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The purpose of this paper is to establish the relationship between corporate governance, ethical culture, Internal Controls over Financial Reporting (ICFR) and compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by microfinance institutions (MFIs).

This is a cross-sectional survey based on a sample of 85 MFIs in Uganda. Hypotheses were tested using partial least squares (PLS) analysis technique. An unweighed IFRS compliance index to capture the level of compliance with IFRS was constructed. Yet to capture corporate governance, ethical culture and ICFR variables, the perceptions of top management of MFIs have been taken into consideration.

Corporate governance, ethical culture and ICFR, each makes a significant contribution to compliance with IFRS. Also both corporate governance and ethical culture are significantly associated with ICFR. However, compliance with IFRS by MFIs is better enhanced by corporate governance and ethical culture through ICFR.

Results support the idea that in terms of agency and virtue ethics theories, the board should support ICFR to minimize egocentric managers and other employees and also inculcate an ethical culture to achieve better compliance with IFRS because corporate governance and ethical culture are associated with sound ICFR which in turn lead to compliance with IFRS.

Boards of MFIs should encourage investments that improve ICFR. At the same time, regulators should ensure that boards are composed of members with financial expertise, with no conflict of interest and introduce mechanisms that encourage boards to perform their roles.

The study contributes towards a methodological position by showing that the behavioural perspective of corporate governance can be an alternative to the boards’ structural variables in investigating compliance with IFRS. A direct association of ethical culture and compliance with IFRS and an indirect association through ICFR can be envisaged.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between corporate governance and company performance and how a board’s ethical commitment can influence this relationship. Prior studies documented mixed evidence on the corporate governance and corporate performance relationship, which can be due to the influence of a board’s ethical commitment and will shape the corporate governance mechanism in the company and, in turn, influence performance.

This study collected data for two years, i.e. 2013 and 2014, from the biggest 500 Malaysian companies listed in the stock exchange. Corporate governance is measured based on the requirements of the Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance (MCCG), while a board’s ethical commitment is measured based on the MCCG and various international best practices. Corporate performance is measured based on return on equity, return on assets, net profit margin, market-to-book value and TobinQ.

A board’s ethical commitment was found to be significant in increasing the strength of the relationship between corporate governance and corporate performance. The findings are robust to the alternative performance measurements and lagged one-year corporate performance.

This paper provides further evidence on the importance of ethical practices to improve corporate environment and, hence, sustain a company’s performance. This study, however, was conducted on only large companies with a limited data collection period.

This study provides an indicator that the policymaker and regulatory authorities need to double their efforts in promoting and encouraging a board of directors to take a bold step in improving its ethical culture. Shareholders and investors need to use their power and rights to demand the company to improve their governance and ethical practices.

This study is original, as it measures a board’s ethical commitment from various sources of local and international best practices such as Malaysia, Australia, Canada, Norway, South Korea, Singapore, Sweden, Turkey, the UK and the USA. It also contributes to the literature and theoretical understanding of the interaction between a board’s ethical commitment and corporate governance on corporate performance, particularly in developing countries like Malaysia, which is scarce in the literature.

Data economy is a recent phenomenon, raised by digital transformation and platformisation, which has enabled the concentration of data that can be used in economic purposes. However, there is a lack of clear procedures and ethical rules on how data economy ecosystems are governed. As a response to the current situation, there has been criticism and demands for the governance of data use to prevent unethical consequences that have already manifested. Thus, ethical governance of the data economy ecosystems is needed. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new ethical governance model for data economy ecosystems. The proposed model offers a more balanced solution for the current situation where a few global large-scale enterprises dominate the data market and may use oligopolistic power over other stakeholders.

This is a conceptual article that covers theory-based discourse ethical reflection of data economy ecosystems governance. The study is based on the premise of the discourse ethics where inclusion of all stakeholders is needed for creating a transparent and ethical data economy.

This article offers self-regulation tool for data economy ecosystems by discourse ethical approach which is designed in the governance model. The model aims to balance data “markets” by offering more transparent, democratic and equal system than currently.

By offering a new ethically justified governance model, we may create a trust structure where rules are visible and all stakeholders are treated fairly.

In April 2020, it was announced that NHSX, a unit of the UK National Health Service (NHS) responsible for digital innovation, was developing a contact tracing app that would offer a digital solution to managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the urgency with which the app was developed, a clear commitment was made to designing the technology in a way that enshrined key ethical principles, and an ethics advisory board (EAB) was established to provide timely advice, guidance and recommendations on associated ethical issues. Alongside this, there were extensive criticisms of how NHSX adhered to ethical principles in the handling of the app development-criticisms that require empirical exploration. This paper explores how ethics was incorporated into decision-making during governance processes associated with the development of app.

Interviews were conducted with those involved in the app's development/governance, those with a consulting role associated with the app, or those who sat on the EAB.

The EAB fulfilled an important role by introducing ethical considerations to app developers. Though at times, it was difficult to accommodate key ethics principles into governance processes, which sometimes suffered from little accountability.

While several articles have provided overviews of ethical issues, or explored public perceptions towards contact tracing apps, to the best the authors, knowledge this is the first empirical piece analysing ethics governance issues via stakeholder interviews.

Following the surge of documents laying out organizations' ethical principles for their use of artificial intelligence (AI), there is a growing demand for translating ethical principles to practice through AI governance (AIG). AIG has emerged as a rapidly growing, yet fragmented, research area. This paper synthesizes the organizational AIG literature by outlining research themes and knowledge gaps as well as putting forward future agendas.

The authors undertake a systematic literature review on AIG, addressing the current state of its conceptualization and suggesting future directions for AIG scholarship and practice. The review protocol was developed following recommended guidelines for systematic reviews and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA).

The results of the authors’ review confirmed the assumption that AIG is an emerging research topic with few explicit definitions. Moreover, the authors’ review identified four themes in the AIG literature: technology, stakeholders and context, regulation and processes. The central knowledge gaps revealed were the limited understanding of AIG implementation, lack of attention to the AIG context, uncertain effectiveness of ethical principles and regulation, and insufficient operationalization of AIG processes. To address these gaps, the authors present four future AIG agendas: technical, stakeholder and contextual, regulatory, and process. Going forward, the authors propose focused empirical research on organizational AIG processes, the establishment of an AI oversight unit and collaborative governance as a research approach.

To address the identified knowledge gaps, the authors present the following working definition of AIG: AI governance is a system of rules, practices and processes employed to ensure an organization's use of AI technologies aligns with its strategies, objectives, and values, complete with legal requirements, ethical principles and the requirements set by stakeholders. Going forward, the authors propose focused empirical research on organizational AIG processes, the establishment of an AI oversight unit and collaborative governance as a research approach.

For practitioners, the authors highlight training and awareness, stakeholder management and the crucial role of organizational culture, including senior management commitment.

For society, the authors review elucidates the multitude of stakeholders involved in AI governance activities and complexities related to balancing the needs of different stakeholders.

By delineating the AIG concept and the associated research themes, knowledge gaps and future agendas, the authors review builds a foundation for organizational AIG research, calling for broad contextual investigations and a deep understanding of AIG mechanisms. For practitioners, the authors highlight training and awareness, stakeholder management and the crucial role of organizational culture, including senior management commitment.

Corporate governance is built on the responsibility of members towards other stakeholders inside and outside the organization. Through the testing of hypotheses on the interconnections between corporate governance and its precursors, this research aims to substantiate that emotional intelligence (EI) is the first layer of bricks, trust the second layer, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) the third layer of the entire architecture of corporate governance.

A total of 382 responses in completed form returned from self‐administered structured questionnaires relayed to 640 middle level managers underwent an analysis based on structural equation modeling (SEM).

Emotional intelligence, as the data divulges, is a rich network of social synapses among members for knowledge‐based or identity‐based trust to grow in their souls, which can activate ethical CSR deeds as levers for corporate governance.

The journey to test research hypotheses has built, layer by layer, an EI‐based model of corporate governance in which a high concentration of emotional intelligence among members in the organization catalyzes knowledge‐based or identity‐based trust, without which CSR initiatives to cultivate ethical values cannot be implemented successfully to optimize corporate governance effectiveness in Vietnamese organizations.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first to add to the debate on good governance and ethics of enterprise risk management (ERM) and second to describe an ethical maturity scale based on duty and responsibility for practical implementation to ensure better governance.

The methodology has centred on risk governance as a way for many organisations to improve their risk management (RM) practices from an ethical perspective based on responsibility and on fulfilling one's duty within the organisation.

While companies in Australia, for example, are more mature than those in Russia in terms of governance systems life cycle, there are a number of common international challenges in risk governance implementation. These relate to a link between risk framework, enterprise value model and strategic planning; to a definition of risk appetite, the embodiment of RM in organisational culture, internal audit and ERM function, the evolving role of a chief risk officer (CRO) and senior management buy‐in and sponsorship of the integrated ethical RM from a chief executive officer.

ERM – a way for many organisations to improve their RM practices – is a key component of the applied ethics of corporate governance. It has developed into a philosophy to assist organisations with the process of protecting shareholders' value while also increasing the bottom‐line profitability. Effective ERM is based on ethical risk governance. Internal audit needs to be involved in the process of integrating RM and compliance. It should maintain a degree of independence when assisting with ERM establishment. CRO is most effective when reporting to the board.

Global companies are becoming more accountable to multiple stakeholders. It is the adoption of an ethical code to arrest the lack of clarity of roles ascribed to the audit committee and risk committee and management's accountability or lack thereof that remains the challenge across different jurisdictions. In attempting to implement good governance and meet the challenges, the paper introduces an ethical maturity scale as an internal measure that could be embedded in an organisation's strategy.

This study aims to evaluate blockchain as an e-government governance model. It assesses its alignment with legal frameworks, emphasizing robustness against disruptions and adherence to existing laws.

The paper explores blockchain’s potential in e-government, focusing on legal, ethical and governance aspects. It conducts an in-depth analysis of blockchain’s integration into data governance, emphasizing legal compliance and resilient security protocols.

The study comprehensively evaluates blockchain’s implementation, covering privacy, interoperability, consensus mechanisms, scalability and regulatory alignment. It highlights governance’s critical role in ensuring legal compliance within blockchain paradigms.

Ethical and legal concerns arising from blockchain adoption remain unresolved. The study underscores how blockchain challenges its core principles of anonymity and decentralization in e-government settings.

The framework outlined offers potential for diverse technological environments, albeit raising ethical and legal queries. It emphasizes governance’s pivotal role in achieving legal compliance in blockchain adoption.

Blockchain’s impact on legal and ethical facets necessitates further exploration to align with its core principles while addressing governance in e-government settings.

This study presents a robust framework for assessing blockchain’s viability in e-government, emphasizing legal compliance, despite ethical and legal intricacies that challenge its fundamental principles.

Big data and analytics are being increasingly used by tourism and hospitality organisations (THOs) to provide insights and to inform critical business decisions. Particularly in times of crisis and uncertainty data analytics supports THOs to acquire the knowledge needed to ensure business continuity and the rebuild of tourism and hospitality sectors. Despite being recognised as an important source of value creation, big data and digital technologies raise ethical, privacy and security concerns. This paper aims to suggest a framework for ethical data management in tourism and hospitality designed to facilitate and promote effective data governance practices.

The paper adopts an organisational and stakeholder perspective through a scoping review of the literature to provide an overview of an under-researched topic and to guide further research in data ethics and data governance.

The proposed framework integrates an ethical-based approach which expands beyond mere compliance with privacy and protection laws, to include other critical facets regarding privacy and ethics, an equitable exchange of travellers’ data and THOs ability to demonstrate a social license to operate by building trusting relationships with stakeholders.

This study represents one of the first studies to consider the development of an ethical data framework for THOs, as a platform for further refinements in future conceptual and empirical research of such data governance frameworks. It contributes to the advancement of the body of knowledge in data ethics and data governance in tourism and hospitality and other industries and it is also beneficial to practitioners, as organisations may use it as a guide in data governance practices.

To demonstrate that mainstream current ethical stances of corporate governance and associated strategic and operational management are contributors to global unsustainability, and to discuss issues and approaches for bringing governance and management into alignment with sustainability.

A representative model of a business is used to predict outcomes for financial wealth creation and environmental sustainability under mainstream ethical stances for corporate governance.

Analysis of the model concludes that, given these stances, enhanced management practice and/or technological innovation is unlikely to take such businesses above the threshold of sustainability. This leads to proposal of a model that demonstrates seven alternative pathways to achieving alignment of governance and management with planetary sustainability. One pathway retains current mainstream ethical stances, that must be constrained by government interventions. The other six pathways show alternative influences that cause corporates to shift their ethical stances autonomously and hence to change governance and management strategies and action.

The paper reaches theoretical conclusions that could be further developed as research propositions for empirical testing and raises issues that can be considered directly by corporate directors and managers.

The paper introduces models and analysis that have not appeared elsewhere in the literature.