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This paper introduces the second part of a AAAJ special issue on accounting, accountability and management during the COVID-19 emergency. The authors analyse the themes that emerge from the second part of the special issue, which allows us to identify the diverse accounting and accountability practices across different geographical and organisational contexts. The authors also provide an overall picture of the contributions of the special issue, with insights into avenues of future research.

Building on the first part of the AAAJ special issue, the paper draws together and identifies additional emerging themes related to research into the COVID-19 pandemic and how it impacts accounting, accountability and management practices. The authors reflect on the contributions of the special issue to the interdisciplinary accounting research project.

The authors identify two macro-themes and outline their contributions to the accounting literature. The first deals with the changes and dangers of accounting and accountability practices during the pandemic. The second considers accountability practices in a broader sense, including reporting, disclosure and rhetorical practices in the management of COVID-19.

The paper shows the pervasive role of accounting and accountability in the unprecedented and indiscriminate health crisis of COVID-19. It highlights the important role of special issues in producing timely research that responds to unfolding events.

This paper contributes to current debates on the roles of accounting and accountability during COVID-19 by drawing together the themes of the special issue and identifying future interdisciplinary accounting research on the pandemic's aftermath.

The mass exodus of the professional healthcare workforce has become a cankerworm for a developing nation like Nigeria, and this worsens the already depleted healthcare systems in underdeveloped nation. This study investigated the rationale behind medical workers' brain-drain syndrome and the quality healthcare delivery in the Nigerian public healthcare sector.

To stimulate an understanding of the effect of the phenomenon called brain drain, the study adopted a diagnostic research design to survey the public healthcare personnel in government hospitals. The study administered a battery of adapted research scales of different measures to confirm the variables of interest of this study on a probability sampling strategy. The study surveyed 450 public healthcare sector employees from four government hospitals to gather pertinent data. The study used a structural equation model (SEM) and artificial neural networks (ANNs) to analyse the collected data from the medical personnel of government hospitals.

The findings of this study are significant as postulated. The study discovered that poor quality worklife experienced by Nigerian medical personnel was attributed to the brain-drain effect and poor healthcare delivery. The study further demonstrated that job dissatisfaction suffered among the public healthcare workforce forced the workforce to migrate to the international labour market, and this same factor is a reason for poor healthcare delivery. Lastly, the study discovered that inadequate remuneration and pay discouraged Nigerian professionals and allied healthcare workers from being productive and ultimately pushed them to the global market.

Practically, this study has shown three major elements that caused the mass movement of Nigerian healthcare personnel to other countries of the world and that seems novel given the peculiarity of the Nigerian labour market. The study is original and novel as much study has not been put forward in the public healthcare sector in Nigeria concerning this phenomenon.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in China, student engagement in online learning has been a critical issue for all educational institutions. The university student engagement inventory (USEI) is the most used scale for assessing the construct of student engagement. The present study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the USEI among 1504 Chinese university students who completed a survey through an online platform between December 2020 and January 2021.

In this cross-sectional study, content validity, construct validity and reliability of the scale were assessed.

The results supported the three-factor model with acceptable goodness of fit (χ² (71) = 369.717, p = 0.13, χ²/df = 5.207, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.967, normed fit index (NFI) = 0.960, Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) = 0.958, standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) = 0.030, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) (90% CI) = 0.053 [0.049, 0.057]), good internal consistency and construct reliability (Cronbach's alpha and omega coefficient >0.70) and strong convergent validity. Also, the measurement invariance was confirmed across gender.

This study showed that the 3-factor structure of USEI with Chinese university students had good construct validity, internal consistency and reliability. It could help measure student engagement in online learning in China.

The purpose of this paper is to study teachers’ perspectives of social and emotional learning (SEL) in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) primary schools.

This research was a case study design investigating the phenomenon of SEL in primary schools (elementary school level) in Aotearoa NZ (Stake, 2005).

The SEL themes that were drawn from the data were: positive interdependence, empowerment, self-management, self-awareness restorative conversations and circle time.

The research challenges the field to work with teachers and community workers to create more in-depth qualitative research knowledge that is contextually relevant to SEL for researchers, educational policymakers and our children.

Based in Aotearoa NZ primary schools, this qualitative research provides a unique perspective of SEL from school-based practicing teachers.

Swedish society has systematically worked to improve children's health and well-being since the early twentieth century and is considered a leading figure globally in battling violence against children. Awareness of violence against children and its detrimental effects on development and health is generally high in Sweden. Violence is also broadly recognised as a violation of human rights. A ban on corporal punishment was enacted in 1948 in social childcare institutions, in 1958 in schools, and in 1979 at home. The more recent landmark was the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, established as law on 1 January 2020. In line with convention's Article 12, stating that a child has the right to express their views in all matters affecting them, more attention to child participation has been paid since 2020. This chapter provides several recent examples of strategic measures that have been used to enhance child participation in governmental assignments and enquiries and state-funded research. We discuss the examples considering the United Nations convention and child participation methods and pinpoint opportunities and obstacles to further develop and consolidate child participation as a norm in publicly funded societal activities.

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.

Today, low-income people seeking resources from the federal government must often work through non-profit organizations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the constraints that the poor must face today to secure resources through non-profit organizations.

This is a conceptual paper. The authors review cases of non-profit organizations providing federally supported resources to the poor across multiple sectors.

The authors find that to accept government contracts serving the poor, nonprofit organizations must often engage in one or several practices: reject clients normally consistent with their mission, select clients based on likely outcomes, ignore problems in clients’ lives relevant to their predicament, or undermine client progress to manage funding requirements. To secure government-supported resources from nonprofits, the poor must often acquiesce to intrusions into one or more of the following: their privacy (disclosing sensitive information), their self-protection (renouncing legal rights), their identity (avowing a particular self-understanding) or their self-mastery (relinquishing authority over daily routines).

The authors show that the nonprofits’ dual role as brokers, both liaisons transferring resources and representatives of the state, can complicate their relation to their clients and the predicament of the poor themselves; the authors suggest that two larger trends, toward increasing administrative accountability and demonstrating deservingness, are having both intended and unintended consequences for the ability of low-income individuals to gain access to publicly funded resources.

This paper examines the national solidarity in Brunei Darussalam during the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequential impact on younger generations. Utilising Emile Durkheim's solidarity theories, I examine how young people's social media use builds on state discourse in the pandemic. I contend that a shift towards an organic society is visible through a social cohesion that is based on differentiated roles. I argue that the citizenry plays a vital role in the forward momentum toward Industrial Revolution (IR) 4.0, which illustrates that solidarity cannot be forged as a top-down directive. By prompting economic and creative divisions of labour, the local use of social media in a public health crisis has shown the government a new way to foster solidarity. Significant implications for youth as future leaders of the nation are discussed.