Safiya Sinclair and Gregory B. Fairchild
Jason has had a string of bad luck: he was fired from his job, his car got repossessed, he had to move back in with his mother when he was unable to make rent on his apartment…
Abstract
Jason has had a string of bad luck: he was fired from his job, his car got repossessed, he had to move back in with his mother when he was unable to make rent on his apartment, and his girlfriend dumped him. He is feeling unmotivated and discouraged, but also recognizes—at his mother's insistence—that he needs to start contributing to the household. Following his mother's orders, he heads to the local strip mall seeking employment.
How hard could it be to get a job, anyway?
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Ian Colville and Laurie McAulay
There is a scene in a play by Euripides in which Medea, the central character, persuades Jason, her husband, to be the unwitting participant in her plot for revenge. This scene…
Abstract
There is a scene in a play by Euripides in which Medea, the central character, persuades Jason, her husband, to be the unwitting participant in her plot for revenge. This scene illustrates a facet of finance and accounting expertise because it shows how narrative, including finance and accounting, provides ontological security; a belief in the security of reality and the predictability of outcomes. The Chorus in the play suggests that Jason is “so sure of destiny”. What makes the scene particularly interesting is that it carries a second meaning, which is absolutely clear to the audience, and which has tragic consequences, of which Jason is “so ignorant”. This possibility of a second meaning suggests dangers in accepting a superficial understanding of any narrative. In turn, this shows the need for a knowledge of the history and characters from which any single scene, or finance and accounting report or calculation, is constructed. Provides quotations from practitioners which illustrate ways in which they see finance and accountancy as narrative and the ways in which they succeed and fail to imbue any accounting scene with characters and history.
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Jason Canning and Pauline Anne Found
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the contributing factors that lead to resistance to change, and to ascertain the relationship between organizational culture and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the contributing factors that lead to resistance to change, and to ascertain the relationship between organizational culture and employee resistance in organizational change programmes, such as lean.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology for this research is in three main parts. Firstly, a systematic review of the literature pertaining to resistance to change is, secondly, followed by a case study involving an anonymous survey and semi-structured interviews to test the assumptions drawn from the literature. Finally, the literature research and case study results are drawn together to present a new model of resistance.
Findings
The finding of the literature, along with the finding of the case study confirm that lack of communication and participant involvement during change are highlighted as significant contributing factors to resistance and that these are related to organizational culture.
Research limitations/implications
Whilst the secondary sources of information provide a significant weight of evidence to support the results from the case study, the results of the research are based on a single case study; therefore, caution should be applied before making generalizations from the data.
Practical implications
The findings can provide organizations, and change practitioners, with an insight into a number of the issues that should be considered in relation to an organizations culture before attempting large-scale change programmes.
Originality/value
The research findings provide a new model, the “resistance model” that identifies the interconnected issues that affect employees’ attitude to, and thus acceptance of, organizational change.
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This case illustrates the concept of consolidation and how freight forwarders use it to reduce transportation costs. The student must compare a ship-direct model against vehicular…
Abstract
This case illustrates the concept of consolidation and how freight forwarders use it to reduce transportation costs. The student must compare a ship-direct model against vehicular consolidation, then consider temporal consolidation, investigate the differences between a freight broker and a freight forwarder, and develop a rate analysis for use in negotiation.
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Chipmunkapublishing is a unique, London—based, social enterprise that aims to help people with mental health problems through the publication of literature — mostly…
Abstract
Chipmunkapublishing is a unique, London—based, social enterprise that aims to help people with mental health problems through the publication of literature — mostly autobiographies — on mental illness. John Matthews profiles the first publishing house to specialise in publishing the voices of the sufferers of mental illness, and describes how it is helping to buck the trend of negative portrayals in the media of people with mental illness.
Thalia Anthony and Vicki Chartrand
Over the past decade, criminology in Australia, Canada and other settler colonies has increasingly engaged with activist challenges to the penal system. These anti-carceral…
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Over the past decade, criminology in Australia, Canada and other settler colonies has increasingly engaged with activist challenges to the penal system. These anti-carceral engagements have been levelled at its laws, institutions and agents. Following a long history of criminology explicating and buttressing penal institutions, the criminological gaze slowly transitioned in the 1970s to a more critical lens, shifting focus from the people who are criminalised to the harms of the apparatus that criminalises. However, the focus remained steadfastly on institutions and dominant players – until much more recently. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the strength of activist organisations and grassroots movements in affecting change and shaping debates in relation to the penal system. This chapter will explore the role of activism in informing criminological scholarship during the pandemic period and how criminologists, in turn, have increasingly recognised the need to build alliances and collaborations with grassroots activists and engage in their own activism. The chapter focuses primarily on Australian and Canadian criminology and its growing imbrication with the prison abolition movement, especially in the shadow of ongoing colonial violence. It considers how activist scholars, including ourselves, attempt to build movements for structural change in the criminal system and beyond.
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Tracy Noga and Tim Rupert
Both accounting professionals and accounting academics have noted the importance of communication skills for the career success of students. Further, the general consensus from…
Abstract
Both accounting professionals and accounting academics have noted the importance of communication skills for the career success of students. Further, the general consensus from the academic and practitioner literature is that these communication skills are an area in which many students could use improvement. One factor that has been shown to impact the improvement and development of these skills is communication apprehension.
In this chapter, we describe a combination of pedagogical methods we employed in tax classes at two universities to reduce written communication apprehension among students. More specifically, we draw ideas from communications research which suggest that increased writing opportunities, progressively increasing the weighting of the assignments, using models and examples for study and comparison, and trying to make feedback more effective may help to reduce written communication apprehension. We implemented this suggested approach by using a series of assignments that incorporated writing components.
Results suggest that writing apprehension reduced from the beginning of the semester to the end of the semester. Further, the reduction in writing apprehension was even greater for those students who began the semester with high written communication apprehension. In addition, the results of the survey questions at the end of the semester suggest that the methods also improved students’ confidence in preparing tax-related written communication.
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Goodwill Industries warehousing operations has increased as the Used Merchandise Store Sales in the US has also increased to a total spending of $17 billion in 2013. Goodwill…
Abstract
Goodwill Industries warehousing operations has increased as the Used Merchandise Store Sales in the US has also increased to a total spending of $17 billion in 2013. Goodwill Industries faces warehousing issues as their inventory fluctuates seasonally. As people do their spring cleaning in the beginning of the year and rush to get their tax-deductible donations in by the end of the year, the warehouses are overflowed but in the off-seasons they are scarce. The following case poses the issue of an efficient warehouse operation that also supports the company sales plan.
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Jason L. Powell and Jon Hendricks
The purpose of this concluding paper is to reflect on the theories of ageing well delineated by the papers of the special issue. It sets research themes that social theorists of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this concluding paper is to reflect on the theories of ageing well delineated by the papers of the special issue. It sets research themes that social theorists of ageing should reflect upon in creating conceptual tools to understanding the power dynamics of older people and modern society.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is an overview of the key issues that have been found by theories introduced throughout the special edition. It attempts to look ahead to seeing how social theory and ageing will need to be strengthened so that theory and experiences are inter‐locked.
Findings
This concluding paper cites how social theory can be analysed in variety of international and national contexts that gives an holistic and not eurocentric approach to social gerontology.
Originality/value
The paper is original in that it points to the future challenges social gerontology in terms of theorising ageing. The great value of social theory is that it provides critical questions about the nature of modern society and the implications this has for older people. This is original in getting researchers to see the creative use of theories of ageing.
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Jason Mayes, Vladimir Voikov and Mihir Sen
Simple methods for the steady‐state analysis of a flow network are readily available, but the dynamic behavior of a large‐scale flow network is difficult to study due to the…
Abstract
Purpose
Simple methods for the steady‐state analysis of a flow network are readily available, but the dynamic behavior of a large‐scale flow network is difficult to study due to the complex differential‐algebraic equation system resulting from its modeling. It is the aim of this paper to present two simple methods for the dynamic analysis of large‐scale flow networks and to demonstrate their use by examining the dynamics of a self‐similar branching tree network.
Design/methodology/approach
Two numerical projection methods are proposed for one‐dimensional dynamic analysis of large piping networks. Both are extensions of that suggested by Chorin for the nonlinear differential‐algebraic system resulting from the Navier‐Stokes equations. Each numerical algorithm is discussed and verified for turbulent flow in a nonlinear, self‐similar, branching tree network with constant friction factor for which an exact solution is available.
Findings
The dynamics of this network are calculated for more realistic friction factors and described as system parameters are varied. Self‐excited oscillations due to laminar‐turbulent transition are found for some parameter values and dynamic component behavior is observed in the network which is not observable in components apart from it.
Practical implications
It is shown that the dynamics of a flow network can exhibit unexpected behavior, reinforcing the need for simple methods to perform dynamic analysis.
Originality/value
This paper presents two numerical projection schemes for dynamic analysis of large‐scale flow networks to aid in their study and design.