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Although accounting and reporting visualisations (i.e. graphs, maps and grids) are often used to veil organisations’ untransparent actions, these practices perform irrespectively of their ability to represent facts. In this research, the authors explore accounting and reporting visualisations beyond their persuasive and representational purpose.

By building on previous research on the rhetoric of visualisations, the authors illustrate how the design of accounting visualisations within integrated reports engages managers in a recursive process of knowledge construction, interrogation, reflection and speculation on what sustainable value creation means. The authors articulate the theoretical framework by developing a longitudinal field study in International Fashion Company, a medium-sized company operating in the fashion industry.

This research shows that accounting and reporting visualisations do not only contribute to creating unclear and often contradicting representations of organisations’ sustainable performance but, at the same time, “open up” and support managers’ unfolding search for “sustainable value” by reducing its unknown meaning into known and understandable categories. The inconsistencies and imperfections that accounting and reporting visualisations leave constitute the conditions of possibility for the interrogation of the unknown to happen in practice, thus augmenting managers’ questioning, reflections and speculation on what sustainable value means.

This study shows that accounting and reporting visualisations can represent good practices (the authors are not saying a “solution”) through which managers can re-appreciate the complexities of measuring and defining something that is intrinsically unknown and unknowable, especially in contexts where best practices have not yet consolidated into a norm. Topics such as climate change and sustainable development are out there and cannot be ignored, cannot be reduced through persuasive accounts and, therefore, need to be embraced.

This research investigates the nature of regulatory-focused effectuation (as the basis of entrepreneurial behavior) in absorptive capacity development for open innovation implementation, the role of crowds or communities management practices in the effectuation-based open innovation process, and open innovation performance as the output of the open innovation process in digital multi-sided platform (MSP) startups context.

In order to verify the hypothesis, the researcher conducts a quantitative study that is based on a self-administered questionnaire and employs the PLS-SEM approach. The sample comprises of 70 Indonesian digital MSP businesses that have been operational for at least three years and have used open innovation approaches with their audiences, communities or complementors.

The research findings imply that there is a connection between promotion-focused effectuation and the open innovation process. This connection is particularly strong when it comes to the incorporation of absorptive capacity and crowds or communities management practices. On the other hand, prevention-focused effectuation shows insignificant effect toward open innovation process in digital MSP startups context.

The research findings imply that with limited resources and experiences, young entrepreneurs can still implement open innovation strategy for their digital MSP platform through effectuation principles that leverage the external resources from digital platform ecosystem members.

In digital MSP startups context that perform promotion-based effectuation principles, innovation performance can be achieved by analyzing new insight, transforming the existing activities with the new insight, creating new offering afterward, as well as strengthening crowds or communities management practices through co-creation activities with platform ecosystem members that may lead into new business model.

The originality of this work is to make a contribution to the literature on strategic entrepreneurship by describing the phenomena of the paradox of resource-based theory; adopting open innovation strategy under constrained initial resources and capabilities scenario.

Palm oil is widely used in the food industry; however, there are two main controversies connected to its use, namely, its nutritional value and the environmental consequences deriving from its crop. In Italy, the use of palm oil has recently been criticized, insomuch that some important bakery companies decided to substitute it, creating a real food marketing case. Through a focus on biscuits, this study is aimed at profiling consumers with regard to palm oil issue to better comprehend if the presence of this ingredient truly influences their food purchases and if they care about the nutritional and environmental aspects, highlighting the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on consumers' consumption.

A questionnaire was administered to 243 subjects in Italy, in order to apply a cluster analysis.

The findings show the presence of three main kinds of consumers: (1) compromise finders (sensitive to cost savings but trying to privilege palm-oil free food), (2) brand-loyal consumers (palm oil does not influence their preferences) and (3) healthsensitives (the presence of palm oil profoundly affects their choices), who represent the majority of our sample. The results and implications are discussed.

Research on palm oil is essentially focused on chemistry, natural sciences or on its industrial uses: this study analyzes the consumer point of view by applying a different methodology compared to existing studies.