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In this paper, I demonstrate an alternative explanation to the development of the American electricity industry. I propose a social embeddedness approach (Granovetter, 1985, 1992) to interpret why the American electricity industry appears the way it does today, and start by addressing the following questions: Why is the generating dynamo located in well‐connected central stations rather than in isolated stations? Why does not every manufacturing firm, hospital, school, or even household operate its own generating equipment? Why do we use incandescent lamps rather than arc lamps or gas lamps for lighting? At the end of the nineteenth century, the first era of the electricity industry, all these technical as well as organizational forms were indeed possible alternatives. The centralized systems we see today comprise integrated, urban, central station firms which produce and sell electricity to users within a monopolized territory. Yet there were visions of a more decentralized electricity industry. For instance, a geographically decentralized system might have dispersed small systems based around an isolated or neighborhood generating dynamo; or a functionally decentralized system which included firms solely generating and transmitting the power, and selling the power to locally‐owned distribution firms (McGuire, Granovetter, and Schwartz, forthcoming). Similarly, the incandescent lamp was not the only illuminating device available at that time. The arc lamp was more suitable for large‐space lighting than incandescent lamps; and the second‐generation gas lamp ‐ Welsbach mantle lamp ‐ was much cheaper than the incandescent electric light and nearly as good in quality (Passer, 1953:196–197).

This paper aims to investigate the effect of varying Wt.% (0-3 per cent) of graphite as a solid lubricant on the tribological properties of Fe-Cu-Sn alloy.

Powder metallurgy technique is used for the fabrication of Fe-Cu-Sn alloy with varying Wt.% of graphite. The tribological tests were conducted on a ball-on-disc universal tribometer under different testing conditions.

The friction coefficient decreases with sliding distance and load, but the wear rate increases with the increase in load. The G3 composition showed the best tribological properties under dry conditions. The wear mechanism of G0 composition shows adhesive wear and abrasive wear, while G1, G2 and G3 compositions show mildly abrasive wear.

This paper reported a new, cheap and wear-resistant self-lubricating Fe matrix material for gears and bearings.

This study aims to demonstrate how pressures (incentives) in the audit environment can lower audit quality because of a breakdown between professionally skeptical (PS) judgment (risk assessment) and PS action (testing).

The authors used a Qualtrics-based experiment with attitude change as a proxy measure of cognitive dissonance (CD). The authors analyze the results using a one-way independent between-group ANOVA with post hoc tests and t-tests.

The authors find that auditors experience CD when they fail to take appropriate high PS action (audit tests) that are in line with high PS judgment (risk assessments). The motivational force to reduce CD drives auditors to revise their assessments upward (rank higher), lower diagnostic audit tests (PS actions) and lower risk assessments (PS judgments). This leads to lower overall professional skepticism, and hence lower audit quality.

This investigation provides an empirical investigation of Nelson’s (2009) model of professional skepticism and demonstrates a specific mechanism for how incentives in the audit environment lower audit quality. Based on the findings, treatments to enhance audit quality can benefit by strengthening the critical link between PS judgments (risk assessments) and PS actions (audit tests).

This paper aims to evaluate the outcome effectiveness of the global reporting initiatives (GRI) transitions by understanding how companies have responded to the changes from G3.1 to G4 and finally to the GRI Standards.

A quality disclosure score is developed that incorporates assessments of both the quality of disclosures and the materiality of Australian companies. To analyse materiality, survey data were collected from 187 companies. Disclosure scores are based on a content analysis of the sustainability reports of 12 mining and metals companies and 12 financial services companies that used the GRI Standards from 2011 to 2019 (a total of 213 reports).

The study found that the GRI transitions have not led to companies improving the quality of their disclosures on areas considered important for them to achieve their social and environmental goals. Instead, the companies tended to use a greenwashing strategy, where the quality of disclosure of material issues declined or fluctuated over time.

From a practical perspective, the disclosure score developed in this paper enables managers of companies to recognize a threshold of completeness and to summarize the areas that are not materially relevant to their business.

The results are potentially helpful for investors, shareholders and other stakeholders, enabling them to better understand sustainability reports.

This study contributes to the body of research in sustainability reporting by providing evidence on the outcome effectiveness of the latest updates in the GRI framework.

Rapid advancements in internet technology have made it possible to develop electronic commerce in general and internet shopping in particular. Easy access to a vast number of existing internet stores enables buyers to customize their shopping processes to minimize the total purchase cost. This paper aims to investigate a novel internet shopping problem, which consists of the diversification of a given list of products to buy among many stores and to use discounts offered by the stores.

The adequate discrete optimization problem referred to as internet shopping optimization problem with price sensitivity discounts (ISOPwD) is investigated, which turned out to be strongly nondeterministic polynomial (NS)-hard. Two heuristic solution algorithms have been derived using the tabu search (TS) and the simulated annealing (SA) metaheuristics for having a solution in a reasonable time. The algorithms have been assessed via computational experiments, and they have been compared with another algorithm known from the literature that has been elaborated for a simpler version of ISOPwD.

The conducted evaluation has shown the advantage of both heuristic algorithms on the algorithm known from the literature. Moreover, the TS-based algorithm outperformed the other one in terms of the total cost incurred by customers and the computational time.

The special primary piecewise linear discounting function is only taken into account. Other possible discounts connected, for example, with bundles of products and (or) coupons are not considered.

The elaborated algorithms can be recommended for internet shopping providers who want to introduce the ability to search a cost-optimized set of products in their databases or for applications that combine offers from various online retailers, e.g. internet price comparison services and auction sites.

The novelty of considered ISOPwD, in comparison with similar problems discussed in the literature, deals with an arbitrary number of purchased products, the possibility to buy an identical product in different stores and the consideration of the weight, the amount and the availability of goods as parameters of ISOPwD.

This study aims to analyze whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) report characteristics, including disclosure level and external assurance, and reporting firms’ CSR performance, explain variation in cost of equity capital among CSR disclosers.

The study uses a propensity score matched sample of CSR reports prepared according to the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) G3/G3.1 Reporting Guidelines.

Overall, there does not appear to be a difference in cost of equity capital among CSR disclosers based on GRI disclosure level. The exception is for poor CSR performers reporting at the highest GRI disclosure levels, but not obtaining assurance. These firms may be suspected of greenwash and therefore have higher cost of equity capital than the reference group. Poor CSR performers, especially those reporting at the highest GRI disclosure levels, obtain the greatest cost of equity capital benefit associated with external assurance.

This study contributes to the literature by showing that the cost of equity capital benefits associated with CSR disclosure and assurance do not accrue equally to all CSR disclosers. Specifically, this study is the first to provide empirical evidence of the cost of equity capital consequences of suspected greenwashing and empirically demonstrate the role of external assurance in mitigating greenwashing concerns among poor performers.

An experimental study was conducted to investigate the local ventilation (the right arm, the chest and the back) and wear response of three types of working jackets in different conditions. The relationship between the local ventilation and its related wear response was also explored. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A clothing local ventilation measuring system was developed based on the steady state method to measure the local ventilation of the right arm, the chest and the back. Separate wear trials were conducted to determine the local skin temperature, local microclimate temperature and humidity, clothing local surface temperature, heart rate (HR), eardrum temperature and subjective perceptions.

The results indicated that the back part of the jacket had the highest ventilation, followed by the chest and the arm. Fabric permeability affected the local ventilation of the arm and the chest more than on the back. Clothing local surface temperature was significantly related to garment regions but not to fabric permeability. Back ventilation and back surface temperature, arm or chest ventilation and local microclimate humidity of the arm or chest, HR and back ventilation, local ventilation of the arm or the chest and its related thermal sensation, had significant linear relationships.

The research will help to understand the relationship between the air exchange of the microclimate and the wear response, and thus gives some suggestions on garment design or selection, especially for the working garments.

Hybrid Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes large eddy simulation (RANS-LES) methods have become popular for simulation of massively separated flows at high Reynolds numbers due to their reduced computational cost and good accuracy. The current study aims to examine the performance of LES and hybrid RANS-LES model for a given grid resolution.

For better assessment and contrast of model performance, both mean and instantaneous flow fields have been investigated. For studying instantaneous flow, proper orthogonal decomposition has been used.

Current analysis shows that hybrid RANS-LES is capable of achieving similar accuracy in prediction of both mean and instantaneous flow fields at a very coarse grid as compared to LES.

Focusing mostly on the practical applications of computation, most of the attention has been given to the prediction of one-point flow statistics and little consideration has been put to two-point statistics. Here, two-point statistics has been considered using POD to investigate unsteady turbulent flow.

This paper aims to examine the impact of the Australian Securities Exchange Corporate Governance recommendations on the breadth (amount of items covered) of (environmental and social) sustainability reporting by the firms in the Top 100, around the change from G3.1 to G4 disclosure regimes.

This paper undertakes comparisons of means and regression models to investigate the changes between disclosure scores of 98 listed entities from the 2013 G3.1 to the 2015 G4 disclosure regimes.

This paper finds that average disclosure levels did not change. Nonetheless, disclosure practices did vary by entity size and performance. Analysis of 2015 disclosures contingent on 2013 disclosure practice indicates that disclosure changes are consistent with a pattern of mean reversion.

Evidence that low disclosers increased disclosure and high disclosers reduced disclosers is consistent with the idea that sustainability disclosure is not so much driven by any ethical considerations, but rather by a desire to not be a disclosure outlier. Reliance on voluntary disclosure to achieve a socially desired level of disclosure is unlikely to bear fruit.

This paper contributes to the literature on sustainability by examining firm responses to change in disclosure regimes, and concluding that size and peer relativities drive the disclosure process.

This paper aims to offer an overview of key aspects of the journey to develop the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Framework and Guidelines, focusing on the Materiality construct. It provides a practitioner’s perspective of several issues related to this construct.

This commentary is mainly based on publicly available technical documents, the analysis of papers related to the Materiality construct and a contextual review of the evolution of the main features of the GRI Guidelines and Standards.

This paper discusses the conundrum currently surrounding the Materiality construct and offers some reflections and suggestions about the challenges facing GRI.

Clarification of the Materiality construct could reduce confusion and eventually allow for clear identification and differentiation of the financial and sustainability accounting fields at their interface.

Language creates reality; an opportunity has arisen to bring appropriate and distinctive terminology to the sustainability reporting field, bridging the gap between competing logics.

This viewpoint is timely. It contributes a practitioner’s perspective to the current debate on the development of the Materiality construct.