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The objective of this study is to determine the impact of GHG assurance on firms’ carbon emissions performance (CEP) regarding curbing carbon emissions and the effect on such by the GHG assurance provider’s affiliation and reputation. It also explores whether the affiliation and reputation of GHG assurance providers imply the relationship between GHG assurance and the firm’s CEP. Further, this study examines the moderating effect of the country’s development level on the relationship.

Based on a sample of international firms from 56 countries spanning the period from 2012 to 2020, this study utilizes the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. We also run the OLS regression at times t+1 and t+2 to verify the baseline results. To address the endogeneity concerns arising from self-selection bias and the causality effect, this study applies the generalized method of moment (GMM) and the Heckman test.

This study finds that GHG assurance leads to better CEP by firms. We also find that engaging with accounting assurance providers leads firms to a better CEP than non-accounting assurance providers. Our results show that Big Four auditors can help firms decrease carbon emissions. We also find that the positive effect of GHG assurance is prevalent in firms operating in developed countries.

Our study only considers the influence of the assuror’s reputation and affiliation on CEP without examining other factors that may influence the quality of assurance services provided.

Our study provides a practical implication related to the influence of a GHG assurance provider’s affiliation and reputation globally by providing evidence that accounting and Big Four assurance providers do play a significant role in a firm’s carbon emission performance. This study offers great insights into the GHG assurance impact on CEP with the interplay between the assuror’s affiliation and reputation and the country’s development.

This paper enriches the limit evidence on GHG assurance and CEP by providing novel evidence on the relationship between GHG assurance and a firm’s CEP. Moreover, this study provides insights into the implication of a country’s development level on the role of GHG assurance in CEP.

This chapter will focus on the use of reflective dialogues (RDs) to explore pedagogical practice in higher education. RDs allow researchers and participants to reflect on observed phenomena together, engaging in collaborative reflection that may allow both the researcher and the researched to gain from the interaction, throwing into focus different aspects of practice and a different perspective on the situation, and blurring the boundaries of research and researched into a more reciprocal relationship. Drawing on research which investigated the relationship between critical pedagogical theory and practice with 10 self-identifying critical pedagogues across eight English universities, I will explore the benefits and tensions of using a reflective dialogue approach, and the impact this methodology can have on researchers and participants. This chapter will make a case for RDs as both a practice for educators and as a methodology and explore how to do it, supported by relevant methodological literature, as well as the benefits and challenges of using RDs in social research, concluding with a discussion on how RDs might be used in other contexts to aid professional learning and reflection.

Background: Ideas always have and always will change the world; with ideas-engagement enabling individuals to become more knowledgeable, better able to make good decisions and better positioned to re-align their values in response to new progressive norms and beliefs. Given these potential benefits, of primary interest is how citizens can be most effectively encouraged to engage with new ideas.

Methods: With this study we test the efficacy of two approaches designed to enhance citizen’s perceptions regarding the value of ideas-engagement. Specifically, we recontextualise a previously undertaken small-scale randomised control trial designed to stimulate states of either curiosity or pragmatic prospection amongst two randomly allocated groups of respondents. Our target variables involve the importance respondents attribute to staying up to date, as well as to four related attitudinal variables. Our target audience is the voting age population of England.

Results: 515 participants took part in the experiment, with 269 receiving the curiosity stimulating intervention and 246, the prospection intervention. Our findings suggest that, by the end of four weeks, only the intervention designed to promote pragmatic prospection had significantly impacted on the importance respondents attribute to staying up to date. It also positively impacted the value-scores for one of the secondary attitudinal variables (relating to the importance of supporting physical and mental-health).

Conclusions: While this study provides useful insight regarding ideas-engagement, further work is needed. In particular, future studies will require a larger sample, so as to ascertain the impact of these approaches on “ideas refusers”. Also required is the inclusion of a control group to provide a definitive counter factual. Furthermore, since positive changes in attitudes towards ideas-engagement also ideally leads to changes in behaviours, questions are also needed to examine the sources of ideas respondents subsequently engage with (or not) as a result of these interventions.

Today, changing business systems, especially the COVID-19 epidemic, and the rapid development of technology have brought the phenomenon of spirituality to a new point. Cyber spirituality and dataism are also starting to become the focus of attention in this field. This situation also affects the issue of spirituality in the workplace. While the subject of spirituality in the workplace keeps up with innovations and expands in the literature, the relationship between religion and spirituality continues to be discussed and examined. For this reason, this study aims primarily to explain the relationship between the concept of religion and spirituality. In light of current developments, it is to mention the place of spirituality in the workplace between these two concepts.

This paper contributes to a dialogue about the psychoanalytic concept of free association and its application in the context of qualitative research interviewing. In doing so, it also adds to wider discussion regarding the relationship between clinical psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic psychotherapy and qualitative research.

Critical consideration of different perspectives on the application of free association in the qualitative research interview, extending earlier work addressing this issue. Differences and similarities in the way the concept of free association is articulated are examined regarding its framing in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy.

Whether researchers see themselves as borrowing, applying or drawing inspiration from free association, there is scope for muddling distinct ways of viewing it as it is conceived in psychoanalysis.

Considerations are outlined for researchers interested in psychoanalytically informed methods to be mindful of.

The new ways to complete financial transactions have been developed by setting up mobile payment (m-payment) platforms and such platforms to access banking in the financial mainstream can transact as never before. But, does m-payment have veiled consequences? To seek an answer, the research was undertaken to explore the dark sides of m-payment for consumers by extending the theory of innovation resistance (IR) and by measuring non-adoption intention (NAI).

Three hundred individuals using popular online m-payment apps such as Paytm, PhonePe, Amazon Pay and Google Pay were surveyed for the primary data. IBM AMOS based structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data.

Each m-payment transaction leaves a digital record, making some vulnerable consumers concerned about privacy threats. Lack of global standards prevents consumers from participating in the m-payment system properly until common interfaces are established based on up-to-date standards. Self-compassion (SC) characteristics such as anxiety, efficacy, fatigue, wait-and-see tendencies and the excessive choice of technology effect contribute to the non-adoption of m-payment.

This study proposes a threat model and empirically explores the dark sides of m-payment. In addition, it also unveils the moderator's role of SC in building the structural relationship between IR and NAI.

The ongoing paradigm shift in the energy sector holds paramount implications for the realization of the sustainable development goals, encompassing critical domains such as resource optimization, environmental stewardship and workforce opportunities. Concurrently, this transformative trajectory within the power sector possesses a dual-edged nature; it may ameliorate certain challenges while accentuating others. In light of the burgeoning research stream on open innovation, this study aims to examine the intricate dynamics of knowledge-based industry-university-research networking, with an overarching objective to elucidate and calibrate the equilibrium of ambidextrous innovation within power systems.

The authors scrutinize the role of different innovation organizations in three innovation models: ambidextrous, exploitative and exploratory, and use a multiobjective decision analysis method-entropy weight TOPSIS. The research was conducted within the sphere of the power industry, and the authors mined data from the widely used PatSnap database.

Results show that the breadth of knowledge search and the strength of an organization’s direct relationships are crucial for ambidextrous innovation, with research institutions having the highest impact. In contrast, for exploitative innovation, depth of knowledge search, the number of R&D patents and the number of innovative products are paramount, with universities playing the most significant role. For exploratory innovation, the depth of knowledge search and the quality of two-mode network relations are vital, with research institutions yielding the best effect. Regional analysis reveals Beijing as the primary hub for ambidextrous and exploratory innovation organizations, while Jiangsu leads for exploitative innovation.

The study offers valuable implications to cope with the dynamic state of ambidextrous innovation performance of the entire power system. In light of the findings, the dynamic state of ambidextrous innovation performance within the power system can be adeptly managed. By emphasizing a balance between exploratory and exploitative strategies, stakeholders are better positioned to respond to evolving challenges and opportunities. Thus, the study offers pivotal guidance to ensure sustained adaptability and growth in the power sector’s innovation landscape.

The primary originality is to extend and refine the theoretical understanding of ambidextrous innovation within power systems. By integrating several theoretical frameworks, including social network theory, knowledge-based theory and resource-based theory, the authors enrich the theoretical landscape of power system ambidextrous innovation. Also, this inclusive examination of two-mode network structures, including the interplay between knowledge and cooperation networks, unveils the intricate interdependencies between these networks and the ambidextrous innovation of power systems. This approach significantly widens the theoretical parameters of innovation network research.

Risk factors related delay hinder the schedule performance of most construction projects in the world. It is a critical challenge to realize the advantages of prefabricated construction projects (PCPs) under the negative effect of schedule delay. This paper aims to propose an exhaustive list of risk factors impeding the progress of PCPs and evaluate the collected risk factors based on the cause–effect relations. The ultimate goal is to improve the understanding of the complex relations among various risk factors related delay in PCPs, and also offer managers a reference on aspect of schedule risk management.

This paper proposes a hybrid method of GT–DEMATEL–ISM, that is combing grounded theory, DEMATEL (decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory) and ISM (Interpretative Structural Modeling), to collect, evaluate and structure risk factors related delay for PCPs. The research procedure of this methodology is divided into three stages systematically involving qualitative and quantitative analysis. In the first stage, GT is utilized to implement qualitative analysis to collect the risk factors leading to schedule delay in PCPs. While, the quantitative analysis is to analyze and evaluate the collected risk factors based on the cause–effect relations in the next two stages evaluation by the DEMATEL focuses on quantifying the priority and intensity of the relations between factors. Additionally, ISM is employed to construct the hierarchical structure and graphically represent the pairwise relations between factors.

The outcome of qualitative investigation by grounded theory proposes a theoretical framework of risk factors related delay for PCPs. The framework contains three levels of category, namely, core category, main category and initial category and provides a list of risk factors related delay. Following this finding, evaluation results by the DEMATEL classify factors into cause and effect groups and determine 11 critical delay risk factors. Meanwhile, the findings show that risks referring to organizational management issue foremost impact the progress of PCPs. Furthermore, a systemic multilevel hierarchical structure model is visually constructed by ISM to present the pairwise linkages of critical factors. The model provides the risk transmission chains to map the spread path of delay impact in the system.

The contribution of the study involves twofold issues. Methodologically, this research proposes a hybrid method GT–DEMATEL–ISM used to identify and analyze factors for a complex system. It is also applicable to other fields facing similar problems that require collecting, evaluating and structuring certain elements as a whole in a comprehensive perspective. The theoretical contribution is to fill the relevant research gap of the existing body of knowledge. To the best knowledge of the authors, this paper is the first attempt to integrate qualitative and quantitative research for risk analysis related delay and take the insight into the whole process of PCPs covering off-site manufacture and on-site construction. Furthermore, the analysis of findings provided both a micro view focusing on individual risk factor and a managerial view from a systematic level. The findings also contribute the effective information to improve the risk management related schedule delay in PCPs.

The main objective of this study is to analyze the impact of spiritual intelligence (SI) based on its four dimensions (critical existential thinking (CET), personal meaning production (PMP), transcendental awareness (TA) and conscious state expansion (CSE)) on teachers' turnover intention (TI) through sanctification of work (SoW) and job satisfaction (JS).

Drawing from multiple intelligence theory, this study adopted a cross-sectional design to explore the hypothesized relationships. Copies of the questionnaire were distributed to 367 teachers working in public schools in Plateau State, Nigeria, and 290 out of the retrieved copies were useable. The data collected were analyzed using variance-based structural equation modeling (SEM), Smart-PLS 4.

The results suggest that SI does not significantly influence TI, while SoW and JS mediate the relationship between SI and TI.

The result suggests that SoW and JS are significant mechanisms through which SI predicts teachers' TI. This highlights the need for educational policymakers to integrate spiritual literature as well as imbibe spiritual practices such as prayers, meditations and yoga either at work or privately to enhance the development of SI among teachers.

The results offer an insightful understanding of SI and how it influences work outcomes. The mechanism roles of SoW and JS explain the process by which one's perceived numinous object, activity event and job experience influence a job decision.

The purpose of this research is to identify and test selected economic and organisational factors influencing the sustainability of participatory budgeting (PB) in Slovakia.

The data were collected from websites and publicly available documents from all local governments with urban municipality status in Slovakia, for a total of 155 municipalities, 59 of which have established a participatory budget. The main method applied was correlation analysis.

The findings indicate: (1) a weak inverse correlation between debt level and the continuous existence of PB in municipalities; (2) a moderate direct correlation between the duration of PB in a municipality and integration of PB in its programme budgeting; (3) a moderate direct correlation between the duration of PB in a municipality and the political experience of the mayor.

The findings are derived from a quantitative analysis of cases localised in a single country, and therefore interpretation requires an awareness of the context of local democracy in Slovakia. In this regard, any generalisation beyond the context under study needs to be considered with caution.

This research fills a gap in the role of PB in the context of sustainability, especially in the context of a post-communist country like Slovakia. It applies a quantitative approach to the analysis of PB, which is relatively rare in this field of study (qualitative case studies are predominant in PB research).