Graduate Journal of Social Science

Articles

• Is there a place for covert research methods in criminology? A different approach

  Helen M. Wells

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  • pp. 1–19

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  A reply to Wells

  Anneliese J. Dodds

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  • pp. 20–41

• Theoretical Dialogues through Field Experiments: Some Notes on Active Research in Management Accounting

  Alberto Asquer

  • Abstract

    This paper investigates the process of management accounting system implementation through a field experiment of introducing an activity-based costing and management system into a small-medium sized firm. This research constitutes an example of “clinical” or “active” research in management accounting, because of the direct and deep involvement of the researcher in the phenomena under investigation. Data are analysed from two different theoretical perspectives, namely the process stage model of activity-based costing system implementation of Anderson (1995) and the organisational process of knowledge generation of Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995). Finally, this paper highlights that the insights suggested from active research might contribute to improve implementation tactics in order to accomplish success in implementation efforts, and that the contrast and comparison between different theoretical perspectives might contribute to theory development in the field of management accounting system implementation.

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  • pp. 42–88

• Global companies, local symbols. An ethnographic view of the uses of symbolism in a multinational corporation

  Fiona Moore

  • Abstract

    This article combines anthropological theory and methodological techniques with a setting and research problem drawn from business studies to explore the ways in which transnational elite businesspeople in multinational corporations make use of symbols, not only (as some works in business studies have contended) to define boundaries between groups and develop collective solidarity, but to subvert and negotiate between different social groupings.
    Taking as a case study the use of certain symbols associated with ‘German business style’ by the employees of a German bank branch in London, as they interact with colleagues in the office, staff at their Frankfurt head office, and their clients and competitors, I conclude that, firstly, the use of symbolic interaction is key to the negotiation of global and local social spaces, and secondly, that as the concepts of 'global' and ‘local’ are themselves symbolic constructs, the drawing of distinctions between the two may be misleading.
    Although a limited amount of research has been done in business studies on the use of symbols in corporate settings, most such works take a simplified view, being based in the anthropological theory of the 1950s through 1970s. By applying Sperber’s more recent theory of symbolism as a system of knowledge to an ethnographic study of the London branch and Frankfurt head office of a German financial multinational corporation (MNC), I propose to investigate how its staff engage in complex negotiations between global and local social spaces using the symbols which define, in their view, the ‘German business style’.

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  • pp. 89–116

• Publishing the past. Gender and patterns of authorship in academic and public archaeology journals

  Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh

  • Abstract

    Publication constitutes an essential facet of the contemporary practice of social science, not only as a means to disseminate knowledge, but also to attain status and material rewards such as job advancement and salary increments. Focusing on two distinct types of publications in American archaeology – ‘academic’ and ‘public’ journals – this paper explores the relationship between gender and patterns of authorship in American archaeology to assess the status of women in the profession and better elucidate how the past is socially constructed and disseminated in the political present. Following a review of previous research, this study presents a content analysis of the percentage of female authors and the number of articles expressly concerned with gender issues in American Antiquity, American Journal of Archaeology, Archaeology (Magazine), and Biblical Archaeology Review between 1979 and 1999. The results from this analysis are mixed, but demonstrate the complex and important interplay between gender and authorship in different forms of written media.

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  • pp. 117–143

• Research is a messy process. A case study of a figurational sociology approach to conventional issues in social science reserach methods

  Daniel Bloyce

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  • pp. 144–166

• Social science. In retrospect and prospect

  Simon Blackburn

  • Abstract

    This discussion paper is conceived as a commentary aiming to describe the broad philosophical object of social science. In the article, I subject the work and practice of modern social science disciplines to a ‘classic’ pre-disciplinary critique. I suggest that as a collection of separate disciplines (‘separatism’), social science is unable to realise its essence: an understanding of the social totality, or ‘society’. The rejection of any such totality in post-modern literature forms an additional problematic that the paper addresses. By way of conclusion, I advance the conjecture that the social sciences must adopt, in order to overcome their failures, a more systematic interdisciplinary mode of enquiry.

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  • pp. 167–188

• Finding bias in geography textbooks. A proposed case study

  Paul B. Nagel

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  • pp. 198–203