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The purpose of this paper is to investigate accounting and performance reporting practices embraced in the midst of a pluralistic institutional environment of an emerging economy (EE), Zambia. The research is necessitated due to the increased presence and influence of donor institutions whose information needs may not conform to the needs of local citizens in many EEs.

The study draws on institutional pluralism and Ekeh’s post-colonial theory of “two publics” to depict pluralistic environments that are typical of EEs. Primary data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 33 respondents drawn from the main stakeholder groups involved in health service delivery including legislators, policy makers, regulators, healthcare professionals and health service managers. Data analysis took the form of thematic analysis which involved identifying, analysing and constructing patterns and themes implicit within the data that were deemed to address the study’s research questions.

Findings indicate that Zambia’s institutional environment within the health sector is highly fragmented and pluralistic as reflected by the multiplicity of both internal and external stakeholders. These stakeholder groups equally require different reporting mechanisms to fulfil their information expectations.

The multiple reporting practices evident within the health sector entail that the effectiveness of health programmes may be compromised due to the fragmentation in goals between government and international donor institutions. Rather than pooling resources and skills for maximum impact, these practices have the effect of dispersing performance efforts with the consequence of compromising their impact. Fragmented reporting equally complicates the work of policy makers in terms of monitoring the progress and impact of such programmes.

Beyond Goddard et al. (2016), the study depicts the usefulness of Ekeh’s theory in understanding how organisations and institutions operating in pluralistic institutional environments may be better managed. In view of contradictory expectations of accounting and performance reporting requirements between the civic and primordial publics, the study indicates that different practices, mechanisms and structures have to be embraced in order to maintain institutional harmony and relevance to different communities within the health sector.

The research objectives of this chapter are threefold. First, we explore what is the current status of corporate water accounting tools and methodologies. Second, we develop a framework for analyzing corporate water accounting and reporting. Third, we investigate what French CAC 40 companies account for and report in relations to the water challenge.

We collected annual and sustainability reports from all CAC 40 companies as well as their water Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) responses when available. We also collected all publically available corporate water accounting methodologies to assess the international water accounting field. We coded the data according to our designed framework via qualitative data analysis software.

Although water is seen as equally important to climate change (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), 2009), French multinationals have a very immature reporting on this topic. Most still do not report to the water disclosure questionnaire of CDP in 2014 and rely on basic figures such as global water consumption. We analyzed the multiple water accounting, reporting, and risk assessment frameworks that have mushroomed since 2000, and question the impact of this fragmented field on the maturity of the water performance reporting by French companies.

The developed framework for analysis of water reporting can be used for sustainability teaching at university level.

We developed the first comprehensive analytical framework for water corporate reporting assessment. Moreover, this research is the first comprehensive study of water reporting in Europe. We therefore contribute to extend our comprehension of corporate maturity in water stewardship and water performance reporting.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which performance indicators (PIs) reported by New Zealand (NZ) higher education institutions (HEIs) correspond with accounting standards and guidance and the effects issuance of principles-based authoritative guidance and early adoption of Public Benefit Entity Financial Reporting Standard 48 (PBE FRS 48) have on the PIs disclosed.

Using a content analysis index derived from accounting standards and guidance, we conduct a longitudinal assessment of the 2016 and 2019 statements of service performance published by 22 NZ HEIs.

The PIs reported extend beyond the service performance elements proposed by standard-setters. Despite few indicators on intermediate and broader outcomes, the measures disclosed by HEIs are reflective of their role in the NZ economy and the national Tertiary Education Strategy. The results show that principles-based authoritative guidance and early adoption of PBE FRS 48 influence the focus and type of measures disclosed, while there is no evidence of improvements in the reporting of impacts, outcomes and information useful for performance evaluation.

This paper provides timely insights for standard-setters and regulators on the influence principles-based accounting standards and guidance have on non-financial reporting practices.

This study contributes to the scant literature on HEIs’ service performance reporting. It presents a model for conceptualising HEIs’ PIs that can be used as a basis for future research on non-financial reporting. It also reflects on the tension between accountability and “accountingisation”, suggesting that, although the PIs reported support formal accountability, they do not communicate whether HEIs’ activities and outputs meet their social purpose.

With the increasing adoption of integrated reporting and the subsequent interest of the accounting discipline in its development, this paper aims to examine the enablers and barriers to the involvement of accountants in integrated reporting.

The paper adopts a case study approach by collecting interview data from six organisations that have adopted integrated reporting internationally. In the selected organisations, face-to-face and telephone interviews were conducted with professionals who are involved in the preparation of an integrated report. The interviewees in this study included key integrated report preparers including accountants, corporate reporting managers, sustainability managers and other report preparers. Institutional entrepreneurship provided the theoretical insights for this study.

The study found that accountants’ expertise in corporate reporting and especially their knowledge of the assurance process was one of the major reasons why they were involved in integrated reporting. Accountants’ in-depth understanding of an organisation in addition to their general analytical and interpersonal skills were also found to be useful in preparing an integrated report. However, the voluntary nature of integrated reporting along with the lack of sufficient guidelines deterred accountants from being involved in integrated reporting. The study also found that accountants themselves did not see value in integrated reporting and found it challenging to convert numerical information to narratives, thus limiting their involvement in integrated reporting.

Whilst prior studies have underlined accountants’ institutionalised practices, this study uncovers the strategies applied by accountants to maintain their institutionalised practices. The specific application of the institutional entrepreneurship concept identifies mechanisms and strategies through which accountants restrict their practices to narrow taken-for-granted roles.

This study uncovers practical implications by highlighting the factors that limit the involvement of accountants within integrated reporting. One of the major implications identified relates to the training of accountants to apply their existing skills and expertise in non-financial reporting to contribute effectively to multi-disciplinary teams that contribute towards integrated reporting in organisations. This study also provides an impetus for the International Integrated Reporting Council to provide more guidance for preparing an integrated report.

This is one of the initial studies that has explored the enablers and barriers to the involvement of accountants in integrated reporting through its focus on organisations that are already practising this form of reporting. The use of institutional entrepreneurship theory adds to the theoretical insights for exploring the involvement of the various actors in integrated reporting.

With the accelerated global adoption of integrated reporting, this paper aims to understand the role of practicing accountants in integrated reporting.

Using the case study approach, data was collected from semi-structured interviews in six international organisations that have adopted integrated reporting. Institutional work provided the theoretical insights for this study.

The study found that accountants were an indispensable part of the integrated reporting process because of their strength and knowledge in corporate reporting. However, despite having the potential to engage, it was noted that accountants currently do not apply their key reporting skills in the integrated reporting context. It was observed that accountants’ roles were limited to carrying out their traditional routine financial reporting activities including reporting on the financial aspects of the report, developing key performance indicators and assisting with assurance related tasks.

This study adds to the limited literature by providing a comprehensive understanding of how accountants are currently involved in integrated reporting. This study suggests that accountants are seeking to maintain their existing institutional practices.

A need for accountants to move beyond maintaining their institutional roles and engage more extensively in integrated reporting is emphasised.

Through its focus on human agency, this study applied institutional work to integrated reporting, thereby expanding literature on integrated reporting and the roles performed by accountants in this process. This study also contributes to the conceptualisation of maintaining institutions strategies through the development of the cooperative strategy.

This paper aims to demonstrate methods that sustainability-conscious brands can use to include their primary producers in the measurement and reporting of the environment and sustainability performance of their supply chains. It explores three questions: How can farm businesses provide information required in sustainability reporting? What are the challenges and opportunities experienced in preparing and presenting the information? What future research and policy instruments might be needed to resolve these issues.

This study identifies and describes methods to provide the farm-level information needed for environmental performance and sustainability reporting frameworks. It demonstrates them by compiling natural capital accounts and environmental performance information for two wool producers in the grassy woodland biome of Eastern Australia; the contrasting history and management of these producers would be expected to result in different environmental performances.

The authors demonstrated an approach to NC accounting that is suitable for including primary producers in environmental performance reporting of supply chains and that can communicate whether individual producers are sustaining, improving or degrading their NC. Measurements suitable for informing farm management and for the estimation of supply chain performance can simultaneously produce information useful for aggregation to regional and national assessments.

The methods used should assist sustainability-conscious supply chains to more accurately assess the environmental performance of their primary producers and to use these assessments in selective sourcing strategies to improve supply chain performance. Empirical measures of environmental performance and natural capital have the potential to enable evaluation of the effectiveness of sustainability accounting frameworks in inducing businesses to reduce their environmental impacts and improve the condition of the natural capital they depend on.

Two significant social implications exist for the inclusion of primary producers in the sustainability and environmental performance reporting of supply chains. Firstly, it presently takes considerable time and expense for producers to prepare this information. Governments and members of the supply chain should acknowledge the value of this information to their organisations and consider sharing some of the cost of its preparation with primary producers. Secondly, the “additionality” requirement commonly present in existing frameworks may perversely exclude already high-performing producers from being recognised. The methods proposed in this paper provide a way to resolve this.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to describe detailed methods of collecting data for natural capital accounting and environmental performance reporting for individual farms and the first to compile the information and present it in a manner coherent with the Kering EP&L and the UN SEEA EA. The authors believe that this will make a significant contribution to the development of fair and standardised ways of measuring individual farm performance and the performance of food, beverage and apparel supply chains.

This paper aims to examine new public management (NPM) reform in New Zealand Universities (NZUs) and the process by which government policy changes generated service performance reporting (SPR), and how the SPR practices were institutionalised. It seeks to explain the underlying institutional forces of the reform process, how universities were subjected to accountability pressures through government-imposed managerial techniques and how universities responded to them.

The authors draw on the theoretical lens of neo-institutional theory and the concept of NPM to interpret the setting of SPR. Data comprise annual reports and other documents produced by the NZUs.

The findings show that the development of the SPR was driven by NPM ideals and rationales of greater transparency and accountability. The institutional pressures bestowed extra power to the government by demanding greater accounting reporting of university performance. It also shows the ensemble of institutions, organisations and management practices that were deployed to reorganise performance reporting practices.

The study adds to the neo-institutional theory work that universities are experiencing extraordinary institutional pressure to become a market-type commodity in New Zealand and internationally. The findings have implications for government, universities, policymakers and public sector professionals who work in public sector reform.

Through the institutional theoretical lens, the study offers new insights into our understanding of NPM-driven regulation and institutionalisation of managerial techniques. The insights inform policy and practice surrounding design, implementation and the potential effect of future policy changes with reference to the performance of NZUs and internationally.

This study aims to explore the intelligibility of communication with stakeholders as a result of accrual accounting adoption. It focuses on changes in the use of visual forms and the readability of text that occurred immediately after the adoption of accrual accounting in performance reports of Italian public universities.

The authors collect the stakeholder section of performance reports published before and after accrual accounting adoption. Then, the authors use manual and computer-assisted textual analysis. Finally, the authors explore the data using principal component analysis and qualitative comparative analysis.

This study demonstrates that switching from cash to accrual accounting provokes immediate changes in communication patterns. It confirms the significant reduction of readability and increase in visual forms after accruals accounting adoption. The results indicate that smaller universities especially put effort into increasing intelligibility while implementing a more complex accounting system. This study also finds a relation between the change in readability and the change in visual forms that are complementary, with the exception of several very large universities.

The findings underline the possibility of neutralising the adverse effects of accounting reform associated with its complexity and difficulties in understanding by the use of visual forms and attention to the document’s readability.

This paper adds a new dimension to the study of public sector accounting from the external stakeholder perspective. It provides further insight into the link between accrual accounting adoption and readability, together with the use of visual forms by universities.

Many emerging economy firms are under foreign owners' pressure to embrace the challenges of addressing corporate social responsibility (CSR) and consider adopting sustainability initiatives. However, it is not clear how foreign ownership plays a role to enable or inhibit these emerging economy firms from translating sustainability initiatives into improved financial performance. Utilizing neo-institutional theory, the authors argue that emerging economy firms that voluntarily report sustainability gain legitimacy in the eyes of shareholders and improve stock market performance. However, emerging economy firms may not have the resources to reconcile the internal stakeholders' various legitimacy requirements to promote sustainability practices, resulting in a negative association with accounting performance. Foreign ownership attenuates the relationship between sustainability reporting and firm performance due to the different legitimacy requirements in foreign markets.

To test the study’s hypotheses, the authors collected and analyzed a large sample of publicly listed firms between 2010 and 2016 in Taiwan where the types of foreign ownership include foreign trust funds, foreign financial institutions and other foreign legal entities. Regression analyses were conducted to investigate whether the firms that report their sustainable practices have better financial performance, including stock market performance and accounting performance. Additionally, a three-step procedure was employed to address the endogeneity issue with a binary explanatory variable.

The positive stock market reaction to the emerging economy firms' voluntary sustainability reporting supports legitimacy gained among investors. By contrast, sustainability reporting has a negative association with accounting performance due to the difficulty of reconciling different legitimacy requirements among various stakeholders in emerging economies. Further, foreign ownership, particularly the trust fund, exhibits a negative moderating effect on the relationship between sustainability reporting in aligning corporate practices with sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the company's stock market performance.

By examining the less tested contingent role played by foreign ownership in the emerging economy firms' sustainability reporting, the authors provide insights into the influence exerted by different types of foreign ownership on firms' financial performances beyond previous studies that focus on family ownership, state ownership, or managerial ownership in emerging economies. The findings shed light on corporate sustainability strategy and foreign direct investment policies for an emerging economy.

The purpose of this paper is to document the types of and any changes in the budgeting and performance management practices of New Zealand primary educational organisations and explain why they occurred using an institutional theory framework. In doing so, it will provide an understanding of past budgeting and performance measurement and reporting practice, as well as consider the policy implications for the contemporary public‐provided primary education system.

The paper uses a historical archival‐based case study approach.

The historical evidence suggests that from 1844 until 1859 budgeting and performance management practices in educational organisations changed as the provision and control of education moved from not‐for‐profit community‐based organisations to become a predominantly public function. The budgeting, inspection and performance management practices and changes observed in the primary education providers were directly related to their need to obtain legitimacy and procure resources.

The detailed information regarding historical budgeting and performance management practices provides rich background material for researchers as well as suggesting that split responsibility and control between the community and government for education creates a tension between the two controlling bodies.

This paper is the first study of internal accounting and performance reporting practices in a mid‐nineteenth century New Zealand education context.