of experience of homelessness to challenge prevailing social discourses, particularly in terms of the way in which the local media presents homelessness as a social issue.

A PAR approach informed the design, development and dissemination of the study on which this paper is based. Analytically, it is underpinned by Foucauldian discourse analysis (FDA). FDA, with its focus on power relations in society, is noted to be particularly useful for analysing local media representations of homeless people.

The research reported here found that academic practitioners and homeless people can work together to challenge media discourses, which serve to marginalise people affected by homelessness.

The research reported here served to challenge some of the ways in homeless people are victimized and stigmatized.

The research reported here has the potential to inform future research concerned with understanding media presentations of homeless people. It can be seen as a model for how people affected by a particularly pernicious social issue can contribute to research in ways that go beyond researching for the sake of research.

The research reported here provides evidence of the emancipatory value of research that seeks to bring academic practitioners and homeless people together in a partnership to challenge vital social issues such as the power of the local media to frame understandings of homelessness.

How can people with lived experiences of marginalisation actively participate in contesting their marginalisation? This article aims to review the literature on PAR as a research approach. It will first describe what PAR means and consider this approach's particular features. The paper will go on to explore the advantages, limitations and criticisms of this approach to research.

How can people with lived experiences of marginalisation actively participate in contesting their marginalisation? The approach of this paper is to provide needed viewpoint discussion on Participatory Action Research (PAR) advantages, limitations and criticisms. PAR is mostly a qualitative research approach that takes account of researchers and participants collaborating to investigate social issues and take actions to bring about social change.

The aim of (PAR) is to systematically collect and analyse data to take action and make a change by generating practical knowledge. However, PAR as an approach to research has advantages and disadvantages. Also, PAR as an approach can be a problematic tool for facilitators and communities to apply due to power relations within the research process. However, PAR can help the praxis of collective critical consciousness of the participation and democratisation of participants presented in studies where this approach is used. Although a PAR approach can be an unknown and challenging tool, it is a path through which communities can explore their society and ignite to change it.

This paper provides a discussion of the critical consciousness value of PAR that seeks to bring academics, researchers and practitioners to the approach to primarily qualitative research methodology that should be understood with advantages, limitations (ethical challenges) and criticisms.

This paper aims to explore the lived experiences of key stakeholders working with homeless people during the implementation of universal credit during the austerity years.

The literature on austerity reveals welfare reforms’ impact on support services staff. Service providers’ perceptions of the impact of austerity-led policies and welfare reform via nine interviews with people working in homelessness organisations in Brighton and Hove in the UK. Service providers see the situation for their service users has gotten worse and that the policies make it more difficult to extricate themselves from their current situation. Three central themes relating to the impact of austerity-led welfare reforms were, namely, Universal Credit: the imposition of a precarious livelihood on welfare claimants; a double-edged sword: “If people are sanctioned: people can’t pay”; and “Hard to maintain my own mental equilibrium”.

More precisely, this paper captures service providers’ perceptions and experiences of the impact of austerity-led policies on their services and how they believe this, in turn, impacts their clients and their own lives.

The dimension cuts across service provision to vulnerable people and is intertwined with health and well-being outcomes. Austerity is detrimental to the health of service users and their clients. It is known that when it comes to the health and well-being of the most vulnerable, who have suffered most from the impacts of austerity policies. However, in times of open austerity, it falls also on those trying to ease their suffering.

The data suggest that policies were developed and accentuated by austerity, which led to the stripping of welfare support from vulnerable people. This process has impacted the people who rely on welfare and service providers.

This paper provides a needed viewpoint discussion on Participatory Action Research's (PAR) foundations. It allows for reflections on how PAR enables the investigation of social issues and takes action to bring about social change.

What are the conceptual foundations of Participatory Action Research (PAR)? This article aims to review some of PAR's cornerstones as a research approach. It will first briefly describe PAR and consider this approach's particular features. The paper will then explore some foundations of this approach to research.

The aim of PAR is to systematically collect and analyse data to take action and make a change by generating practical knowledge. However, PAR as an approach to research has philosophical roots. There is a need to reflect on its foundation, and it reflects on how practice.

This paper discusses the foundations of PAR, seeking to bring academics, researchers, community organisations and practitioners closer to this approach's way of thinking. As PAR becomes more used, reflecting on its origins and importance to research and knowledge production is key.

This chapter is a case study of Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN, National Steel Company, Volta Redonda, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), in order to compare two models of social responsibility adopted by the same company in two different historical periods: when it was state-owned company (since forties) and then when it was privatized in the 1990s. The results are preliminary for this case study, in that the research is ongoing. However, we can anticipate a main conclusion, that CSN has no social responsibility with its main stakeholders: the community of city Volta Redonda, where industrial activities are carried out. This research is relevant for future research in the comparative perspective, in poor or developing countries such as Brazil. We add that this study has led us to build the concept of territorial social responsibility, in order to broaden and move beyond the debate focused on social responsibility in the corporate world and move towards a transnational reflection of what is liability to the planet.

This paper reassesses the center-periphery relationship in light of recent developments in the international monetary system and the currency hierarchy in a geopolitical economy framework. The center-periphery relationship has historically been examined in relation to the international division of labor, the pace and diffusion of technical progress associated with it, and the pattern of consumption it embodies. As conceived by structuralists and dependentistas, it is not seen as the result of the uneven and combined development of capitalism: it does not take into account the struggle between the dominant States (center), which want to reproduce the current order and the contender States (periphery) which aim to accelerate capitalist development to reduce the unevenness, and even to undermine the imperial project of dominant states. In a geopolitical economy framework, a powerful obstacle peripheral countries face in their efforts at combined development is the international monetary system, something that the theorists of the center-periphery relationship have perhaps overlooked. Because of its subordinate position in the currency hierarchy, the periphery is subject to greater external vulnerability, greater instability of exchange and interest rates, and as a result, enjoys a more restricted policy space. In this sense, the chapter shows that, beyond macroeconomic policies, the currency hierarchy in a context of high capital mobility limits a range of developmental policies of peripheral countries, reinforcing the unevenness of world economy and constraining combined development.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the flexible aircraft model accurately from the frequency responses.

The frequency domain output error method is used to estimate the aerodynamic (rigid body and elastic body) derivatives, and mode shape parameters in the process of identification of flexible aircraft model. The accurate identification of lightly damped low frequency rigid-body response modes requires a careful selection of the frequency sweep length and the fast Fourier transform (FFT) window size, as the FFT window length cannot be longer than any individual sweep records. To address this issue, an effort is made to derive the FFT window length for the application of frequency domain estimation approach.

The investigations are initially made to select a suitable FFT window size for the accurate identification of the lightly damped low frequency rigid-body response modes of the flexible aircraft. Subsequently, frequency domain estimation approach is applied to simulated data of flexible aircraft. Besides the stability and control derivatives, the structural modes of the flexible aircraft are also estimated as part of state space model identification, and it is shown that all the model parameter estimates are accurate. Identification of such flexible aircraft aerodynamic (rigid body and elastic body) derivatives and structural mode shape parameters will lead to mathematical models of flexible aircraft that are accurate over a wide frequency range. The identified models are validated using the time response of frequency sweep data.

Aircraft system identification is an integral part of aerospace system design and life cycle process. This becomes a complex process when the aircraft has significant effects of flexibility on the flight dynamics, especially as the frequencies of the elastic modes become lower and approach those of the rigid body modes. Thus, an integrated mathematical model of flexible aircraft is required to develop, and it should be valid for a wide frequency range and relevant for the design of flight control system.

This paper focuses on the application of frequency domain approach to identify the valid model of flexible aircraft by estimating the aerodynamic (rigid body and elastic body) derivatives and structural mode shape parameters of flexible aircraft. The unknown frequencies of structural modes are also able to identify accurately in frequency domain. This gives more value addition to analyze the flight data of flexible aircraft, as it is challenging problem in parameter estimation of flexible aircraft.

This study aims to explore the configuration of a public university service innovation: the phenotypic evaluation of self-declared black and brown applicants for access to college undergraduate courses through racial quota in a Brazilian federal higher education institution (HEI).

By using qualitative methods and collecting data through semistructured interviews, this case study raises new explanatory aspects about service innovation in a noncommercial context.

Diversity in team composition and users’ sense of belonging emerged as unprecedented aspects of service innovation. The present study also coined another concept not verified in the literature: service cross-coproduction.

Regarding the limitations of the study, the technological dimension, despite having been shown to underlie the political–administrative process of innovations in services, given its importance reinforced by the literature and the current temporal context itself, did not emanate from the data collected. In addition, the fact that the service innovation investigated has occurred recently prevented longitudinal research that could detail the effects of phenotypic evaluation on institutional performance indicators.

The ethical–methodological care used in the interaction and preservation of the psychological integrity of the users in the case study proved to be subject to systematization and has great potential to enhance the service experience of the users through the humanization of the service delivery process. The linkage of the user’s perception to the phenotypic diversity of people working in the new service provision highlights the importance of incorporating themes such as the diversity of teams’ composition and representative bureaucracy to the scientific production of service innovation and their role in coproduction. The findings suggest that the resource allocation supply of basic goods and services needed to provide the new service reduces the individual risk of academic community members involved with innovation. Further studies could explore this relation.

Among the internal factors that influenced the configuration of service innovation, the idea of diversity in the team’s composition stood out. It based the phenotypic evaluation commission’s diverse constitution on gender, race, occupation and even nationality. It conferred greater legitimacy on service innovation, increasing the representation of groups that may not feel represented in public service delivery processes.

The results of the phenotypic evaluation case point to a new coproduction form emanating from the constitutive diversity of the phenotypic evaluation board members. This new type of coproduction is directly related to the complex, integrated and interdependent nature of the services that complement each other to enable the achievement of the objectives of a public university.