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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of Google in everyday online searching activities of Swedish teenagers in different contexts.

The study is qualitative and material has been produced through interviews and observations in two different schools with participants aged 15-16. Goffman’s frame analysis provides the analytical lens for studying how activities are assigned meaning.

Three different framings in relation to using Google and googling are identified in the material: Google and fact-finding, Google as a neutral infrastructure, and Google as an authority. There is an interplay between activity, context, and interaction in defining the role of Google. In relation to school, the fact-finding framing is more pronounced whereas the infrastructure framing comes forth more in their free time activities. The authority framing cuts across both framings and underpins their trust in the search engine.

The study addresses the way that Google is embedded in online activities and how the search engine is viewed in various contexts, as well as how it is made invisible in some contexts. Previous research has not addressed Google’s role in specific in relation to various everyday uses.

Symbolical-interaction sociology is useful to mediators and relevant to mediation practice. It explores the elements of everyday social interaction including behavior of disputants during instances of conflict. In particular, Erving Goffman’s frame analysis offers mediators a practical tool useful in assessing and managing both the intellectual and emotional responses of disputants during mediation. Moreover, frame analysis can effectively guide mediators in assisting disputants to reorient their respective responses to each other and to the dispute, thereby enhancing opportunities for meaningful dialogue. In addition, Goffman’s game, drama, and ritual metaphors offer simple but powerful analytic tools guiding mediation clients through terrain which would otherwise be chaotic and overwhelming. Mediators committed to enhancing their practices and researchers in search of a sound theoretical base for effective dispute resolution can benefit substantially by applying these insights to the practice of mediation.

Despite an increasing trend in adoption of social media by for-profit organizations and their chief executive officers (CEOs), there is little understanding of how these new channels of communication are incorporated into the broader communication domain of a firm to discharge accountability during a crisis, when accountability is of critical importance. More importantly, research on how people perceive a crisis and voice their opinions to firms and CEOs on social media in reaction to that crisis is rather limited. Therefore, in this study the authors investigate these questions.

This study is based on a case. The authors focus on the biggest data breach in Internet history in a pioneer technology firm, the Yahoo data breach. The authors conduct descriptive and dramaturgical analyses informed by Goffman to investigate how Yahoo manages its several front stages (communication channels), including social media during and after the Yahoo data breach announcements, and how people respond to the Yahoo's front stage management.

The results show that, during this crisis, Yahoo engages in management of its front stages by first limiting them to a few, then by redrawing the line between its back and front stages, and finally by expanding its front stages to include two-way communication channels, including social media. An ongoing accountability process back stage guides Yahoo's management of its front stages and undermines Yahoo's accountability in front stages. However, social media audiences challenge Yahoo's control of its front stages by using various frames to make sense of the crisis, and to demand accountability.

This study furthers the understanding of how social media platforms are positioned in a firm's broader communication channels during a crisis. It also enhances understanding of accountability demand, especially during critical times in a digitized era.

This study provides insights into the external powers that can influence business leaders' communication on sustainability. It shows how the socio-political context manifested in national and transnational policies, regulations and other socio-political events can influence the CEO talk about sustainability.

This study adopts an interpretative and qualitative method of analysis using the lenses of the theoretical concepts of framing and legitimacy, analysing CEOs’ letters from 10 multinational industrial companies based in Sweden, over the period of 2008–2019.

The results show that various discourses of sustainability, emerging from policies and regulatory initiatives, socio-political events and civil society activism, are reflected in the ways CEOs frame sustainability over time. This article reveals that CEOs not only lead the discourse of profitable sustainability, but they also slowly adapt their sustainability talk to other discourses led by the policymakers, regulators and civil society. This pattern of a slow adaptation is especially visible in a period characterised by increased discourses of climate urgency and regulations related to social and environmental sustainability.

The theoretical frame is built by integrating the concepts of legitimacy and framing. Appreciating dynamic notions of legitimacy and framing, the study suggests a novel view of reporting as a film series, presenting many frames of sustainability over time. It helps the study to conceptualise CEO framing of sustainability as adaptive framing. This study suggests using a dynamic notion of adaptive framing in future longitudinal studies of corporate- and accounting communication.

The results show that policymakers, regulators and civil society, through their initiatives, influence the CEOs' framing of sustainability. It is thus important for regulators to substantiate sustainability-related discourses and develop conceptual tools and language of social and environmental sustainability that can lead CEO framing more effectively.

The study engages with Goffman's notion of dynamic framing. Dynamic framing suggests a novel view of reporting as a film series, presenting many frames of sustainability over time and conceptualises CEO framing of sustainability as adaptive framing.

This paper aims to analyze the conditions for co-creation in a non-commercial context. The particular aim is to show how a co-creative activity is framed for the participants and the consequences of the frames for the values that are co-created in the process.

Goffman’s frame analysis is applied to investigate how co-creation is used as a marketing strategy where an art event is used as an engagement platform to involve citizens in creating visions for an urban renewal area. It is a qualitative study based on observations.

The taken-for-granted ideas of the active and creative consumer along with the focus in marketing research on the positive values achieved in a co-creative process are problematic in a public context. An unreflexive use of a co-creative strategy in a non-commercial setting and using art as an engagement platform, in combination with insufficient communication about the new framings, result in no-creation of value or even co-destruction of value.

Unclear definition of the situation for co-creation results in confusion about how to interact and how to create value. Such an outcome is highly problematic for a public organization. It is of major importance that citizens can identify and understand the type of activity. The authors argue that communication in well-defined phases of an event can facilitate desired acts of co-creation.

Value co-creation theory has been transferred between contexts, but there are few studies of what the transfer means in terms of consumer abilities to take part in the value creation process and its rules of engagement. This study demonstrates the difficulties of moving from theory to practice when the context changes from a commercial to a public participatory one. This opens for new research venues in value co-creation and marketing theory.

The study applies Erving Goffman's (1974) “frame analysis” principles to examine how Sharia governance is practiced in Islamic banks and explores the interaction and strategies adopted by bank managers to influence the decisions of Sharia scholars. The study also aims to identify inherent flaws in the Sharia compliance review system.

The study employs the principles of Goffman as a lens to critically analyse a rich dataset obtained through interviews undertaken with 46 key players operating in the governance framework of the Malaysian Islamic banking industry due to its progressive Islamic governance framework.

The study demonstrates that managers of Islamic banks may engage in “passing” and “covering” strategies while interacting within the governance structure. Concurrently, Sharia boards (SBs) implement “protective practices” during their interactions, adding complexity to their responsibilities within the banks. Consequently, SBs cannot merely be viewed as instruments for legitimising banking operations. This raises questions about the “impression management,” “concealment” and “competence” strategies employed by managers and SB members, as suggested by Goffman's framework. These findings indicate that there is room for further enhancement in the governance practices of Islamic banks.

Future research could explore aspects related to the governance of Islamic banks, such as investigating the independence and effectiveness of internal Sharia officers. Examining the strategies employed during their interactions with external Sharia boards and other stakeholders could provide further valuable insights.

By highlighting shortcomings in the governance and compliance review process, the findings could serve as a valuable resource for policymakers. The insights derived could inform the development of regulations aimed at reducing opportunistic behaviour and promoting accountability in the Islamic banking sector.

This study uniquely employs Goffman's concepts of “frontstage” and “backstage” strategies to offer insights into the interactions between Islamic bank managers and SBs and the impact of these interactions on Sharia compliance. The study contributes to the understanding of the dynamics between key players in the governance of Islamic banks and the factors influencing their adherence to Sharia principles.

This paper aims to explore the important role boundaries play in back-office framing of environmental engagement. This is of particular interest because it is not clear how organizations in an industry without standardized environmental reporting navigate their boundaries behind the scenes and why they engage with the environment the way they do. This element of their environmental identity offers important insights into the emergence of sustainability reporting.

Guided by Miles and Ringham (2019) the authors conduct an ethnography of the Montana ski industry. The ethnography includes extensive on-site observations at nine Montana ski areas and interviews with 16 ski area executives, two regulators and a land development executive.

The authors find three key boundaries – accountability structure, degree of regulatory burden and impact measurement approach – that shape the back-office economic and environmental framing of ski executives (Goffman, 1959, 1974). From these back-office frames the authors identify four front-office cultural performances – community ecosystem, quantitative ownership, approval seeking and advocacy platform – that represent the environmental engagement strategies at these resorts.

Understanding the relationships between boundaries and environmental engagement is an important step in developing appropriate industry-wide environmental accountability and sustainability expectations. The study’s findings extend to other industries that are both highly dependent on the environment and are in the early stages of developing environmental reporting standards.

Ski resorts operate in an industry that is impacted by changes in the natural environment. The authors chronicle the process by which boundaries lead to framing which leads to environmental engagement in this weather-dependent industry. The authors explain the process of environmental identity building, the result of which both precedes environmental reporting and puts such reporting into context. In this sense, the authors show how boundaries are set and maintained in the ski resort industry, and how fundamental these boundaries are to the development of individual companies' environmental engagement strategies.

This paper explores the way in which industrial pollution has been expressed in the narrative accounts of nature, landscape and industry by William Gilpin in his 18th-century picturesque travel writings. A positive description of pollution is generally outdated and unacceptable in the current society. The authors contrast his “picturesque” view with the contemporary perception of industrial pollution, reflect on these early accounts of industrial impacts as representing the roots of impression management and use the analysis to inform current accounting.

The research uses an interpretive content analysis of the text to draw out themes and features of impression management. Goffman's impression management is the theoretical lens through which Gilpin's travel accounts are interpreted, considering this microhistory through a thematic research approach. The picturesque accounts are explored with reference to the context of impression management.

Gilpin's travel writings and the “Picturesque” aesthetic movement, it appears, constructed a social reality around negative industrial externalities such as air pollution and indeed around humans' impact on nature, through a lens which described pollution as adding aesthetically to the natural landscape. The lens through which the picturesque tourist viewed and expressed negative externalities involved quite literally the tourists' tricks of the trade, Claude glass, called also Gray's glass, a tinted lens to frame the view.

The paper adds to the wealth of literature in accounting and business pertaining to the ways in which companies socially construct reality through their accounts and links closely to the impression management literature in accounting. There is also a body of literature relating to the use of images and photographs in published corporate reports, which again is linked to impression management as well as to a growing literature exploring the potential for the aesthetic influence in accounting and corporate communication. Further, this paper contributes to the growing body of research into the historical roots of environmental reporting.

The Mexican-American population has experienced a dramatic increase in ethnic entrepreneurship over the last several decades. In an attempt to explain this development, 25 Mexican-American entrepreneurs were interviewed in the Chicago area. These interviews focused upon the specific ethnic strategies used by these entrepreneurs to bridge the gap between the opportunity structures for entrepreneurship in the United States economy and the unique group characteristics or capacities for entrepreneurship characterizing the Mexican-American population. Based upon these interviews, we found that the favored ethnic strategy used by Mexican-American entrepreneurs involved attempts at socializing the economic encounter between co-ethnic customers and entrepreneurs. These socializing activities were examined using Goffman's frame analysis, with particular attention devoted to the collective organization of customer and entrepreneur experience in terms of an ethnic frame.

This paper explores how performance-management systems are understood and framed through the use of rhetoric and language within universities, where not-for-profit, charitable goals are (or should be) central. It addresses the issues of: how strategic rhetorical frames are used by university actors; and how these relate to actors' primary frames and reactions to performance-management practices. The study focuses on the case of UK universities, taking into consideration both old and newer institutions.

This study adopts a case-study approach, relying on 28 interviews with key-academic actors involved in the design and implementation of university performance-management systems in four UK universities.

The research highlights the important effect of primary frames over the strategic frames that are mobilised to achieve desired outcomes or individual advantage. In Business disciplines, the consistency between actors' primary frames and managerial and performance-management tools introduced into universities makes such disciplines a fertile ground for these practices to be embraced. This is not the case with Natural Sciences.

While framing a new practice consistently with existing/prevailing primary frames may be a winning strategy in the short term, in the long term, those tasked with introducing new practices should consider that the prevalence of a certain view of the world has the potential to hamper innovation and learning.

The paper contributes to advance our understanding of the interaction between individual primary and strategic frames, as well as academic staff's reactions and interpretations of performance-management practices in universities as knowledge-intensive, not-for-profit organisations.