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Technical Information Systems (TIS) is the department responsible for the flow of techno‐commercial information in the Strip Mills Division of the British Steel Corporation (BSC). To give some idea of its size, the Division employs 64,000 people, has a gross turnover of around £600 million and has a number of steelmaking and finishing plants in the U.K., the majority being in Wales. TIS has been operating in its present form since 1968 when the industry was nationalised, and its initial aim from which it has not deviated was to set up small localised information units at each large works with a major back‐up facility at the Research Centre, Port Talbot.

Based on institutional theory, this paper aims to examine whether, and if so which, institutional forces influence the quality of China’s listed financial institutions’ (FIs) sustainability disclosures.

Using univariate statistical and multiple regression analyses, this study quantitatively examines the impacts of coercive pressure from the government and stock exchanges, imitation within subsectors and normative pressure from industry associations and regulators on the quality of China’s listed FIs’ sustainability disclosures. Assessment of the robustness of regression results uses panel random-effects and generalized methods of moments estimation.

Financial sector corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure quality did not increase dramatically following issue of the “Guiding Opinions on Establishing a Green Finance System.” However, a convergence in quality is found over time. State ownership concentration and state links to dominant shareholders negatively impact the quality of financial sector sustainability disclosures, whereas stock exchange index listing requirements and industry association reporting guidance have positive influences.

First, data availability limits the sample to listed financial firms with RKS quality scores. Thus, results may not be generalizable to the broader listed and unlisted financial sector. Second, this study only examines the influence of external forces based on institutional theory. However, internal institutional forces, such as corporate governance, may require examination. This study’s results indicate that coercive pressure, as represented by issue of the “Green Finance” policy, has not yet prompted the financial sector to improve reporting quality; however, normative pressure has had significant influence in influencing FIs’ CSR practices, with China’s banks potentially taking a leading role.

The financial sector has a lower direct environmental impact than traditional polluting industries and different operating and reporting structures, features often used to argue for its exclusion in prior studies. However, its indirect environmental impact via lending and investing activities is significant, suggesting evidence on the determinants of sustainability disclosure quality is required. This study uses evidence from China’s financial sector to reduce this gap in the literature.

Perhaps the marvel is that there should exist at all a department in a British official body at national level dedicated to the support of research into information needs and the problems of providing and operating library and information services. That it does exist may be regarded as the product of a typically British combination of conscious decision‐making and historical accident.

Based on some of the results and definitions provided in the paper “system linkage: structural functions and hierarchies” and adding new definitions that are in keeping with the spirit of the same paper, new results have been obtained that explore the utility of the structural input‐output function.

Our approach is based principally on the application of graph theory to the study of relationships between variables using specific set theory concepts.

A result such as the fact that A covers B, for example, can be interpreted in terms of the latter set being formed of direct influences from elements in the former set in relation to one or more than one relationships. Analogously, the invariant set concept may be interpreted as the set maintaining its structure and status, remaining constant with respect to any possible relationships.

From a practical point of view, in the context of the study of networks within an ecosystem, authors (such as Patten et al. and Patten) have demonstrated that indirect effects between the variables of an ecosystem outweigh direct effects. This is the notion that the present authors have borne in mind in order to extend previous results to indirect influences from a discrete perspective.

This paper aims to examine the differences in quality and quantity of disclosures dealing with greenhouse gas emissions among companies with a relatively large or small carbon footprint. It also considers whether disclosures are being included in the primary report to stakeholders (an integrated report) or in a secondary source (a sustainability report).

A comprehensive carbon disclosure checklist was constructed based on professional and academic literature to identify and categorise carbon disclosures. Quality is gauged according to a multi-dimensional assessment derived from prior research based on density of reporting, disclosure attributes, management orientation, integration of information, ease of analysis, reporting on strategy, use of independent assurance and repetition. A content analysis is used to gauge the quantity and quality of carbon disclosures of 50 companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Differences in the quantity and quality scores of high- and low-carbon companies are tested using a Mann–Whitney U test.

Carbon disclosures are used as part of a legitimacy management exercise. This involves not just the use of additional environmental disclosure to placate stakeholders as environmental impact grows. The quality of reporting and location of disclosures are, perhaps, more important for understanding how companies are responding to stakeholder expectations for reporting on carbon emissions and climate change.

Despite mounting scientific evidence on the risks posed by climate changes, companies remain reluctant to commit to high-quality reporting on specific steps being taken to reduce carbon emissions. Even when disclosures are being targeted at key stakeholders, the possibility of impression management remains. It may, therefore, be necessary to have carbon reporting regulated and independently assured. More guidance on how companies should be managing and reporting on carbon emissions and climate change may also be required.

Despite mounting scientific evidence on the risks posed by climate changes, companies remain reluctant to commit to high-quality reporting on specific steps being taken to reduce carbon emissions. Even when disclosures are being targeted at key stakeholders, the possibility of impression management remains. It may, therefore, be necessary to have carbon reporting regulated and independently assured. More guidance on how companies should be managing and reporting on carbon emissions and climate change may also be required.

The study merges the traditional approach of focusing on the quantity of disclosures to illustrate the application of legitimacy theory in a sustainability/integrated reporting setting with less-seldom-studied quality and location of reporting. This result provides a more nuanced perspective of how carbon disclosures are being used to manage stakeholders’ reporting expectations.

Focusing on a sample of firms from environmentally sensitive industries over several years, this study aims to reexamine the association between environmental disclosure and environmental performance.

The authors use a panel data analysis to examine how the interaction between environmental performance and economic and legitimacy factors influence firms’ environmental disclosures.

Results suggest that environmental performance moderates the effect of economic and legitimacy incentives on firms’ propensity to provide proprietary environmental disclosure, with both sets of incentives being influential. More specifically, there appears to be a reporting bias based on the firm’s environmental performance whereas the high-performers disclose more environmental information in the three following vehicles: annual report, 10-K and sustainability reports combined. Results also show that economic and legitimacy factors influence the disclosure decisions of the low and high environmental performers differently.

Understanding the determinants of environmental disclosure for high and low environmental performers helps regulators to close the reporting gap between these firms.

There is little evidence to suggest that firms with low-environmental performance attempt to use their disclosures to legitimize their environmental operations.

The study examines environmental disclosures of 78 firms over a period of 14 years in annual, 10-K and sustainability reports. The panel data analysis controls for significant cross-sectional and period effects.

The study sought to evaluate a state agricultural leadership program, Leadership Idaho Agriculture (LIA), according to the perceptions of program graduates. Of the 348 graduates from 1993-2001, 246 returned a completed instrument for a total response rate of 70.7%. Participants rated communication skills as the most frequently used skills and public speaking skills as the least frequently used skills emphasized within the LIA program. Participants perceived LIA to have the greatest impact in their career and their ability to set new goals in their careers. Participants reported that the four LIA program objectives were met with an above average success rate or higher but recommended the inclusion of content related to conducting business meetings and conflict management.

Describes issues relevant to multilevel systems and, as a particular case, living systems analysed from the entities point of view. As attributes, behaviours, sub‐systems, etc., entities are primitive terms. For this reason, in examining issues such as the influences between entities, look indirectly at issues referring to different levels in the system. This notion was also extended in considering the environment system and analysing the different relationships between the system and the environment system.

Not all cells are equal: each tissue and organ has its own type of cell. Although the nucleus of each cell in a living system has the same genetic information, each one dispenses of the lion's share of that information and only those genes that are necessary for carrying out the function of the particular organ or tissue to which they belong remain active. Despite the fact that in specific scientific fields, such as ecosystem studies, it is possible to measure the relationships between different variables and to compare the various direct and indirect effects they may have on one another, there has been no such development in the wider context of a General Systems Theory. This paper sets out to address the question of cellular change by interpreting processes such as direct and indirect causality, cellular meiosis and mutation of cells.

To attract funding from ethical investment trusts, it is expected that investee companies will need to undertake corporate social disclosure (CSD) in annual reports. This paper first explores the notion that companies included within the portfolio of ethical investment trusts (ETIs), are likely to provide a greater quantity of CSD than companies in which ethical trusts have not invested (NETIs). Second, the paper examines the characteristics of companies that undertake CSD, and their relationship to the ETI/NETI classification. Results from the examination of a sample of 300 Australian annual reports for 147 companies over a five‐year period (1990–1994), indicate that CSD is related to size, industry visibility, and company presence in both foreign countries and foreign stock exchanges. The significance of this paper, in addition to building upon empirical research into CSD, is that, in a range of circumstances, companies with an ethical investor as a shareholder, provide greater transparency about their social and environmental activities, than companies without an ethical investor. As a result, case can be made for the direct regulation and monitoring of ETI companies to be reduced, relative to NETIs, given that ethical investment may fulfil a market based regulatory function.