Neoliberalism and management accounting:Reconfiguring governmentality and extending territories

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce the themes and aims of this Accounting, Auditing & Accountability (AAAJ) special issue and comments on the papers included in the issue. The paper provides a thematic outline along which the future researchers can undertake more empirical research examining how neoliberalism shapes, and shaped by, management accounting. Design/methodology/approach: This entails a brief review of the previous critical accounting works that refer to liberalism and neoliberalism to identify and highlight the specific themes and trajectories of neoliberal implications of management accounting has been and can be explored. This is followed by a brief commentary on the papers the authors have included in this special issue; these commentaries explain how these papers capture various dimensions of enabling and enacting neoliberal governmentality. Findings: The authors found that management accounting is now entering new territories beyond its conventional disciplinary enclosures of confinement, reconfiguring its functionalities to enable and enact a circulatory mode of neoliberal governmentality. These new functionalities then produce and reproduce entrepreneurial selves in myriad forms of social connections, networks and platforms within and beyond formal organizational settings, amid plethora of conducts, counter-conducts and resistances and new forms of identities and subjectivities. Research limitations/implications: This review can be read in relation to the papers included in the special issue as the whole issue will inspire more ideas, frameworks and methodologies for further studies. Originality/value: There is little research reviewing and commenting how management accounting now being enacted and enabled with new functionalities operating new territories and reconfiguring forms of governmentality. This paper inspires a new agenda on this project

The expected AI as a sociocultural construct and its impact on the discourse on technology

The thesis introduces and criticizes the discourse on technology, with a specific reference to the concept of AI. The discourse on AI is particularly saturated with reified metaphors which drive connotations and delimit understandings of technology in society. To better analyse the discourse on AI, the thesis proposes the concept of “Expected AI”, a composite signifier filled with historical and sociocultural connotations, and numerous referent objects. Relying on cultural semiotics, science and technology studies, and a diverse selection of heuristic concepts, the thesis delves beneath the surface of AI discourse and demonstrates the hidden political, social, cultural, and ecological dangers of AI. The entanglement of the discourse(s) with (science) fiction, folklore, myth, and religion impacts how AI is perceived and received, as well as the expectations to AI-enabled technologies now and in the future. The thesis also proposes a more ethical and comprehensive ontological model for AI systems. The model describes AI systems as complex figurations, considering their socio-material organisation, global economic-material becoming, and impact on the environment, social institutions, and the semiosphere. The dissertation argues that AI should be understood not just as an object or sociotechnical system, but as its entire product chain encompassing people and cultures, as well as the used resources and impact (both material-ecological and semiotic) on a planetary scale

Leadership, Leaderlessness and Leaderless Groups: The case of the Occupy London Movement

This thesis investigates how ‘leaderless’ social movements are coordinated and sustained by their members. Drawing on an empirical study of the London Occupy protests, it emphasises the socially-constructed nature of ‘leaderlessness’, arguing that the London Occupy movement can be understood as an ensemble of symbolic meanings, practical accomplishments and communicative political actions that allowed activists to mobilise and develop a broad-ranging repertoire of protest. The thesis examines how divergent but interrelated modalities, including occupation of physical and virtual space, appropriation of both ‘new’ and ‘old’ media and dramaturgical use of physical artefacts (most notably the Guy Fawkes mask), were deployed in ways that instantiated a series of highly-charged political ‘spectacles’, challenging the dominance of the capitalist economic order. This thesis also considers whether the Occupy movement represents a new template for twenty-first-century political activism. Whilst the movement can be seen as distinctively new, in the sense that it operates ‘virtually’ and without a fixed political programme or formal structure, similar political actions can be traced back to the protest movements of the 1960s and to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century struggles

Dynamics of Early Project Collaboration

Early project collaboration involves the resolution of misunderstandings among project participants. Misunderstandings can be considered a natural emergent feature in Early Project Collaboration, which only become problematic if they are not revealed and resolved, leading to wrong assumptions and false expectations among project participants. At early project interactions, misunderstandings tend to involve individuals’ different interpretations of what collaboration means. Diverse interpretations of collaboration become manifested within different artefacts that project participants design and select to use in the activity. When these diverse understandings are revealed and exposed in time, they can lead to opportunities to explore and expand different ways to perceive the situation, as well as to conceive different design alternatives. However, little is known about the nature of collaborative interactions related to the resolution of misunderstandings at early project stage. Current interpretations of these collaborative interactions seem to be limited by a positivist and reductionist notion of knowledge, which have traditionally focused on individual models of cognition, separating mind and body. A case study approach was adopted to address this gap in the literature and propose a new interpretation of early project collaboration. The findings from the case studies suggested that the resolution of misunderstandings requires that participants perceive and embrace the dialectical and situated nature of collaborative interaction towards mutual intelligibility, involving breakdowns and the use of metaphors. The study also revealed that early project interactions involve the socio-construction of key constructs of collaboration objectivated in terms of perceptions of interdependency and performance, and conceptions of resource and changing actions. Thus, project participants need to work upon misunderstandings emerging from different interpretations of these key constructs of collaboration that become embodied into diverse artefacts, assembles, events and approaches in the activity. As a result, this thesis proposes an alternative to current models of early project collaboration, based on a group-level framework that provides the means to interpret the dialectical and situated nature of early project collaboration. It is contended that the proposed theoretical framework provides a better interpretation of collaborative interactions because it allows the mapping of individuals’ interactions to socially construct the project activity. It is suggested that this framework can potentially be used by project participants as a mapping tool, aligned with a pragmatic perspective, and supporting collective reflective interaction to socially construct collaboration

Dialogue and revolution: fostering legitimate stakeholder agency in natural resource governance

This thesis explores how people exert their agency in policy processes that pertain to natural resource governance, and how they construct the required sense of legitimacy for such actions. It also examines the manner in which facilitated multi-stakeholder processes foster legitimate stakeholder agency, and reflects on how they may ensure the rigour of research interventions in situations characterised by intractable uncertainty and controvers

Marketing as a skin trade: a critical chiasm for change

Joe Pilotta and Jill Adair McCaughan give us analysis about the problems with which marketing is facing in 21st century: advertising is viewed as manipulation form, impact and influence level of marketing are low as never. Authors briefly discuss about the existing theories of marketing and why existing theories do not reflect the real situation at present. Book highlights and reveals the importance to change model and logical approach of marketing from consumer orientation to customer orientation. It’s important to underline that customer needs identification should not be linked with past trends or rating. In order to achieve the maximum and overall benefit it is important to include customer in the process of analyzes. Such measures should help to realize the customer needs and also goods or services perspectives in markets. The book authors clarify the possibility to transform perception about Marketing Mix Modeling and analyze the need to adapt existing marketing models to the changing environment and media. In this book, authors try to demonstrate academic credentials as well as writing for the professor and professional of marketing, advertising, and brand.oe Pilotta ir Jill Adair McCaughan knygoje analizuoja problemas, su kuriomis susiduria rinkodara 21 amžiuje: sumažėjo poveikis, įtaka, reklama identifikuojama kaip viena iš manipuliacijos klientais formų. Autoriai trumpai aptaria egzistuojančias rinkodaros teorijas bei, kodėl tos teorijos jau nebeatspindi realios situacijos. Knygoje pabrėžiama, kad būtina pereiti prie požiūrio, kada centre atsiduria ne vartotojas, o klientas, tačiau kliento poreikių identifikavimas neturi būti siejamas su praeities tendencijomis ar įvykiais. Norint pasiekti maksimalią ir visapusišką naudą, svarbų klientą įtraukti į analizės procesą, kad būtų galima suvokti jo lūkesčius ir kartu vienos ar kitos prekės ir paslaugos perspektyvas. Plačiau analizuojamas kompleksinis rinkodaros modelis ir galima jo suvokimo transformacija, pabrėžiama, kad būtina adaptuoti esamus rinkodaros modelius prie pakitusios aplinkos bei egzistuojančių medijų. Knygoje stengiamasi pateikti mokslines įžvalgas bei rekomendacijas tiek profesoriui, tiek rinkodaros, reklamos ir ženklinimo profesionalui

Emergent planning in baccalaureate, general, private, not-for-profit colleges in the United States of America.

This study employed a method of analysis and development to develop the model of emergent planning. The study was exploratory in nature and therefore directed at uncovering a research process that was sensitive to the unique features of higher education and strategic planning. Triangulation involved the development of concepts from the literature, analysis of analogies, and the analysis of a survey. Fifty concepts were developed based on five principal tenets. These concepts were developed from literature in the social and business sciences. The analogy research was based on the analysis of three primary terms and five secondary terms that have been embedded in strategic planning literature since its inception post World War II. The results showed weak support for the importation of analogies from the business and social science domains into the domain of higher education management. The results pointed to weaknesses in background and foreground relevance as well as vertical and horizontal relations. A survey of executive management in General Baccalaureate, private, not-for-profit educational institutions was conducted. The survey results (n = 127) showed support for twenty five of the fifty principal concepts of the model of emergent planning. These concepts support a model that incorporates theory from the knowledge domains of social constructionism, transformative learning, and planning. The research highlights areas for further research and theory building that is responsive to the unique features of higher education

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality