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The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the effects of online learning on student engagement as a result of a shift from face-to-face to online learning during the COVID-19 lockdown in New Zealand.

The reflection expresses the accounting lecturers’ observations and experiences of student engagement in online learning during the COVID-19 lockdown focussing on the three facets of student engagement; social presence, cognitive presence and teaching presence.

The focus on social and teaching presence in online learning by Unitec academic staff had a positive impact on cognitive presence as student course success rates and course ratings were similar to rates achieved from face-to-face delivery despite a rapid transition to online learning.

This reflection is based on the experiences of three academic staff in one tertiary organisation.

The findings of this study can be helpful for tertiary institutions that are planning to adopt blended learning in the future. Academic staff may revisit teaching pedagogies to design new strategies and institutions may develop blended learning guidelines and tools to support academics to embrace blended learning.

The reflection shows the respect, support and care provided by academics to students building a sense of belongingness and supporting students’ mental well-being in a period of fear and anxiety about COVID-19.

This is a reflection on students’ online engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has not been addressed previously in the academic literature.

Current accounting practice tends to split environmental complexities into quantifiable, codified elements, producing codified simplifications of the “complex” in pursuit of environmental externalities. This has led to standardization, but has done little to motivate organizations to engage in more environmentally-aware behavior that transcends the coercive dimensions of codification. The work of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) can bring new insights and perspectives to social and environmental accounting (SEA). In discussing Humboldt's philosophy of understanding the interconnectedness between people, their contexts (cultures) and their environment, the authors contribute to the emerging SEA literature on notions of interconnectedness and the web of accountabilities. The authors also explore how a Humboldtian approach may help break through the current epistemological boundaries of SEA by combining accurate measurement with imagery to make the “complex” manageable whilst embracing interconnectedness and hermeneutics.

In this conceptual paper, the authors humbly draw on Humboldt's legacy and explore the underlying philosophical assumptions of Humboldtian science. The authors then contrast these with current SEA approaches in the literature and derive new insights into their intentionality and practical use.

Re-examining Humboldt's pioneering work enables us to pinpoint what might be missing from current SEA approaches and debates. Humboldt upheld an “ethics of precision,” which included both measurement accuracy and qualitative relevance, and combined hands-on scientific fieldwork with the aesthetic ideals and interconnectedness of the age of Romanticism. Drawing on Humboldtian science, the authors propose focusing on the interconnectedness of nature and humanity, embracing the qualitative and hermeneutical and including aesthetics and emotion in environmental visualizations.

The paper elucidates why and how Humboldtian science might inform, guide and enhance the emancipatory potential of SEA in the 21st century. Specifically, the authors discuss Humboldt's approach of linking accurate measurement with imagery to convey a sense of interconnectedness.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the discussion surrounding the definition of accounting proposed by Carnegie et al. (2021a, 2021b) and further elaborated by Carnegie et al. (2023) from/under an institutionalist political-economy (IPE) based foundation and to specifically extend this approach to the arena of social and environmental accounting (SEA).

By adopting an IPE approach to SEA, this study offers a critique of the use of the notion of capital to refer to nature and people in SEA frameworks and standards.

A SEA framework based on the capabilities approach is proposed based on the concepts of human capabilities and global commons for the purpose of preserving the commons and enabling the flourishing of present and future generations.

The proposed framework allows the engagement of accounting community, in particular SEA researchers, with and contribution to such well-established initiatives as the Planetary Boundaries framework and the human development reports initiative of the United Nations Development Programme.

Based on the capability approach, this study applies Carnegie et al.’s (2023) framework to SEA. This new approach more attuned to the pursuit of sustainable human development and the sustainable development goals, may contribute to turning accounting into a major positive force through its impacts on the world, expressly upon organisations, people and nature.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive examination of corporate sustainability reporting strategies, focusing on the rationale for adopting the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards, the challenges to be faced and the implications that can arise for accounting professionals, managers, policymakers and scholars alike.

The single case study approach was followed. Qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis were used for an in-depth, contextual examination of Enel Green Power's sustainability reporting practices and the adoption of the GRI Standards. The documents analyzed include annual sustainability reports, integrated reports and press releases over the period ranging from 2018 to 2022.

The GRI Standards' adaptability, modular structure and emphasis on stakeholder involvement emerged as stimulating factors for Enel Green Power. GRI Standards allowed the company to benchmark its sustainability performance against competitors and identify areas for improvement. The company faced challenges during the implementation of the GRI Standards concerning data collection and management across global operations, stakeholder identification and engagement and alignment of sustainability reporting with corporate strategy. The company addressed these challenges by investing in robust data management systems, maintaining active communication with stakeholders and embedding sustainability into its corporate culture.

This research contributes to the academic literature on sustainability reporting and accounting, offers valuable insights for managers and professionals and informs policymakers about the potential benefits and challenges associated with the adoption of GRI Standards. The paper highlights the importance of aligning organizational strategies with global sustainability frameworks and fostering a culture of transparency and stakeholder engagement.

This work offers a novel contribution to the scholarly discourse on sustainability reporting standardization, shedding light on the governance challenges to be faced and providing potential solutions.

Purpose – Previous studies distinguish revenue management based on discretionary accruals; the research of studies is to investigate the factors that affect the finance manager at the discretionary accrual in General financial information statement.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Literature review models used in research aimed at detecting any company that performs the company’s discretion to fulfill the accrual of interests internally. This research study also discusses the relationship between earnings and discretionary manager behavior.

Findings – The researcher wants to re-examine the hypothesis of market efficiency on Indonesia’s capital market. The current company information technology uses greatly influences worldwide investor interest to invest on Indonesian’s capital market. Emerging Indonesia Capital market status becomes very interesting to be studied.

Originality/Value – It also presented the shortcomings of current research and the trends for future study in capital market.

While women are increasingly in senior positions in accountancy firms, a century after gaining entry to this once exclusively male field, they are still struggling to achieve career success. The concept of possible selves and a model of career crafting are activated in an analysis of how a set of New Zealand professional accountants have pursued their careers. This paper aims to focus on how people actively craft career selves in the context of organisational and gendered constraints, some of which are self-imposed, and therefore, can be modified and revised.

Interviews with 36 male and female accounting professionals in New Zealand – 21 working in private firms and 15 in academia identify how careers are shaped by contexts, cultural understandings of gender, organisational structures within which accountants are located and wider environmental factors.

Women accountants in this study are both agential and responsive to a range of constraints they encounter. These women challenge the notion that professional achievement requires single minded allegiance to a career; their strategic career crafting demonstrates how career and family commitments are not irreconcilable but can be skilfully integrated to nurture multiple selves. Their strategies are considered alongside those of a comparable set of male accountants.

This paper contributes to the literature on possible selves and the complexity of gendered lives through the application of a career crafting matrix to explore how accounting professionals forge careers and construct multiple selves.

This paper undertakes a structured literature review to analyse the literature on performance management and measurement (PMM) in universities over the last four decades. Over that time, PMM has emerged as an influential force in universities that impacts their operations and redefines their identity.

A structured literature review approach was used to analyse a sample of articles on PMM research from a broad range of disciplines over four decades. This was undertaken to understand the impacts of PMM practices on universities, highlight changes over time and point to avenues for future research.

The analysis highlights the fact that research on PMM in universities has grown significantly over the 40 years studied. We provide an overview of published articles over four decades regarding content, themes, theories, methods and impacts. We provide an empirical basis for discussing past, present and future university PMM research. The future research avenues offer multiple provocations for scholars and policymakers, for instance, PMM implementation strategies and relationships with various government programs and external evaluation and the role of different actors, particularly academics, in shaping PMM systems.

Unlike a traditional literature review, the structured literature review method can develop insights into how the field has changed over time and highlight possible future research. The sample for this literature review differs from previous reviews in covering a broad range of disciplines, including accounting.

This paper has two purposes. First, it aims to explore how Australian universities used calculative rhetoric and practices through accounting numbers to persuade employees and legitimize their financial recovery plans to alleviate the financial hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, it aims to analyze how the accounting-based solutions were legitimized through a well-blended pathos, logos and ethos rhetoric.

Building on a rhetorical theory of diffusion, we employed a qualitative research design within all 37 Australian public universities involving Internet-based documentary analysis.

This study finds that in an urgent crisis like the fiscal crisis caused by COVID-19, universities again found rescue in accounting tools, in particular budgets, as a rhetorical device to justify their operational and strategic choices such as job-cuts, programs closures and staff pay-cuts. However, in this crisis, the same old accounting-based solutions were even more quickly to be accepted by being delivered in management’s colorful blending of pathos–logos–ethos rhetoric.

While this study is constrained to Australian public universities’ financial responses, its findings have implications for university decision-makers and higher education policymakers across the globe when it comes to university management using calculative devices in persuading employees to work their way through financial hardship caused by an extreme health crisis-like COVID-19 pandemic.

This study adds more evidence that the use of budgets as a calculative tool continues to play a key role in organizations in the construction, mobilization and preservation of certain strategic and operational choices during volatilities. Especially, the same way of creating calculative-based solutions can be communicated via the colorful blending of different rhetoric to make it acceptable.

The per capita GDP of the countries of Southeast Asia (SEA) varies from less than $5,000 to over $97,000. This paper aims to analyze the political factors behind such variation, such as wars, extreme politics, political instability, and kleptocratic governments and leaders, and how they affect the development experience within the region.

This paper uses the comparative political economy analysis approach to make a comparison among SEA countries using knowledge from well-known political–economic history and development data from World Development Indicators provided by World Bank.

A long period of political stability creates a favorable environment for investment that, in return, stimulates sustained economic growth in SEA. The countries have all grown rapidly, but their experience of development varies. The four countries that avoided political extremes (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Brunei) have the highest per capita incomes today. Those that have had long periods of war and political instability, but which have also had substantial periods of stability (Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines), come next. Cambodia and Laos have suffered long periods of war and are the least developed. Myanmar’s military rulers, through civil wars and kleptocratic mismanagement of the economy, have prevented growth much of the time.

Most studies of Southeast Asian growth have analyzed the experience of single countries and missed the central role played by extreme politics, including wars, to explain why some countries have much higher per capita incomes than others. This paper is expected to fill this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Austrian public universities (APUs) respond to the challenge of maintaining academic freedom while complying with legal requirements and enhancing competitiveness by using Management Control Systems (MCSs). Specifically, it examines how APUs respond to the co-presence of academic, government and business logic.

The perspective of institutional logics as a theoretical lens and the framework of MCSs by Malmi and Brown (2008) serve to analyse how APUs respond to the existence of different institutional field-level logics. In-depth expert interviews from the perspective of APUs’ research management are conducted to identify the applied management control practices (MCPs) and APUs’ responses to the different institutional field-level logics.

This study identifies how academic, government and business logic are represented in field-level-specific MCPs and field-level-specific corresponding narratives. Reflecting upon APUs’ responses to the co-existence of academic and government logic, compliance or rather, selective coupling with government logic or decoupling from government logic became obvious.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study at higher education institutions representing academic, government and business logic in the applied MCPs in research management. The study reveals that APUs have developed specific responses and narratives regarding the existence of different institutional field-level logics.