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Examines research activity in executive competencies, and the Management Charter Initiative M3 framework. Briefly outlines executive competency frame‐works currently being developed and indicates future directions.

Describes the national trialling of the Management Charter Initiative Senior Management Standards which involved hundreds of senior managers in 1994‐5. Outlines the results of the field tests and concludes that the senior management standards have a high level of acceptance among senior managers across a wide variety of organizations.

The governance structure of Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) implements Islamic canon law (Shari'a) into business transactions through Shari'a supervision processes. This paper aims to define Shari'a supervision and examine Shari'a supervisory councils (both within and outside the Central Bank), Shari'a consulting firms, Shari'a advisors, and Shari'a Supervisory Boards (SSB). It also discusses the importance of the hierarchical position of SSBs and evaluates their objectives and functions.

The paper reviews a wide range of theoretical literatures especially recent proceedings of relevant conferences in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries along with the standards of the Accounting and Auditing Organization of Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI). A framework for understanding the role of the SSB is developed suggesting a set of objectives and functions for the SSB.

The paper finds a lack of standardization among the IFIs concerning the position of the SSB within the corporate hierarchy. Moreover, the SSB is found to control the IFIs activities more than the other types of Shari'a supervision such as Shari'a consulting firms and Shari'a advisors.

The research focuses exclusively on the GCC countries and excludes the other Middle East and Far East countries where Shari'a supervision might have different forms.

The research provides guidelines for IFIs in defining the SSB role in their governance structure and recommends the SSB among the other forms of Shari'a supervision (Shari'a consulting firms and Shari'a advisors) in controlling the IFIs activities.

This study contributes to the literature gap about the governance of IFIs. It is one of the first studies that provide a conceptual foundation for the SSB role in the governance structure of IFIs.

US demographers predict that women, people of color and ethnic minorities will represent over 50 percent of all new entrants to the US workforce by 2008. This shift in demographics plus the pressure from a growing competitive global marketplace are forcing organizations to rethink models of business success. The authors describe how organizations can ensure their readiness to effectively align business strategies with today's demographic and market realities to achieve growth, profitability, and sustainability. This study updates the literature by connecting the leadership literature with diversity research. The theory development of this study reviewed the progress made and the future prospects and potential profits for US businesses in leading today's diverse workforce. Findings from interviews and focus groups with senior executives, representing a cross section of American industries, led to best practices recommendations for capitalizing on the strategic benefits of diversity.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned entrepreneur regarding his pioneering efforts in starting robotic companies and commercializing technological inventions. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The interviewee is Brennard Pierce, a world-class robotics designer and serial entrepreneur. Pierce is currently consulting in robotics after exiting from his latest startup as cofounder and chief robotics officer of Bear Robotics. Pierce discusses what led him to the field of robotics, the success of Bear Robotics, the challenges he’s faced and his future goals.

Pierce received a Bachelor of Science in computer science from Exeter University. He then founded his first startup, 5TWO, a custom software company. Always passionate about robotics as a hobby and now wanting to pursue the field professionally, he sold 5TWO to obtain a Master of Science, Robotics degree from the newly formed Bristol Robotics Lab (BRL) at Bristol University. After BRL, where he designed and built a biped robot that learned to walk using evolutionary algorithms, he joined the Robotics Research team at Carnegie Mellon University where he worked on a full-size humanoid robot for a large electronics company, designing and executing simple experiments for balancing. He then spent the next six years as a PhD candidate and robotics researcher at the Technical University Munich (TUM), Institute for Cognitive Science, where he built a compliant humanoid robot and a new generation of field programmable gate array-based robotic controllers. Afterwards, Pierce established the robotic startup Robotise in Munich to commercialize the omni-directional mobile platforms that he had developed at TUM. A couple of years later, Pierce left Robotise to cofound Bear Robotics, a Silicon Valley based company that brings autonomous robots to the restaurant industry. He remained at Bear Robotics for four years as chief robotics officer. He is presently a robotics consultant, waiting for post-COVID before beginning his next robotic startup.

Pierce is a seasoned roboticist and a successful entrepreneur. He has 15+ years’ of unique experience in both designing robotic hardware and writing low level embedded and high level cloud software. During his career he has founded three companies, managed small to middle sized interdisciplinary teams, and hired approximately 100 employees of all levels. Pierce’s robotic startup in Munich, Robotise, was solely based on his idea, design and implementation for an autonomous mobile delivery system. The third company he cofounded, Bear Robotics, successfully raised a $32m Series A funding lead by SoftBank. Bear Robotics is the recipient of the USA’s National Restaurant Association Kitchen Innovation Award; Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards; and the Hospitality Innovation Planet 2020 Award.

The emerging roles of management accountants as either hybrid accountants or business partners are a cause for much debate in the literature. Of the two characteristics related to these roles, namely information provider and interpreter, and decision-maker, the latter remains under-researched. The present study adds to the decision-maker debate by examining business decision-making involvement. Survey responses from a diverse sample of mostly Institute of Management Accountants (USA) and Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (UK) members were obtained and analysed to examine their current business decision-making involvement, including an investigation guided by role theory into possible contextual factors associated with different levels of decision-making involvement. The business decision-making involvement of management accountants varies significantly, and is less pervasive than widely believed. A significant proportion (53%) of management accountants in traditional management accounting positions report no, or limited, business decision-making involvement. Management accountants employed in smaller firms, and middle-aged professionals, are more likely to be involved in making business decisions. The inverted u-shaped association between age and decision-making involvement identified in this study, requires further investigation. The large cross-sectional analysis of the present study extends prior research which was mostly narrowly focussed due to its case study nature. The varying levels of decision-making involvement, and contextual variables associated with higher level involvement, shed some light on the intricacies of the role of management accountants. Professional associations and educators should note that the roles of today’s management accountants vary greatly between information provider and decision-maker.

The Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) maintain better control over their transactions than conventional financial institutions (CFIs) through the existence of Shari'a Supervisory Board (SSB) and Shari'a Control Department (SCD). The purpose of this paper is to highlight the superiority of Shari'a supervision over external audit and Shari'a audit over internal audit. The study identifies five independent variables that affect the SSB control: ex‐ante Shari'a audit; ex‐post Shari'a audit; SCD reporting to the SSB; corrective actions of SSB towards the management violations; and the number of SSB members.

The variables are articulated in five hypotheses, which are tested by ordinary least square regression. The data are collected via a questionnaire which was sent to the SSB members of 219 IFIs in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.

The results indicate that ex‐ante Shari'a audit, ex‐post Shari'a audit, and reporting of SCD are significantly related to the SSB control, whereas corrective actions and the number of SSB members have insignificant relation.

The research is focused on internal factors only, without considering other external factors such as stakeholders and regulators. Also, the research covered the GCC region alone.

The research recommends testing the hypotheses in other geographies to generalize the results, and including external factors as well as shareholders and board of directors.

The research provides practical implications for the SCD role and calls for merging the SCD with the traditional internal audit department to reduce the excessive work of controlling.

The paper contributes to the literature gap about the SSB. It is believed to be one of few studies that provide empirical evidence about the SSB control in the IFIs of the GCC region.

This study examines the influence of firm management’s ethical “tone at the top” (tone) and the working relationship of an auditor with his/her supervisor (senior) on the auditor’s propensity to engage in an unethical, dysfunctional auditor behavior (DAB). Findings indicate that environmental factors influence the staff auditor’s decision of whether or not to follow a course of action suggested by the supervisor that is contrary to both the audit program and generally accepted auditing standards (GAAS). Specifically, auditors are influenced by the tone that the partner sets for the firm and by the working relationship that the staff auditor has with the supervising senior auditor. The results of this research have ramifications for the auditing profession, as they identify specific factors outside of auditing standards and beyond an auditor’s moral reasoning capabilities that can influence the acceptance of unethical, dysfunctional behavior.