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In recent years, international bodies and public opinion have recommended that governments adopt social responsibility practices to inform and be accountable to citizens about their sustainability actions in environmental, social and economic fields (Galera et al., 2014) and restore citizens' confidence in public authorities (Crane et al., 2008; Shepherd et al., 2010). This chapter reviews the literature on measuring and reporting sustainable performance in the public sector. Analyzing 35 studies published in a period of 10 years (from 2012 to 2021), we address two specific research questions: How and to what extent have public organizations changed to integrate sustainability reporting (SR) systems? What are the enabling organizational factors in adopting SR in public organizations?

This chapter aims to contribute to the literature on sustainability in the public sector by discussing how human resource and human resource management can help to integrate environmental management into organizations and improve environmental performance. Public sector scholars have neglected the study of Green Human Resource Management (GHRM) until now. Nevertheless, implementing such practices could lead to positive outcomes regarding awareness of environmental issues, organizational reputation and attractiveness, job satisfaction and organizational performance. The authors discuss the relevance and the necessity of developing a field of research on GHRM in public organizations. Starting from a conceptual review of the main literature on GHRM, this chapter provided some directions for future research.

Both authors have been involved as lay members in research and other activities for a number of years, ensuring they represent the views of members of the public. This chapter identifies what is, and what is not, patient and public involvement as well as highlighting the importance of involving members of the public in all aspects of the research process. Best practice is explored as identified in the UK Standards for Public Involvement 2019 and the UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research 2020. The implications of the Mental Capacity Act and its wording on research matters are also considered. Case studies have been incorporated to highlight the impact of involving patients and members of the public in all aspects of the research process. These include the lessons learnt by researchers and lay members of the team. The aspiration is to move towards more collaboration between members of the public and researchers; therefore, we discuss co-production of research or community-based participatory research (CBPR). We highlight the need for a better partnership between researchers and members of the public. The benefits of this are explored along with the consequences for all involved.

Trafficking¹ in human beings is gross.² It constitutes one of the most egregious violations of human rights.³ The vile nature of human trafficking is also hinged on the fact that it commodifies human beings. Hence its categorisation is modern slavery.⁴ So much of trafficking activities follow the pathways5 of other transnational forms of organised crimes and irregular cross-border movement of people.6 In response to this egregious crime, several international, regional and country laws and instruments have been used or proposed for combatting human trafficking.7 These instruments forbid trafficking in human persons and provide several preventive measures, prosecution of perpetrators and protection of victims of human trafficking.8 The number of state parties to the United Nations Protocol to prevent suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (the Palermo Protocol), demonstrates the global commitment to combatting human trafficking. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on legal systems, and the capacity of both state and private institutions to combat human trafficking, has added a knotty twist to the global problem of human trafficking. This essay looks at the trends of human trafficking in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also highlights international law and policy approaches that state parties and civil society organisations should adopt to counteract the changes and sustain the fight against human trafficking. Thus, the essay contributes to updating the legal and policy approaches to combat human trafficking in this era.

In the mid-2000s, the operator of New York City’s mass transit network committed more than a half-billion dollars to military contractor Lockheed Martin for a security technology capable, in part, of inferring threats based on analysis of data streams, of developing response strategies, and taking automated action toward alerts and calamities in light of evolving circumstances. The project was a failure. This chapter explores the conceptualization and development of this technology – rooted in cybernetics – and compares its conceptual underpinnings with some situated problems of awareness, communication, coordination, and action in emergencies as they unfold in one of the busiest transport systems in the world, the New York subway. The author shows how the technology, with all the theatrical trappings of a “legitimate” security solution, was apparently conceived without a grounded understanding of actual use-cases, and the degree to which the complex interactions which give rise to subway emergency can be anticipated in – and therefore managed through – a technological system. As a case-study, the chapter illustrates the pitfalls of deploying technology against problems which are not well-defined in the first place, to the neglect of investments against much more fundamental problems – such as inadequate communication systems, and unstable relationships with emergency response agencies – which might offer guaranteed benefits, and indeed lay a firm groundwork for future deployment of more ambitious technology.

Drawing on managerial innovation model proposed by Abrahamson (1991), this chapter tries to gain a better understanding of how the UN SDGs have impacted the practice of sustainability reporting of Spanish public universities. Data were collected from a variety of sources, such as: several email structured interviews with university managers, an examination of the Chancellor letters of sustainability reports of Spanish public universities, a detailed reading of some sustainability reports and a consultation of the website of each Spanish public university. The findings reveal that there has been an increasing number of Spanish public universities that have started to publish stand-alone sustainability reporting since the appearance of the UN SDGs. According to Abrahamson's framework, our findings reveal that governmental-policy forces have shaped the sustainability reporting landscape in the Spanish public university setting, and their behaviour is mostly explained by the forced-selection and fad/fashion perspectives.

This whistleblowing case study engages students in discussions about when and how to disclose differences of opinion on a revenue recognition matter with higher-ups in an organization. Factors to consider include the morality of whistleblowing, confidentiality obligations, the rules of conduct in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Code, Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX), Dodd–Frank, and the US Supreme Court ruling in Digital Realty, Inc. v. Somers that addresses when to report matters to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Case questions are designed to promote students’ critical thinking skills, ethical reasoning skills, and decision-making. A flowchart of AICPA ethics rule 2.130.020 (Subordination of Judgment) provides the framework for making decisions when differences exist in financial reporting. The case provides learning objectives, implementation guidance, and teaching notes. The case was used in an accounting ethics course taught at the undergraduate senior level but can also be used in auditing, fraud examination, and advanced financial reporting courses.

Companies are often accused of using sustainability disclosures as public relations tools to manage financial and non-financial stakeholders' impressions. The purpose of our study was firstly to determine how comprehensive the human rights disclosures of a sample of large international companies were and secondly, whether different narrative styles are associated with levels of disclosure to manage readers' impressions about the company. We analysed the public human rights disclosures for 154 large, international companies obtained from the UN Guiding Principles Reporting website. On average, companies complied with only one-third of the UN Guiding Principles Reporting Framework criteria. Communication about policies has the highest compliance, whilst communication about determining which human rights aspects are salient to the company, remedies for transgressions and stakeholder engagement have the lowest disclosure. When we split the sample between high disclosure and low disclosure companies, we found that the readability of the human rights disclosures is exceptionally low and even more so for low disclosure companies. Low disclosure companies used words implying Satisfaction significantly more than high disclosure companies, which provides some support for suspecting that low disclosure companies practise impression management by only presenting a ‘rosy picture’, as well as obfuscation via low readability. We add to the literature on impression management by large corporations in their sustainability reporting, and specifically human rights disclosures, by revealing how the interplay of low disclosure, low readability and overuse of words signalling Satisfaction contributes to impression management, rather than sincere attempts at accountability to all stakeholders.