'Shock' advertising is the new black and the subject of the reflection in which this article engages. We do this in particular through consideration of the (largely) British high-street fashion house French Connection's seemingly endless 'FCUK' campaign. The obvious resonance between this...

Stock markets and politics are enduring staples of dinner party conversations but surprisingly little is known about the interaction between the two. Here we present evidence for a robust relationship between a key financial measure - the aggregate price earnings ratio - and surveyed approval of...

Since their introduction in the United States in 2002, contactless card payment systems have been widely regarded as the pinnacle of current retail banking technology. However, the potential demand and usage of this innovation has hitherto received little attention from the academic community....

This paper fuses Lukes' (1974) three-dimensional view of power with the economic concept of informational asymmetry to explicate how access to information is organized and how power relationships arise from this organization. We argue that many observed asymmetries are deliberate and, drawing...

Over recent years, interest has been growing in Bitcoin, an innovation which has the potential to play an important role in e-commerce and beyond. The aim of our paper is to provide a comprehensive empirical study of the payment and investment features of Bitcoin and their implications for the...

The paper examines the contribution of inscriptions, in particular new accounting measures, to a process of transforming the ethos and operations of ‘Britech', a high-tech division of a major British manufacturer. Focusing upon the increased and changing use of inscriptions at this site, we...

Cryptocurrencies were supposed to replace traditional payment methods when they were invented over 13 years ago, but adoption by the general consumer is still lacking, at least in the United States. Instead, crypto is often used as a speculative investment, by illicit actors, or for use cases...

The rise of modern corporations has been accompanied by an expansion of salaried executives who have replaced owner-managers. With this expansion, the new class of managers/executives came to regard themselves as stewards of large and complex corporations, and not principally or exclusively as...

The current model of corporate governance needs reform. There is mounting evidence that the practices of shareholder primacy drive company directors and executives to adopt the same short time horizon as financial markets. Pressure to meet the demands of the financial markets drives stock...