Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical account of a social accounting technology applied within a New Zealand Local Body Authority and reflect on "assemblages" that enable change for sustainability thinking at the organisational level.Design/methodology/approach - The paper presents a case using semi-structured interviews to track six sustainability assessment model (SAM) applications over a two-year period. The diversity of applications ranged from large infrastructure projects such as transport through to libraries and meant the SAM was operational under a variety of organisational settings.Findings - Evidence found suggests that the SAM influenced mental models of participants, fostered more reflective and inclusive accounts, changed organisational decisions, and resulted in tangible change. However, managers vulnerable to voting influences later changed their criteria on which the SAM was evaluated and in turn rendered it "technically inadequate". Further findings indicate the role of accountants and legislation were salient enabling "assemblages". Such findings support the assertion of in-depth case studies and multiple applications of a social accounting technology being required to make visible important factors in enabling sustainability thinking.Originality/value - The paper explores the process of change implicated with SEA technology engagements beyond a "success" or "failure" label by examining empirically the enabling features implicated in sustainability thinking. In doing so the paper responds to a lack of in-depth engagements of social accounting technologies in the organisational environments they were designed for and provides a basis for theorising SEA technologies.

In recent years there has been a marked resurgence of interest in the areas of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social and environmental accounting (SEA) among business, Governments, public policymakers, investors, unions, environmentalists and others. While at one level there appears to be widespread agreement that CSR and SEA are worthy topics of attention, different groups have very different understandings of these fields. This article provides a meta-analysis of these differences by comparing three broad approaches to SEA: the business case, stakeholder-accountability and critical theory approaches. It also responds to concerns a number of commentators have expressed regarding the current dominance of 'business case' discourses. While not seeking to impose on readers a 'correct' way of viewing SEA and CSR, exposure to competing perspectives is viewed as one way of challenging us to think more reflectively about the frames available to us and their implications for the social realities we construct, embed or seek ton change.

There is increasing recognition that social and ecological challenges necessitate societal change. In responding to these challenges a number of tools have been mooted as having the potential to facilitate change at the organisational level. Accounting is one such tool which is implicated in changing the mental models of those making decisions in organisations (Bebbington, 2007a). However, the role that accounting performs is uncertain and calls have been made to extend our understanding by exploring further empirical cases (Bebbington, 2007a, 2007b; Bebbington, Brown and Frame, 2007a; Bebbington, Brown, Frame and Thomson, 2007b; Tilt, 2006) in a way which can make explicit a priori assumptions of change (Broadbent and Laughlin, 2005). Experimenting with social accounting technologies may provide greater insight into their limiting and enabling aspects. Examples of such technologies include full cost accounting (FCA), the sustainable cost calculation (SCC) and, most recently, the sustainable assessment model (SAM). The SAM is an accounting technology developed to incorporate sustainability considerations into organisational decisionmaking and, potentially, accountability processes. In constructing and implementing new accounting technologies such as the SAM, researchers are confronted with two key challenges: first, a lack of empirical exploration within field studies means the impact a new technology may have is not well documented (Gray, 2002); second, the extant theorisation with which to evaluate 'successful' implementations remains underdeveloped (Gray, 2002). For example, use of non-explicit evaluative criteria glosses over the necessary aspects by which people can facilitate and evaluate change (Thomson and Bebbington, 2004, 2005; Dillard, 2007). This thesis explores the potential of the SAM to foster more critically reflective organisational accounts in the pursuit of sustainability, and involved the application of the SAM in two New Zealand case-study sites. In total, forty-seven individual and group semi-structured interviews were conducted over a three-year period. The resulting empirics provided the basis of an organisational narrative, structured according to Laughlin's (1991) organisational change framework, and evaluated using a Freirian heuristic. Laughlin (1991) provides a framework that sensitises the researcher to identify facets of change considered salient in the application of the SAM. His framework provides a structure for the organisational narrative (that is, both a 'technical' account on how the SAM was applied and a descriptive account on what specific change may have occurred in the organisation). However, drawing on Laughlin's (1991) framework presented two key challenges: first, the SAM requires a critical evaluation framework that makes explicit a priori assumptions of change that are not evident using Laughlin's (1991) 'real' and 'superficial' change categorisation; second, the skeletal nature of the framework focuses insufficient attention on how change occurs (Laughlin, 1991, p.229). To address the above challenges and to evaluate the effectiveness of the SAM, a Freirian dialogic heuristic framework (DHF) is applied to the organisational narrative. The human agency focus of Freire's work makes the evaluative framework complementary to Laughlin's (1991) framework by providing greater insight into how change occurs. To date, the application of a Freirian lens in social accounting literature has been restricted to papers theorising the engagement of the SAM (Bebbington et al., 2007b), generic samples of social accounting reports (Thomson and Bebbington, 2005), accounting education (Coulson and Thomson, 2006; Thomson and Bebbington, 2004), and calls to extend stakeholder engagement (O'Dwyer, 2004a). In this thesis the SAM is explored in an empirical organisational setting and evaluated using the DHF. Findings indicate that the SAM did promote more critically reflective organisational accounts. The SAM created a space which amplified the agency of operational managers and researchers to challenge dominant organisational beliefs held typically by senior staff. Beliefs, such as the organisational commitment to sustainability, were exposed, interrogated, and challenged. The process of applying the SAM fostered the problematisation of organisational issues, broadened the perspectives of participants involved in decision-making, and challenged existing notions of who might have legitimate, 'expert' knowledge. It also made visible differences among viewpoints, highlighted the socially constructed nature of accounting technologies, made visible the interrelationships among different elements in an account, and changed project decisions. However, on several occasions the use of SAM was challenged and in one instance resulted in termination of the SAM application. Findings from this thesis contribute to social accounting and organisational change literature by exploring one form of engagement and extending organisational change frameworks. These two contributions provide possibilities for future research and have implications for those involved in policy and practice.

We contribute to the research policy literature by pioneering the development of a sufficiently reliable and generically applicable benchmarking approach for research area output quantity and/or quality. In our development, we overcome substantial structural problems such as the ignorance of books and monographs or the inconsistent citation behaviour differences between research areas. Our approach offers various new opportunities to stakeholders of the research process. For instance, governments, research funding bodies or researchers could benefit from a traffic light system for research area performance and competitiveness, which universities could also use for strategic decision making on their national research assessment submissions. We illustrate our approach for the interdisciplinary research area of responsible investment, which is backed by a trillion $ industry, and find it to experience under-proportional aggregated (quality weighted) research output. This signals to governments, which already legislatively support responsible investment, the need for additional research support and to researchers a less competitive but relevant research area.

Legal and business frameworks for the content industry are discussed in this paper on the premise that the prevailing business model is unsuitable for meeting consumer demands in today’s digital world. Proposed that a new knowledge infrastructure and a virtual content supply chain will benefit content creators and consumers alike, and will at the same time reward every stakeholder, who adds value, in the content supply chain. The new knowledge infrastructure will create a generic model for one-stop access to all kinds of content – copyright, outof-copyright and public-domain copyright-free Creative

A key challenge in moving towards a more sustainable future is adequately embedding sustainability principles into organisational decision-making. The Sustainability Assessment Model (SAM) has been put forward as one option to highlight and assess sustainability principles within various project decisions. Developed originally in the UK, SAM is a Full Cost Accounting tool designed to produce a graphical display for discussion on the monetised costs and benefits of externalities arising from the social, environmental, resource and economic implications of a project – where a “project” consists of any economic activity for which a scope can be defined and acceptable boundaries laid (e.g. development of an oil and gas field or waste disposal). The primary intention of SAM is in its process: to engage a broader range of stakeholders in order to generate dialogue around indirect impacts of a given project, in turn facilitating broader consideration of options and allowing greater sustainability for that project to be achieved. This paper discusses the experiences gained through the application of SAM in urban case studies in New Zealand, including assessment of different waste management options, housing and transport projects. In particular, a number of challenges were faced in undertaking the assessments, these include; establishing appropriate boundaries for assessment, data limitations, differing levels of engagement achieved with different stakeholders, and the relationship of SAM to more conventional assessments (including cost-benefit analysis and triple bottom line reporting). Some of these challenges are likely to be applicable to any approach that aims to embed sustainability into organisational decision-making.

In recent years there has been a marked resurgence of interest in the areas of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social and environmental accounting (SEA) among business, governments, public policymakers, investors, unions, environmentalists and others. While at one level there appears to be widespread agreement that CSR and SEA are worthy topics of attention, different groups have very different understandings of these fields. This article provides an analysis of these differences by comparing three broad approaches to SEA: the business case , stakeholder-accountability and critical theory approaches. It also responds to concerns a number of commentators have expressed regarding the current dominance of ‘business case’ perspectives. While not seeking to impose on readers a ‘correct’ way of viewing SEA and CSR, exposure to competing perspectives is viewed as one way of challenging us to think more reflectively about the frames available to us and their implications for the social realities we construct, embed or seek to change. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

A key reason for e-Science and e-Social Science applications to embrace a services-oriented approach is to participate in the sharing of standards, thus simplifying modifications or extensions of current applications as well as facilitating the engineering of new ones with a substantial reduction in the amount of code needed. Reducing the amount of code replicated within and across e-Science and e-Social Science applications will have an impact into code creation and code maintenance and save time and money. This paper uses the experience of the eIUS project and reflects upon methodologies that would facilitate technical interoperability within and across education and research in a way that minimises the effort required for developers and academic end-users.