Author Guidelines

Proceedings of Pragmatic Constructivism is no longer an active periodical. We encourage you to make your submission to Journal of Pragmatic Constructivism: https://tidsskrift.dk/JouPraCon

Please use the downloadable templates from the PPC websites to layout your manuscripts before the final submission. 

1 Submissions to PPC

Submissions to Proceedings of Pragmatic Constructivism are made by e-mail. There are two types of submissions:

• Conference submission: If you want to submit to a specific workshop/conference of the Research Group for Actor Reality Construction that includes a later publication of your work, please contact the respective organizer (see http://econ.au.dk/research/research-groups/actor-reality-construction/).
• Open submission: If you want to submit to the journal without presenting at a workshop/conference, please contact the current editor of PPC.

Submitted manuscripts must be written in English.

2  Copyrights of third authors

Authors have cleared all permissions and copyright conflicts as described in the general policies of PPC.

3  Format requirements

Authors must ensure that their work is complete, grammatically correct and without spelling or typographical errors. PPC has a “printed as submitted” policy; there is just minimal editing. Thus, authors should ensure sending a ready-to-print version of their work.

3.1 Manuscript

• The manuscript is electronically submitted in Microsoft Word.
• Paper format is A4 with 3cm margins on top and bottom, and 2cm margins left and right.
• For “speeches”, 2 slides from Microsoft PowerPoint need to be placed on each page of the word document. In addition, the original PowerPoint file should be submitted. “Speeches” should be accompanied by a short introductory part in Microsoft Word, explaining the main purpose of the presentation to the reader in brief.

3.1.1  Title

The title of the work is centered. The font is Times New Roman, 19 pt, bold.

3.1.2  Main text body

• The normal text body is set in Times New Roman, 10pt.
• The normal text body is single spaced. There are no additional spaces before or after paragraphs
• First paragraphs are not indented (after headings, figures or tables). Second paragraphs are indented by 1.00 cm.
• Emphasis can be added using italics. There should not be bold or underlined text.
• The font is Times New Roman.
• Headings are formatted using the “styles” function of Microsoft Word. Manual formatting is not accepted.

3.1.3  Headings

• Headings are consequently numbered using Arabic numerals. They are not ended by a point, so the numbering would be “1”, “1.1”, and “1.1.1”.
• There are only three levels of headings.
  • Heading 1:
    • Font 14 pt
    • Bold
    • Line spacing: single
    • Indent: 0 cm
    • Hanging 0.75 cm
    • Space before paragraph: 12 pt
    • Space after paragraph: 6 pt
• Heading 2:
  • Font 12 pt
  • Bold, italic
  • Line spacing: single
  • Indent: 0 cm
  • Hanging 1.00 cm
  • Space before paragraph: 12 pt
  • Space after paragraph: 6 pt
• Heading 3:
  • Font 10 pt
  • Bold, italic
  • Line spacing: single
  • Indent: 0 cm
  • Hanging 1.25 cm
  • Space before paragraph: 12 pt
  • Space after paragraph: 6 pt

3.1.4 Footnotes

• Footnotes are set in 10p using the Microsoft Word standard formatting. In the footnote, the text should be indented by 1 cm.
• There are no endnotes. But authors may add an appendix.

3.1.5 PowerPoint presentations

Special rules apply for the “speeches” section: Slides have to be readable when printed out using the “2 pages per sheet” print option in Microsoft PowerPoint.

3.2 Length

The length of the manuscript conforms to the policy of the respective section.

1. Essays: Full papers should range from 2,500 to 10,000 words including all figures, tables, appendixes, and references. The abstract should not exceed 200 words.
2. Speeches: The usual length for a PowerPoint presentation should not exceed 50 slides (corresponds to 25 printed pages). References are to be submitted separately in a Word document.
3. Notes: Extended abstracts range from 250 to 2,500 words. Though there is no formal specification, authors should may consider structuring their abstracts the following way

• Purpose: What is the reason for conducting this research? Which research question should the work answer?
• Methodology: What is the theoretical scope of this work? What are the methods used? Which instruments are employed? Which type of evidence does this work use (e.g., information on the data).
• Findings: What results have been found in the course of the research?
• Discussion: What are the implications of this research? Please refer specifically to the contributions to the meta-theory (e.g., pragmatic constructivism), the contributions to the field-specific concepts (e.g., transfer pricing), and the contributions for practice and society (e.g., managers in organizations, regulators).
• Limitations and future research: How far and why are the results presented in this paper (not) generalizable? What are the next steps for future research in this field?
• Originality: Please summarize what is new about this paper, and who can benefit from its insights.

1. Contemplations: These should not exceed 1,500 words.
2. Dialogs: Authors need to transcribe the dialogs themselves; there is no support from PPC for that. The transcript of the conversations should be edited and shortened to the relevant points. Subheadings should be added to guide the reader. The cited actors need to consent in writing to the submitted version. If desired, each author can have 1-2 highlighted quotes. In total, dialogs should not exceed 8,000 words.

3.3 Title page

The title page is composed using Microsoft Word. It contains the full name, email address, and affiliation of each contributing author. One of the authors is indicated to be the corresponding author. It also contains between 4 and 8 keywords. Authors can add acknowledgements. Authors must declare their source of funding and the role of the funder in the research process.

3.4 Figures and tables

• Authors are responsible for the quality of the figures/tables submitted in the word file. For better readability, it is suggested to add “embedded objects” to the Word file instead of “images”.
• Figure/tables need to be additionally submitted as separate files, such as Microsoft Excel.
• Authors must refer to the included figures/tables in the text.
• Figures and tables must be consecutively numbered using Arabic numerals. Figures and tables have separate counts (i.e., there is a “Figure 1” and a “Table 1”).
• Figures/tables are centered and must have meaningful captions above (aligned left). The font is 10 pt in bold. There is a line below the caption.
• The reader must be able to interpret figures/tables on a stand-alone basis. Thus, figures/tables need to have legends and sufficient information to interpret them. These are placed in or underneath the table in italics. There is a line underneath the legend.
• Figures/tables may be supplied in color for online publication. Yet, black and white is recommended as offprints will not be available in color.

3.5 References

References must be in Harvard style and carefully checked for correctness, so electronic crawlers like Google Scholar can establish references among PPC and other works.

In-text publications need to be cited as

• Red is a color (Brown and Smith, 2006: 500-501).
• Brown and Smith (2006: 500) argue that red is a color.
• Publications with 3 or more authors are always cited using “et al.”

References are formatted with a hanging indent of 1.00 cm.

The reference list at the end of the work follows the exact format of the Academy of Management Review. Please refer to the website of AMR for more information or use the standard setting in the software “Endnotes” to adhere to the style. Examples include:

3.5.1 Books

Ryan, B., Scapens, R. W., & Theobald, M. 2002. Research Methods and Methodology in Finance and Accounting (2nd ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.

3.5.2  Book chapters

Nørreklit, H., Nørreklit, L., & Mitchell, F. 2007. Theoretical Conditions for Validity in Accounting Performance Measurement. In A. Neely (Ed.), Business Performance Measurement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

3.5.3 Edited books

Jakobsen, M., Johanson, I.-L., & Nørreklit, H. (Eds.). 2011. An Actor's Approach to Management: Conceptual Framework and Company Practices. Copenhagen: DJØF.

3.5.4  Journal articles

Seal, W. 2012. Some proposals for impactful management control research. Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, 9(3): 228-244.