There have long been calls from industry for guidance in implementing strategies for sustainable development. The Circular Economy represents the most recent attempt to conceptualize the integration of economic activity and environmental wellbeing in a sustainable way. This set of ideas has been adopted by China as the basis of their economic development (included in both the 11 th and the 12 th 'Five Year Plan'), escalating the concept in minds of western policymakers and NGOs. This paper traces the conceptualisations and origins of the Circular Economy, tracing its meanings and exploring its antecedents in economics and ecology, and discusses how the Circular Economy has been operationalised in business and policy. The paper finds that while the Circular Economy places emphasis on the redesign of processes and cycling of materials, which may contribute to more sustainable business models, it also encapsulates tensions and limitations. These include an absence of the social dimension inherent in sustainable development that limits its ethical dimensions, and some unintended consequences. This leads us to propose a revised definition of the Circular Economy as "an economic model wherein planning, resourcing, procurement, production and reprocessing are designed and managed, as both process and output, to maximize ecosystem functioning and human well-being".

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This article explores the professional identity formation of professionals and its relationship with their embodied physical image, with a particular focus on women in accounting and law. It examines the role of the professional services firm in defining a professional body image, socialization processes that contribute to the definition of the professional body, the role of the client in defining professionalism, the legitimation of certain types of embodied identities and the importance of the body in defining gendered perceptions of the self. The article draws on Bourdieu's concepts of capital to explore how physical capital is implicated in processes of socialization, subordination and control. By examining the development of professional embodiment of women in accounting and law, and drawing on interviews with contemporary practitioners, the article argues that notions of physical capital remain highly gendered in professional services firms, with implications for equality and diversity in the professions.

This paper gives a critical review of 25 years of critical accounting research on gender, addressing what we have learned to date and what are the most challenging areas to be investigated in the future. It considers accounting as a political construct implicated in perpetuating inequality, with reference to global gender challenges. Gendered histories of accounting and stories of individual struggles show barriers to entry being overcome; but challenges remain. Accounting acts as both a gendered and gendering institution in relation to career hierarchies, motherhood, work-life debates, and feminisation and segmentation, and interacts with gendered identity, embodiment and sexuality. The paper outlines the contribution of feminist theory to accounting research on gender and calls for further research on the interaction of gender relations with global capitalism.

This paper investigates the experience of motherhood and employment within the UK accounting profession by examining the oral history narratives of a small group of accountants who have recently become mothers and returned to work, thereby undertaking a process of redefinition and transformation of the self. Drawing from contemporary theories on identity, it considers how individuals make sense of the different social identities, which they take on over their life course, and to what extent social, institutional and cultural factors shape and restrict the ways in which the self is experienced. The paper extends the use of oral history methods in accounting research, arguing for the use of narrative to conceptualise identity formation, and also explores the implications for both the self and the accounting profession of interconnections and juxtapositions between the ostensibly private sphere of the home and the public sphere of employment.