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This whistleblowing case study engages students in discussions about when and how to disclose differences of opinion on a revenue recognition matter with higher-ups in an organization. Factors to consider include the morality of whistleblowing, confidentiality obligations, the rules of conduct in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Code, Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX), Dodd–Frank, and the US Supreme Court ruling in Digital Realty, Inc. v. Somers that addresses when to report matters to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Case questions are designed to promote students’ critical thinking skills, ethical reasoning skills, and decision-making. A flowchart of AICPA ethics rule 2.130.020 (Subordination of Judgment) provides the framework for making decisions when differences exist in financial reporting. The case provides learning objectives, implementation guidance, and teaching notes. The case was used in an accounting ethics course taught at the undergraduate senior level but can also be used in auditing, fraud examination, and advanced financial reporting courses.

Although risk culture is a key determinant for an effective risk management, identifying the risk culture of a firm can be challenging due to the abstract concept of culture. This paper proposes a novel approach that uses unsupervised machine learning techniques to identify significant features needed to assess and differentiate between different forms of risk culture.

To convert the unstructured text in our sample of banks' 10K reports into structured data, a two-dimensional dictionary for text mining is built to capture risk culture characteristics and the bank's attitude towards the risk culture characteristics. A principal component analysis (PCA) reduction technique is applied to extract the significant features that define risk culture, before using a K-means unsupervised learning to cluster the reports into distinct risk culture groups.

The PCA identifies uncertainty, litigious and constraining sentiments among risk culture features to be significant in defining the risk culture of banks. Cluster analysis on the PCA factors proposes three distinct risk culture clusters: good, fair and poor. Consistent with regulatory expectations, a good or fair risk culture in banks is characterized by high profitability ratios, bank stability, lower default risk and good governance.

The relationship between culture and risk management can be difficult to study given that it is hard to measure culture from traditional data sources that are messy and diverse. This study offers a better understanding of risk culture using an unsupervised machine learning approach.

The German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (GSCDDA), as a comprehensive regulation for due diligence in supply chains, will exert profound pressure on companies’ sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). This study aims to examine the affected stakeholders’ polarizing expectations stemming from the GSCDDA, the resulting impacts on SSCM and how these findings compare with theoretical SSCM developments.

From 5,490 GSCDDA posts on X (formerly “Twitter”), the authors extracted 556 qualitative posts illustrating the GSCDDA discourse and analyzed them from a stakeholder perspective. The posts were classified according to the dimensions of stakeholder groups and expectations (i.e. challenges and opportunities). The authors then synthesized the posts across these dimensions and compared the identified expectations with the SSCM literature.

Seven stakeholder groups were identified, along with nine challenges (e.g. legal flaws) and four opportunities (e.g. increased transparency). The synthesis of both components revealed highly discussed and conflicting expectations. The theoretical SSCM developments partly differ from the discourse, indicating discernible gaps between theory and practice

Identifying key stakeholder groups supports building synergies between GSCDDA implementers and stakeholders to tackle their challenges and reinforce opportunities.

Due to the growing prevalence of supply chain due diligence regulations, it is essential to consider the legal implications for SSCM. This study explores the link between due diligence concepts and SSCM, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to analyze how legal pressure shapes stakeholders’ expectations on companies’ SSCM.

This paper examines the effects and root causes of client influence within the valuation profession in Kenya.

This study adopted a mixed research design incorporating a survey and experiment of registered and practising valuers in Kenya and interviews of key informants from registered and practising valuers, valuers' clients (commercial banks) and professional bodies.

The study found that client influence negatively impacts the valuation profession, contributing to inaccurate valuation outcomes, and it exists because of the valuation environment, represented by limited and unreliable information in Kenya and many other developing countries.

This study makes a critical contribution to the empirical literature as it introduces new insights into the impacts and causes of client influence by demonstrating how the valuation environment, characterised by poor information, contributes to client influence in Kenya, which is typical of many other developing countries.

This paper aims to explore the consumer insights and ethical concerns surrounding the online payday loan services available in the Google Play Store. This research was conducted to compare whether the presence or absence of debt collection protection acts in a country creates differences in consumer experiences regarding the ethics of payday loan collection. Specifically, the study compares customers’ experiences in both the Indonesian and US markets.

Indonesia and the USA were chosen because they have very different regulatory structures for the payday loan industry. The data was scraped using Python from 27 payday loan apps on the Indonesian Play Store, resulting in a total of 244,697 reviews extracted from the Indonesian market. For the US market, 446,010 reviews were extracted from 14 payday loan apps. The data was further analyzed using NVIVO.

The results suggest that consumers of payday loans in Indonesia and the USA hold positive views about the benefits of payday loan apps, as revealed by the word frequency and word cloud analysis. Notably, customers in both countries did not express any negative sentiments regarding the unethical interest rate charged by the payday loan, contradicting what is commonly reported in academic literature. However, a distinct pattern of unethical conduct was observed in both countries concerning marketing communication and debt collection practices. In the Indonesian market, payday loan companies were found to engage in unethical debt collection activities. In the US market, payday lenders exhibited unethical behavior in their marketing communication, particularly through deceptive advertising that makes promises to consumers that are not delivered.

The study aims to provide evidence on the various experiences of customers in the presence and absence of debt collection regulations using a novel methodology and a large sample, which strengthens the results and conclusions of the study. The study also intends to inform policymakers, particularly the Indonesian government, about the need for specific laws to regulate the debt collection process and prevent unethical practices. Ultimately, the study is expected to protect the rights of consumers from a deceptive marketing communication or unethical debt collection practices in both the Indonesian and US markets.