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This paper aims to explore the concept of sustainability imaginaries – unifying core assumptions on what sustainability entails held by stakeholders – set within a large suburban Canadian university. The study aims to expand the field of research into imaginaries by focusing on imaginaries within an institution as opposed to a societal or national level.

The paper is conceptual in nature and draws upon empirical tools, such as collaborative thematic coding of interviews of university community members, to illustrate emergent imaginaries around sustainability at the institution.

This paper identifies four core sustainability imaginaries in an analysis of the interview data: sustainability as performance, sustainability as governance, sustainability as techno-efficiency and sustainability as community organizing. The paper then uses these imaginaries to analyse two recent university-wide events: the establishment of a high-level sustainability council and an energy management program.

Because of the institutional focus of this study, the research may lack generalizability to other institutions. Thus, researchers are encouraged to explore what other imaginaries may exist at other institutions.

This paper includes implications for how universities can manage conflicting expectations and definitions in relation to new sustainability initiatives on campus.

This paper offers reflections on the concept of sustainability imaginaries and what they might offer the field of sustainability in higher education.

Purpose: In this paper, we focus on the mythic nature of the anonymous Bitcoin creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Drawing on ideas from Foucault and Barthes on authorship, we analyze the notion of the absence of the author and how that sustains the brand. Design/methodology/approach: Based on interview data, participant observation, archival data, and a netnography, we examine the discourses that emerge in the wake of multiple Satoshi Nakamoto exposés that serve as both stabilizing and destabilizing forces in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Findings: We analyze the different interpretations of Satoshi Nakamoto through his own text and how his readers interpret him. We identify how consumers employ motifs of myth and religiosity in trying to find meaning in Satoshi’s disappearance. His absence allows for multiple interpretations of how the Bitcoin brand is viewed and adopted by a diverse community of enthusiasts.

Implications: Our findings provide a richer understanding of how, in a period of celebrity brands, Satoshi Nakamoto’s anti-celebrity stance helps sustain the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Originality/value: Our analysis examines the nature of anonymity in our hyper-celebrity culture and the mystique of the anonymous creator that fuels modern-day myths for brands without owners.

Predictions can be fun to make, and the temptation must be overwhelming if you're an “expert” in a field as dynamic as personal computing. For that matter, market analysts are paid to make projections. Thus, the PC field doesn't lack for insights into the future. If you base your plans on those predictions and projections rather than your understanding and a touch of caution, you can be led seriously astray. As with most other projections for the marketplace, PC predictions range from superb to awful. Worse yet, some supposedly objective analysts become advocates—coloring their projections with their hopes. To wrap up this year‐long look back at a decade of personal computing, the author notes a few of the failed predictions and assertions that litter the computer press. Hindsight is always easier than foresight, and some of these predictions should have been correct. Meanwhile, it's worth noting a few general areas where projections have gone wrong.

Considers what the NeXT computer can offer libraries as an alternative to conventional mainframe‐PC‐terminal systems for sorting, storing, and displaying bibliographic information. Discusses the NeXT computer hardware, software, the idea of a library workstation, and the promise of the Digital Librarian utility. Surmises that, despite criticisms of cost, NeXT offers the possibility of a transformation in the way bibliographic information is handled by both patrons and staff.

MINITELNET NOW AVAILABLE IN THE US. Over a decade ago, the French government introduced Minitel, an electronic gateway to phone numbers, banking services, news digests, travel information, and other online resources. Included in the installation cost of a telephone (250 Francs or $42), more than 5 million of the 9‐inch Minitel monitors have been distributed, with users logging in more than 60 million hours online. At first blush, Minitel is an overwhelming success, generating revenues in excess of 800 million Francs ($136 million) per year. Minitel has already crossed the Channel and invaded the United Kingdom and earlier this year became available in the U.S. with telecommunications software for the IBM PC and the Apple Macintosh. What drives Minitel's popularity? Bold headlines in both France and abroad state that the allure of sex may be the answer.

The singular success of Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. in rescuing IBM from dismemberment and destruction in terms of his shifting the institutional memory of 300,000 employees from corporate politics to customer service focus, has been expalined memory management explain failures as well?

Chacko (memory management in survival decisions of corportions 1956‐2003, Barmarick Publications, UK, 2006) published a sequence of ordered procedures (protocol) of memory management: memory management disequilibria dimensions (MD)² protocol. This paper applies the protocol to the birth and death of the GO computer.

The memory management disequilibria dimensions (MD)² protocol analyzes accurately the Jerry Kaplan narrative of founding on August 14, 1987, the GO corporation to AT&T firing the last remaining employees of EO, the spin‐off of GO on July 29, 1994. (MD)² Step 1: Chief Ntrapreneur officer will to win became a casualty, founder CTO/CNO Kaplan reflecting that money wasn’t the problem, but loss of faith of the chief financial officer on the viability, of the Software VP on the development schedules, of the CEO on market momentum, and of the CTO/ECO on the “stick‐to‐itveness” of the new management team.

The habit patterns of thought and action that make a corporation/country unique are instructed/inscribed in individual/institional memory. This paper demonstrates that the (MD)² protocol explains both success and failure, providing a basis to make memory management effective.

In this chapter we apply a range of insights drawn from social science studies of hope amidst contexts of illness, and studies of hope emerging from the sociology of emotions, in critically considering social processes of hoping amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. While much of the health sciences literature on hope emphasises positive outcomes in terms of coping and motivation, we also draw upon various perspectives which denote a dark side of hoping, whereby inequalities and injustices are tolerated, or where feeling rules insidiously coordinate collective hopes in ways which serve various political-economic interests. Reflecting this ambivalence across different literatures, our examples and analyses suggest that hoping as a social process is itself inherently conflicted, dissonant and rife with tensions. As we explore the contradictions of hoping amidst a pandemic, the tensions between expectations and desire, tragedy and optimism, aspiring to act and fatalistic acceptance make apparent that emotions of hope can be neither neatly delineated nor disentangled from a ‘messy’ web of related feelings and framings. We extend our emphasis of these blurry, dissonant and messy aspects of hoping through work on ‘tragic optimism’, following Frankl, wherein wider lifeworlds or imaginaries pertaining to deeply embodied and implicit notions of self and a good life are central to maintaining hope amidst heightened vulnerability and uncertainty. We close by laying out a post-formal approach to hope, which methodologically and conceptually focusses on contradictions and dissonance in narratives of hope, whereby living hopefully always involves living awkwardly with these tensions.

This study examines the market valuation of the unearned revenue liability reported by a sample of newspaper and magazine publishers. The evidence indicates that stock prices behave as if the unearned revenue liability represents an economic asset overall. It is further shown that the market valuation of the unearned revenue “asset” is increasing in the magnitude of advertising relative to circulation revenue. After controlling for advertising revenue inflows, reported unearned revenue is negatively related to stock price, indicating that the economic asset is valued in part on its liability characteristics. These results have direct implications for the FASB's current deliberations on revenue and liability recognition.

The purpose of this paper is to review the implementation of two strategies that are actually un-teachable yet highly effective in higher education: meditation and storytelling.

Specifically focussing on workplace spirituality as a movement from corporate workers, and consequently, also a teaching topic in management education, the paper first indicates some problems faced in today's world, and relates these to the need for facilitating college courses in more compelling and comprehensive ways.

Spirituality and spiritual concepts can involve emotional and other non-cognitive experiences which cannot be taught using traditional teaching approaches such as reading and lecture. Specific approaches, such as meditation and storytelling are useful for teaching spirituality and spiritual concepts in a business school classroom setting. These two strategies provide an opportunity for students to reflect on their experiences and to become more self-aware.

Using the practical strategies discussed in this paper in management classes turns out to be a positive experience for both the course facilitators and the students.

Reflecting on the overhaul attempts of management education in universities, even those with the prestige of Harvard and Stanford, the authors discuss some interesting strategies that can help management educators take their course experiences and the results attained to the next level.