Although sustainability has become a strategic topic at many universities, working towards a learning approach in which sustainability is the fundament underlying and permeating the entire course is hardly straightforward. This paper is a case study on the development, the teaching, and the evaluation of one specific course that aims to achieve this. Based on (participant) observation, documents, and discussion with students and other stakeholders, we describe and analyze the results of the transformation of the course ‘advanced management accounting techniques’ for Masters students at the University of Groningen, in the academic year 2017–2018. We show how the course was transformed in a way to increase both a general, a business, and an accounting awareness of the importance of sustainability, while also applying a new teaching approach, namely lemniscate learning, to support this. Our course was the first in the faculty to make this transformation, and although the majority of the students were enthusiastic, the faculty staff was cautiously positive. In presenting our findings, we aim at supporting educators and other stakeholders at universities, by supplying a case study on the transformation of our course, and by scrutinizing the problems that we encountered, the feedback, both positive and negative, that we received, and the challenges that still face us, both on a course and a university level. Thus, we hope to be a source of inspiration and advice for others and to further advance our understanding of the dilemmas, practicalities, and challenges in working towards sustainability in teaching.

In this article we study the role of power and power differences in cross-cultural perception. We do so by way of exploratory case studies in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the police in the Netherlands and Curaçao. We demonstrate how crosscultural perception between two specific ethnic groups, European Dutch and African Curaçaoans, changes depending on the amount of power imbalance in the various organizational and national contexts. With this article, we follow the call for research on the impact of power dynamics on cross-cultural perception, an approach that goes beyond the traditional, dimensional approach that is prevalent in organization literature.

PurposeThe purpose of this exploratory paper is to examine cross‐cultural perception and cooperation between black, Curaçaoan and white Dutch police officers in The Netherlands. It also compares the findings with similar research carried out in the Dutch Internal Revenue Service.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is a multiple ethnographic case study using participant observation, interviews and literature review.FindingsThe paper finds a problematic cooperation between black Curaçaoans and white Dutch in the police. These are based neither on cultural differences nor on the traditional white, male organization type; instead, they are related to the specific, organizational culture in the police and the hierarchical position of both groups in the organization.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper shares the general limitations of case‐study research. However, the findings allow one to draw conclusions beyond this limited population and challenge researchers to engage in further study on cross‐cultural cooperation in relation to organizational culture and to more general theories on in‐group versus out‐group behaviour. This line of research could focus on different ethnic groups, as well as other countries and organizations, and introduce longitudinal studies.Practical implicationsThe paper shows that the depth of the troublesome cross‐cultural cooperation and the role of organizational culture can help police managers and administrators in decisions involving research, training, management and evaluation.Originality/valueThe paper sees that, with most research in this area based on studies in the USA and UK and limited to the police force as such, this paper fills a gap in examining cross‐cultural perception and cooperation in The Netherlands, including a comparative analysis with a similar government organization. The work also adds to the growing body of qualitative research and gives voice to officers at work in a multicultural police force.

No abstract

Although the year 2019 has not seen the usual high frequency of Shakespeare productions on the Dutch stage, the bard continues to be the most popular playwright in the Netherlands. Oddly enough, after the unassailable leader Hamlet, one of the most often performed plays in the past seventy years turns out to be The Taming of the Shrew (Heijes 668) and the year 2019 was no exception to this rule with a Taming directed by Nina Spijkers for "Toneelschuur Producties", a professional and subsidized theatre company, which has its home base in the city of Haarlem, but also tours the country with its productions. As the audience filtered in for Taming, they were confronted with a stage which resembled a changing room, with a clear differentiation between on the one hand dresses and high-heeled shoes, and on the other hand the usual shirts and jackets. The design (by Katrin Bombe) immediately set the tone for a binary and stereotypical contrast between the sexes, which was further underlined by attributes which accompanied the two sets, such as an iron and a hoover for the women and an axe and other tools for the men. As the audience had settled in, four female and two male actors entered the stage in their underwear and started dressing, the men as females, and the women as males. The stereotyping was further enhanced as the women strapped on artificial penises, and the men used bras with breast padding.The approach was part of an ongoing trend of the interchange of gender in Taming productions. In 2017, the Dutch Shakespeare Theatre Diever, a semi-professional theatre company directed by Jack Nieborg, produced a Taming in which the gender of the actors playing Petruchio and Katherina was determined on the night of the performance. The two main actors had learned both parts but did not know beforehand which part they were going to play on the night. A member of the audience, through a spin of a Wheel of Fortune, determined which actor would play which role that night. The production drew a record number of 25,000 visitors. The 2019 Jo Clifford adaptation of Taming, directed by Michael Fentiman, rewrote the play such that the male characters were female and vice versa. The 2019 RSC Taming, directed by Justin Audibert, employed an equally straightforward reversal of gender roles, set in a matriarchal past, and in the programme notes the director said he was "interested in seeing what happens when you get female actors to play traditionally powerful male roles, and vice versa".Productions of this type address themes such as the social construction of gender roles, the cultural conditioning on which they are based, and the ensuing imbalance of power between the opposing gender roles. One of the potential pitfalls tends to be that, while the gender swap as such may be interesting, the productions rather perpetuate existing, stereotypical perception of gender roles and binary identities, instead of breaking through them and presenting a more fluid picture of gender, power and identity. While at first, I thought this production...