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This paper examines the gap between reporting and managers’ behaviour to challenge the current theoretical underpinnings of intellectual capital (IC) disclosure practice and research. The authors explore how the key features from IC and integrated reporting can be combined to develop an extended model for companies to comply with EU Directive 2014/95/EU and increase trust in corporate disclosures and reports.

This essay relies on academic literature and examples from practice to critique the theories that explain corporate disclosure and reporting but do not change management behaviour. Based on this critique, the authors argue for a change in the fundamental theories of stewardship to frame a new concept for corporate disclosure incorporating using a multi-capitals framework.

We argue that, while the inconsistency between organisations’ reporting and behaviour persists, increasing, renewing or extending the information disclosed is not enough to instil trust in corporations. Stewardship over a company’s resources is necessary for increasing trust. The unanticipated consequences of dishonest behaviour by managers and shareholders compels a new application of stewardship theory that works as an overarching guide for managerial behaviour and disclosure. Emanating from this new model is a realisation that managers must abandon agency theory in practice, and specifically the bonus contract.

We call for future empirical research to explore the role of stewardship theory within the dynamics of corporate disclosure using the approach. The research implications of those studies should incorporate the potential impacts on management behaviours within a stewardship framework and how those actions, and their outcomes, are disclosed for rebuilding public trust in business.

The implications for integrated reporting and reports complying with the new EU Directive are profound. Both instruments rely on agency theory to coax managers into reducing information asymmetry by disclosing more. However, agency theory only re-affirms the power managers have over corporate information. It does not change their behaviour, nor to act in the interest of all stakeholders as the stewards of an organisation’s resources.

We advocate that, in business education, greater emphasis is needed on how stewardship has a more positive impact on management behaviour than agency, legitimacy and stakeholder theories.

We reflect on the current and compelling issues permeating the international landscape of corporate reporting and disclosure and explain why current theories which explain corporate disclosures do not change behaviour or engender trust in business and offer an alternative disclosure model based on stewardship theory.

The paper identifies the types of risks disclosed by Italian organisations using integrated reporting (IR). This paper aims to understand the level and features of risk disclosure with the adoption of IR.

The authors use risk classifications already provided in the literature to develop a content analysis of Italian organisations’ integrated reports published.

The content analysis reveals that most of the Italian organisations incorporate many types of risk disclosure into their integrated reports. Organisations use this alternative form of reporting to communicate risk differently from how they disclose risks in traditional annual financial reporting. That is, the study finds that the organisations use their integrated reports to disclose a broader group of risks, related to the environment and society, and do so using narrative and visual representation.

The paper contributes to a narrow stream of research investigating risk disclosure provided through IR, contributing to the understanding of the role of IR in representing an organisational risk.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and classify the various initiatives developed and implemented across the globe for the abatement of maritime air emissions.

In this paper, an extensive survey of various sources was conducted, including the official reports of international and regional institutions, government policy documents, port authority websites, classification society pages, private firms’ sites and the academic literature. The initiatives were then categorized in accordance with the classification of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and analyzed using the SPSS Statistics software to give some insight into their frequencies and the interrelationships between them.

This exploratory review resulted in the establishment of a comprehensive global database of initiatives encouraged by the whole range of shipping stakeholders and decision-makers for the reduction of shipping air emissions. According to the findings, economic incentives that provide motivation for the adoption of less environmentally damaging practices are the most commonly used initiative, followed by infrastructure investments and informative policies.

The results provide implications for further research that include an in-depth analysis of ports’ policies, as well as an evaluation of initiatives applied on a large scale to map their emissions reduction potential for shipping.

The main contribution of this paper is the identification and analysis of all the diverse initiatives implemented globally in a comprehensive way and its dealing with air pollution from shipping as a whole.

Nowadays, the increase in the capacity of batteries has laid the foundations for a broader diffusion of electric mobility. However, electric mobility is causing a growing electricity demand as well as the need to increase the diffusion of suitable charging stations. Within these last challenges, drawing on the recent literature, this chapter provides a critical and wide-ranging review of papers dealing with the formulation of the problem of the localisation of electric vehicle (EV) charging points. This problem is approached considering the electric charging infrastructure technologies, localisation criteria and related methodologies. This review shows how the ‘electric mobility revolution’ applies the technological innovations provided by the energy supply systems, and the location of these systems within the urban contexts. Since the technological innovations have different options, achieving an international standard of charging systems is still far away. Moreover, as there are several criteria, parameters and methodologies, and some analytical approaches for the localisation of electric vehicle charging points, the formulation of the ‘localisation’ problem should require the application of multi-criteria analysis to be addressed. Finally, the results show that there is no consensus on technologies, criteria, and methodologies to be adopted. Therefore, this wide-ranging analysis of the literature would be useful to support possible benchmarking and systematisation accordingly.

With more cities aiming to achieve climate neutrality, identifying the funding to support these plans is essential. The purpose of this paper is to exploit the present of a structured green bonds framework in Sweden to investigate the typology of abatement projects Swedish municipalities invested in and understand their effectiveness.

Marginal abatement cost curves of the green bond measures are constructed by using the financial and abatement data provided by municipalities on an annual basis.

The results highlight the economic competitiveness of clean energy production, measured in abatement potential per unit of currency, even when compared to other emerging technologies that have attracted the interest of policymakers. A comparison with previous studies on the cost efficiency of carbon capture storage reveals that clean energy projects, especially wind energy production, can contribute to the reduction of emissions in a more efficient way. The Swedish carbon tax is a good incentive tool for investments in clean energy projects.

The improvement concerning previous applications is twofold: the authors expand the financial considerations to include the whole life-cycle costs, and the authors consider all the greenhouse gases. This research constitutes a prime in using financial and environmental data produced by local governments to assess the effectiveness of their environmental measures.

Previous literature dealing with sustainable marketing in a B2B context is mostly limited to spot measures on an environmental, economic or social layer. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to exemplify how seaports as powerful economic business networks can facilitate multi-layered sustainability.

The authors integrate multiple case studies to pursue an inductive research approach to derive general patterns based on empirical observations.

Operationalizing the concept of a port community enables the authors to show how seaports not only facilitate multi-layered sustainability but also mutually interact. Hence, port sustainability can be achieved through and by a port community.

The conceptualization of the interplay between port community and multi-layered sustainability contributes to the business and industrial marketing literature in general and to the yet hitherto scarce port marketing literature in particular. Future research should go beyond this initial conceptualization by gathering further empirical research.

The study outlines how strengthening interactions among port management stakeholders (i.e. business and non-business actors such as port authorities and policymakers) might lead to higher economic success and societal welfare by pooling yet hitherto independent resources.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to define how the concept of a holistic port community can facilitate sustainability acted out on its three pillars and how both concepts interact.