Bertrand Fauré, François Cooren and Frédérik Matte
The purpose of this paper is to extend the literature on accounting’s performativity by developing a ventriloquial perspective that directs the attention to the reciprocity…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to extend the literature on accounting’s performativity by developing a ventriloquial perspective that directs the attention to the reciprocity between the accounting signs and the accountants: they both do things by making each other speak. This oscillation explains where accounting number’s authority, materiality and resistance come from.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to show the relevance of this approach, the authors examine various ways numbers manage to speak or do things in the context of video-recorded conversations taken from fieldwork completed with Médecins sans frontières (also known as Doctors without Borders) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Findings
The analyses show how this ventriloquial perspective can inform the way the authors interpret what happens: when numbers do not say the same thing; when numbers are competing with other figures; and when numbers backfire on their own promoters.
Research limitations/implications
Even if some of the numbers studied are sometimes far from accounting per se, it shows how the absence or presence of accounting can make a difference.
Practical implications
The authors then discuss the implications of this research for accounting social innovation through accounting inscriptions.
Social implications
This perspective helps to understand that numbers can give great power, but that everything cannot be told with numbers. This is why making numbers speak is a great talent.
Originality/value
This refreshing perspective on accounting could be extended to other fields such as auditing and auditing.
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Comfort Olubukola Iyiola and Modupe Cecilia Mewomo
Understanding electricity use behaviour is considered one of the strategies to achieve sustained electricity management in buildings. The lack of understanding of occupants’…
Abstract
Purpose
Understanding electricity use behaviour is considered one of the strategies to achieve sustained electricity management in buildings. The lack of understanding of occupants’ electricity use behaviour has been found to cause various environmental and ecological issues. This paper aims to investigate the factors influencing occupants’ inefficient use of electricity in buildings becomes a vital area of study to achieve maximum benefit in the area of electricity management.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopted a quantitative survey and questionnaire as instruments for gathering relevant information from end-users in the study area, and the data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics.
Findings
The major factors influencing the electricity use behaviour of students in the study area were attributed to their level of awareness, personal beliefs and attitude towards electricity, managerial influences and economic factors.
Originality/value
The threats to the environment and ecology necessitate immediate attention to the elements that impact students’ electricity use habits. This research explains the key elements that might impact students’ electricity consumption habits in buildings. Understanding these key characteristics will provide policymakers with vital knowledge of its prevalence.
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Khadidja El-Bahdja Djebbar and Abderahemane Mokhtari
This study aims to examine the awareness of the inhabitants regarding energy consumption in relation to comfort in Tlemcen and analyze the paths of influence and the effects of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the awareness of the inhabitants regarding energy consumption in relation to comfort in Tlemcen and analyze the paths of influence and the effects of individual objective and subjective characteristic factors. This determines the factors' level of perception of the importance of energy retrofitting.
Design/methodology/approach
As part of an exploratory empirical study, this paper further discusses accompanied survey data from a sample of 208 properties, through a triangulation of in-depth qualitative studies and quantitative studies developed and analyzed by SPSS software (the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences).
Findings
Analysis of the results of the survey shows that the respondents have a level of awareness on comfort linked to energy savings but they lack guidance and recourse to specialists. The conclusion is that resident awareness is crucial and beneficial and that the key socio-demographic characteristics to determine the perception factors are related to age, occupation, household size and time lived in the house.
Originality/value
By exploring some of the key insights from the survey, this research improves residents' perception of the importance of energy retrofitting in the residential sector, highlighting the importance of priorities. This influences public attitudes and contributes to raising awareness in order to provide useful results for developing, in future studies, motivational strategies for these inhabitants. The present research is expected to add value to existing studies academically and methodologically and provide policy guidance to policy makers and other energy efficiency (EE) practitioners in the Maghreb region and beyond.
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In this presentation I shall be concerned with only one aspect of information science and its relation with linguistics: namely document analysis (for a broader survey of…
Abstract
In this presentation I shall be concerned with only one aspect of information science and its relation with linguistics: namely document analysis (for a broader survey of ‘Linguistics and information science’, see the recent article published under that title by C. Montgomery (1972); also M. Kay and K. Sparck Jones (1971), and the report prepared for F.I.D. by the same authors, forthcoming; M. Coyaud (1972), in French, deals with many separate facets of the same subject).
Changes at the top for STN International. After 15 years as the Scientific Directorof FIZ Karlsruhe, Dr Werner Rittberger will step down at the end of this month. Taking up the…
Abstract
Changes at the top for STN International. After 15 years as the Scientific Directorof FIZ Karlsruhe, Dr Werner Rittberger will step down at the end of this month. Taking up the post will be Professor Georg Schultheiss, a nuclear engineer by training.
Sof Thrane, Lars Balslev and Ivar Friis
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how fairness evaluations are constructed in a B2B context.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how fairness evaluations are constructed in a B2B context.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper conducts a field study of Air Greenland and its internal and external customers based on strong structuration theory (Stones, 2005). The authors employ context and conduct analysis to analyze how fairness evaluations emerge across four levels of structuration.
Findings
The paper finds that fairness evaluations emerge as a result of the interaction between external institutional pressures, agents' internal structures, and situated reflection and outcomes. The construction of fairness evaluations was embedded in contradictory institutional structures, where groups of actors constructed different evaluations of fair profits, procedures and prices. Actors furthermore worked on changing position-practice relations which shifted relations, external structures and affected outcomes and fairness evaluations.
Originality/value
This paper offers a conceptualization of embedded agency as emerging across the four levels of structuration. This contributes to debates in strong structuration theory through conceptualizing and analyzing how actors may be both be constrained and oriented by structures while reflexively adapting structures across the four levels of structuration. The paper extends extant pricing fairness research by illustrating how actors' construction of fairness flexibly develop fairness evaluations while responding to legitimacy and societal demands, including the needs of particular customer groups.
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Michael Kompf and Frances O’Connell Rust
The first part of this chapter addresses the history and development of the International Study Association of Teachers and Teaching (ISATT) and its engagement with the global…
Abstract
The first part of this chapter addresses the history and development of the International Study Association of Teachers and Teaching (ISATT) and its engagement with the global educational community. We provide an account of the context and background against which ISATT developed as well as information about the founders’ orientations and the actions that led to ISATT’s birth. The second part of the chapter uses patterns of topic focus as graphic indicators of the evolution of ISATT’s research interests expressed through publication titles.
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August Hans den Boef, Jelke Nijboer and Joost Kircz
The purpose of this paper is to show that the demise of quality in the press, possibly due to short‐sighted financial practices, and the decline in some uses of the public library…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to show that the demise of quality in the press, possibly due to short‐sighted financial practices, and the decline in some uses of the public library are both effects of the tide of electronicification of information and knowledge. However, this new force can be re‐formed and used as a reinforcement of the democratic roots of society by integrating the public library as a centre of certified and validated culture and information and as the new public function of civil journalism.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper starts with a description of developments in the library world in which the Dutch case is taken as a typical example. Subsequently, the decline of the quality newspaper is discussed, its societal role and its increasing dependency on stock market value. Hereafter, the central role of the civic stakeholders is revisited to and the crucial position that free quality information has for a democratic society.
Findings
The analysis clearly shows that both institutions, the library and the press, face the same damage as a result of the rapid changes due to the electronic revolution in the media. However, going back to the societal functions of these institutions, the new media can also be used as an engine for change and for development of a novel integration of quality information creation and storage.
Originality/value
The paper defends the need for a concerted and conscious policy to turn the public library into a workspace for civil journalism and a centre not only of high culture, social cohesion and a quality information repository, but also as an integrated public space for democratic self‐publishing and news reporting.