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The purpose of this study is to examine the ways that sin industry companies attempt to utilise CSR reporting for legitimation.

Conventional and summative content analyses were carried out on annual CSR reports in UK tobacco and gambling companies, juxtaposed against analysis of the actual behaviour of the companies, collectively and individually.

The paper concludes that there is an ongoing tension between the business of sin industry companies and their attempts to establish and maintain any legitimacy, using CSR reporting in particular ways to try to prove their credentials to society and to engage salient stakeholder support. Ultimately, they aim to give themselves the scope for strategic choice to enable survival and financial flourishing.

Further research on CSR on other sin industries and in other jurisdictions with different regulatory situations could shed further light on the achievement or denial of different types of legitimacy. Studying different time periods as industries change would be of value.

On a practical basis, the study offers guidelines to stakeholders on the use of CSR reports from sin companies, and suggests the establishment of objective external CSR reports, overseen by accounting regulators.

The paper provides an overview of the role of sin industries in society, and mitigating their harms.

This study allowed for a comprehensive, dynamic and inclusive understanding of the interplay of CSR reporting and legitimacy by addressing conflicting interests between sin companies' social effects and inherent activities at the industry level. The methodology of multiple case study design in two sin industries combined content analysis of CSR reports, juxtaposed against analysis of behaviour in context. Previous research included the juxtaposition of actuality in analysis of only single case studies or particular issues. Thus, this research allows for a broader industry understanding. On a practical basis, the study offers guidelines to stakeholders on the use of CSR reports from sin companies, and suggests the establishment of objective external CSR reports, overseen by accounting regulators. At the social level, the paper provides an overview of sin industries in society, and mitigating their harms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how responsible gambling policies are communicated and presented as a legitimation strategy to different stakeholders.

This study is based primarily on 49 semi-structured interviews with internal and external stakeholders of Macao’s gambling industry in 2011. This study draws on Reast et al.’s (2012) legitimacy-seeking strategy framework.

The findings indicate that these organisations use construing and earning legitimacy strategies to ensure passive support and acquiescence from certain stakeholder groups, and they deploy bargaining and capturing legitimacy strategies to generate active support for this morally contested industry. As a means of attaining long-standing legitimacy in the industry, gambling operators engage symbolically rather than substantively in responsible gambling to minimise the legitimacy gap.

The findings of the study pertain to a unique setting and might not be suitable for generalisation.

In the absence of stringent legal mechanisms and strong external stakeholder pressure, the 12th Five-Year Plan of the People’s Republic of China aims to transform Macao into a “World Centre of Tourism and Leisure”, and gambling companies may soon face much stronger pressures from the Chinese Government and the Macao Government.

Voluntary responsible gambling initiatives are liable to be used only in symbolic fashion, without offering genuine engagement or full commitment to the most vulnerable stakeholder group.

This study contributes to the literature on social and accounting literature by providing an in-depth case study of how organisations in the gambling industry use different communication strategies to shape and respond to controversial issues.

This paper aims to explore the extent to which social responsibility and social and environmental reporting and disclosure have any relevance in the (so-called) controversial industries. The literature is ambivalent over the extent to which it is expected to see corporate social responsibility and social disclosure employed as active legitimation strategies. However, the apparent importance of “responsible gambling” in both the literature and in gambling industry initiatives suggests, at least a priori, that the international industry is active in some degree of legitimation.

This exploratory study examines the social and environmental disclosures of a sample of large companies in each of five countries over a three-year period using conventional content analysis.

The results are unexpected in that, although disclosure is dominated by employee- and director-related, other areas of social and environmental – and indeed economic – activity feature hardly at all. There is remarkably little disclosure around responsible gambling.

The paper is a research note based on a range of samples across five countries and is, inevitably, tentative. The implications, albeit tentative, include the need to re-theorise corporate disclosure, especially in the controversial sectors.

The note adds to the accounting literature concerned with the controversial industries and contributes to the scarce social accounting research in the gambling sector. The authors hope that the research will be useful in guiding more focused and in-depth studies into this increasingly important and counter-intuitive area.

The purpose of this paper is to deal with the issue of market redefinition through an examination of a unique industry that has met with multiple obstacles: online gambling. The main research question is how markets get redefined when quantum technological change occurs, despite the lack of formal support and a highly fragmented industry structure, typical in online industries.

This industry lends itself to the analysis because of the intense competition for reconstruction of the field among state powers, professional associations, and global forces. The paper provides an archival and qualitative overview of the industry and identify the various forces competing for dominance in the market. It examines the competing logics in this industry and identify the sources and implications of such competition for emerging markets.

Both broad and specific contributions of this paper are discussed, namely the important role of professional and interest associations in industries without clear geographical boundaries, as well as the growing role for global moderating agencies.

The paper provides a timely example of the ways in which firms organize in the modern business environment. In addition, it discusses the volatile and complex power structure in a global economy. While the research is necessarily processual and does not provide for multiple settings, the extent of legal implications here can be generalized to much smaller differences in global markets.

This paper provides support for the idea that, contrary to many concepts of industry acceptance and growth, legitimacy is not a requisite condition for an industry to prosper.

The study aims to integrate the insights gained from the gambling industry into a value creation conceptual framework for analyzing the influence of digital technology application. Both primary and secondary data from industry practitioners are examined and discussed.

In-depth interviews covering top management from six major casinos in Macau were conducted with industry experts, who provided the pioneering feedback on digitalization technology implemented with examples from major casino cities, including Macau, Las Vegas, Monte Carlo, Singapore, Seoul and some others.

The study provides an overview of the current status of the application of digital technology in the gambling industry and the level of the feasibility, practicability and profitability of this development on the casino floor. Digital technologies are found to augment the gambling industry in aspects of the product, service and operational structure. Research also discovers that benefits and values gained by the casino can be categorized in three dimensions: (1) value perceived by the customer, (2) value obtained from the customer and (3) value gained by the firm.

The research serves as a reference for Macau policymakers regarding regulations on emerging digital technologies in the gambling industry, as well as for casino management seeking to understand new potential business opportunities and future developments in digitalization.

The purpose of this study is to summarize the factors that result in V-shape rebound of Macau gambling industry's from 2014 to 2019. Both internal and external factors are examined and discussed by representatives from academia, industry and government.

Practitioners from the gambling industry offered their cutting-edged analysis and viewpoints with observation and comments from scholars and government representatives in gambling domain.

Internally, actions are taken by both the Macau government and Macau casino operators to rebrand Macau with nongambling elements and to adjust the strategies to attract more tourists from a wider range. Externally, global economic upturn and support from the China government also enhance Macau's quick rebound. A total of nine key factors are finally recognized.

This study provides answers and sense-making explanations to why Macau gambling industry can recover in such a short time after a big drop in Gross Gambling Revenue in 2014. This work reveals that Macau, by learning the lessons from the dramatic decline, conducts various self-rescue action plans which contribute to the quick V-shape rebound. This study is also a self-examination of Macau gambling industry from the firsthand perspectives of scholars, government representatives and casino management.

The rapid expansion of the Canadian gambling industry since 1969 has generated substantial profits for provincial governments and industry operators. As gambling expands its reach and regulatory structures evolve, a growing body of researchers is starting to scrutinize the industry and its socio‐economic impacts on Canadians. This article provides background information on Canada's gambling industry and presents an overview of essential information resources.

To highlight the compliance issues which face gambling entities with the implementation of the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF's) 2003 Forty Recommendations

To determine the gambling sector's attitudes towards the FATF's new anti‐money recommendations their responses to an earlier FATF consultation paper are analysed. Interested parties were asked to provide feedback on a number of options proposed by the FATF. Twenty six of the 145 respondents provided feedback on issues relating to the gambling sector. It is these responses that form the bases of the analysis in this paper.

The preferences of the gambling sector were not taken on board by the FATF. The increased customer due diligence (CDD), suspicious transaction reporting and the identification of politically exposed persons will be a burden on casino operators, the only gambling sector to be specifically identified in the new recommendations. Non‐compliance could be a serious issue.

The small number of responses from the gambling sector does place limitations on the ability to generalise the outcomes to the global gambling industry, though five of the respondents were gambling organisations.

For regulators, the possibility of non‐compliance by the gambling sector should be addressed as should the likelihood of pressure for reduced CDD procedures.

The FATF's updated 2003 Forty Recommendations impose considerable compliance costs on the financial sector. A number of other business sectors are also caught within the scope of these new recommendations. This paper addresses anti‐money laundering compliance issues for the gambling sector, an area not previously explored.

This study aims to explore how the economic recession and some corporate governance (CG) provisions can affect the performance of Italian gambling small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across different business segments.

This study uses a panel sample of 2,135 observations before and during the global financial crisis. Specifically, the roles of ownership, boards of directors, chief executive officer gender and gambling business segments are investigated in the Italian gambling market.

Ownership concentration has a negative relationship with the performance of foreigner- and financial-owned firms, while boards exert a positive role on performance. Interestingly, the financial crisis does not impact the performance of Italian gambling SMEs and some business segments, such as bingo, perform even better during the crisis.

Further investigations should analyze the role of single games on firm performance. The consumer- and firm-level examinations offer very different perspectives and scholars should be aware of this when investigating the gambling industry.

This study might help both policymakers and other gambling firms, such as casinos, to better understand which appropriate CG model should be adopted and how it can positively influence performance, especially in recessionary times.

This study contributes to studies on hospitality and tourism by focusing on the complementary role of gambling SMEs with respect to casinos. It also increases knowledge on the role of CG in privately owned gambling firms, which thus far has been scantly investigated by scholars.

This chapter examines the shifting significance of data ownership and athlete rights as they pertain to the growth and expansion of the global sports gambling industry. It provides a nuanced overview of the ‘datafication’ of society, tracing how the omnipresent embrace of digital technologies has expediated new forms of organisational, political and corporate surveillance from which concerns over privacy, rights to ownership and the misuse of personal data arise. The chapter moves on to discuss how the extraction and trade of data has revolutionised how elite sport is performed, manufactured, broadcast and consumed, shedding critical light on the role of the gambling industry in the exchange of human data as a market commodity. These insights inform a series of socio-legal and ethical questions about the relationships between athlete data and the sports gambling industry for the purpose of signposting emerging issues and opportunities for critical sociological research and intervention.