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This study aims to ask a theoretical question of “whether forensic accounting meets the sociological criteria of being a profession” in the Australian context. The present study responds to several scholarly calls to improve the studies on forensic accounting in Australia.

Based on the professionalism theory perspective, this study developed an analysis of the sociological criteria of a profession. This study used qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with elite Australian forensic accounting practitioners and academics.

The findings of the study show that forensic accounting in Australia partly meets the sociological criteria of a profession. Forensic accounting in the Australian context must meet essential criteria such as autonomy and commitment to be recognized as a profession.

This study has implications for the professionalism of forensic accounting along with vital issues surrounding the profession such as public recognition, altruistic behavior and control of entry to the profession.

This study provides social contributions by emphasizing forensic accountants’ sociological roles, including the altruistic role and solving social problems role. Understanding these roles provides the practitioners with the fundamental knowledge to use during their work.

This study is original in that it sheds light on the professionalism of forensic accounting in the Australian context.

While the wine market is significant in Australia, very little has been done in the way of consumer research to investigate Australians' attitudes towards the product. This study explored the physical and social contexts that are considered appropriate for wine consumption in Australia. Interviews were conducted with 82 adults, adolescents, and children across three Australian states. The findings indicate that the apparent preference of females for wine over other forms of alcohol is contrived by the social environment in which Australians live and consume, as is the tendency for many men to avoid wine consumption in particular informal contexts. Wine marketers need to be aware of the extent to which different segments of the population adhere to the social norms surrounding wine consumption in order to select appropriate ways to attempt to integrate wine more fully into a wider range of consumption contexts.

This chapter serves as the introduction to the edited collection, calling into focus the diverse ways in which ‘Australia’ is asserted in the spaces, scenes and practices of Australian heavy metal. This chapter responds to earlier quandaries in the sparse research on Australian metal which question if there is anything definitively ‘Australian’ about the characteristics, themes and narratives demonstrated within Australian heavy metal scenes. In response to this challenge, the author uses this chapter to establish critical foundations for addressing how Australianness has been represented ‘Downunderground’ (Phillipov, 2008, p. 215) – historically, musically and geographically, as work in this collection affirms. This introduction foregrounds the concerns of the edited collection at large, which addresses how national identity has been imagined and constructed in ways which can at once celebrate problematic patriarchal nationalist symbolism, yet also call into focus the resistant and subversive ways in which metal scenes have deconstructed, critiqued and renegotiated the parameters of what it means to be ‘Australian’. This chapter asserts that any interrogation of the ‘Australianness’ of Australian metal must problematise the notion of a singularly ‘Australian’ identity in the first instance. Here the author argues that ‘Australian metal’ as a consolidated signifier must be problematised to instead come to an understanding of the multisited ways in which ‘Australianness’ is experienced within scenes. In doing so the author establishes the critical trajectories for the edited collection at large – to track the genealogies of Australian metal as a component in a wider global scene, and consider the plurality of its contemporary manifestations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the disempowering and/or empowering role of accounting in the context of Indigenous Australians.

A total of 31 interviewees participated in this study, which included 18 self-identified Indigenous Australians and 13 non-Indigenous Australians. A qualitative research methodology, and in particular an oral history method, was chosen because of its ability to support a deeper and richer form of inquiry. Bourdieu’s concepts provide the framework for mobilizing and analyzing the findings of this study.

The damaging role of accounting in the context of Indigenous peoples has largely stemmed from non-Indigenous peoples providing accounting services for Indigenous peoples. The evidence and analysis provided by this study postulates a constructive way forward of accounting’s role in contributing to the empowerment of Indigenous Australians.

Limitations include being a non-Indigenous researcher conducting research in an Indigenous context, which may have prevented some interviewees from feeling comfortable to openly share their experiences and insights.

As this study’s findings have supported the theory that accounting skills can be used in an empowering way when used “by” Indigenous peoples, Indigenous Australians should be actively supported by the accounting bodies to gain the qualifications needed for membership of the accounting profession.

This study contributes to the expanding accounting literature that locates the role of accounting in the context of Indigenous peoples by proposing accounting as a tool of empowerment.

Purpose – We investigated recent efforts of the Australian Football League (AFL) to reintroduce the sport of Australian Football to post-Apartheid South Africa. The chapter adopts a critical approach exploring the difference between the rhetoric of reconciliation and its use as a commercial marketing tool and other agendas that may be at play in international expansion.

Design/methodology/approach – The discussion and research findings outlined in this chapter are based on extensive tape-recorded interviews with Anglo-Australian advocates, African converts and Indigenous Australian critics of the claim to reconciliation as well as field notes collected during the time of visits to Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa and Alice Springs, Australia.

Findings – Key themes to emerge from the interviews are presented, cohering around issues of identity, as well as personal and community empowerment through sport, together with the claimed uniqueness of Australian Football to achieve reconciliation in Australia and international contexts such as South Africa.

Research limitations/implications – The limitations of using an ethnographic approach are indicated. This research draws on the qualitative and self-reflective approaches that are characteristic of contemporary indigenous studies where the emphasis is on attempts to allow indigenous people and other marginal voices to speak for themselves.

Originality/value – The chapter provides the first scholarly engagement with the expansion of Australian Football in the new South Africa in the context of the politics of indigenous reconciliation.

Australians consume twice the global average of textiles and are deeply engaged in a linear take/make/waste fashion model. Furthermore the Australian fashion sector has some unique supply chain complications of geographical distances, sparse population and fragmentation in processing and manufacturing. This research aims to examine how Australian fashion small to medium enterprises (SMEs) are overcoming these challenges to run fashion businesses built around core principles of product stewardship (PS) and circularity.

SMEs make up 88% of the Australian apparel manufacturing sector. This qualitative exploratory study included in-depth interviews with three Australian fashion SMEs engaged in circular design practice, and a focus group of 10 Western Australian fashion advocates of sustainability. Analytic coding and analysis of the data developed eight distinct themes.

This study examines the barriers to circular economy (CE) that exist in the Australian fashion sector, and maps the practice of Australian SMEs with circular business models in overcoming these barriers. In CE innovation, Australian SMEs may have an advantage over larger fashion companies with more unwieldy structures. Employing design-thinking strategies, Australian SMEs with a foundation of PS and circular purpose are creating new systems of viable closed-loop business models and design processes.

The themes from this research contribute to the limited literature on circular innovation examples that link CE theory with practice in the fashion sector. The model for circularity maps the practice of three SMEs built around core principles of PS and circularity in overcoming the barriers to CE in an Australian context, and may be used as a visual tool in education and understanding.

This paper aims to explore how corporate Australia engages in reconciliation through recognizing and providing pathways for Indigenous Australians' corporate leadership aspirations.

The research design is informed by the prior literature on pathways by minority groups to corporate leadership through the theoretical lens of transformational leadership. The investigation is conducted using textual analysis of reconciliation action plans (RAPs), a contemporary and voluntary practice adopted by Australian listed companies to disclose their commitment to national reconciliation. RAPs are publicly available from the official websites of listed companies.

The analysis of contemporary RAPs highlights organizational initiatives to support Indigenous Australians related to corporate and community leadership. Since the authors’ focus is the former, corporate leadership initiatives are further analyzed. Two initiatives for Indigenous Australians to pursue corporate leadership positions are emerging future leaders' programs and mentoring programs. This is the extent to which the authors observe Australian firms' transformational leadership. While some firms have implemented these initiatives with specific targets, other firms do not have specific initiatives or targets. The paper also conducts longitudinal analysis into the transformational leaders' past RAPs and triangulates to other evidence of reconciliation commitment such as the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

This paper contributes new insights to the research area of board cultural diversity, specifically to the limited literature on Indigenous reconciliation. It provides insights into firms and policymakers to address the ongoing issue of the underrepresentation of Indigenous Australians in corporate leadership. The sample of firms comprises Australian listed firms that have adopted higher-order RAPs, which restricts the generalizability of the findings to other sectors.

This paper explores the under researched phenomenon of Indigenous people's pathways to corporate leadership. The research design is informed by transformational leadership theory through considering institutional actions for reconciliation. This research provides evidence of the extent to which corporate Australia has taken action on the issue of the under-representation of Australian Indigenous people in corporate leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to describe outcomes from a trial of the Danish Intellectual Capital Statement (ICS) within the Australian public sector.

Two work teams within the Department of Primary Industries, Farm Services Victoria (FSV) participated in the trial over a six-month period. Data were collected and triangulated from structured focus groups, researcher guided workshops and individual project record journals kept by participants and observers.

This trial has tested and confirmed existing European Intellectual Capital Management (ICM) theory in a new context, confirmed the strategic management and communication utility of the Danish ICS. It also revealed the utility of this method: to assist the organisation articulate its knowledge-related needs; in developing knowledge management (KM) strategy, in planning and reviewing KM initiatives, in developing clarity and shared context and in navigating change.

This research focuses on a single in-depth case study and concurrent organisational restructuring impacted on team focus.

The strategic management and communication utility of the Danish ICS was confirmed. The paper demonstrates new insights for practitioners using this ICM method as a useful tool to assist an organisation to articulate KM needs.

The primary research gap in the ICM field is examination of the practical application of methods in a real-life context (particularly outside Europe). This work has tested and confirmed existing theory in a new and different context – the Australian public sector.

This article aims to understand the underlying mechanisms through which transformational leadership influences employee job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Specifically, the study explores the mediation role of employee well-being on the relationships between leadership and both employee job satisfaction and turnover intentions.

Employing a quantitative research method, data were collected from 280 academics and professional staff from an Australian regional university. The Mplus software was used for data analysis.

The results showed that transformational leadership had significant positive impact on employee well-being and job satisfaction while it alleviated employee turnover intentions. Furthermore, employee well-being mediated the effect of transformational leadership on employee job satisfaction and turnover intentions.

The research was cross-sectional, and data were collected from a convenient sample and therefore minimises our ability to generalise the findings to other contexts.

Effective leadership, employee well-being, job satisfaction and employee turnover are of strategic importance in the higher education sector in Australia and internationally. These findings will therefore provide a basis for university policy makers to craft relevant policies that promote effective leader behaviours and enhance employee well-being as they facilitate employee job satisfaction and minimise turnover intentions among higher education sector employees (i.e. academics and professional staff).

Our study provides a unique contribution to knowledge as it explains the mediation effect of employee well-being on the relation between transformational leadership a, job satisfaction and turnover intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to present and analyse the context, the current issues and the opportunities for project management (PM) research within Australia. The paper contributes to researcher and industry practitioner knowledge and debates on supporting and promoting the development of national PM research agendas.

This is a research paper which draws on and interprets empirical data generated from a comprehensive national survey of Australian PM researchers.

The paper first profiles the current landscape of Australian PM research. Thereafter, it explores the future opportunities/risks for PM research in this country, as perceived by the researcher community.

This research was limited to the collection of data from PM researchers across Australia (80 percent response rate to the survey tool). Clearly, this study was confined to one country and to one category of respondent.

This paper will make contributions to national and international debates and analysis on current research trajectories and future opportunities in the PM field and thereby also aid comparative knowledge development within the researcher community.

This paper represents the first comprehensive national PM researcher study undertaken in Australia. It provides a compelling national insight into the current state of PM research as perceived by PM researchers and illustrates issues concerning their research contexts, their links to industry partners and perceptions of industry and industry representative body engagement in PM research activity.