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1 – 10 of over 2000As part of discussing future research in the era of change for Globalization 4.0, this chapter examines the traditional academic CSR literature to determine a gap in current…
Abstract
As part of discussing future research in the era of change for Globalization 4.0, this chapter examines the traditional academic CSR literature to determine a gap in current research. An academic literature search revealed limited literature on actual CSR activities, and more specifically, Social Initiatives (SIs). It is important to expand on this area of research as it relates to an evolution of the original CSR definition by Carroll (1979, 1999). The literature review also revealed limited use of Social Identity Theory in CSR studies: a theory which provides an excellent context to give ‘purpose’ and meaning to a more socially oriented form of CSR. It also provides a base to understand human ‘identification’ and ‘identity’ with CSR activities, in a new era of change. Recent research reveals the importance of understanding what employees and global citizens as stakeholders want, need, identify, and engage with. Following a literature review, this chapter introduces a new ‘Social Initiatives Framework,’ designed to incorporate the many terms and alternative themes associated with CSR. The chapter concludes with extracts from an example paper for this area of research, and provides a model to examine changing stakeholder perspectives in global settings. The findings behind the development of the model is discussed, revealing substantial opportunities for future research. The chapter highlights the development of CSR SIs to study the sustainable development goals, while also supporting social enterprises to solve wicked challenges and create shared value (CSV) for both the host community and the company within the setting where the organization resides.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze how accounts of costs and accounts of needs are shaped, connected and made durable in the day-to-day practices of welfare professionals.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze how accounts of costs and accounts of needs are shaped, connected and made durable in the day-to-day practices of welfare professionals.
Design/methodology/approach
Throughout a year, the author traced the work of connecting costs and needs across and beyond the organizational boundaries of the accounting and child protection departments in a Danish local government. Over the course of the study, accountants realized that the budget was overspent and this, accordingly, gave insights into what was done to make accounts more durable.
Findings
This paper shows that multiple accountabilities are made possible through the ongoing and practical work of shaping, connecting and making accounts durable. This fragile process fails when connections between separate aspects of organizational work are not made visible.
Research limitations/implications
This paper attempts to convey the potentials of a symmetrical approach for organizational ethnography. In this way, it does not, for instance, address prevailing budget limits or regimes of cost control.
Originality/value
Insights into how accounts are shaped into meeting multiple and diverging demands for accountability are rare in both the fields of management accounting as a practice and research on social work practice.
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Penelope Van den Bussche and Claire Dambrin
This paper investigates online evaluation processes on peer-to-peer platforms to highlight how online peer evaluation enacts neoliberal subjects and collectives.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper investigates online evaluation processes on peer-to-peer platforms to highlight how online peer evaluation enacts neoliberal subjects and collectives.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses netnography (Kozinets, 2002) to study the online community of Airbnb. It is also based on 18 interviews, mostly with Airbnb users, and quantitative data about reviews.
Findings
Results indicate that peer-to-peer platforms constitute biopolitical infrastructures. They enact and consolidate narcissistic entrepreneurs of the self through evaluation processes and consolidating a for-show community. Specifically, three features make evaluation a powerful neoliberal agent. The object of evaluation shifts from the service to the user's own worth (1). The public nature of the evaluation (2) and symetrical accountability between the evaluator and the evaluatee (3) contribute to excessively positive reviews and this keeps the market fluid.
Social implications
This paper calls for problematization of the idea of sharing in the so-called “sharing economy”. What is shared on peer-to-peer platforms is the comfort of engaging with people like ourselves.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature on online accounting by extending consideration of evaluation beyond the review process. It also stresses that trust in the evaluative infrastructure is fostered by narcissistic relationships between users, who come to use the platform as a mirror. The peer-to-peer context refreshes the our knowledge on evaluation in a corporate context by highlighting phenomena of standardized spontaneity and euphemized evaluation language. This allows evaluation processes to incorporate a market logic without having to fuel competition.
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Iain Munro, Mehdi Boussebaa and Carl Rhodes
This viewpoint aims to contribute to understanding corporate power in two key respects. First, it provides insight into the ways in which transnational corporations continue to…
Abstract
Purpose
This viewpoint aims to contribute to understanding corporate power in two key respects. First, it provides insight into the ways in which transnational corporations continue to operate as vehicles for neo-colonial projects, which are underpinned by exploitation and racial hierarchies. Second, it highlights the significance of investigative journalism in providing a crucial empirical resource for both activists engaged in holding power to account and scholars engaged in critical research into corporate power and civil society activism.
Design/methodology/approach
This viewpoint combines an interview with an investigative journalist and the academic commentary provided by the authors in response to the interview.
Findings
This viewpoint highlights contemporary mutations in the concentration of corporate power, along three broad themes: the growth of transnational institutions critical to enabling and supporting abuses of transnational corporate power and neo-colonialism; the emergence of corporate-run political territories secured by private security organisations; and the corporate attack on progressive politics. It also analyses the important role of investigative journalism in advancing knowledge of transnational corporate power as well as its role in holding such power to account and the urgent need for new forms of independent journalism to support union activism, whistleblowing and other forms of democratic activism.
Research limitations/implications
This viewpoint engages with an alternative tradition of social critique and the critique of corporate power, which has been underrepresented in the field of international business.
Practical implications
This study highlights the significance of investigative journalism in providing a crucial empirical resource for both activists engaged in holding power to account and scholars engaged in critical research into corporate power and civil society activism.
Social implications
These implications entail developing a critique of transnational corporate power and neo-colonialism, enriching democtratic oversight and journalism, and supporting freedom of expression and democratic activism.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, minimal research has explored the critical role of investigative journalism in uncovering and holding transnational corporate power accountable. This paper therefore offers a highly original contribution by addressing this significant yet underexamined area.
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Iain Munro and Kate Kenny
Whistleblowing plays a crucial role in revealing organizational misconduct and systemic corruption in industry and government. This paper investigates changing practices of…
Abstract
Whistleblowing plays a crucial role in revealing organizational misconduct and systemic corruption in industry and government. This paper investigates changing practices of whistleblower activism, with particular reference to the role of solidarity and the increased role of support networks. Many modern whistleblower disclosures have revealed gaping flaws in the system of global governance related to a range of important social and economic issues, such as tax evasion, global mass surveillance, the use of torture and illegal wars of aggression. All these forms of systemic corruption are reliant on the use of secrecy havens to conceal the abuse from public scrutiny and democratic oversight. Counter-hegemonic social movements that oppose forms of systemic corruption can find important allies in those whistleblowers, who leak vital information about misconduct and corruption to the public. In this paper, we argue that there is a clear relationship of mutual support between whistleblowing and activist social movements, both in the process of whistleblowing and in furthering the campaigns of the social movements themselves. We theorize this, unpacking the processes and dynamics underlying the relationship, and offering a framework for analysis. The paper concludes with a discussion of the changing role of whistleblower activism and support networks in undertaking social reform and counter-hegemonic practice.
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Bruno Lanz, Allan Provins, Ian J. Bateman, Riccardo Scarpa, Ken Willis and Ece Ozdemiroglu
We investigate discrepancies between willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA) in the context of a stated choice experiment. Using data on customer preferences for…
Abstract
We investigate discrepancies between willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA) in the context of a stated choice experiment. Using data on customer preferences for water services where respondents were able to both ‘sell’ and ‘buy’ the choice experiment attributes, we find evidence of non-linearity in the underlying utility function even though the range of attribute levels is relatively small. Our results reveal the presence of significant loss aversion in all the attributes, including price. We find the WTP–WTA schedule to be asymmetric around the current provision level and that the WTP–WTA ratio varies according to the particular provision change under consideration. Such reference point findings are of direct importance for practitioners and decision-makers using choice experiments for economic appraisal such as cost–benefit analysis, where failure to account for non-linearity in welfare estimates may significantly over- or under-state individual's preferences for gains and avoiding losses respectively.
This paper aims to examine the recommendation system of the video-sharing website YouTube to study how control of users is effected on online platforms.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the recommendation system of the video-sharing website YouTube to study how control of users is effected on online platforms.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper conceptualises algorithmic systems as protocols – technological and social infrastructures that both facilitate and govern interactions between autonomous actors (Galloway and Thacker, 2004, 2007). It adopts a netnographic approach (Kozinets, 2002) to study not only the formal, technological systems of the platform but also the systems as they were made sense of, understood and enacted upon by actors. It relies both on information as revealed by the organisation itself, as well as discussions between lay users in online forums and press coverage.
Findings
The results of this study indicate that the ways in which platforms selectively facilitate interactions between users constitute a form of control. While maintaining the appearance of an open and neutral marketplace, interactions on the platform are in fact highly structured. The system relies on the surveillance of user interactions to rapidly identify and propagate marketable contents, so as to maximise user “engagement” and ad revenue. The systems place few demands or restrictions on individual users, instead control is effected in a probabilistic fashion, over the population of users as a whole, so as to, in aggregate, accomplish organisational goal.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature on accounting and control practices in online spaces, by extending the notion of control beyond overt rankings and evaluations, to the underlying technical and social infrastructures that facilitate and shape interactions.
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Kaupapa Māori research brings to the centre and normalises Māori academic success in higher education in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Identity as Māori, through Iwi (tribal) affiliations…
Abstract
Kaupapa Māori research brings to the centre and normalises Māori academic success in higher education in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Identity as Māori, through Iwi (tribal) affiliations and as tangata whenua (people of the land), are foundational values from a Māori world view. Strong Māori identity is significantly a consistent element in the stories of Māori academic successes. It is part of the ‘cultural capital’ that tauira Māori (students and graduates) take with them into educational institutions, where little active attention is given to it. At issue on a broader level is the resounding ‘silence of the archives’, the lack of information about Māori succeeding in higher education, particularly from a Māori world view. The dominant discourse in Aotearoa/New Zealand positions us into the ‘other’ and as ‘deficit’. In a reversal of this my doctoral research asked how and why do Māori succeed in higher education. Uniquely Māori elements of whenua (land), whānau (family) and connection with marae (meeting ground and complex) are part of the how and the why of Māori academic achievement. This chapter highlights how some Māori began their journeys that result in academic successes and IT qualifications. Their haphazard access to information about IT implicates the poorly developed pathways of entry into IT studies at that time and may explain some of the low uptake of IT qualifications and IT field employment by Māori and other New Zealanders.
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The purpose of this paper is to determine whether Internet‐based services, used by those individuals or organisations seeking to launder monies derived from illegal sources, will…
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to determine whether Internet‐based services, used by those individuals or organisations seeking to launder monies derived from illegal sources, will pose a greater risk to financial institutions than more traditional financial services. The use of the financial services sector by criminals seeking to ‘launder’ money has become a business risk that financial institutions cannot ignore, with governments and regulators increasing the legislation and regulation designed to prevent money laundering. Financial institutions have both a moral and a legal obligation to assist in preventing criminals from obtaining benefits from their activities. Simultaneously, the development of Internet‐based financial services continues at a rapid pace, with new technologies such as Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)‐enabled telephones and interactive televisions empowering customers, allowing them the flexibility to carry out transactions without the direct involvement of the institution.
Informed by Jung’s analytical psychology, this chapter discusses Kafka’s short-story The metamorphosis in relation to moral reflection on organisational life. Adopting the view…
Abstract
Informed by Jung’s analytical psychology, this chapter discusses Kafka’s short-story The metamorphosis in relation to moral reflection on organisational life. Adopting the view that fiction offers a promising path to engage the reader’s imagination and reflection on moral issues, I explore such process in light of The metamorphosis. I argue that this story not only outlines important moral issues of relevance to workers in modern organisations, but is also particularly effective in eliciting a reaction from the reader which calls for further analysis. Reading about Gregor Samsa’s transformation precludes indifference; instead, it asks us to reflect on our own moral values and behaviours, and to ponder on our tolerance for what is ‘other’. In turn, this enhanced knowledge and understanding of ourselves help explore ethical issues in organisations in a more subjective, creative and holistic manner.
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