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The study aims to determine whether a relationship exists between the potential significance of corporate controversies for stakeholders and how organisations respond to them in their annual and sustainability reports.

This paper employs content analysis on annual and sustainability reports of 48 listed companies from the Refinitiv database. The logit regression was used to estimate the model.

The study revealed that the main factors increasing the probability of a controversial issue being addressed in a corporate report are the controversy’s potential significance, companies’ financial performance and lawsuits.

Our study has three major limitations. These are a relatively small sample of companies and reports, focusing on disclosures made in corporate reports and omitting other channels of communication, for example, social media, and a certain amount of subjectivity in the process of coding information.

Former studies show that corporations face a serious risk of their hypocritical strategies becoming too evident for stakeholder groups. Our findings suggest that the risk is already materialising and may undermine the idea of CSR and sustainability reporting.

Our research focuses on high-profile adverse incidents widely reported in the media, the omission of which from corporate reports seems to constitute a particular case of organised hypocrite. It also demonstrates that companies use an impression management strategy to defuse adverse publicity and that major controversies cause minor ones to be omitted from their reports.

This chapter examines the world of risk management within fintech. It initiates by emphasizing the crucial role of technology and risk assessment in shaping the fintech landscape. It discusses various risk categories prevalent in fintech operations, elucidating the nuances of technology, operational, compliance, strategic, and reputational risks. A comparative analysis across different fintech sub-sectors unveils their distinct risk profiles. The narrative extends to proactive risk management frameworks, contrasting prominent models like the COSO ERM, FAIR Risk Quantification, and NIST Cybersecurity Frameworks. Integral defense measures are scrutinized, encompassing data encryption, access controls, vulnerability assessments, and incident response plans. This chapter underscores the significance of building operational resilience through robust technology infrastructure, regular system updates, disaster recovery planning, and business continuity measures. Ultimately, this chapter culminates in a comprehensive summary, offering pragmatic recommendations to fortify technology risk management in fintech.

The purpose of this study is to provide a timely synthesis of the empirical literature focusing on the economic consequences of money laundering, as this topic has been gaining momentum among policymakers and academic researchers due to its adverse effects.

Empirical studies are collected by consulting accounting and finance journals in diverse digital sources (e.g. Science Direct, Blackwell, Taylor and Francis, Springer, Sage and Emerald). Key words used to identify relevant papers include “money laundering” and “anti-money laundering regulations,” with specific focus on the economic consequences. Our search strategy includes 24 published papers over the period of 2018–2023.

Findings show that most studies represent cross-country investigations; the main topics investigated focus on accounting field (e.g. audit fees, real and accrual earnings management), tax evasion, financial stability, sustainability, economic indicators (inflation, economic growth, foreign direct investment) and financial inclusion; and the economic consequences of money laundering have been also examined within banking industry (e.g. banking profitability, banking stability). Reported findings of reviewed studies suggest that money laundering has diverse adverse impacts at the country level (e.g. increased tax evasion, higher inflation rate, less sustainability and foreign direct investments), at the firm level (e.g. increased audit risk and aggressive real and accrual earnings management) and within banking industry through negative impact of money laundering on bank’s loan portfolio quality, stability and profitability.

With respect to policymakers, strengthening anti-money laundering regulations may play a critical role in reducing money laundering activities. Furthermore, financial institutions should implement specific rules dealing with anti-money regulations to ensure adequate compliance and disclosure. Finally, policymakers should be aware about the importance of digital transformation to combat money laundering activities since it facilitates the detection of financial crimes due to their traceability.

The summary of the empirical literature focusing on the economic consequence of money laundering represents a historical record and an introduction for accounting researchers. It also urges them to further explore the economic implications of anti-money laundering disclosure within banking industry.

This is an elementary and yet important chapter. In this chapter, the most important hindrances to rural development have been identified and how they usually hinder development has been explained. Various forms of bias that adversely affect a rural development process, namely, spatial bias, person bias, elite bias, male bias, user and adopter bias, and active present and living biases have also been briefly discussed.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the amount of trust customers have in Somali Islamic banks. Furthermore, the role of gender in CSR activities and Islamic bank clientele is evaluated.

Throughout February and March 2022, 410 clients of Islamic banks in Somalia were surveyed using a questionnaire. The partial least squares approach and the structural equation model are applied to examine the data.

Findings indicate that all variables of CSR activities, such as social product, social legal, social needs, social environment and social employees’ responsibility, are influential and significant predictors of trust in Islamic banks in Somalia. Gender inequalities moderate the relationship between social product, social needs, social environment, social employee and trust. Conversely, only social legal responsibility was unaffected by gender differences in Somalia regarding people’s trust in Islamic banks.

A sample from a developing country such as Somalia is useful for shedding light on the outcomes of consumers’ perceptions of and trust in businesses’ CSR in the developing world. Furthermore, this study contributes to knowledge regarding CSR and how it can help the Islamic banking industry. Its findings will be useful to policymakers and regulatory bodies in the banking industry in their efforts to improve CSR.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first empirical investigation of its kind about the understudied relationship among customer trust, CSR efforts and gender in Somalia context. Furthermore, it investigates how gender specifically moderates CSR in the Islamic banking sector in a developing country.

The protection and preservation of the environment, whether of an urban area or a rural area may not be disregarded. Most of the rural areas in the world lacks the knowledge on this issue. In so far as the developing countries are concerned, it has now become a societal problem mainly owing to the lack of public awareness in the rural areas of these countries. This chapter examines the principal causes of the lack of public awareness. The author also examines the correlation between poverty and deterioration of the environment and between industrialisation and deterioration of the environment, where possible. Both sophisticated and unsophisticated technology cause pollution. The other causes of pollution, industrial or otherwise have also been identified and explained. The relevant UN Resolution, namely, the Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources 1962, the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States 1974, the UN World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future (The Brundtland Report) have also received attention. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals have been mentioned.

In the opinion of the author, almost all of the important and relevant documents have received attention in this chapter in order to create awareness of the problems in connection with the protection of the environment.

The author’s interest in studying this topic was inspired by new extraordinary external influences, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and war operations in Europe, which have a direct impact on economic entities and therefore on the economies of many countries in the surrounding area and beyond. The aforementioned external, unpredictable factors appeared unexpectedly. As soon as they appeared, they caused major disruptions in business operations and a crisis on the market, which could not be influenced beforehand, nor could its occurrence be prevented. The impact of external shocks on economies will vary depending on individual countries’ exposure to Russian energy sources, food security, as well as their own economic structure, geographic location, and the degree of flexibility of their public finances. Empirical findings show that there are relatively significant differences in the reactions to the resulting conditions, between large companies that still take into account the durability and publicity of development indicators and others, which are characterized by the absence of a long-term perspective and its reduction to a set of short-term goals that are sought to be achieved in the framework of the visible future. In addition to the standard theoretical analysis, the authors conducted research by surveying selected business entities in Serbia, which provided an insight into the current state of the company and indicated the necessary directions for changes both at the level of business entities and at the level of the entire economy. Based on the conducted research, the authors came to the knowledge that economic entities can solve economic instability by implementing one or more reorganization models.

In this chapter, the most important regulatory measures required for rural marketing and sales have been identified – why protection of consumers' interests should be maintained; why rural development is important; the role of Code of Conduct, particularly on Advertising and Marketing Communication Practice 2011, and the role of Codes, in general, but in particular, International Code of Advertising Practice 1986, the Code of Marketing Practice, the International Code of Sales Promotion 1987, etc. have received attention.

This chapter shows the prevalence, trends and heterogeneity in maternal smoking around birth in the United Kingdom (UK), focussing on the war and post-war reconstruction period in which there exists surprisingly little systematic data on (maternal) smoking behaviours. Within this context, the authors highlight relevant events, the release of new information about the harms of smoking and changes in (government) policy aimed at reducing smoking prevalence. The authors show stark changes in smoking prevalence over a 30-year period, highlight the onset of the social gradient in smoking as well as genetic heterogeneities in smoking trends.

This chapter examines the ICC Advertising and Marketing Communications Code of 2018. The primary themes of this Code are advertising and marketing communications. This is a lengthy Code – in addition to an Introduction, it has been developed over four chapters and two annexes. The ‘technologically enhanced’ marketing communications seem to have prompted the International Chamber of Commerce to draft this Code of Conduct.

This Code emphasised the self-regulatory Codes of Conduct in the hope that self-regulatory codes of conduct should convince customers of their social responsibility. This Code also believes that high sense of social responsibility will achieve the principal purpose of it. This Code should be more useful if the member States take it seriously and implement its provisions in their own interests.