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This study examines how assurors make sense of sustainability assurance (SA) work and how interactions with assurance team members and clients shape assurors’ sensemaking and their actual SA work.

To obtain detailed accounts of how SA work occurs on the ground, this study explores three SA engagements by interviewing the main actors involved, both at the client firms and at their Big Four assurance providers.

Individual assurors’ (i.e. partners and other team members) sensemaking of SA work results in the crafting of their logics of action (LoAs), that is, their meanings about the objectives of SA work and how to conduct it. Without organizational socialization, team members may not arrive at shared meanings and deviate from the team-wide assurance approach. To fulfill their objectives for SA work, assurors may engage in socialization with clients or assume a temporary role. Yet, the role negotiations taking place in the shadows of the scope negotiations determine their default role during the engagement.

Two options are available to help SA statement users gauge the relevance of SA work: either displaying the SA work performed or making it more uniform.

This study theoretically grounds how assurors make sense of SA work and documents how (the lack of) professional socialization, organizational socialization and socialization of frequent interaction partners at the client shape actual SA work. Thereby, it unravels the SA work concealed behind SA statements.

Drawing on prior research on strengths use and job performance, this study aims to investigate how employees’ strengths use for tasks and strengths use for relationships jointly influence role breadth self-efficacy and subsequent job performance, specifically in- and extra-role performances.

To test the assumptions, the authors methodologically performed a polynomial regression with response surface analysis using data collected from multiple time points and sources (i.e. 312 employee–supervisor dyads in Chinese companies).

The results showed that the higher the congruence between strengths use for tasks and strengths use for relationships, the higher the employees’ role breadth self-efficacy. Employees’ role breadth self-efficacy was greater when both strengths use for tasks and strengths use for relationships were high. Furthermore, the congruence between strengths use for tasks and strengths use for relationships had indirect effects on in- and extra-role performances via role breadth self-efficacy.

This study uniquely contributes to the strengths use literature by offering a more nuanced understanding of the consequences of strengths use for tasks and strengths use for relationships in the Chinese context. It highlights the importance of both types of strengths use for improving employee performance in Chinese organizations. Furthermore, this study provides new theoretical insights into the relationship between strengths use and job performance by ascertaining the mediating effect of role breadth self-efficacy.

Digital labor platforms (DLPs) are transforming the nature of the work for an increasing number of workers, especially through extensively employing automated algorithms for performing managerial functions. In this novel working setting – characterized by algorithmic governance, and automatic matching, rewarding and punishing mechanisms – gig-workers play an essential role in providing on-demand services for final customers. Since gig-workers’ continued participation is crucial for sustainable service delivery in platform contexts, this study aims to identify and examine the antecedents of their working outcomes, including burnout and engagement.

We suggested a theoretical framework, grounded in the job demands-resources heuristic model to investigate how the interplay of job demands and resources, resulting from working in DLPs, explains gig-workers’ engagement and burnout. We further empirically tested the proposed model to understand how DLPs' working conditions, in particular their algorithmic management, impact gig-working outcomes.

Our findings indicate that job resources – algorithmic compensation, work autonomy and information sharing– have significant positive effects on gig-workers’ engagement. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that job insecurity, unsupportive algorithmic interaction (UAI) and algorithmic injustice significantly contribute to gig-workers’ burnout. Notably, we found that job resources substantially, but differently, moderate the relationship between job demands and gig-workers’ burnout.

This study contributes a theoretically accurate and empirically grounded understanding of two clusters of conditions – job demands and resources– as a result of algorithmic management practice in DLPs. We developed nuanced insights into how such conditions are evaluated by gig-workers and shape their engagement or burnout in DLP emerging work settings. We further uncovered that in gig-working context, resources do not similarly buffer against the negative effects of job demands.

Innovative work behaviour (IWB) has long been advocated as a crucial resource for organisations. Evidence that work characteristics stimulate the adoption of IWB is widespread. Yet, the relationship between knowledge characteristics and IWB has often been overlooked. This study aims to address this gap by examining this relationship.

Building on an integrative vision of innovation, this study analyses the effects of combinations in work characteristics on IWB through a configurational approach. Job autonomy, complexity, problem solving, specialisation and demand for constant learning were examined as determinants of IWB using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis.

Based on a sample of 214 Belgium employees, the results highlight seven configurations of work characteristics to elicit high levels of IWB. For six of them, problem solving appears as a needed condition.

Presented findings offer insights for organisations aiming at evolving in a competitive context to generate optimal conditions for promoting employee innovation.

While most studies have tested the influence of work characteristics independently, this research investigates the joint influence of work characteristics and identifies how combinations of multiple variables lead to IWB.

Operational risks can cause considerable, atypical disturbances and impact food supply chain (SC) resilience. Indicatively, the COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruptions in the UK food services as nationwide stockouts led to unprecedented discrepancies between retail and home-delivery supply capacity and demand. To this effect, this study aims to examine the emergence of digital platforms as an innovative instrument for food SC resilience in severe market disruptions.

An interpretive multiple case-study approach was used to unravel how different generations of e-commerce food service providers, i.e. established and emergent, responded to the need for more resilient operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

SC disruption management for high-impact low-frequency events requires analysing four research elements: platformisation, structural variety, process flexibility and system resource efficiency. Established e-commerce food operators use partner onboarding and local waste valorisation to enhance resilience. Instead, emergent e-commerce food providers leverage localised rapid upscaling and product personalisation.

Digital food platforms offer a highly customisable, multisided digital marketplace wherein platform members may aggregate product offerings and customers, thus sharing value throughout the network. Platform-induced disintermediation allows bidirectional flows of data and information among SC partners, ensuring compliance and safety in the food retail sector.

The study contributes to the SC configuration and resilience literature by investigating the interrelationship among platformisation, structural variety, process flexibility and system resource efficiency for safe and resilient food provision within exogenously disrupted environments.

A gap between research and practice is commonly perceived throughout accounting academia. However, empirical evidence on the magnitude of this detachment remains scarce. The authors provide new evidence to the ongoing debate by introducing a novel topic-based approach to capture the research-practice gap and quantify its extent. They also explore regional differences in the research-practice gap.

The authors apply the unsupervised machine learning approach Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) to compare the topical composition of 2,251 articles from six premier research, practice and bridging journals from the USA and Europe between 2009 and 2019. The authors extend the existing methods of summarizing literature and develop metrics that allow researchers to evaluate the research-practice gap. The authors conduct a plethora of additional analyses to corroborate the findings.

The results substantiate a pronounced topic-related research-practice gap in accounting literature and document its statistical significance. Moreover, the authors uncover that this gap is more pronounced in the USA than in Europe, highlighting the importance of institutional differences between academic communities.

The authors objectify the debate about the extent of a research-practice gap and stimulate further discussions about explanations and consequences.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to deploy a rigorous machine learning approach to measure a topic-based research-practice gap in the accounting literature. Additionally, the authors provide theoretical rationales for the extent and regional differences in the research-practice gap.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive knowledge structure for environmental accounting (EA) research by identifying research hotspots and frontiers and suggesting future trends for scholarly investigation.

Using the bibliometric method, the paper analyzed 321 academic articles and reviews in international journals from the Scopus database. Science mapping, including strategic diagrams, network analysis and thematic maps, was used to analyze the evolution of topics and to recommend future research trends.

EA research is an emerging trend. This study presents the landscape of EA research by constructing the “synthesis house of knowledge” in EA. Significant EA research areas were identified and future research trends were suggested based on the results.

This paper provides insights into the current state of EA research and identifies potential future research trends that can help scholars and experts develop and stimulate further advancement of the research in this field.

Results may motivate policymakers and government agencies to formulate regulations to enforce appropriate corporate environmental strategies to better manage environmental costs and reduce community environmental impact.

The study provides an intellectually structured literature review of the EA research field; identifies the main themes through the innovative use of network analysis, strategic diagrams and thematic maps; highlights research gaps; and offers potential research questions and suggestions for future research. The novelty of this paper lies in the “synthesis house of knowledge” in EA and the research gaps and potential and specific research questions constructed from the findings.

The aim of this study is to examine the relationships between taking charge, bootlegging innovation and innovative job performance, and to explore the moderating roles of felt responsibility for constructive change (FRCC) and creative self-efficacy (CSE).

Data for this research was collected from 503 employees working in a chain company. Through a longitudinal study design, a three-wave survey with 397 valid data provided support for the proposed theoretical model.

The results maintain a positive association between taking charge, bootlegging innovation and innovative job performance, indicating the mediating effect of bootlegging innovation. Additionally, both the FRCC and CSE facilitate the indirect effect of taking charge on innovative job performance through bootlegging innovation. Furthermore, the integrated moderated mediation model analysis suggested that FRCC is more vital in improving employees' innovative job performance.

This research aims to break the black box between taking charge and innovative job performance, which has been relatively unexplored. Drawing from self-determination theory (SDT) and the proactive motivation model, the authors verify the bridge-building role of bootlegging innovation and the dual-facilitating effects of FRCC and CSE while employees conduct taking charge. This study’s results provide new insight for managers to foster, encourage and support employees' proactive behavior.

The paper aims to explore the relationship between accounting and racial violence through an investigation of sharecropping in the postbellum American South.

A range of primary sources including peonage case files of the US Department of Justice and the archives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are utilised. Data are analysed by reference to Randall Collins' theory of violence. Consistent with this theory, a micro-sociological approach to examining violent encounters is employed.

It is demonstrated that the production of alternative or competing accounts, accounting manipulation and failure to account generated interactions where confrontational tension culminated in bluster, physical attacks and lynching. Such violence took place in the context of potent racial ideologies and institutions.

The paper is distinctive in its focus on the interface between accounting and “actual” (as opposed to symbolic) violence. It reveals how accounting processes and traces featured in the highly charged emotional fields from which physical violence could erupt. The study advances knowledge of the role of accounting in race relations from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, a largely unexplored period in the accounting history literature. It also seeks to extend the research agenda on accounting and slavery (which has hitherto emphasised chattel slavery) to encompass the practice of debt peonage.

How does a manager’s coaching behaviour encourage taking charge behaviour among subordinates? Although prior research has found a positive association between managerial coaching behaviour and employee performance, to date few studies have examined its effect on proactive behaviours in the workplace such as taking charge. Drawing on social exchange theory (SET) and social cognitive theory (SCT), this study develops a theoretical model to examine the mediating effects of work engagement and role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE) in the relationship between managerial coaching and subordinates taking charge. Additionally, drawing on social role theory (SRT), we test whether our proposed relationships are contingent on subordinates’ gender.

We tested our proposed moderated-mediation model using empirical data collected across two waves from 196 employees within a large Malaysian services enterprise. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results revealed that managerial coaching has a significant, positive relationship with taking charge, work engagement and RBSE. However, only work engagement was found to partially mediate the relationship between managerial coaching and taking charge. Subordinates’ gender was found to positively attenuate the direct effect between managerial coaching and taking charge among females. However, the mediating effects of work engagement and RBSE in managerial coaching and taking charge were found to be not contingent on subordinates’ gender.

Finding from this study reveals that managerial coaching is useful in shaping employees' taking charge behaviour through work engagement. Hence, organisations should focus on strategies aiming to enhance managers' coaching capabilities.

This study extends the nomological networks of managerial coaching by highlighting it as a predictor of taking charge. Moreover, drawing on SET and SCT to explain the mechanism of managerial coaching and taking charge, we provide a novel perspective on how managerial coaching can influence taking charge. Specifically, we highlight the critical role of work engagement as a key mechanism that influences the relationship between managerial coaching and taking charge. Finally, we demonstrate managerial coaching as a means through which organisations can improve individual functioning.