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This study aims to provide a precise understanding of how corporate sustainability information is used in socially responsible investing (SRI). The study is motivated by the lack of a recognised body of knowledge on this issue. This study, therefore, collates and reviews relevant studies (67 studies) to provide guidance to investors interested in SRI and identify a research agenda for academics desiring to contribute to this area.

This study conducts a systemic literature review employing recognised key words and searching the Web of Science. HistCite is utilised to ensure important cited studies are not missed from the collection. The review was conducted from two perspectives: (1) sources of sustainability information and (2) how the information is used in SRI.

The review identifies five major sources of sustainability information, including corporate reports, ESG ratings, industry affiliation, news and private communication with firms. These sources of information play different roles in the cross section of SRI strategies (i.e. negative and positive screening, active ownership and integration). This study provides guidance on how to use this information in SRI and provides recommendations for future research on how analysts interact with the information, how different informational characteristics impact implementation, ways to improve data quality, improvements to analysis methods and where data use needs to be extended into new strategies.

This review contributes to the SRI literature by inventorying studies of an important, yet omitted aspect, namely, sustainability information. This work also enriches the literature on corporate sustainability information by investigating how this information can be used for a specific purpose, namely, SRI. Given the increasing interest in SRI, this review will provide much-needed guidance for a range of practitioners, including investors and regulators.

This paper aims to explore the role played by the National Archives of South Africa in human rights promotion and protection. The study examined the challenges that archivists encounter when undertaking archival functions, such as acquisition, appraisal and access provision, that contribute to forming documentary archives crucial for human rights promotion and protection.

A review of literature dealing with acquisition, appraisal and access was used in this research. It was supplemented with interviews.

This paper provides recommendations of benefits in the field of archives management with a focus on the areas of acquisition, appraisal and access. The transformational discourse in the jurisdiction of archives management challenges archival institutions to be active players in selecting historical and cultural archives’ significance that is significant in human rights protections. However, despite judicial requirements that recommend the importance of archives, there is evidence that archival functions such as appraisal, acquisition and access are not being fully used, resulting in national archives institutions that are subject to irregularities that contribute to an unbalanced archives collection.

The paper was limited only to the National Archives of South Africa.

The paper makes practical implications concerning the acquisition, appraisal and providing access to human rights records.

Sufficient funding resource allocation ought to be provided to advance human rights promotion.

This paper offers informed recommendations to address the challenges of acquisition, appraisal and access provision of archive materials. The availability of archives materials reinforces the community by aiding to protect legal rights and prevent human rights violations. It was, thus, necessary to establish whether the National Archives of South Africa is actively building the archives collections that are important for human rights promotion and protection.

As buyers and suppliers seek to create value, they face the challenge of creating an environment that promotes coordination and information sharing and discourages opportunism. While the literature suggested dyadic mechanisms to create such an environment, this study focuses on ties beyond the buyer–supplier dyad. Specifically, close connections to one's partner's partners (CPP) are crucial in the realization of benefits for buyers and suppliers.

Drawing from embeddedness theory and governance theory, the authors developed a contingency framework to examine when CPP are beneficial or counterproductive considering two dyadic attributes – relational capital (RC) and partner dependence. Analyses were conducted using data from a dyadic survey complemented with archival data on 106 buyer–supplier relationships (BSRs).

The study reveals that CPP both help and hurt in the realization of benefits. Stark asymmetries exist between the impact of CPP on the buyer and supplier sides. For buyers, CPP exert a direct positive effect on operational and innovation benefits. For suppliers, the effect of CPP on operational and innovation benefits is contingent on buyer dependence and RC – CPP serves as a substitute for buyer dependence and RC. There are no such contingency effects for buyers. Further analysis identifies situations for suppliers when CPP hurt the realization of benefits.

The study highlights the importance of CPP to foster efficiency and innovation within BSRs and illustrates how their impact varies across contingency conditions and across the parties within a dyad.

The purpose of this study is to identify the norms that underlie and condition the decisions made by preparers of financial reports.

This interview-based study illustrates how financial report preparers engage in behaviors linked to the perception of recognition and measurement of internally generated intangible assets by important stakeholders. All of the companies included in the study adhere to International Financial Reporting Standards when creating their consolidated financial statements. The participants selected for the study are involved in accounting decisions related to research and development in accordance with International Accounting Standard (IAS) 38.

The authors identify the normative assumptions underlying the recognition and measurement of internally generated intangibles, which are based on concerns of consistency, credibility and reasonableness. The authors find that the normative basis for legitimacy in financial accounting is primarily related to cognitive legitimacy and is not of a moral or pragmatic nature.

The study reveals that recognition and measurement of internally generated intangibles in financial accounting relate to legitimacy. The authors identify specific norms that form the basis of this legitimacy, namely, consistency, credibility and reasonableness. These identified norms serve as constraints, mitigating the risk of judgment misuse within the IAS 38 framework for earnings management.

By adopting the “hard” and “soft” project management (PM) approaches from the PM-literature, this paper aims to problematize the expected role of client organizations in driving innovation in the transport infrastructure sector.

Addressing a large public client in Sweden, a case study design was initially applied to provide in-depth insights and perspectives of client project managers’ views and experiences of managing projects expected to drive innovation. In this paper, the concepts of “hard” and “soft” are used to discuss empirical findings on challenges associated with adopting a PM-approach for driving innovation in projects. The empirical material consists of interview data, complemented with observations and archival data.

Findings reveal challenges associated with combining hard and soft approaches, frequently demonstrating difficulties in balancing short-term project expectations with the promotion of innovation. In line with the literature, project managers note that there is a need for soft approaches to promote development and drive innovation. Yet, findings reflect a situation in which operational success criteria predominate, whereas soft approaches are not sufficiently used to create the grounds required for fostering innovation.

Insights are provided into how PM-approaches may impact construction innovation in the infrastructure sector, demonstrating a need for further research on the challenges and implications of applying and combining hard and soft PM-approaches.

This study aims at proposing and testing a model delineating how and when the quality of a special B2B professional service, investment relations (IR), would drive corporate intangible value.

This study employs a proprietary dataset on voting records of an annual investment relations (IR) awards event and the corresponding company-level archival data for analysis. Regression analysis is used to test hypotheses.

IR service quality not only directly enhances corporate intangible value, but also indirectly boosts it via information transparency. While competitive intensity does not moderate the relationship between IR service quality and corporate intangible value, its moderating effect on the relationship between information transparency and this value is negative.

The findings advance academic understanding of the mechanism and boundary conditions underlying the complex and dynamic relationships among IR service quality, information transparency, corporate intangible value and competitive intensity. Future research endeavors to verify the present findings in other service and/or geographic settings would help establish their external validity.

The findings advise companies to expand the traditional role of IR by taking it as a powerful communication and relationship marketing tool to improve their visibility and attract investors.

The findings suggest that superior IR service would strengthen the company’s social bonding with institutional investors and effectively signal to them its commitment to good corporate governance practices.

Matching a proprietary dataset on IR voting records with the corresponding company-level archival data over a five-year period to investigate the performance implications of IR service quality within the Hong Kong context rectifies methodological limitation and geographic confinement of prior IR research.

This study aims to explore how CEO narcissism drives investment in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its mediating mechanism.

This study includes panel regression based on archival data.

CEO narcissism leads to signaling of organizational virtuous orientation that results in increase in CSR investment.

Relevance of CEO traits on CSR remains unexplored in emerging markets context, especially the underlying mechanism. This study uncovers these mechanisms.

Celebrate Michael Buckland's impressive legacy to LIS by showing his humanity, generosity and versatility.

This article is walk through a scientific career in LIS. Through personal anecdotes and life history and building upon Michael Buckland's legacy, it summarises the author’s own work seen through the prism of her interactions with Buckland, leading to scholarly contributions articulating significant statements about the field of LIS as well as pointers to past relevant publications.

Michael Buckland has a unique way of putting an end to thorny LIS issues as well as being a documentator extraordinaire.

It is a personal account, as such cannot be evaluated through the classical norms of empirical research as there is no ground truth. This account shows how chance encounters with fellow scholars can have a lasting influence on one's academic career as well as wider impact in a field.

This study aims to investigate the extent to which audit committee (AC) members who are formally independent are truly independent in practice, and what challenges they face that undermine their independence.

The study utilizes semi-structured interviews with 18 members of the AC in Jordan.

The responses indicate that AC is mostly labelled as independent but fails to play an effective monitoring role due to different institutional factors. These factors include family ownership, government ownership, culture, compensation package and the lack of qualified directors.

This research addresses this gap by presenting qualitative evidence from a civil law jurisdiction, featured by a developing financial market, a prevalence of family businesses, limited investor protection and a low risk of litigation. Additionally, this study aims to rectify the current imbalance between qualitative and quantitative studies on AC and bridge the gap between research conducted in developed countries and their developing counterparts.

This study offers valuable insights for regulatory authorities to engage in a more profound contemplation of extant governance regulations. Also, this study offers useful feedback for nomination committees of public companies, and it also has an implication for shareholders as they rely on independent directors to protect their investment. Furthermore, implications of the findings derived from this research possess the potential for generalization to other developing nations characterized by akin institutional contexts, notably encompassing the countries situated in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

This research introduces novel qualitative empirical evidence from a distinctive jurisdiction governed by civil law, thereby enriching the existing scholarly discourse. It also contributes to the AC literature by suggesting that it is not only the existence of conventionally independent ACs that affect the integrity of financial statements, but also the absence of social ties and other contextual obstacles.

Leveraging signalling theory and institutional environment theory, this study aims to examine how the entrepreneurial orientation of emerging market firms impacts initial public offering (IPO) performance.

The authors conduct regression analysis based on archival data from 312 firms’ IPOs in India.

The results in the Indian context suggest it differs from IPO performance in developed markets. In an emerging market context, the findings suggest that only competitive aggressiveness is valued by investors in IPOs. The findings further show that proactiveness and autonomy negatively influence IPO underpricing.

The research propositions imply that, owing to institutional voids in emerging markets, investors’ risk propensity and, hence, rewarding a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation differ from those in developed markets.

Extant literature has given limited attention to the dynamics of entrepreneurial orientation and the effect of each dimension of entrepreneurial orientation on IPO performance in emerging markets.