NFPOs and their anti-corruption disclosure practices: Evidence from Australia

By focusing on major Australian overseas aid not-for-profit organisations (NFPOs), this study has found that NFPOs’ public disclosures lack appropriate commentary relating to anti-corruption measures. We found that this could be due to a break down in regulatory oversight caused by a lack of mandatory reporting standards. This finding reinforces the experience of NFPOs in terms of addressing anti-corruption issues. The key lesson is that there is a need for significant improvement in the anti-corruption regulations, hence associated disclosure practices within the NFPOs sector.

Do inventory management practices affect economic performance? An empirical evaluation of the machine tool SMEs in Bangalore

Inventory management (IM) has a decisive role in the enhancement of manufacturing industry's competitiveness. Therefore, major manufacturing industries are following IM practices with the intention of improving their performance. However, the effort to introduce IM in SMEs is very limited due to lack of initiation, expertise, and financial constraints. This paper aims to provide a guideline for entrepreneurs in enhancing their IM performance, as it presents the results of a survey based study carried out for machine tool Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Bangalore. Having established the significance of inventory as an input, we probed the relationship between IM performance and economic performance of these SMEs. To the extent possible all the factors of production and performance indicators were deliberately considered in pure economic terms. All economic performance indicators adopted seem to have a positive and significant association with IM performance in SMEs. On the whole, we found that SMEs which are IM efficient are likely to perform better on the economic front also and experience higher returns to scale.

Theatre, networked performance, and notions of ‘democratised’ spectatorship

The potential to cultivate new relationships with spectators has long been cited as a primary motivator for those using digital technologies to construct networked or telematics performances or para-performance encounters in which performers and spectators come together in virtual – or at least virtually augmented – spaces and places. Today, with Web 2.0 technologies such as social media platforms becoming increasingly ubiquitous, and increasingly easy to use, more and more theatre makers are developing digitally mediated relationships with spectators. Sometimes for the purpose of an aesthetic encounter, sometimes for critical encounter, or sometimes as part of an audience politicisation, development or engagement agenda. Sometimes because this is genuinely an interest, and sometimes because spectators or funding bodies expect at least some engagement via Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. In this paper, I examine peculiarities and paradoxes emerging in some of these efforts to engage spectators via networked performance or para-performance encounters. I use examples ranging from theatre, to performance art, to political activism – from ‘cyberformaces’ on Helen Varley Jamieson’s Upstage Avatar Performance Platform, to Wafaa Bilal’s Domestic Tension installation where spectators around the world could use a webcam in a chat room to target him with paintballs while he was in residence in a living room set up in a gallery for a week, as a comment on use of drone technology in war, to Liz Crow’s Bedding Out where she invited people to physically and virtually join her in her bedroom to discuss the impact of an anti-disabled austerity politics emerging in her country, to Dislife’s use of holograms of disabled people popping up in disabled parking spaces when able bodied drivers attempted to pull into them, amongst others. I note the frequency with which these performance practices deploy discourses of democratisation, participation, power and agency to argue that these technologies assist in positioning spectators as co-creators actively engaged in the evolution of a performance (and, in politicised pieces that point to racism, sexism, or ableism, pushing spectators to reflect on their agency in that dramatic or daily-cum-dramatic performance of prejudice). I investigate how a range of issues – from the scenographic challenges in deploying networked technologies for both participant and bystander audiences others have already noted, to the siloisation of aesthetic, critical and audience activation activities on networked technologies, to conventionalised dramaturgies of response informed by power, politics and impression management that play out in online as much as offline performances, to the high personal, social and professional stakes involved in participating in a form where spectators responses are almost always documented, recorded and re-represented to secondary and tertiary sets of spectators via the circulation into new networks social media platforms so readily facilitate – complicate discourses of democratic co-creativity associated with networked performance and para-performance activities.

The accounting and accountability practices of Fairtrade International (FLO)

This study examines the accounting and accountability practices of Fairtrade International (FLO), one of the largest Fair Trade umbrella organizations. Our aim is to explore whether new forms of accounting and related disclosures emerge in the reporting practices of FLO and how these reflect their self-declared social mission towards the emancipation and sustainability of producers. Using thematic analysis and reflecting on Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power, we analyse FLO’s reporting practices from 2006 to 2013. Our findings reveal that FLO mobilises the taken-for-granted images and symbols of ’fairness’ in the Fair Trade system by using descriptive statistics of Fair Trade premium distributions and pictures of producers but keeps silent to current concerns surrounding the limitations of Fair Trade. Such findings extend important insights into how new forms of accounting and related disclosure are used to legitimise the practice of Fair Trade.

Communication and Political Crisis: Media, Politics and Governance in a Globalized Public Sphere

Communication and Political Crisis explores the role of the global media in a period of intensifying geopolitical conflict. Through case studies drawn from domestic and international political crises such as the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, leading media scholar Brian McNair argues that the digitized, globalized public sphere now confronted by all political actors has produced new opportunities for social progress and democratic reform, as well as new channels for state propaganda and terrorist spectaculars such as those performed by the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. In this major work, McNair argues that the role of digital communication will be crucial in determining the outcome of pressing global issues such as the future of feminism and gay rights, freedom of speech and media, and democracy itself.

Toiminta, valta ja kokemus organisaation muutoksessa : Tutkimus kolmesta suuryrityksestä

Action, Power and Experience in Organizational Change - A Study of Three Major Corporations This study explores change management and resistance to change as social activities and power displays through worker experiences in three major Finnish corporations. Two important sensitizing concepts were applied. Firstly, Richard Sennett's perspective on work in the new form of capitalism, and its shortcomings - the lack of commitment and freedom accompanied by the disruption to lifelong career planning and the feeling of job insecurity - offered a fruitful starting point for a critical study. Secondly, Michel Foucault's classical concept of power, treated as anecdotal, interactive and nonmeasurable, provided tools for analyzing change-enabling and resisting acts. The study bridges the gap between management and social sciences. The former have usually concentrated on leadership issues, best practices and goal attainment, while the latter have covered worker experiences, power relations and political conflicts. The study was motivated by three research questions. Firstly, why people resist or support changes in their work, work environment or organization, and the kind of analyses these behavioural choices are based on. Secondly, the kind of practical forms which support for, and resistance to change take, and how people choose the different ways of acting. Thirdly, how the people involved experience and describe their own subject position and actions in changing environments. The examination focuses on practical interpretations and action descriptions given by the members of three major Finnish business organizations. The empirical data was collected during a two-year period in the Finnish Post Corporation, the Finnish branch of Vattenfal Group, one of the leading European energy companies, and the Mehiläinen Group, the leading private medical service provider in Finland. It includes 154 non-structured thematic interviews and 309 biographies concentrating on personal experiences of change. All positions and organizational levels were represented. The analysis was conducted using the grounded theory method introduced by Straus and Corbin in three sequential phases, including open, axial and selective coding processes. As a result, there is a hierarchical structure of categories, which is summarized in the process model of change behaviour patterns. Key ingredients are past experiences and future expectations which lead to different change relations and behavioural roles. Ultimately, they contribute to strategic and tactical choices realized as both public and hidden forms of action. The same forms of action can be used in both supporting and resisting change, and there are no specific dividing lines either between employer and employee roles or between different hierarchical positions. In general, however, it is possible to conclude that strategic choices lead more often to public forms of action, whereas tactical choices result in hidden forms. The primary goal of the study was to provide knowledge which has practical applications in everyday business life, HR and change management. The results, therefore, are highly applicable to other organizations as well as to less change-dominated situations, whenever power relations and conflicting interests are present. A sociological thesis on classical business management issues can be of considerable value in revealing the crucial social processes behind behavioural patterns. Keywords: change management, organizational development, organizational resistance, resistance to change, change management, labor relations, organization, leadership

Näkökulmia eurooppalaiseen sosiaalipolitiikkaan : malli, väestö, resurssit ja kommunikaatio

The study analyses European social policy as a political project that proceeds under the guidance of the European Commission. In the name of modernisation, the project aims to build a new idea for the welfare state. To understand the project, it is necessary to distance oneself from both the juridical competence of the European Union and the traditional national welfare state models. The question is about sharing problems, as well as solutions to them: it is the creation and sharing of common views, concepts and images that play a key role in European integration. Drawing on texts and speeches produced by the European Commission, the study throws light on the development of European social policy during the first years of the 2000s. The study "freeze-frames" the welfare debate having its starting points in the nation states in the name of the entity of Europe. The first article approaches the European social model as a story in itself, a preparatory, persuasive narrative that concerns the management of change. The article shows how the audience can be motivated to work towards a set target by using discursive elements in a persuasive manner: the function of a persuasive story is to convince the target audience of the appropriateness of the chosen direction and to shape their identity so that they are favourably disposed to the desired political targets. This is a kind of "intermediate state" where the story, despite its inner contradictions and inaccuracies, succeeds in appearing as an almost self-evident path towards a modern social policy that Europe is currently seen to be in need of. The second article outlines the European social model as a question of governance. Health as a sector of social policy is detached from the old political order, which was based on the welfare state, and is closely linked to economy. At the same time the population is primarily seen as an economic resource. The Commission is working towards a "Europe of Health" that grapples with the problem of governance with the help of the "healthisation" of society, healthy citizenship and health economics. The way the Commission speaks is guided by the Union's powerful interest to act as "Europe" in the field of welfare policy. At the same time, the traditional separateness of health policy is effaced in order to be able to make health policy reforms a part of the Union's wider modernisation targets. The third article then shows the European social policy as its own area of governance. The article uses an approach based on critical discourse analysis in examining the classification systems and presentation styles adopted by Commission communications, as well as the identities that they help build. In analysing the "new start" of the Lisbon strategy from the perspective of social policy, the article shows how the emphasis has shifted from the persuasive arguments for change with necessary common European targets in the early stages of the strategy towards the implementation of reforms: from a narrative to a vision and from a diagnosis to healing. The phase of global competition represents "the modern" with which European society with its culture and ways of life now has to be matched. The Lisbon strategy is a way to direct this societal change, thus building a modern European social policy. The fourth article describes how the Commission uses its communications policy to build practices and techniques of governance and how it persuades citizens to participate in the creation of a European project of change. This also requires a new kind of agency: agents for whom accountability and responsibilities mean integration into and commitment to European society. Accountability is shaped into a decisive factor in implementing the European Union's strategy of change. As such it will displace hierarchical confrontations and emphasise common action with a view to modernising Europe. However, the Union's discourse cannot be described as being a political language that would genuinely rouse and convince the audience at the level of everyday life. Keywords: European social policy, EU policy, European social model, European Commission, modernisation of welfare, welfare state, communications, discoursiveness.

Local Politicizations : A Comparison of Finns and French Practicing Democracy

This study examines how do the processes of politicization differ in the Finnish and the French local contexts, and what kinds of consequences do these processes have on the local civic practices, the definitions and redefinitions of democracy and citizenship, the dynamics of power and resistance, and the ways of solving controversies in the public sphere. By means of comparative anthropology of the state , focusing on how democracy actually is practiced in different contexts, politicizations the processes of opening political arenas and recognizing controversy are analyzed. The focus of the study is on local activists engaged in different struggles on various levels of the local public spheres, and local politicians and civil servants participating in these struggles from their respective positions, in two middle-size European cities, Helsinki and Lyon. The empirical analyses of the book compare different political actors and levels of practicing democracy simultaneously. The study is empirically based on four different bodies of material: Ethnographic notes taken during a fieldwork among the activities of several local activist groups; 47 interviews of local activists and politicians; images representing different levels of public portrayals from activist websites (Helsinki N=274, Lyon N=232) and from city information magazines (Helsinki-info N=208, Lyon Citoyen N= 357); and finally, newspaper articles concerning local conflict issues, and reporting on the encounters between local citizens and representatives of the cities (January-June in 2005; Helsingin Sanomat N=96 and Le Progrès N= 102). The study makes three distinctive contributions to the study of current democratic societies: (1) a conceptual one by bringing politicization at the center of a comparison of political cultures, and by considering in parallel the ethnographic group styles theory by Nina Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman, the theory on counter-democracy by Pierre Rosanvallon and the pragmatist justification theory by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot; (2) an empirical one through the triangulation of ethnographic, thematic interview, visual, and newspaper data through which the different aspects of democratic practices are examined; and (3) a methodological one by developing new ways of analyzing comparative cases an application of Frame Analysis to visual material and the creation of Public Justification Analysis for analyzing morally loaded claims in newspaper reports thus building bridges between cultural, political, and pragmatic sociology. The results of the study indicate that the cultural tools the Finnish civic actors had at their disposal were prone to hinder more than support politicization, whereas the tools the French actors mainly relied on were frequently apt for making politicization possible. This crystallization is defined and detailed in many ways in the analyses of the book. Its consequences to the understanding and future research on the current developments of democracy are multiple, as politicization, while not assuring good results as such, is central to a functioning and vibrant democracy in which injustices can be fixed and new directions and solutions sought collectively.

Gender, Politics and Democratisation in Cameroon

Gender perceptions, religious belief systems, and political thought have excluded women from politics, for ages, around the world. Combining feminist and modernisation theorists in my theoretical framework, I examine the trends in patriarchal Europe and I highlight the gender-sensitive model of the Nordic countries. Retracing local gender patterns from precolonial to postcolonial eras in sub-Saharan Africa, I explore the links between perceptions, needs, resources, education and women's political participation in Cameroon. Democratisation is supposed to open up political participation, to grant equal opportunities to all adults. One ironic feature of the liberalisation process in Cameroon has been the decrease of women in parliamentarian representation (14% in 1988, 6% in 1992, 5% in 1997 and 10% in 2002). What social, cultural and institutional mechanisms produced this paradoxical outcome, the exclusion of half the population? The gender complementarity of the indigenous context has been lost to male prevalence privileged by education, church, law, employment, economy and politics in the public sphere; most women are marginalised in the private sphere. Nation building and development have failed; ethnicism and individualism are growing. Some hope lies in the growing civil society. From two surveys and 21 focus groups across Cameroon, in 2000 and 2002, some significant results of the processed empirical data reveal low electoral registration (34.5% women and 65.9% men), contrasted by the willingness to run for municipal elections (33.3 % women and 45.2% men). The co-existence of customary and statutory laws, the corrupt political system and fraudulent practices, contribute to the marginalisation of women and men who are interested in politics. A large majority of female respondents consider female politicians more trustworthy and capable than their male counterparts; they even foresee the appointment of a female Prime Minister. The Nordic countries have institutionalised gender equality in their legislation, policies and practices. France has improved women's political inclusion with the parity laws; Rwanda is another model of women's representation, thanks to its post-conflict constitution. From my analysis, Cameroonian institutions, men and more so women, may learn and borrow from these experiences, in order to design and implement a sustainable and gender-balanced democracy. Keywords: democratisation, politics, gender equality, feminism, citizenship, Cameroon, Nordic countries, Finland, France, United Kingdom, quotas, societal social psychology.

Calculating life : Nation, Nature, and the Nativisation of Nonhuman Genetics

In recent decades, nation-states have become major stakeholders in nonhuman genetic resource networks as a result of several international treaties. The most important of these is the juridically binding international Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), signed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 by some 150 nations. This convention was a watershed for the identification of global rights related to genetic resources in recognising the sovereign power of signatory nations over their natural resources. The contracting parties are legally obliged to identify their native genetic material and to take legislative, administrative, and/or policy measures to foster research on genetic resources. In this process of global bioprospecting in the name of biodiversity conservation, the world's nonhuman genetic material is to be indexed according to nation and nationality. This globally legitimated process of native genetic identification inscribes national identity into nature and flesh. As a consequence, this new form of potential national biowealth forms also what could be called novel nonhuman genetic nationhoods. These national corporealities are produced in tactical and strategic encounters of the political and the scientific, in new spaces crafted through technical and institutional innovation, and between the national reconfiguration of the natural and cultural as framed by international political agreements. This work follows the creation of national genetic resources in one of the biodiversity-poor countries of the North, Finland. The thesis is an ethnographic work addressing the calculation of life: practices of identifying, evaluating, and collecting nonhuman life in national genetic programmes. The core of the thesis is about observations made within the Finnish Genetic Resources Programmes in 2004 2008, gathered via multi-sited ethnography and related methods derived from the anthropology of science. The thesis explores the problematic relations of the communal forms of human and nonhuman life in an increasingly technoscientific contemporaneity  the co-production and coexistence of human and nonhuman life in biopolitical formations called nations.

Biovalta, toiseus ja naisten toimijuus hedelmöityshoidoissa

Biopower, Otherness and Women's Agency in Assisted Reproduction. This sociological study analyses how, why and with what kind of consequences assisted reproductive technologies (ART) have become the primary technology for governing infertility in Finland both on the level of individuals and society. The phenomenon is construed as one the strategies of the Focaultian biopower since ART are political techniques of the beginning of life par excellence, as they are used to prepare the bodies of certain types of women to create certain kind of life, i.e. certain kind of children. Moreover, ART are interpreted to be gendered control techniques with which the pure, and at the same time prevailing, social order symbolised by a female body is maintained by naming and excluding otherness, unsuitable mother candidates and children. Finally, it is considered how the agency, subjectivity, of women experiencing infertility and seeking treatment appears in the prevailing context of ART. The introduction of IVF-based reproductive technologies to Finland and the treatment practices of the early 1990s have been studied on the basis of a clinic questionnaire, medical doctor interviews and articles of the Medical Journal Duodecim from 1969 to 2000. Opinions on the method of the treatment providers were studied by conducting a theme interview with fertilisation doctors in 1993. Experiences of women who have received treatment or experienced infertility were studied by means of a survey in 1994 and by analysing the content of messages in an online discussion forum in 2000. On the basis of the medical doctor interviews, significant criterion for choosing mother candidates turned out to be her vitality and her mental and physical health, which are considered prerequisites for a vitality of the child to be born. The hierarchies concerning children became evident. While people normally make their children on their own, this is what people experiencing infertility are trying to do as well. In the era of ART, the primary child is genetically the parents' own child, a secondary option for Finnish parents is a genetically Finnish child conceived by donated Finnish gametes or embryos and the last option is an adopted child of foreign origin. Women's agency mainly appears in their way of using ART as a technology of the self for self-control on one's own nature, which helps them to prepare their bodies in order to become pregnant in co-operation with a fertilisation doctor. Women's creative free agency exceeding governance appeared as a distinctive use of language with which they created shared meaning for their infertility experience, their own individual and group identity and distinctive reality. ART are very political techniques as they have a possibility to change the methods of having children and to shape life. Therefore, further sociological research on them is important and needed. Key words: practises of assisted reproduction, women's agency, biopower, vital politics of the beginning of life, otherness