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The purpose of this study is to expand upon accounting literature that highlights the benefits of hardiness in the accounting environment. Accordingly, the relationship between hardiness and accounting task performance is investigated across two scenarios in the presence of conscientiousness, a well‐documented predictor of performance (Barrick and Mount).

Subjects completed a bank reconciliation task with either an immediate deadline or a non‐immediate deadline. The personality traits were measured with scales from prior literature.

The relationship between the commitment dimension of hardiness and task performance was positive and significant in the presence of the immediate deadline, but not the non‐immediate deadline. Conversely, the conscientiousness‐task performance relationship was positive and significant under the non‐immediate deadline, but not the immediate deadline. Additional analysis revealed a significant association between commitment and detection of errors.

Since task performance was measured in relation to one task, the generalizability of the results is limited. However, the results imply that hardiness serves as a relevant variable in cognitive performance models.

The hardiness trait appears to produce positive outcomes in the accounting environment. Accounting educators and firm leaders should understand how the trait is expressed and activated in order to train professionals on critical accounting and auditing tasks.

This paper provides new evidence about the benefits of the hardy personality in accounting settings. Additionally, the results offer a basis for researchers to incorporate hardiness as an individual difference in studies on auditor performance.

NEXIS and DIALOG both offer full‐text online coverage of the magazine Business Week, while ABI/INFORM Global Edition on CDROM provides abstracts. A comparison of all three systems shows mixed results. DIALOG had the most records for two narrow topics, while NEXIS was superior when the search topic was broader. Although retrieving fewer items than the full‐text systems, ABI/INFORM had a considerable amount of material. With the difficulty of choosing between costly full‐text systems, settling for abstracts on CDROM may be an alternative for the researcher.

This study presents a fuzzy synthetic evaluation of the challenges of smart city realisation in developing countries, using Nigeria as a case study. By defining and delineating the problems faced by the country, more viable directions to attaining smart city development can be achieved.

The study adopted a post-positivist philosophical stance with a deductive approach. A structured questionnaire was used to gather data from built environment professionals involved in the delivery of Nigerian public infrastructures. Six dimensions of the challenges of smart cities were identified from literature and explored. They are governance, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal issues. Data gathered were analysed using Cronbach alpha test for reliability, Shapiro-Wilks test for normality, Kruskal-Wallis H-test for consistency and fuzzy synthetic evaluation test for the synthetic evaluation of the challenges of smart city attainment.

The findings revealed that all six assessed dimensions have a significant impact on the attainment of smart cities in Nigeria. More specifically, issues relating to environmental, technological, social and legal challenges are more prominent.

The fuzzy synthetic approach adopted provides a clear, practical insight on the issues that need to be addressed before the smart city development can be attained within developing countries.

This paper is about marketing accounting. It is about reading marketing writing and writing marketing reading and what calls them into being. It is about our “ab‐outing” practices; those signifying practices by means of which we week to capture a piece of the world and show it off, wrapped in a suitable tale of discovery, in a cabinet in the museum of marketing knowledge. You may wonder why should we bother, since without those representation practices and textual conventions how could we be sure that the objects on display were real, not fakes; that our representations were true images of objects in the real world, not mere simulations of simulations? Do you find comfort in the view that marketing discourse organizes in such a way as to sustain the convention that objects in the marketing world “out there” are antecedent to our images of them? And does it discomfort you to recognize the ideas of Garfinkel (1967) being used to suggest that marketing accounts are constituent features of the settings we make observable? Whatever your answers, how textual organization persuades and makes real is a point worth considering. I think this is a timely project, as we warm to qualitative methods, especially ethnography, on the (mis)understanding that they can reveal truer, deeper, thicker insights into the real world. For it is not possible to avoid the problem of representation in this way, as Geertz (1973) reminds us in his invitation to reflexive ethnographic inquiry.

The northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) was declared a threatened species by the US Fish and Wildlife Service on June 22, 1990. Its listing as a threatened species makes it illegal not only to harm the owls directly, but also to destroy their habitat. Uncertainty associated with the federal government's handling of the owl habitat area increased with the announcement on June 27 that a plan for protection would be delayed. Subsequently, the Bush administration responded with a plan aimed at “balancing” environmental and employment considerations (Hooker and Rockwell, 1990). Reflecting the 1994 Clinton forest plan for the Pacific Northwest, total harvests of softwoods in the Douglas‐fir region of Western Washington and Western Oregon were recently projected to decline from 3.14 billion cubic feet in 1986 to 1.75 billion cubic feet in 2010 (Haynes, Adams, and Mills, 1995). Since the stock market responds very rapidly to new information, its reaction to the owl's listing can be investigated in an attempt to uncover Wall Street's perception of the likely future effect of the decision on the financial attractiveness of growing and marketing timber. Results have implications for the forest products industry and should be of interest to policymakers, forest industry planners, and security analysts.

The adoption of robotics and automation (R&A) within the construction industry has been adjudged as slow, despite the possibility of it reducing the high risk posed on health and safety of humans by the activities of the industry. The call for research and development in this area of technology to improve its adoption in the delivery of construction projects is evident in past studies. Thus, this paper aims to conduct a review of R&A in construction-related fields with a view to revealing the area of focus of past studies.

A bibliometric approach was adopted for this study, and data used were gathered from the Scopus database. Keywords such as “robotics”, “automation” and “construction” were used to extract papers from the database. VOSviewer was used to prepare a co-authorship and co-occurrence map based on the bibliographic data gathered.

The findings revealed that focus is placed on construction automation, industrial robots and application, robots’ systems and designs, robotics in earthworks, and robots’ control and information system. Furthermore, currently, research focus in this area is tending towards a more digitalised application of R&A especially in the areas of 3D manufacturing.

The findings of this study are limited due to the use of a single database.

Despite its limitations, the findings open a knowledge gap that can be explored in developing countries particularly in Africa to improve construction delivery in the continent through R&A.

The study adopted the bibliometric approach in mapping out research focus in R&A – an aspect of digital technology that has not been given considerable attention in recent bibliometric and scientometric studies.

This paper presents the findings from the assessment of the determinants of cloud computing (CC) deployment by construction organisations. Using the technology-organisation-environment (TOE) framework, the study strives to improve construction organisations' project delivery and digital transformation by adopting beneficial technologies like CC.

This study adopted a post-positivism philosophical stance using a deductive approach with a questionnaire administered to construction organisations in South Africa. The data gathered were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Also, the fusion of structural equation modelling (SEM) and machine learning (ML) regression models helped to gain a robust understanding of the key determinants of using CC.

The study found that the use of CC by construction organisations in South Africa is still slow. SEM indicated that this slow usage is influenced by six technology and environmental factors, namely (1) cost-effectiveness, (2) availability, (3) compatibility, (4) client demand, (5) competitors' pressure and (6) trust in cloud service providers. ML models developed affirmed that these variables have high predictive power. However, sensitivity analysis revealed that the availability of CC and CC's ancillary technologies and the pressure from competitors are the most important predictors of CC usage in construction organisations.

The paper offers a theoretical backdrop for future works on CC in construction, particularly in developing countries where such a study has not been explored.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977 and its amendment – the Trade and Competitive Act of 1988 – are unique not only in the history of the accounting and auditing profession, but also in international law. The Acts raised awareness of the need for efficient and adequate internal control systems to prevent illegal acts such as the bribery of foreign officials, political parties and governments to secure or maintain contracts overseas. Its uniqueness is also due to the fact that the USA is the first country to pioneer such a legislation that impacted foreign trade, international law and codes of ethics. The research traces the history of the FCPA before and after its enactment, the role played by the various branches of the United States Government – Congress, Department of Justice, Securities Exchange commission (SEC), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS); the contributions made by professional associations such as the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICFA), the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), the American Bar Association (ABA); and, finally, the role played by various international organizations such as the United Nations (UN), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC). A cultural, ethical and legalistic background will give a better understanding of the FCPA as wll as the rationale for its controversy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of budget participation conflict (BPC) on job performance and the mediating effect of job satisfaction and job tenure on this relationship in a South Korean setting. BPC is defined as the difference between a manager’s actual budget participation and the same manager’s preferred level of budget participation.

Survey data, analyzed using path analysis, were used to measure the direct effect of BPC on performance, and the indirect effects between BPC and performance running through job satisfaction and job tenure.

Findings suggest that BPC does not directly impact job performance. Overall, this study suggests that BPC has a negative impact on job satisfaction and that job satisfaction in turn can significantly influence job performance. The authors also find some marginal effect of job satisfaction on job tenure, implying that increasing satisfaction can marginally increase job tenure.

Limitations of this study are those usually found in cross-sectional survey research.

Despite its limitations, this study has both academic and practical implications. The study adds to the job performance literature in an Asian country which has not been widely researched. The study also finds that managers’ job performance and job satisfaction can be improved by minimizing BPC. Future research should study other variables that influence job performance of South Korean managers.

This paper presents the findings of assessing the strategies required for improved work-life balance (WLB) of construction workers in Eswatini. This was done to improve the work-life relationship of construction workers and, in turn, improve the service delivery of the construction industry in the country.

The study adopted a quantitative research approach using a questionnaire administered to construction professionals in the country. The data gathered were analysed using frequency, percentage, Mann–Whitney U test, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

The findings revealed that the level of implementation of WLB initiatives in the Eswatini construction industry is still low. Following the attaining of several model fitness, the study found that the key strategies needed for effective WLB can be classified into four significant components, namely: (1) leave, (2) health and wellness, (3) work flexibility, and; (4) days off/shared work.

The findings offer valuable benefits to construction participants as the adoption of the identified critical strategies can lead to the fulfilment of WLB of the construction workforce and by extension, the construction industry can benefit from better job performance.

This study is the first to assess the strategies needed for improved WLB of construction workers in Eswatini. Furthermore, the study offers a theoretical platform for future discourse on WLB in Eswatini, a country that has not gained significant attention in past WLB literature.