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The natural environment has become an increasingly important business issue over the last ten years while shareholder views on the importance of corporate environmental disclosure have not been extensively investigated. The purpose of this paper is to report the requirements of individual shareholders for the disclosure and regulation of environmental information and their intended use of the information.

Respondents were questioned using an online survey whether they want specific types of environmental information from companies and if so, where they want it disclosed, why they want it disclosed and if they feel strongly enough about it to want it made compulsory and be subject to an audit. The authors regard New Zealand as an ideal experimental setting for the investigation of shareholder views and focus on the members of an active shareholders' association in New Zealand and obtain a very high response rate.

The paper finds that most shareholders are very positive about the disclosure of a range of environmental information items and furthermore they want environmental information to be made compulsory, to be audited, and to be published in the annual report and also on the company website. The most important reason given by shareholders for requiring environmental information is that they want companies to be accountable for their environmental impacts. The results are potentially significant for company governance and management decision making and will also have policy implications for regulators.

The findings have important implications for the government, the accounting profession and other standard setters. The paper suggests that the time has come for legislators, regulatory bodies and standard setters to take note of the policy implications if such a large proportion (59 percent – 72 percent) of shareholders want environmental disclosure to be compulsory and prescribed and not left to the discretion of companies.

The information needs of individual shareholders who make their own investment decisions should be of great interest to regulators, because such investors rely on publicly available information, whereas institutional investors also collect private information. Regulators need to remove information asymmetry by regulating and/or mandating disclosures and shareholder requirements for information should be an important consideration.

This paper is of high value. The paper addresses why the information is requested and what it would be used for, something that the studies prior to the year 2000 did not cover. In addition this study is the first to survey New Zealand investors 1996, i.e. prior to the resurgence of late in societal interest in environmental issues.

This work aims to check the validity of the hypotheses of the agency, signalling, political costs and proprietary costs theories in the disclosure of information online. More specifically, to determine the prevalence of the purposes alleged by those theories, we analyse the effect of industry concentration and other factors on an index of items of information disclosed on corporate web sites, in its entirety as well as its breakdown into information whose elaboration and disclosure is compulsory and information whose elaboration and disclosure is voluntary.

First, a content analysis of the quoted non‐financial Spanish companies' web sites was carried out. To do this, three disclosure indexes were created and applied. Then three causal models were estimated by applying a linear regression, taking several factors into consideration.

The findings emphasise the relevance of the hypotheses of political costs theory as the main explanatory factor for voluntary disclosure of information on the internet by quoted Spanish firms. In particular, the hypothesis that the greater the firm's monopolistic power, the more visible the company is and the more political costs it faces. To reduce these costs, such companies have an interest in disclosing greater amounts of information.

The researchers have analysed only one year of data from one country, but this analysis is significant because the motives which lead a firm to disclose information can be very different depending on its geographic location, especially if the factors which determine disclosure practices are associated with the political costs that the companies face.

This is the first study to examine the effect of industrial concentration on the disclosure of information online.

The emergence of “knowledge economies” brings along new lenses to organizational management and behaviour. One of the key concepts at the heart of this new wave is knowledge management (KM). The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize how KM is taught and discussed within the context of business schools around the UK.

The general research question is: how do top 40 business schools in the UK understand, teach and implement KM in their teaching? To answer this question, the author reviewed the curriculums of leading schools and contacted all schools to collect more information and data.

The study reveals that KM has yet to carve a self-standing place for itself within taught programmes in UK business schools.

The study’s methodological design can explore the relevance of KM as a term, but it can only provide limited perspective into how this complex and multidimensional concept is operationalized in business schools’ curriculums. Moreover, the capacity of business schools to frame KM holistically is beyond the scope of this research.

Framing KM discourse within the relevant academic literature, this paper outlines that, while KM is being scrutinized as a research topic, interest in KM has yet to be translated into a widespread integration of KM as a taught skill within business schools.

The study is considered as one of the first attempts to investigate how KM is understood, taught and implemented in teaching and curriculum design within the UK business schools.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the quality of disclosure on intangibles in presentations to analysts held by firms listed in the Spanish capital market. Given that quantification of the information provides a more precise and convincing message than qualitative disclosure, the information is measured by two indices, which are focused on the specificity of the disclosure.

The reports of all presentations to financial analysts held by Spanish companies listed in the Madrid Stock Exchange are analysed during the year 2000 and 2001. The sample contains 257 reports.

Briefly, the study finds that there are differences in the quality of the information reported to financial analysts in Spain, and that several factors, such as firm size and the levels of profitability and leverage, highly influence it.

This study contributes to the literature by analysing the disclosure of the information on intangibles beyond the commonly used disclosure/no disclosure dichotomy. Consequently, this study introduces different indices in order to analyse not only the extent but also the specificity of disclosure.

Establishing the quality of overall disclosure on intangibles, as well as the categories on which the specificity is higher, should be relevant for management teams when they design their disclosure strategies. In addition, understanding why firms disclose information on intangibles to financial analysts and why its quality varies among them is also useful to the users of accounting information as well as to accounting policy makers.

Prior to widespread social insurance, European governments experimented with a variety of programs to protect workers from income loss due to illness. This paper examines the consequences for worker absenteeism of making sickness insurance coverage voluntary or compulsory. Medical benefits appear to have reduced absenteeism for all workers. The effect of paid sick leave depended on insurance fund membership status. Better-paid workers found it easier to take time off in compulsory than in voluntary funds. Distinctive information problems plagued voluntary systems, and eventually were resolved by rejecting the voluntary ideal and forcing all workers into a single risk pool.

Prior to the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) crisis, detailed information on beef products seemed no real necessity. However, following the outbreak of BSE, the Government felt obliged to protect consumer interest with legislation. Obligatory product information became required for beef traceability. This paper describes how the emergence of beef product information became relevant against the background of BSE. The paper describes the beef sector over time, through two case studies. From both studies, the emergence of product information exchange can be clearly noted. The first study describes the type of information exchanged, before the BSE outbreak. The second study describes the type of information exchanged after the BSE outbreak, prior to compulsory labelling.

The aim of this paper is to map and analyse the state of the art of eco‐energy labelling and its potential as a fundamental component in the transition process towards eco‐sustainability.

A detailed scenario of trends in eco‐energy labelling systems, both on an international and European Union scale are outlined, followed by identification and analysis of the key representative experiences. Subsequently, the main constraints that limit their full potential as a benchmark and tool of improved customer communication for environmental sustainability have been highlighted and critically analysed.

The full implementation of eco‐energy labelling, as a authentic driving force in sustainability building processes, requires the elimination of the critical factors identified. Therefore, standardisation of benchmarking methodologies, based on improved customer information mechanisms regarding qualitative and quantitative indicators, need to implemented. A strong commitment on the part of all participants involved, to define a multi‐level framework, capable of promoting a recognised international rating scheme in needed.

The most significant implications regard the attempt to classify and coordinate all the information concerning instruments, initiatives, policies and strategies related to eco‐sustainability.

The paper is a contribution towards pinpointing the current fragmented scenario of eco‐energy labelling tools with the aim of re‐conducting them into a coherent and more functional whole.

Financial reporting information had been aimed mainly at internal users and audit offices, but this has changed in recent years. Potential users have widened, among whom we should mention certain financial institutions, owing to their particular relevance. In this context, based on a sample of 54 credit institutions, this study aims to obtain evidence on the information that is shown to be useful to these users in their decision‐making, by looking at the Spanish financial reports. A study is also made of causes that restrict the usefulness of local financial information, along with possible suggestions to make this information more useful to credit institutions. The results reveal that owing mainly to legal reasons, the profit and loss account and the balance sheet are the least relevant financial statements to credit institutions’ indebtedness operation decision making. Likewise, it is obvious that current local financial information needs to become more opportune, reliable, complete and understandable.

The purpose of this paper is to provide new insights into the implementation of large‐scale learning projects; thereby better understanding the difficulties, frustrations, and obstacles encountered when implementing enterprise‐wide e‐learning as a tool for training and organization transformation in a complex organization.

Information‐sharing disturbances, one of five categories of disturbances that emerged from a grounded theory open coding procedure applied to empirical data collected through a longitudinal field research, are in focus. Third generation activity theory, specifically the notions network of activity systems, disturbances, tensions and contradictions, is used as an analytical lens through which to understand the role of information sharing in a large‐scale implementation.

The study has identified how information sharing disturbances became a critical factor in the implementation of e‐learning in a large company. A number of tensions that point to potential contradictions have been identified. Ways in which to deal with such tensions in future implementations of e‐learning have been suggested.

Activity‐theoretical discussion of e‐learning in a large organization, identifying underlying tensions, is of relevance to large organizations introducing new technologies for working and learning.

The study has identified the causes of an important type of problem that can slow down or hinder e‐learning adoption in an organization, and thereby pointing out shortcomings of standardised e‐learning applications.

Empirical studies of enterprise‐wide implementations of e‐learning have rarely been reported on in the research literature.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.