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The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretically informed analysis of the evolution of environmental management accounting (EMA) and social and environmental reporting (SER), and the accompanying development of a sustainability programme, in a large family-owned, unlisted corporation.

A longitudinal case study based on semi-structured interviews and documentary data was conducted. The main periods of fieldwork were carried out in 2007 and between 2010 and 2012. Sustainability reports were collected until 2019 when SER appeared to cease. The case analysis draws on the concepts of organisational identity (OI) and internal legitimacy (IL) to examine the decision-making and actions of a range of key organisational actors as they engage with EMA and SER.

The study demonstrates that a gap between an organisation’s identity claims (“who we are”) and its enacted identity (“what we do”) can enable the adoption of constitutive, performative and representational EMA and SER. It illuminates the nature of the role of key actors and organisational dynamics, in the form of OI and IL, in adapting these practices. It also demonstrates that, in giving meaning to the concept of sustainability, organisational actors can draw on their organisation’s identity and construct the comprehensibility of an organisational sustainability programme.

More empirical work is needed to examine the applicability of OI and IL to other settings. It would also be beneficial to examine the potential for OI work to allow organisations to change and reinvent themselves in response to the evermore pressing environmental crisis and the role, if any, of EMA in this process.

The study enriches our understanding of why and how EMA and SER evolve by demonstrating that paying attention to OI and IL can provide further insight into the decision-making and actions of organisational members as they recognise, evaluate, support and cease these practices.

This study aims to report business preferences for achieving net-zero power production emissions in Saskatchewan, Canada as well as business perceptions of the most preferable power production sources, barriers to change and suggestions for improvement. Mixed methods included focus groups and a survey with experimental design. This research demonstrates that this method of advancing academic and business knowledge systems can engender a paradigmatic shift to decarbonization.

The study is a mixed-methods study using five focus groups and a survey which included a 15-min information video providing more information on power production sources (small modular reactors and biomass). Participants requested more information on these topics in the initial three focus groups.

There is a significant gap in Canadian Government targets for net-zero emissions by 2050 and businesses’ plans. Communications, knowledge and capacity gaps identified include lack of regulatory requirements, institutional barriers (including a capacity charge in the event a business chooses to self-generate with a cleaner source) and multi-level governance dissonance. More cooperation between provincial governments and the federal government was identified by participants as a requirement for achieving targets. Providing information to survey respondents increased support for clean and renewable sources, but gender and knowledge are still important characteristics contributing to support for different power production sources. Scientists and teachers were the most trusted sources of information. Power generated from small modular nuclear reactors was identified as the primary future source of power production followed by solar, wind and natural gas. Research results also confirmed the high level of support for hydropower generated in Saskatchewan versus import from Manitoba based on high values of energy solidarity and security within the province.

This study is original, as it concerns upstream system power production portfolios and not failed projects; the mixed-method research design including a focus group and an experimental survey is novel. This research partially addresses a gap in knowledge surrounding which knowledge systems advance paradigmatic shifts and how and whether involving business people in upstream power production decisions can inform decarbonization.

This Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research is a part of the larger study grant to analyze written reflections through learning log among the third and final year students undertaking BPME 3073 Entrepreneurship module in University Utara Malaysia (UUM). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The data collection techniques are researcher-directed textual data through reflective learning log, taken from 140 students from three classes. A thematic approach was utilized to present the reflections of the students and all data were recorded in a verbatim format.

The findings show that most students have never written a reflective log or essay in the formative assessment. As a consequence, they had difficulty in writing the reflection when being requested to do so. A total 75 (approximately 55 percent) of the reflective logs were identified as level 1 (from 1 to 5 percent) in which reflections were simply written in a descriptive manner, resulted in a balance of 61 learning logs being utilized for further analysis. The students’ reflections on their entrepreneurship’s experience systematically categorize into four different themes comprised of: the nature of entrepreneurship module, entrepreneurial characteristics, opportunity recognition, and creativity and innovation.

As for the limitation of the study, it is important to not to underestimate the challenges of introducing a grade assessment that most of them are not familiar with in their university academic journey. Students need guidance, assurance and confidence writing something that require personal opinion, own thinking, sensitive and personal nature of narration. For most students as found out in this study, self-confessional writing is hard to come by (they dare not attempt it in the first place), only a handful appreciating the writing start with “I,” “me” as first person. More research in this study should be conducted across the university to gauge the response from the students to see if the result of this study is only applicable to this group of students or to this discipline of studies. The researchers would also like to recommend for future studies which take the form of a longitudinal study of similar kind to examine the problems and challenges with regards to promoting learning reflection at the undergraduate level.

Based on the result of the 61 students who had demonstrated an ability in reflective writing, it is suggested that perhaps the university should consider offering coursework that contains a component of reflective writing as part of the assessment. As such, if this is implemented, students of such ability like the one in this sample group would have been benefitted from such assessment which look at reflective ability (Greene, 2014) and which they were allowed to form a broader perspective in relation to the module undertaken. This in turns will foster the growth of reflective ability which is recognized as a learned behavior (Gustafson and Bennett, 1999). In addition, for the future exercise of this reflective learning log, the researcher opined that we should encourage our students to engage with another student (e.g. close friend) in a way that encourages talking with, questioning, or confronting, helped the reflective process by placing the learner in a safe environment in which self-revelation can take place. In addition, students were able to distance themselves from their actions, ideas and beliefs, by holding them up for scrutiny in the company of a peer with whom they are willing to take such risks (Hatton and Smith, 1995).

The results of this research have strongly suggested the need to urgently develop among the students the skills in writing reflectively as they go through the process of higher education which is useful in molding their future professional and entrepreneurial behavior as when they entered the job market which requires a critical reasoning ability.

In Paris, in 2015, 195 countries agreed to limit the emission of CO₂. The German Energiewende is an example of the types of regulatory changes that countries will need to enact to meet their Paris commitments. The Energiewende saw the German Government forcefully shift the energy base from non-renewable to renewable sources to reduce CO₂ emissions, and the effect of this was to reduce the market value of some German energy firms by as much as 70%. This paper aims to consider the strategic options available to energy incumbents facing the sort of regulatory challenges implied by the Paris agreement.

This paper is a literature review and a thought experiment, in which, 12 fields of strategy research are reviewed, and using the insights obtained from these fields, four strategic options are proposed for the energy incumbents, namely, “fight,” “flight,” “fit” and “follow.” Each strategy is introduced and evaluated, and, by looking at examples from other industries, the viability of that strategy for the energy industry is concluded.

Of the four strategies identified – that is, fight (lobbying), flight (internationalization or diversification), follow (imitation) or fit (adopt a core competencies perspective that re-imagines the firm) – it was concluded that only the last is feasible. The present review, and the application of the discussion to the energy industry, suggests that “fight” is viable only in the short term as a delaying strategy; “flight” is a value-destroying strategy, and, therefore not a real option for the energy industry; “follow” will lead the energy incumbents to lose their current positions of power; and only “fit” will allow the energy incumbents to remain viable in the long term.

All research has its limitations. The main limitation of this research is the fact that this study is a thought experiment based on a literature review. The suggested strategies are forward-looking, but are based on historical examples, and are intended to guide the energy incumbents, even when they are based on non-energy examples. The reader should view this paper in that light.

The practical implication of this research is that, of the 12 fields of strategy that it reviews, there is only one feasible strategy for the energy incumbents looking to survive the sorts of regulatory challenges implied by the Energiewende and the Paris agreement. The research suggests that many/most/all of the energy incumbents will, at first, choose a “fight” strategy, but in the long term only those that choose for a “fit” strategy will survive the sort of disruptions implied by these regulatory changes.

The social implications of this research are that many/most/all firms in the affected industry will go through a predictable process, of first resisting the change, before eventually supporting it; that “flight” is not a viable strategy; and that radical innovation rarely comes from incumbents. Policymakers should be aware of these facts when not only working with incumbents to develop the regulations necessary to meet the Paris climate commitments but also looking at the impacts of regulation and when trying to “pick winners.”

The paper reviews the existing literature, and the review is not new. The application to a specific industry and the advice gleaned from this for managers and policymakers is new and of high value.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model of the Islamic sovereign wealth funds (ISWFs) based on Islamic finance principles to modify the precarious image of SWFs from Muslim countries. The Shariah laws are the cardinal direction for this study.

The authors applied a qualitative research technique that consists of three approaches: exploratory case study approach to critically examine and rank the existing status of SWFs; descriptive analysis; and content analysis to present a model of ISWFs in comparison of conventional SWFs.

The authors propose a model of the “Islamic Sovereign Wealth Funds” based on four key pillars: the major Shariah principles; the Islamic corporate governance framework; the Islamic transparency and disclosure framework; and the Islamic corporate social responsibility framework. Furthermore, the authors argue that the potential effect of the ISWFs on Islamic finance and economy will be positive.

The model is an initial work and idea to convert SWFs from Muslim countries into ISWFs, which required an in-depth policy review by governments.

The findings of the paper are useful for policymakers and governments of the Muslim countries to overcome the issues and criticism on SWFs by converting them in ISWFs.

This paper contributes to the literature related to Islamic finance and sovereign wealth fund by presenting a first model of ISWFs for Muslim countries.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the changing pattern and characteristics of international financial flows in the emerging entrepreneurial ecosystems of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), provide a novel taxonomy to classify and analyze them, and discuss how such investments contribute to competence building and sustainable development.

In an exploratory study, the authors analyze the characteristics of international venture capital investors and the start-ups receiving funding in Kenya and map their interaction. The authors proceed by developing a novel taxonomy, classifying investors according to their main rationales (for-profit-for-impact), and start-ups according to the locus of needs and markets addressed by the start-up (local-global) and the locus of the start-ups capacity and knowledge (local-global).

The authors observe a new type of mainly western investors who support innovative ideas in SSA by identifying and investing in domestically developed technical innovations with the potential to address global market needs. The authors find such innovations to be mainly developed at the intersect of global and local knowledge.

The authors shed light on the – up to now – under-researched emerging phenomenon of international high-tech investments in SSA, and develop a novel taxonomy of technology investments in low-income countries, guiding further research on the conditions, impact, practical, and policy implications of this new form of finance flows.

Intellectual capital (IC) is believed to be more important resources to add the value of a company rather than physical assets. This gives rise to the increasing practice of reporting IC information in corporate annual report. Over the past fifteen years, considerable numbers of studies have employed content analysis to examine the extent and nature of IC information in several countries, but they presented different results. These results might partly contribute to different methods in counting information. In fact, the previous studies have been critised for not explicitly clarifying how information was recoded and counted which led to incomparable findings. Therefore, this paper firstly seeks to discuss an illustrative example of ‘sense-making‘ process in identifying, categorizing, and counting of IC information in annual reports of pilot sample company. Secondly, the method refined in the pilot study was applied over the final samples of six large companies in the UK from 1974 to 2008 The contribution of this paper is to primarily refine the previous method in recoding information, to send a message that transparency is crucial in content analysis and to facilitate method replication for future studies. Overall, this study demonstrates a marked increase in IC information disclosure was identified over the 35 years. The relational capital information disclosure was relatively more prominent over time, followed by human capital and structural capital.

The European Parliament and Commission are considering introducing a green supporting factor (GSF) or brown penalty (BP) for capital reserve requirements. This paper aims to estimate the potential impact such a policy intervention may have on both capital reserves of European banks and the cost and availability of capital to “green” and “brown” investments.

The paper draws on the existing empirical and theoretical literature on the impacts of changes to capital reserve requirements on the real economy. It applies these estimates on the particular policy intervention currently being discussed at EU level to estimate the potential range of impacts on the cost of capital – measured in basis points – and the availability of capital – measured in per cent changes to lending.

A GSF would have a limited effect on overall capital requirements of banks compared to a BP – given the larger universe of assets on which such a penalty would be applied. The estimated effect is a reduction in capital requirements associated with a GSF of around €3-4bn based on baseline “green” definitions. In terms of cost of capital, the paper estimates a reduction of 5 to 26 basis points for green projects (with inverse expected effects for a BP). In terms of availability of capital, analysing a BP suggests a potential reduction in lending to brown assets of up to 8 per cent.

The paper provides direct evidence, with the first quantitative analysis of the potential impact of the current policy proposition discussed at EU-level.

This paper investigates the role of market structure and institutional quality in determining bank capital ratios in developing economies.

The generalised methods of moment technique is used to control for auto-correlation and endogeneity in a sample of 79 publicly listed commercial banks. The study period is between 2000 and 2016.

Results show that market structure (proxied with bank competition) as well as institutional quality (regulatory quality) lowers bank capital in the sampled banks. This suggests that banks operating in less competitive markets with good regulatory quality do not need to engage in excessive risk-taking activities that would necessitate holding increased level of capital. Furthermore, the interaction of competition and regulatory quality reinforces the main findings, suggesting the importance of the two variables in determining bank capital ratio.

Research has limitation in that the study investigated publicly listed commercial banks, the findings may not be applicable to non-listed banks.

Taking into cognisance the developing nature of the banking system in Africa, the findings from this study imply that the maintenance of an improved regulatory quality in an environment where healthy competition exists would encourage banks to hold capital ratios appropriate for their level of banking activities, that is, the banks would not engage in excessive risk-taking activities.

This is one of the first papers that examine the effect of market structure and institutional quality on bank capital ratios in developing countries that have bank-based financial systems.

Using bank-level data over the 1994–2015 period, the authors aim to investigate the role of bank-specific factors on credit risk in Italy by considering two different groups of banks, namely, cooperative and non-cooperative (commercial and popular), in different local markets.

Relying on highly territorially disaggregated data at labour market areas’ level, the authors estimate the impact of the role of bank-specific factors on credit risk in Italy from the estimation of a fixed-effect estimator. Non-performing loans to total loans has been used as a proxy of credit risk; the bank-specific factors are as follows: growth of loans, reflecting credit policy; log of total assets, controlling for banks’ size; loans to total assets, reflecting the volume of credit market; equity to total assets, capturing the solvency of banks and reflecting their capital strength; return on assets, reflecting the profitability of banks; deposits to loans, reflecting the intermediation cost; cost of total assets, reflecting the banks’ efficiency or volume of intermediation cost.

The empirical findings suggest that regulatory credit policy, capitalisation, volume of credit and volume of intermediation costs are the main bank-specific factors affecting non-performing loans. Nevertheless, the present analysis suggests that the behaviour of cooperative banks’ behaviour seems to be in line with that of commercial rather than popular banks, casting doubts about the feasibility of their credit policies. It turns out that recent reforms involving popular and cooperative banks represent the first step toward the enhancement of the stability and efficiency of the Italian banking system. While the present study’s benchmark results are not particularly affected by the degree of competition in the banking sector and by banks’ size, it shows that both cooperative and non-cooperative banks have undertaken more prudent credit policies after the advent of the financial crisis and the introduction of the Basel regulation.

The relationship between bank-specific factors and credit risk has been analysed using a rich sample of cooperative, commercial and popular banks in Italy over the 1994–2015 period. The authors rely on labour market areas being sub-regional geographical areas where the bulk of the labour force lives and works. The contribution is motivated by the financial distress experienced after the 2008 financial crisis, which has significantly hit the Italian banking system and cooperative banks in particular.