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Employing Bourdieu’s practice theory, this paper explores factors that influence corporate executives’ behaviour towards corporate governance regulation. Drawing insights from a weak institutional environment (Nigeria) and relying on a qualitative research methodology (semi-structured interviews with 31 executives), this research uncovers how nine nuanced situational and cultural field factors determine executives’ regulatory response to the severity of punishment, the certainty of penalties, and the cost–benefit compliance considerations. The study further explains how sequential rationalisation between the severity and certainty of punishment contributes to the regulatory apathy that executives exhibit. Theoretically, this study demonstrates how practice theory components (habitus, capital, and field) blend to establish executives’ regulatory practice.

The fourth industrial revolution (4IR) presents many opportunities and challenges in a digitised world of work. This paper draws on a systematic literature review of recent research published by accounting professional bodies outlining the impact of digital technologies on the accounting profession. By taking advantage of this work this study critically assesses the types of skills and personal qualities that graduates as future accountants will need and explores the implications for accounting education and university curricula. The analysis reveals that necessary skills for future accountants may be summarised into four categories: a) Ethical skills; b) Digital skills; c) Business skills; and d) Soft skills. The analysis reveals ‘adaptability’ and ‘lifelong approach to CPD’ as the two essential personal qualities for future accountants. The practical implications for university accounting education are summarised in a proposed conceptual framework. The proposed conceptual framework: 1) acts as a roadmap for universities to align their accounting curricula with the developments in professional body syllabi; 2) helps university accounting education teachers to update, enrich, and refocus their teaching and learning approach to the requirements of the 4IR; and 3) promotes the coordination and rationalisation of the skills and personal qualities currently pursued by employability agendas at university, course, and module levels.

This article examines the role of a politics of diversity in local strategies to respond to economic and demographic stagnation in regional Australia. In a context of a market-driven migration agen...

The aim of this study was to implement the Robson Ten Groups Classification System (RTGCS) to identify the main contributors to the caesarean section (CS) rate and to evaluate whether the introduction of a plan of obstetrical interventions reduced this rate. An observational retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted during two time periods at Alicante University General Hospital. In the pre-implementation period (2009-2012), RTGCS was applied to identify the main groups contributing to the overall CS rate. In the post-implementation period (2013-2017), RTGCS was applied again to identify changing trends in CS rates. In all, 11,034 deliveries during the pre-intervention period and 11,453 during the post-intervention period were analysed. The overall CS rate was 23.9% and 20.9%, respectively. There were no changes in perinatal outcomes. In the post-intervention period, there was a significant decrease of the CS rate in the groups of targeted interventions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 8B.Impact statementWhat is already known on this subject? High CS rates are becoming a public health problem because of risks, costs, excessive medicalisation, and abuse of resources. RTGCS provides a framework for auditing and analysing CS rates.What do the results of this study add? RTGCS can identify the groups that have the greatest impact on the CS rate and monitor changes in it consequent to policy changes.What are the implications of these findings for clinical practice? The introduction of a strategic plan with evidence-based clinical interventions may have a greater effect on the CS rate than other features justifying the increase in the incidence of CS.

Short, longer and programmatic rural attachments have developed in a number of medical programmes around the world. However, there is limited literature on the development of the underpinning learning outcomes to guide these attachments. Rural populations are commonly under-served and the specific needs and challenges of rural health care need to be emphasised, as well as encouraging future practice in these areas. Our aim was to produce common rural-specific learning outcomes, aligned with a rationalisation of existing guiding principles and objectives, for our medical student regional-rural programmes. This was achieved through a Delphi technique involving the relevant clinical teachers and supervisors. Forty-nine consenting participants collectively provided 72 learning outcomes which were synthesised down to 16. A consensus process was used to anonymously rate and then rank to reach consensus for the top four learning outcomes. The learning outcomes were placed within the theoretical framework of a 'pedagogy of place' based on rurality and triangulated with rural learning outcomes from an Australian study. The four final outcomes were resolved around two areas of 'place': geographical and developmental. The co-design approach enabled those involved in providing the rural exposure education to generate appropriate learning outcomes.

This study explores identity-related issues ensuing from the behavioral choices of a professional accountant who was convicted for defrauding clients of money entrusted to him. It is grounded in da...

Using postcolonial theory, this paper discusses the conceptualisation and rationalisation of internationalisation in some universities in Ghana. The paper is based on a study conducted to criticall...

Social work has been confronted with a belief that a more rationalised social work will lead to a more effective practice as well as prevent harm to children. However, there is little or no empiric...

"Internal conflict in trade unions has been the subject of considerable academic interest. Often described as intra-union tensions, the basic divergence in priorities and concerns between union officialdom and their members on the shop floor has inspired a multiplicity of pioneering workplace studies and theoretical frameworks. However, while these hierarchical divisions in trade union organisations have received concerted attention, another manifestation of intra-union discord remains relatively under-explored. Inter-sectional or ‘horizontal’ conflict can be described as two sets of workers from different trade groups within the same union which are embroiled in competition or rivalry, usually in the same workplace. Although the loosely associated concept of sectionalism was identified as a re-emerging trend in British trade unionism in the 1960s and 1970s, there has been little attempt to document how conflict can occur between two sections of workers working side-by-side. This article will present a case of horizontal conflict from the British dock industry and consider under what circumstances and pressures the phenomenon is likely to occur. The two sections featured historically had an uneasy relationship and rationalisation of the industry, allied with the neoliberal restructuring of the British economy in the 1980s, exacerbated this. In these contexts, workers began to exhibit greater levels of group self-interest which amplified inter-sectional tensions further."

The aim of this article is to examine the framing of excessive consumption as a disease-like condition in the Swedish press during the years 1992–2012. Against a theoretical background discussing medicalisation, we have analysed the characteristics of problematic consumption framed as a disease, as well as the presumed causes of and responses to this problem. Alongside and intertwined with a structural and a rationalisation perspective, we find discussions and explanations of problematic consumption as a disease all through the investigated period. Class and gender are noticeable components of the core problem description, but the reductionist assumption of addiction as a brain disease seems to point to a problem beyond historical and social context. The disease conceptualisation of problematic consumption can be seen as a compensatory perspective in an individualising and consumption affirming society. However, this perspective is ultimately decided by politics and not by research. Despite being ...

Compensatory consumption has been an increasingly researched yet widely debated area of consumer behaviour over the last 20 years. Extant research formulates the term as overwhelmingly negative, largely due to the simplistic and fragmented conceptualisations assumed in prior work. The purpose of the current paper is to present a comprehensive review of the umbrella term of compensatory consumption, incorporating a continuum of behaviours and accounting for the pre- and post-consumption periods including both positive and negative viewpoints. In addition, expanding upon the theory of need satisfaction, the current paper introduces a novel conceptual distinction between compensation and compromise. Finally, a proposed theoretical framework is presented that differentiates between compensatory and compromisory consumption based on the extent of consumer consciousness, rationality and rationalisation. Future research directions are offered.

This article focuses on one of the dominant interpretations of European integration, namely the reconciliation narrative that defines European integration as a peacebuilding process. The study is divided into three main parts. The first clarifies the various conceptions of reconciliation as a political process. The second examines the reconciliation narrative as a discourse. The analysis of the references made by EU representatives shows that this narrative can be either backward-looking (an ex post rationalisation of ‘what Europe was’) or future-oriented (a description of ‘what Europe should be’). The third part emphasises the reconciliation narrative as a guideline for action in regions as diverse as the Balkans, East Asia, the African Great Lakes and the Middle East. The aim of this article is to determine whether the EU experience, captured by the reconciliation narrative, can – and should – be replicated. Its main conclusion concerns the need for a polyphonic attitude within the EU, and the n...

This paper analyses the transformation of the Maya solar in relation to the contested Marxian theory of primitive accumulation. The Maya of Yucatan are part of the Maya indigenous populations of south-east Mexico and Central America. Their solar, a house and garden plot that has historically supported an intricate indigenous system of land, livelihoods and identities, is today under threat along with the way of life it once sustained. The paper argues that a spatial–temporal reworking of primitive accumulation that draws on both a decoloniality perspective and critical geography can help us better understand both the historical and contemporary significance of the solar’s plight. Using this theoretical framework, the paper shows how the solar has in fact been historically constructed through different cycles of enclosure, dispossession and resistance in Mexico. The Spanish colonial period (1542–1821) enforced its ‘rationalisation’ in ways that disrupted space and time of native populations; the hacienda p...

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) imperils health for people across the world. This enormous challenge is being met with the rationalisation of prescription, dispensing and consumption of antimicrobials in clinical settings and in the everyday lives of members of the general population. Individuals need to be reached outside clinical settings to prepare them for the necessary changes to the pharmaceutical management of infections; efforts that depend on media and communications and, therefore, how the AMR message is mediated, received and applied. In 2016, the UK Review on Antimicrobial Resistance called on governments to support intense, worldwide media activity to promote public awareness and to further efforts to rationalise the use of antimicrobial pharmaceuticals. In this article, we consider this communications challenge in light of contemporary currents of thought on media publics, including: the tendency of health communications to cast experts and lay individuals in opposition; the blaming of individuals who appear to ‘resist’ expert advice; the challenges presented by negative stories of AMR and their circulation in public life, and; the problems of public trust tied to the construction and mediation of expert knowledge on the effective management of AMR.

This commentary deals with the issue of alternative food and drink from the perspective of my work on such topics as disenchantment, enchantment, McDonaldization, nothing, prosumption, rationalisation and something. The conclusion is that the interests of, and pressure from, large-scale profit-making businesses will, to a large extent, undermine efforts to produce ‘true’ alternatives in food and drink. Those alternatives will survive on the margins in the developed world, but they will be more prevalent in the less developed world which is less attractive to those businesses, and therefore, the alternatives will be allowed to survive there.

Scholars have highlighted the importance of Frontex risk analysis in the institutionalisation of EU-level border control without, however, sufficiently substantiating alleged harmonisation dynamics. This paper interrogates how and why EU-level actors seek to exploit risk analysis to harmonise European border control. An interpretive policy analysis of three contemporary applications of Frontex risk analysis – the Eurosur impact level assessment, the Schengen evaluation and monitoring mechanism and resource allocation in the Internal Security Fund – indicates that Frontex and the Commission found their harmonisation hopes on the rationalisation promises of risk-based governance – efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency gains and de-politicisation effects. This multi-functional rationalisation of Community decision-making is meant to justify increased EU-level coordination and interventions without challenging member state competencies, thereby enabling soft harmonisation processes in the weakly...

This article argues that current efforts in parts of Africa to teach Chinese language and culture to university students is an example of how sometimes polarised understandings of education as ‘western’ or ‘northern’ are re-mapped on to an East Asian-oriented future. The first part of the article applies a Weber-inspired theory of rationalisation to a rethinking of liberal traditions within academia, arguing that discourses of development and critiques of colonialism are partly displaced by African students’ uptake of Chinese. Inspired by recent work that rethinks the relation of the global north to the global south, the article uses three ethnographic moments, drawn from 2014 field research, to illustrate cultural manifestations and contestations surrounding the re-rationalisation of education towards the east: opening events at the fifth annual Julius K. Nyerere Intellectual Festival Week held at the University of Dar es Salaam; private Chinese-language schools catering to Tanzanian students and busines...

Today's dominant academic use of the term ‘secularisation’ refers to an epochal process that transformed a society based on Christian faith to one grounded in human reason. This paper argues that ‘secularisation’ had not been used in this sense prior to the 1830s, and that no such process has been shown to have taken place in early modernity. This new use of the term was in fact internal to rival secularising and sacralising programs. The notion of an epochal rationalisation of society was thus invoked by secularists seeking to turn a factional campaign into an historical process. Their sacralising opponents employed the same strategy when they claimed that this process contained a desecularising counter-current, or that secularisation was secretly grounded in an alienated religion whose de-alienation held the promise of a post-secular age. This suggests that until they can adduce evidence of an epochal rationalisation of society in early modernity, histories of secularisation should be regarded as disguised program-statements for rival cultural-political factions in the present.

This article explores adaptation to demands of affiliation with a world religion and increasing religious orthodoxy among followers of the indigenous (Hindu) Kaharingan religion in Indonesian Borneo. It compares ritual practices and notions of religious identity in the provinces of Central Kalimantan (where the local religion has been officially recognised as an agama) and East Kalimantan (where it has not). The empirical material is based on ethnographic fieldwork with the Luangan Dayak who live in both provinces. Different strategies of adapting to state and religious politics have emerged in the two provinces. In Central Kalimantan the recognition of the religion has spurred an extensive rationalisation process causing modification of old practices and the introduction of new ones. In East Kalimantan, an equivalent development is evinced through creative innovation and idiosyncratic adaptation of unrecognised religious practices and the popularisation of a ritual genre incorporating the perspec...

Adventure has outgrown its use as a metaphor and motive for educational journeys into the cultural outdoors. Self-reliance cannot counter the mechanisation of everyday life. ‘Adventure’ is produced and serviced by the very people who felt its worth to their own individualisation and now advance its professionalisation for their own continued participation. Yet adventure workers are limited to enforcing societal risk-mitigation systems, rather than acknowledging that risk is a damaging principle for pedagogy. They must refuse to take responsibility for the lives of others as dictated by institutional rationalisation of the odds of unequal consequences. Educators have been a part of both freeing and fetishising ‘adventure’, but must now distance themselves from the activities that give ‘adventure’ a social status. The more important work for educators is to build a pedagogy of ecologies: of friction, energies, movement, connections and transitions to new relationships with the changing cultural outd...

This paper looks at the concept of ohia ‘poverty’ from Akan sociocultural perspectives. It considers poverty from the Akan background and how the poor see themselves and the factors they believe are responsible for their poverty. Social, cultural, individualistic, fatalistic and religious explanations to poverty are explored within the theoretical framework of language ideology, which reflects the beliefs people have about their language and the justification and rationalisation they make about the language structure and use. It is argued that to understand the concept of poverty among the Akans one has to resort to their cultural beliefs, perception, worldview and social structures. The data for discussion is based on a song text entitled Ɛnneɛ mɛkɔ na maba ‘Then I will go and come back’ by a renowned highlife musician Alex Kwabena Konadu. Konadu captures the concept of poverty through the image of the Akan family system. The paper uses stylistic devices like deixes, parallelism, repetition and symbolism to analyse the data. The rich imagery and symbolism in the song text highlight how the society conceptualises poverty based on their past experiences.

Snowden’s initial revelations aimed at establishing a public debate on online surveillance informed through the media. Media should serve the public’s need for information and offer various viewpoints and sources to enhance public debates. This study assesses how online surveillance is justified or countered in British broadcast news since the 2013 Snowden revelations for five selected major events in news coverage ending with the Charlie Hebdo aftermath in Paris in early 2015. The critical discourse analysis shows that UK broadcasts cover justification and delegitimation arguments of online surveillance. Online surveillance legitimation combines rationalisation (terror prevention) and moral evaluation (public security) arguments, which are often expressed by governmental actors. The broadcast discourse tends to give governmental, pro-surveillance actors a voice by default. The detailedness of terror threat descriptions increases over time. In 2013, ‘terrorist attacks’ are rather factually mention...

Individuals are increasingly subjected to flaming or negative behaviours as society becomes digitally adept. Existing research on flaming is largely fragmented and insufficient to understand what induces individuals to engage in flaming actions online. Neutralisation theory, the theory of planned behaviour TPB, and motivational theory are integrated to develop a theoretical model to better understand flaming in virtual communities. A large-scale online questionnaire targeting individuals who had experience with flaming in a virtual community was employed to analyse the research model. The results indicate that neutralisation techniques acceptability, enjoyment, subjective norms, and low self-control significantly influence flaming. Enjoyment, low moral beliefs, subjective norms, and low self-control influence neutralisation techniques acceptability, or efforts made by individuals to rationalise their deviant behaviour. Neutralisation techniques acceptability is highly correlated with flaming in virtual communities, which has not previously been examined. Intrinsic motivation or enjoyment influences flaming, which is important because neutralisation theory and the TPB do not account for motivation. Virtual communities have a tremendous amount of influence towards an individual's rationalisation of and repeated engagement in flaming. The government, Internet service providers, the media, virtual communities, and Internet activists have an opportunity to define appropriate online behavioural standards that diminish the prevalence of flaming.

The essay argues that Jeremy Bentham played a major role in the transitional process between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries leading to the ‘discovery' or ‘invention of society' as an order, i.e., as an autonomous object of knowledge. By comparing Bentham's discourse with those developed by select protagonists of that transition, particularly Ferguson, Sieyès, and Mirabeau, it is shown how society emerges as the logical and historical space of a set of relationships that affects both the rationalisation and the practice of government. In contrast with Michel Foucault's interpretation of Bentham's role in the genealogy of neoliberalism, recently developed by Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, this paper suggests that ‘the new governmental reason’ rose from within the discourse of law. Consequently, the problem of ‘constitution’ was not left behind by the epistemological change of the eighteenth century, as they argue. Rather, the scientific and political understanding of society as a code became the base for an innovative conception of both law and politics

We suggest that when using the fraud triangle, academics and professionals should take account of the insights gleaned from our study, in which Switzerland and Austria's “elite” white-collar offenders with high professional standing and respectability were interviewed. Our perpetrators consider that only opportunity is a universal precondition of acts defined by others as fraud, though perceived pressure is salient to most frauds. By contrast, financial incentives are not required to be motivational elements. The frequently cited “rationalisation” is too simplistic: rather, a fraud-inhibiting inner voice before the crime and a guilty conscience after it were present among those interviewed.

Research question: International and national sport federations as well as their member organisations are key actors within the sport system and have a wide range of relationships outside the sport system (e.g. with the state, sponsors, and the media). They are currently facing major challenges such as growing competition in top-level sports, democratisation of sports with 'sports for all' and sports as the answer to social problems. In this context, professionalising sport organisations seems to be an appropriate strategy to face these challenges and current problems. We define the professionalisation of sport organisations as an organisational process of transformation leading towards organisational rationalisation, efficiency and business-like management. This has led to a profound organisational change, particularly within sport federations, characterised by the strengthening of institutional management (managerialism) and the implementation of efficiency-based management instruments and paid staff. Research methods: The goal of this article is to review the current international literature and establish a global understanding of and theoretical framework for analysing why and how sport organisations professionalise and what consequences this may have. Results and findings: Our multi-level approach based on the social theory of action integrates the current concepts for analysing professionalisation in sport federations. We specify the framework for the following research perspectives: (1) forms, (2) causes and (3) consequences, and discuss the reciprocal relations between sport federations and their member organisations in this context. Implications: Finally, we work out a research agenda and derive general methodological consequences for the investigation of professionalisation processes in sport organisations.

In this editorial I introduce a range of articles which constitute the second annual special issue of this journal focusing on social theories of risk and uncertainty. I explain and explore the underlying logic and theoretical location of the issue in terms of various tensions within the common association of risk with a very specific process of post-Enlightenment modernisation. I then explore a number of these concerns further in relation to and by way of introducing the guest editorial, a review article and five original research articles of the special issue. A few of the most pertinent and recurring themes across these articles - such as the combining of rational-technical approaches to uncertainty with traditional-magical ones, the salience of faith-based approaches and their agentic qualities, and the logic by which different strategies are combined, ‘bricolaged’ or syncretised - are denoted as especially salient for researching risk and uncertainty within northern European contexts, where the roles of faith, tradition and magic in dealing with uncertainty remain neglected topics. I conclude by linking these reflections to an introduction of the central topics for the 2016 theory special issue and point potential authors towards our call for papers.

Theatre has long been acknowledged as a space that facilitates collaboration, not only between different fields of art, but also between the arts and sciences. Scenography, through its rationalisation of the performance space, is the territory where these collaborations are played out, and is therefore the leading field to employ digital technologies. Increased computing power has introduced new opportunities for digital simulation – already widely exploited in the film and gaming industries – on the live stage. This article focuses on the shift taking place in the performing arts, brought about by the migration from mechanical to digital technologies and the import of software into scenographic working processes; this is my definition of the scenographic turn. What are the repercussions of this turn aesthetically, socially and politically? As a catalyst for discussion I will analyse the Australian-based performing arts collective Chunky Move’s digitally engaged performance, Mortal Engine, which is a quin...

This article explores state involvement in the ‘enchanted’ aspects of irrigated rice production in Bali, Indonesia. Modernising states invariably forward what Max Weber called the rationalisation and disenchantment of the world. In irrigation management, the Indonesian colonial and postcolonial states operated staunchly on this model. ‘Enchanted’ elements of Balinese rice production involving temples and rituals were assumed irrelevant and sidelined. Recently, however, bursts of state-funded construction of irrigation temples and shrines suggest a surprising shift. The post-Suharto decentralised state appears to be supporting the enchantment of irrigated agriculture. This article deals with the relationship between legislation under the decentralised state and ritual building activities in Balinese irrigation associations (subak). We examine how contemporary farmers view the new emphasis on ‘ritual technology’. Does it constitute decentralised support of the farmers' world, of local priorities and varianc...

Researchers from a variety of academic disciplines have begun to incorporate Web-based methodologies in their research agendas. Nonetheless, many of those interested in language ideologies – i.e. speakers’ beliefs about language, as well as their rationalisation of those beliefs – vehemently stand by site-specific ethnographic approaches. Rather than arguing for a replacement of one method by another, the present methodological analysis explores how Internet methods can be intertwined with more traditional, face-to-face techniques for data collection. Exemplifying this process by way of a three-phase project investigating Spanish-speaker opinions about various dialects of Spanish that exist in the world, we illustrate how online and offline methods can mutually inform one another, together allowing both specificity and generalisability of findings, as well as an overall more profound understanding of a given phenomenon of interest.

This study examines the ongoing changes within Australian university libraries to support research. After establishing the reasons for focusing so strongly on research support, this study gives an overview of the adjustments made to libraries' service portfolios and the changes in the roles and responsibilities of subject or liaison librarians. Throughout the study, in-depth comparisons are drawn to the developments in Europe, in particular to the situation in the UK, Switzerland and Germany. This study identifies and discusses five research support services: institutional repositories, open access, bibliometrics and enhancement of research impact, support for research students and research data management. It then examines how these services are resourced and embedded in the library. The study reveals three measures or approaches that were taken by senior management to build up and sustain efficient and effective research support services: (1) rationalisation of student services, (2) focusing activities ...

Roland Paris is one of those authors whose work is always enjoyable, as he exploits so well the gap between the policy world and academia. His best work reveals a high level of policy insight often before many of his colleagues in academia have caught up. His secret is an ability to analyse the shifting understandings at policy level and to then articulate them in academic terms as if critiquing current policies. This enables his work to be both popular with policy-makers and with their erstwhile critics in academia. His 2004 monograph, At War’s End, captured the shift from peacekeeping intervention and ‘early exit’ to the extended remits of international statebuilding (‘Institutionalization before Liberalization’). It provided a wonderful rationalisation of policy shifts that had already occurred in the late 1990s, starting with the extension of international mandates in Bosnia, from 1996 onwards, and further developed with the Kosovo protectorate in 1999. However, this shift was skilfully reposed as a critique of existing policy-understandings.

The Master of Science in engineering technology: biochemical engineering is organised in KU Leuven at four geographically dispersed campuses. To sustain the Master's programmes at all campuses, it is clear that a unique education profile at each campus is crucial. In addition, a rationalisation is required by increased cooperation, increased exchange of lecturers, and increased student mobility. To achieve this, a multicampus education system for the M.Sc. in engineering technology: biochemical engineering was developed by offering modules that are also available for students of other campuses. Such a module is primarily based on the research expertise present at the campus. In the development, special attention has been given to the optimal organisation of the modules, evaluation, required modifications of the current curricula, and the practical consequences for students following the module at another campus. Even in the first year of implementation, around 30% of the students followed a multicampus mo...

Sociology, as a discipline, has been a regular companion to musicology and a substantial amount of sociomusical research has been conducted, which, in many cases, had a serious impact in the way we...

This essay questions the enduring difficulties of addressing racism within the current politics of integration in Europe, with a specific focus on the Portuguese context. The analysis centres on integration initiatives to promote employability among the Portuguese Roma and the ways in which they are rationalised by employment gatekeepers and decision-makers. This rationalisation depoliticises racism by constantly shifting the focus to the presumed characteristics of the ‘other’, re-enacting white-privileged notions of nationhood, Portugueseness and Europeanness. Accordingly, projects based on ‘activation of social competences’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘interculturality’ are implemented as a civilising and disciplinary programme aimed at correcting the presumed deficiencies in ethnically marked populations. The analysis aims to contribute towards a much needed debate on the notion of integration and the re-articulation of the historical legacies of racism in contemporary European democracies.

This article addresses Japan’s Heisei period municipal mergers, which occurred from 2000 to 2010, considering the emerging outcomes and long-term implications. The mergers, which aimed to upscale on a national level to larger-sized municipalities while also rationalising administrative costs and streamlining services, reduced the number of municipalities in Japan from over 3000 to under 1800. Reports from prefectural and municipal bureaus and research institutions, together with coverage through the media, indicate that these aims have largely been met in the short term. However, these sources also indicate that resident reaction is less than favourable, particularly in terms of service rationalisation and loss of local identity. In terms of the long-term implications of the mergers as reflecting within Japan a transition from a developmental state policy orientation toward nation state liberalism, questions are emerging for rural areas regarding the long-term sustainability of the post-merger national mu...

This study seeks to understand the discourse on/and legitimisation of ‘change’ in Korean football. The paper asks the following questions: how has the South Korean post-colonial project for development and nation-state building shaped the discourse on football development in South Korea? How this change has been defined, diffused, imposed, debated and/or resisted in South Korean football? To respond to these questions, the paper examines the debates on modernity and modernisation in Korean society and in football. To this end, we trace some of the ways that colonial and post-colonial discourses have been appropriated in relation to South Korea's construction of ‘self’ and ‘otherness’, and in defining meanings about change – in the sense of reform, modernisation, rationalisation and professionalisation – of South Korean football.

‘Employment intensive growth’ has become a centrepiece of government policy and implies that at any given level of growth, the economy needs to become more labour absorbing. State intervention (or the lack of it) is examined in two areas that are important for employment – agriculture and manufacturing. In the case of agriculture, it is argued that declining and ineffective state support has accelerated the rationalisation of commercial agriculture and failed to regenerate agriculture in the former Bantustans. With regard to the manufacturing sector, we argue that since 1994 the government has set a multiplicity of objectives but, de facto, there has been a surprising level of continuity in the overly generous assistance for heavy, capital-intensive industry. This paper argues that the negative impact of previous ‘distortions’ requires much more than a levelling of the playing field via market-based reforms. Pro-employment policies have to be placed at the centre of the policy agenda.

This paper offers a historical perspective on government policies for the rationalisation of higher education (HE) in Ireland through a critical re-appraisal of the initiative for ‘merger’ of Trinity College and University College Dublin. The initiative launched by Donogh O'Malley in 1967 was the first significant attempt by an Irish government to transform the institutional architecture of HE. This study sheds new light on the rationale for merger. A key motivation for the merger was to overcome ‘the problem of Trinity College Dublin’: policy-makers sought to integrate Trinity College, long regarded as a Protestant ‘enclave’ in a predominantly Catholic society, within the Irish HE system. O'Malley's initiative sought to bring Trinity College Dublin (TCD) firmly under the control of the state and transcend traditional religious divisions, by circumventing the ‘ban’ on the attendance of Catholics at TCD imposed by the Catholic bishops. This paper also explores the emergence of proactive, interventionist ap...

The aim of this research is to examine the effects of the post-1990 transition on the relocation of tourism and changes in the structure of tourism over the last 20 years in Belgrade. Economic and social development altered spatial relations of tourist factors and elements. Apart from the old city core, new tourist zones and directions appeared. Tourist flows and economic challenges influenced the rationalisation of doing business and relocating the hotels outside the central city municipalities. Belgrade has been acknowledged as a low-cost destination of fun and nightlife and the city's new image has attracted more foreign tourists. Both the volume of foreign tourists and their countries of origin have changed significantly over the last several years. However, there have been negligible economic effects on the city's economy, despite this increase in the number of foreign tourists. In conclusion, we examine the implications of new directions in tourism development for the future position of Belgrade as a tourist destination in a competitive European market.

Research into port reform in Taiwan and Australia indicates that reform was undertaken in different contexts while committed and adopting similar strategies. Reform in both countries has been consistent with paradigmatic shifts towards market orientation, and within this context, privatisation was considered the preferred option. In both Taiwan and Australia, however, governments, reluctant to relinquish control over their ports, opted for corporatisation models. This article discusses the dynamics and drivers of reform and examines the outcome of these strategies. Both countries commenced port reform with deregulation of dock labour employment and introduced enterprise-based employment replacing the labour pool system. Privatisation of stevedoring operations was introduced at the same time in Taiwan. In the second reform phase, Taiwan amalgamated the four major commercial ports under a single state-owned port company in March 2012, with the objective of reducing inter-port competition and creating a central port planning mechanism. Australian ports, on the other hand, have undergone restructuring with the implementation of corporatisation, privatisation and commercialisation strategies since 1990s. Reform strategies in both countries display some similarities, e.g. rationalisation strategies in both Taiwan and Tasmanian ports, but also display some distinct dissimilarities with the increasing move to privatisation in Australia, e.g. the sale of South Australian ports and in 2010 the sale of the port of Brisbane.

This paper explores the experiences of women doctoral students and the role of emotion during doctoral candidature. The paper draws on the concept of emotional labour to examine the two sites of emotional investment students experienced and managed during their studies: writing and family relationships. Emotion is perceived by many dominant stakeholders as soft, subjective and an impediment to acquiring objective knowledge. The importance of emotion is under recognised. When it is discussed, the role of emotion in the doctoral undertaking is often subsumed in the passionless language of bureaucratic rationalisation and economic imperatives. This paper builds on a growing literature that examines students' emotions and doctoral candidature. It draws on the experiences of women undertaking their doctoral studies at a large metropolitan university in Sydney, Australia, to show first, how emotional labouring can enable students to channel emotions towards productive behaviours that can contribute to successful doctoral candidature, and second, that studies that attend to emotion offer more nuanced insights into students' experiences during the doctoral undertaking. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Unlike most existing scholarship, which highlights the highly emotional, nearly irrational component of media debates surrounding the Afrikaans language, this article argues that rationalisation is present in even the most heated language ideological scenarios, taking several conflicting guises that are particular in nature. To this end, the article investigates a small-scale, self-contained discussion in the ‘new media’ that can be seen as a manifestation of enduring and deeply rooted beliefs about the role of Afrikaans in today's South Africa.

The conjunction of equity and market logics in contemporary education has created new and different conditions of possibility for equity, both as conceived in policy discourses and as a related set of educational practices. In this editorial introduction, we examine how equity is being drawn into new policy assemblages and how, in the context of marketisation, equity is evolving and being enacted in new ways across education sectors. Different conceptions of equity are considered, including the increasingly influential human capital perspective promoted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We argue that, separate from critiques of neoliberalism and its deleterious effects on equity in education, it is necessary to analyse carefully the increasing rationalisation of equity agendas in economic terms, the associated effects on education governance and policy-making, as well as on the work of educational institutions and educators. Providing an overview of the contributions to this Special Issue, we direct particular attention to the multiple, complex and often contradictory effects of the current education reform agenda in Australia, which has prioritised equity objectives and intensified performance measurement, comparison and accountability as means to drive educational improvement and reduce disadvantage.

I want to explore in this article the ways in which people with a learning difficulty are constructed in a number of ways as disabled, as limited, as being special, and so on. Constructions can also be utilised for different purposes – to ensure that they have effective levels of support and to elevate the status of people with a learning difficulty. Positive constructs may articulate an ‘accentuation of the positive’ as Goodley and Armstrong prescribed. However, whilst I agree with this sentiment, one echoed in Swain and French’s important formulation of an affirmative model of disability, and one that I have also espoused, professionally I also feel that my experience of working with people with learning difficulties makes me suspicious of generalised statements about people, even those deemed positive. This may be especially true in a period of financial rationalisation, where such constructs may seem inevitable in the fight for effective support for people with a learning difficulty.

The new machines introduced by industrialisation subjected workers' bodies to a new pace of work, new tasks and hitherto unknown risks. While the hygienist community in France contributed enormously to the emergence of public health in Europe, it focused only belatedly on the dangers of machines for the physical integrity of workers. This article seeks to explain why there was so little interest in this issue during the first phase of French industrialisation (1800–70). Industrial work was perceived by public-health advocates as a step forward compared to former crafts, often carried out in unhealthy workshops. For them, machines helped rationalise production tasks, ventilate workspaces, relieve workers' suffering and replace men for the most laborious and dangerous tasks. Because of these many advantages, they forgot about the drawbacks of industrial mechanisation. As the decades went by, accidents due to machines maimed and killed more and more workers. Despite the warnings issued by some doctors, it wa...

Industrial experts, engineers and architects in the early twentieth century faced the so-called ‘factory problem’. It had two important components that were interrelated: on the one hand, the plant's spatial order; on the other, the quest for more effective ways of exercising power at the workplace. Both were centred on a new interest in the human factor of production. Workers were no longer regarded as mere objects of discipline but rather as individuals whose individuality was to be utilised. In this context a new discourse on work environment began. Some of the most important German architects and engineers were determined to beautify the factory and to create a human habitat (Lebensraum) inside, not least because of the increasing number of female labourers. Accordingly, notions of efficiency were combined with the new concept of beautification: rationalisation was ‘humanised’. The problem experts faced was how to create an atmosphere of trust which would promote the efficient usage of workers' abilit...