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Calculating an organization's carbon footprint is crucial for assessing and implementing emission reductions. Although Finnish higher education institutions (HEIs) aim for carbon neutrality by 2030, limited research exists on plans to reach a similar target in any country. This paper aims to address the shared and individual challenges Finnish HEIs have with carbon footprint calculations, reductions, resources and offsetting.

A survey was targeted to sustainability experts in all 38 HEIs in Finland to identify key patterns and trends in the focus fields of the study. SWOT analysis was used to classify main strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and threats, based on which a series of policy recommendations was drafted.

Finnish HEIs are committed to carbon footprint tracking (97%, annually by 87%). The lack of standardization and the number of external stakeholders complicate accounting indirect emissions, impeding comparability and reliability. Only 39% had set separate emission reduction targets, suggesting a preference for carbon footprint over other environmental impact indicators. Insufficient monetary and human resources emerged in 23% of institutions, especially those smaller in size. Only 52% had clear offsetting plans, with shared concerns over trust and responsibility.

By including both research universities and universities of applied sciences, the findings provide an unprecedented outlook into the entire Finnish HEI sector. The policy recommendations guide HEIs both locally and globally on how to improve their transparency and scientific integrity, reflect on core successes and weaknesses and how they complete their objectives of education, research and social impact while promoting stronger sustainability.

The aim of this study is to empirically explore and analyze the concrete tasks of output measurement and the inherent challenges related to these tasks in a traditional and autonomous professional public work setting – the judicial system.

The analysis of the tasks is based on a categorization of general performance measurement motives (control-motivate-learn) and main stakeholder levels (society-organization-professionals). The analysis is exploratory and conducted as an empirical content analysis on materials and reports produced in two performance improvement projects conducted in European justice organizations.

The identified main tasks in the different categories are related to managing resources, controlling performance deviations, and encouraging improvement and development of performance. Based on the results, key improvement areas connected to output measurement in professional public organizations are connected to the improvement of objectivity and fairness in budgeting and work allocation practices, improvement of output measures' versatility and informativeness to highlight motivational and learning purposes, improvement of professional self-management in setting output targets and producing outputs, as well as improvement of organizational learning from the output measurement.

The paper presents empirically founded practical examples of challenges and improvement opportunities related to the tasks of output measurement in professional public organization.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how general performance management motives realize as concrete tasks of output measurement in justice organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to garner a deeper understanding of the site of influence of aspects of risk management for tax practitioners.

The research design is twofold. Phase one consisted of a wide-scale international survey with 1,061 tax experts across 59 jurisdictions. In phase two, the authors followed up with 68 semi-structured interviews with tax practitioners working in 11 different countries.

The findings recognise the importance of the firm as a significant “site of influence” for tax practitioners in shaping their risk appetite in their tax work. The firm eclipses other influences of risk such as professional body oversight, public interest and demographic markers such as gender and career stage. The authors show that firm is significant, irrespective of size of firm.

This work has practical implications as the findings highlight the importance of oversight of professional service firms by both the professional accountancy bodies and revenue authorities. The findings may have impact on the ethical training and guidance for trainee accountants in terms of an increased awareness on the employing firm as a site of influence for tax practitioners.

This research is important as it adds to the significant body of work on firm socialisation and highlights the important role that the firm holds in moderating (or exacerbating) the risk appetite of tax practitioners, which has significant implications in terms of pushing the boundaries of tax aggressive behaviours. The work aims to recognise the important role that tax practitioners can have in moderating aggressive tax practice, and, thus, reducing tax inequalities and shaping a better world of “Reduced Inequalities” (SDG10).

The effects of board composition on performance have long been discussed in management research using fractionalization measures. In this study, we propose an alternative measurement approach based on board polarization.

Using an exploratory analysis and applying the polarization measure to German Deutscher Aktienindex (DAX)-, Midcap-DAX (MDAX)- and Small Cap-Index (SDAX)-listed companies, this paper applies the polarization index to examine the relationship between board diversity and performance.

The results show that the polarization concept is well suited to measure principal-agent problems between the members of the management and supervisory boards. We reveal that board polarization is negatively associated with firm performance, as measured by return on investment (ROI).

This exploratory study shows that the measurement of board polarization can be linked to performance differences between companies, which offers promising starting points for further research.

The study aims to determine whether a relationship exists between the potential significance of corporate controversies for stakeholders and how organisations respond to them in their annual and sustainability reports.

This paper employs content analysis on annual and sustainability reports of 48 listed companies from the Refinitiv database. The logit regression was used to estimate the model.

The study revealed that the main factors increasing the probability of a controversial issue being addressed in a corporate report are the controversy’s potential significance, companies’ financial performance and lawsuits.

Our study has three major limitations. These are a relatively small sample of companies and reports, focusing on disclosures made in corporate reports and omitting other channels of communication, for example, social media, and a certain amount of subjectivity in the process of coding information.

Former studies show that corporations face a serious risk of their hypocritical strategies becoming too evident for stakeholder groups. Our findings suggest that the risk is already materialising and may undermine the idea of CSR and sustainability reporting.

Our research focuses on high-profile adverse incidents widely reported in the media, the omission of which from corporate reports seems to constitute a particular case of organised hypocrite. It also demonstrates that companies use an impression management strategy to defuse adverse publicity and that major controversies cause minor ones to be omitted from their reports.

The current scenario shows increased adoption of off-chain voting applications in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to avoid complexity and costs for user engagement in their governance. This paper aims to comprehend the trends and patterns within the DAO community with off-chain voting systems and blockchain usage.

This exploratory study uses a two-pronged quantitative approach, combining descriptive statistical analysis and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. Input data from different DAO proposals and votes were analyzed.

Results indicate that the 179 DAOs analyzed account for 26,538 proposals and 1,268,474 followers of the entire Snapshot base in January 2023, showing high concentration in engagement. The preferred social media communication channels are Twitter and GitHub, showing a decrease of Ethereum as a main chain, with Polygon and Binance Smart Chain already accounting for 22%. Basic voting can lead to greater user involvement in the voting process.

This study complements the traditional governance theory perspective and advances in the emerging literature on DAOs and blockchain with an empirical analysis.

As blockchain technology gains increasing adoption, comprehending trends and patterns within the DAO community becomes pivotal in identifying opportunities and challenges for innovation and improvement.

Findings can facilitate the development of improved governance models and decision-making processes for DAOs, leading to a more robust and sustainable ecosystem.

This study presents a broader IT-based governance foresight via blockchain while providing an understanding of the voting process, technology features and governance mechanisms for social community engagement and decision-making in DAOs.

Crowdfunding is an increasingly popular channel for project fundraising for entrepreneurial ventures. Such efforts require fundraisers to develop and manage a crowdfunding campaign over a period of time and several stages. Thus, the authors aim to identify the stages fundraisers go through in their crowdfunding campaign process and how their engagement evolves throughout this process.

Following a multiple case study research design analysing six successful campaigns, the current study suggests a taxonomy of stages the fundraisers go through in their crowdfunding campaign management process while identifying the types of engagement displayed and their relative intensity at each of these stages.

The study proposes a five-stage process framework (pre-launch, launch, mid-campaign, conclusion and post-campaign), accompanied by a series of propositions outlining the relative intensity of different types of engagement throughout this process. The authors show that engagement levels appear with high intensity at pre-launch, and to a lesser degree also at the post-launch stage while showing low intensity at the stages in between them. More specifically, cognitive and behavioural engagement are most prominent at the pre- and post-launch stages. Emotional engagement is highest during the launch, mid-launch and conclusion stages. And social engagement maintains moderate levels of intensity throughout the process.

This study focuses on the campaign process using engagement theory, thus identifying the differing engagement patterns throughout the dynamic crowdfunding campaign management process, not just in one part.

The purpose of this multi-voiced paper is to propose a prosocial paradigm for the field of performance management and management control systems. This new paradigm suggests cultivating prosocial behaviour and prosocial groups in organizations to simultaneously achieve the objectives of economic performance and sustainability.

The authors share a common concern about the future of humanity and nature. They challenge the influential assumption of economic man from neoclassical economic theory and build on evolutionary science and the core design principles of prosocial groups to develop a prosocial paradigm.

Findings are based on the premise of the prosocial paradigm that self-interested behaviour may outperform prosocial behaviour within a group but that prosocial groups outperform groups dominated by self-interest. The authors explore various dimensions of performance management from the prosocial perspective in the private and public sectors.

The authors call for theoretical, conceptual and empirical research that explores the prosocial paradigm. They invite any approach, including positivist, interpretive and critical research, as well as those using qualitative, quantitative and interventionist methods.

This paper offers implications from the prosocial paradigm for practitioners, particularly for executives and managers, policymakers and educators.

Adoption of the prosocial paradigm in research and practice shapes what the authors call the prosocial market economy. This is an aspired cultural evolution that functions with market competition yet systematically strengthens prosociality as a cultural norm in organizations, markets and society at large.

Building upon the foundational eight dimensions of quality proposed by Garvin (1987), this research formulates a modern meaning of “quality.” This new meaning aligns with and encapsulates the evolving sophistication of consumers, the strategic quality investments made by firms, and the current dynamics of sales.

Due to the complexity of the concept of quality, a triangulation approach is used, which is composed of the following: a review of the literature, an analysis of consumers’ quality dimensions using both qualitative (interviews) and quantitative (survey) methods, as well as a quantitative investigation (survey) of firms’ investments in quality dimensions and the links to sales.

Our findings reveal the existence of 21 new and emerging dimensions through which consumers measure product quality, all of which complement Garvin’s dimensions. These dimensions contribute to a fresh and modern interpretation of quality. Although there are 29 dimensions of quality in total, firms should shape their strategies by focusing on usability, customization, efficiency, innovation, performance, perceived quality, serviceability, pricing, conformance quality, ethics, and sustainability. These dimensions align with consumer wants and positively correlate with firms’ sales.

This research identifies novel and contemporary dimensions of quality, serving to complement the eight dimensions previously delineated by Garvin (1987). Consequently, it contributes to updating the operations management literature on Total Quality Management, 36 years subsequent to the introduction of Garvin’s foundational dimensions.

Objectively evaluating the fairness of the algorithm, exploring in specific scenarios combined with scenario characteristics and constructing the algorithm fairness evaluation index system in specific scenarios.

This paper selects marketing scenarios, and in accordance with the idea of “theory construction-scene feature extraction-enterprise practice,” summarizes the definition and standard of fairness, combs the application link process of marketing algorithms and establishes the fairness evaluation index system of marketing equity allocation algorithms. Taking simulated marketing data as an example, the fairness performance of marketing algorithms in some feature areas is measured, and the effectiveness of the evaluation system proposed in this paper is verified.

The study reached the following conclusions: (1) Different fairness evaluation criteria have different emphases, and may produce different results. Therefore, different fairness definitions and standards should be selected in different fields according to the characteristics of the scene. (2) The fairness of the marketing equity distribution algorithm can be measured from three aspects: marketing coverage, marketing intensity and marketing frequency. Specifically, for the fairness of coverage, two standards of equal opportunity and different misjudgment rates are selected, and the standard of group fairness is selected for intensity and frequency. (3) For different characteristic fields, different degrees of fairness restrictions should be imposed, and the interpretation of their calculation results and the means of subsequent intervention should also be different according to the marketing objectives and industry characteristics.

First of all, the fairness sensitivity of different feature fields is different, but this paper does not classify the importance of feature fields. In the future, we can build a classification table of sensitive attributes according to the importance of sensitive attributes to give different evaluation and protection priorities. Second, in this paper, only one set of marketing data simulation data is selected to measure the overall algorithm fairness, after which multiple sets of marketing campaigns can be measured and compared to reflect the long-term performance of marketing algorithm fairness. Third, this paper does not continue to explore interventions and measures to improve algorithmic fairness. Different feature fields should be subject to different degrees of fairness constraints, and therefore their subsequent interventions should be different, which needs to be continued to be explored in future research.

This paper combines the specific features of marketing scenarios and selects appropriate fairness evaluation criteria to build an index system for fairness evaluation of marketing algorithms, which provides a reference for assessing and managing the fairness of marketing algorithms.

Algorithm governance and algorithmic fairness are very important issues in the era of artificial intelligence, and the construction of the algorithmic fairness evaluation index system in marketing scenarios in this paper lays a safe foundation for the application of AI algorithms and technologies in marketing scenarios, provides tools and means of algorithm governance and empowers the promotion of safe, efficient and orderly development of algorithms.

In this paper, firstly, the standards of fairness are comprehensively sorted out, and the difference between different standards and evaluation focuses is clarified, and secondly, focusing on the marketing scenario, combined with its characteristics, key fairness evaluation links are put forward, and different standards are innovatively selected to evaluate the fairness in the process of applying marketing algorithms and to build the corresponding index system, which forms the systematic fairness evaluation tool of marketing algorithms.