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Digital visualization tools are most often used to help people and teams understand high volumes of complex data via dashboards, infographics and other forms of visual maps. This article describes how some organizations are starting to use visualization platforms to allow team members to articulate and share their thoughts, feelings, beliefs, etc., and thereby make better, more insightful decisions.

Viewpoint based on the experience and expert opinion of the writers.

Three examples are shared of how visualization technologies are being used in leadership development, gender diversity and patient care.

The authors offer examples of pioneering organizations who are going beyond the “digital whiteboard” and finding ways of cocreating powerful imagery and visualizations, capturing the data which is hard to get at. Building narratives and sense-making from the deeper thoughts and difficult to express feelings of team members.

Diversity in boards has gained attention as a reflection of societal imbalances. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of diversity in terms of both gender and nationality in management boards of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on firm performance from an upper echelons perspective. The authors also examine how board-specific characteristics influence the structural makeup of boards in gender and nationality diversity terms.

The authors focus on the UK because of its individualistic society and flexible labour market and assess 309 SMEs in the manufacturing industry over 2009–2019. A 3-stage least squares (3SLS) estimator is used to analyse the data, the Shannon index to measure board diversity, return on assets as proxy for firm performance, and owner-manager presence, board member age and tenure are the board-specific characteristics of primary interest.

Both gender and nationality diversity contribute to firm performance and represent distinct upper echelon characteristics that change the cognitive and psychological dynamics of boards. Firms with larger boards do not perform better, but diverse boards reduce the narrowing view of CEOs. Yet the presence of owner-managers, despite their performance-enhancing contribution, holds firms back from benefitting from diversity as a strategic choice.

This study extends the upper echelons theory to include board diversity as an important aspect that should become more central in upper echelon thinking when understanding firm performance. The authors’ findings suggest that theoretical developments in search of understanding firm behaviour must proceed by accounting for diversity and not simply focusing on decision-making styles.

This research aims to explore the perceived usefulness of audited social information in making economic decisions, in the eyes of both Tunisian financial analysts and bankers.

The authors conduct an exploratory qualitative study using twelve semi-structured interviews: seven are carried out with financial analysts, and five are performed among bankers.

This study’s results reveal that financial analysts and bankers paid little attention to the audited social information in making investment/credit granting decisions. The authors also show that the low perceived usefulness of social audit is due to many reasons related to political, economic, regulatory, educational, cultural and cognitive factors.

This study contributes to the current literature in several ways. First, it enriches the knowledge about the perceived usefulness of social audit. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the perception of financial analysts and bankers to audited social information and its usefulness for decision-making. Second, the focus on the Tunisian context is interesting as it was marked, since the outbreak of the Jasmine Revolution, by the uncertainty and the instability of political, economic and social conditions. Third, this research goes further by exploring the most important factors affecting the perceiveness of social auditing.

The aim of this study is to analyse the factors that contribute to the disclosure of relational liabilities (RLs) of the US companies.

The study uses content analysis to examine the disclosure of RLs in annual reports of the US companies listed on the Nasdaq-100 index from 2013 to 2015.

The study finds a positive correlation between the disclosure of RLs and gender diversity of the board of directors as well as the education level of the CEO. By contrast, the disclosure of RLs is negatively associated with the age of the CEO. Companies in knowledge-intensive industries also tend to disclose more information about their RLs than those in other industries.

This study focuses on the determinants of RLs, whereas previous research has mainly examined the positive impact of voluntary disclosure of intellectual capital on financial performance. The main objective of this study is to shed light on the factors that influence the disclosure of RLs.

This paper aims to investigate how embedding accounting techniques of cost and budgeting within the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) potentially perpetuates colonial practices for Australian First Nations people living in remote areas. Further, the paper aims to explore how accounting might help to integrate the unique modes of accountability First Nations people have over disability care into the NDIS funding system. Ultimately, the aim is to discern whether accounting practices can be mobilised as a means to decolonising the NDIS framework.

This study uses a qualitative methodology to analyse public hearings from the Australian Disability Royal Commission. Drawing on Bhabha's (1994) concept of the “third space”, this study investigates how accounting techniques can be used to potentially decolonise the NDIS. This study also borrows Bhabha's (1994) concept of the third space to explore the potential for decolonising the NDIS through accounting techniques.

Findings show that the accounting techniques pertaining to funding and costs embedded within the NDIS contribute to displacing and disconnecting First Nations people from their cultural practices and ways of life. Further, the analysis reveals that the NDIS funding system could help to decolonise the NDIS space if it were modified to incorporate First Nations' perspectives on accountability for disability care.

The case of the NDIS exposes glimpses of colonisation in contemporary Australia, where Western institutional and economic systems dominate over the structure and authority of the practice. In this paper, this study demonstrates that the accounting system used by the NDIS plays a role in marginalising First Nations people. However, accounting, as a technology of negotiation, could also be mobilised to enhance accountability for disability care outcomes and pave the way for decolonising public policies.

This paper is motivated by the need to assess the risk profiles associated with the substantial number of items within military supply chains. The scale of supply chain management processes creates difficulties in both the complexity of the analysis and in performing risk assessments that are based on the manual (human analyst) assessment methods. Thus, analysts require methods that can be automated and that can incorporate on-going operational data on a regular basis.

The approach taken to address the identification of supply chain risk within an operational setting is based on aspects of multiobjective decision analysis (MODA). The approach constructs a risk and importance index for supply chain elements based on operational data. These indices are commensurate in value, leading to interpretable measures for decision-making.

Risk and importance indices were developed for the analysis of items within an example supply chain. Using the data on items, individual MODA models were formed and demonstrated using a prototype tool.

To better prepare risk mitigation strategies, analysts require the ability to identify potential sources of risk, especially in times of disruption such as natural disasters.

The idea of using positive humor as a managerial tool is gaining traction in both academia and organizations. The purpose of this paper is to test whether supervisors' use of positive humor in organizations in different perceived cultures (hierarchical, clan, market and adhocracy) influences employees' in-role and extra role performance.

The sample includes 317 clinical and non-clinical employees in public hospitals in Palermo, Italy. Hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling.

Results indicate that supervisor positive humor has a direct relationship with employee in-role and extra-role performance. Also, supervisor positive humor has a moderating impact on the relationship between organizational culture and in-role and extra-role performance. Moderating effect of supervisor humor have a greater impact on extra-role performance towards individuals or organizational citizenship behavior toward individuals (OCBI).

The first limitation is that this study examines only positive or adaptive kinds of leader humor; negative or maladaptive humor is not included. A further limitation is the role of social (national) organizational culture in our construct. It is claimed that, specific components of national organizational culture are more significant compared with others and that some national organizational cultures are more vital to performance in one part of the organization compared to others (Nazarian et al., 2017). Hofstede's original four dimensions of national culture: power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity/femininity could be analyzed separately to investigate the role of each variable on the study’s construct.

As Romero and Cruthirds (2006) mentioned, organizations can establish “humor-training seminars” to make the supervisor and team members aware of the benefits of humor in the workplace. For instance, subjects such as appropriate types of humor, gender and ethical differences in appreciating the humor, and matching the humor style with the specific organizational outcome can be discussed. To understand and apply appropriate organizational culture in public organizations, it is beneficial to know which types of culture encourage employee in-role/extra-role performance. This study compared the consequences of the specific dominant culture in relation to the objective of the organization. However, one solution does not fit all. Sometimes managers inevitably follow trends in their industries without noticing other variables (Mason, 2007).

As Romero and Cruthirds (2006) mentioned, organizations can establish “humor-training seminars” to make the supervisor and team members aware of the benefits of humor in the workplace. For instance, subjects such as appropriate types of humor, gender and ethical differences in appreciating the humor, and matching the humor style with the specific organizational outcome can be discussed.

This paper provides evidence to suggest that supervisor humor results in greater employee in-role and extra-role performance.

The ageing and disabled population is fast growing, which emphasises the need to effectively modify current homes and environments to support healthy ageing and increasingly diverse health needs. This paper aims to bring together findings and analyses from three adaptations-focussed projects, drawing on perspectives from key stakeholders alongside the lived experiences of service users acquiring adaptations.

Following an Adaptations Framework developed from interviews and focus groups with older people and key stakeholders, the paper discusses barriers experienced by older people and front-line workers in receiving and delivering adaptations through all stages of the process.

This paper reveals how experiences around adaptations might diverge with unseen, hidden investment and need amongst individuals, and how conceptual and cost-focussed evidence gaps impact wider understandings of adaptations delivery. In so doing, this paper highlights how the adaptations process is perceived as a “fight” that does not work smoothly for either those delivering or receiving adaptations services.

The paper suggests a systematic failure such that the adaptations process needs to be rehauled, reset and prioritised within social and public policy if the housing, health and social care sectors are to support healthy ageing and prepare for the future ageing population.

The paper brings together insights from key stakeholders alongside service users' experiences of adaptations to highlight key policy drivers and barriers to accessing and delivering adaptations.

This study aims to explore the determinants of engagement with and of stakeholders in corporate social responsibility (CSR) decision-making.

Using stakeholder theory, this study is mainly based on business ethics and CSR literature to develop a model depicting social and organizational contextual factors for engagement in the context of CSR decision-making.

This study identifies nine antecedents for engagement with and of stakeholders in CSR decision-making. Based on stakeholder perspective, the author explores how engagement constructs are influenced at both social and organizational levels by the determinants stakeholder pressure, stakeholder roles, stakeholder resources, stakeholder relationships, stakeholder management, two-way communication, procedural justice, interactional justice and stakeholder proactive strategy.

This study provides insights for companies regarding the determinants underlying engagement to reflect its importance in the context of CSR decision-making.

A better understanding of the determinants of engagement is critical because engagement contributes to achieving “win-win” solutions that ensure increased stakeholder satisfaction.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is one of the first to explore the determinants of engagement with and of stakeholders in CSR decision-making at both social and organizational levels by referring to stakeholder theory.

With the growing concern of various sectors of society regarding environmental issues and the promotion of sustainable development, green technology innovation is generally considered to be conducive to the long-term development of enterprises. However, because of the existence of agency problems, managers may have shortsighted behaviors. Then how will managers' shortsighted behaviors affect enterprises' green technology innovation?

This paper uses machine learning-based text analysis methods to construct a manager myopia index based on the data from A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2015 to 2020. We examine the impact of manager myopia on green technology innovation in companies.

Our study finds that manager myopia significantly inhibits green technology innovation in companies. However, when multiple large shareholders coexist and the proportion of institutional investors' holdings is high, it can alleviate the inhibitory effect of manager myopia on green innovation. Heterogeneity tests show that the impact of manager myopia on green technology innovation is relatively significant in non-state-owned and manufacturing companies, as well as in the electricity industry. Robustness tests demonstrate that our conclusions remain valid after using propensity score matching to eliminate endogeneity problems.

From the perspective of corporate governance, this paper incorporates managers' shortsightedness, multiple large shareholders and institutional investors' shareholding ratios into the same logical framework, analyzes their internal mechanisms, helps improve corporate governance, enhances green innovation capabilities and has strong implications for the implementation of national innovation-driven development strategies and the achievement of “carbon peak” and “carbon neutrality” targets.