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The purpose of this study is to explore the contributing barriers to corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER) practices. In particular, this study focuses on non-managerial stakeholders’ perceptions of the barriers to CSER practices in a developing country context. The study also investigates the current initiatives undertaken by the different stakeholders, such as government, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and regulators.

The study takes a qualitative approach, undertaking semi-structured in-depth interviews with 26 participants from NGOs, the media, regulatory authorities, government departments, shareholders, trade union leaders and customers.

The views of stakeholder groups were analysed to identify the contributing barriers to CSER practices. The findings of the study reveal that corruption and politics, lack of coordination, lack of government initiatives and unsatisfactory implementation of laws are perceived as the major barriers that hinder CSER practices in Bangladesh. The study also found a lack of awareness amongst various stakeholder groups regarding the influential role CSER plays in promoting sustainable development. The current initiatives undertaken by various stakeholders to improve CSER practices were limited but growing.

The study utilises the stakeholder theory to examine the role of stakeholders, rather than managers, in relation to CSER practice in Bangladesh. The findings may provide impetus for mitigating CSER barriers in a developing country context.

This study is one of the few engagement-based studies to explore the non-managerial stakeholders’ views on CSER in a developing country context.

This study aims to explore the challenges in the construction of the audit report by a public sector organisation within a non-financial information (NFI) audit context.

This field study primarily uses data collected from semi-structured interviews, in addition to internal and external documents. The data are framed around the generic key audit report elements including audience, scope and criteria, and draw upon insights from Power (1999, 2003a, b) into NFI assurance and Fiske's (1990) insights into communication to draw inferences on the communicative value of the audit report under study.

The findings provide insights into the challenges in determining the appropriate stakeholder audience, objective, content and format of audit reports in a complex non-financial subject matter context. Despite the organisation going to considerable lengths to understand their audiences' needs and audit objectives/criteria when constructing the audit report as the literature suggests, unintended consequences resulted and the communicative value of the audit report was still questionable.

The evidence was analysed from an assuror's perspective. Future research may examine in more detail the user's perceptions on the communicative value of the NFI financial audit report.

The paper's insights into one organisations' challenge in developing appropriate reporting practice(s) within a “new” NFI context have practical implications for the development of emerging assurance practices of other NFI both in public and private sector.

This paper is one of very few studies to use in-action field study approach to comprehensively examine how audit reporting practice develops in a complex non-financial subject matter context within a public sector context.

Through its impact on both demand and supply, the outbreak of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has profoundly disrupted supply chains throughout the world. The purpose of this paper is to explore the underlying drivers of the supply chain vulnerability exposed by COVID-19 and considers potential future directions for global supply.

This paper adopts a case study approach, reviewing the automotive manufacturing sector in Australia to illustrate how neoliberal globalisation policy settings have shifted large tracts of manufacturing from the global north to the global south.

The authors demonstrate the way that neoliberal globalisation policies, facilitated by certain accounting rhetorics and technologies, have consolidated manufacturing in China and Southeast Asia in ways that embed vulnerabilities in global supply chains. The authors present three scenarios for post-COVID-19 supply chains and the accounting techniques likely to garner stronger attention as a result of the pandemic.

The paper illustrates how certain accounting rhetorics and technologies facilitate neoliberal globalisation, embedding supply chain vulnerability that has been exposed by COVID-19. It also suggests how supply chain accounting may develop more robust supply chains in a post-COVID-19 world and sets out an agenda for future research in this area.

A number of practical supply chain accounting and planning technologies are suggested to facilitate more robust supply chains.

This paper draws attention to the neoliberal globalisation policies that have shaped global supply chains as well as how COVID-19, in concert with other geopolitical trajectories, may represent a watershed moment for global supply chains.

The purpose of this study is to explore senior managers’ perception and motivations of corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER) reporting in the context of a developing country, Bangladesh.

In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 senior managers of companies listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange. Publicly available annual reports of these companies were also analysed.

The results indicate that senior managers perceive CSER reporting as a social obligation. The study finds that the managers focus mostly on child labour, human resources/rights, responsible products/services, health education, sports and community engagement activities as part of the social obligations. Interviewees identify a lack of a regulatory framework along with socio-cultural and religious factors as contributing to the low level of disclosures. These findings suggest that CSER reporting is not merely stakeholder-driven, but rather country-specific social and environmental issues play an important role in relation to CSER reporting practices.

This paper contributes to engagement-based studies by focussing on CSER reporting practices in developing countries and are useful for academics, practitioners and policymakers in understanding the reasons behind CSER reporting in developing countries.

This paper addresses a literature “gap” in the empirical study of CSER reporting in a developing country, such as Bangladesh. This study fills a gap in the existing literature to understand managers’ motivations for CSER reporting in a developing country context. Managerial perceptions on CSER issues are largely unexplored in developing countries.