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This paper aims to examine the effect of conditional conservatism on audit fees and whether the firm’s engagement in sustainable practices moderates the relationship between conditional conservatism and audit fees.

Using a sample of 3,767 firm-year observations from 14 European Union countries over the period of 2006–2019, the authors adopt the ordinary least square estimator to perform a panel data analysis of the effect of conditional conservatism on audit fees, and the moderating role of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) scores on the relationship between conditional conservatism and audit fees.

The authors find that conditional conservatism has a significant negative effect on audit fees, suggesting that auditors charge lower audit fees on more conservative clients. The authors also find that firms engaging in ESG actions, whether combined or individual, pay higher audit fees. More interestingly, the authors provide evidence that the negative effect of conditional conservatism on audit fees is mitigated only when ESG performance is considered in combination. This implies that firms exhibiting less commitment to ESG sustainability practices are prone to paying reduced audit fees when engaged in more conservative reporting. The findings remain robust after conducting a battery of tests.

The findings of this study have practical implications for several parties, including companies, auditors and regulators. This study emphasizes the potential benefit associated with using conservative accounting practices in terms of shaping downward the amount of audit fees. However, it also highlights the importance of considering the additional audit costs associated with higher ESG scores when making decisions about implementing sustainable practices.

Unlike prior studies that investigate the direct impact of sustainable practices on audit fees, the present work contributes to the literature on the benefits and costs of ESG by examining the moderating role of ESG performance in the association between audit fees and conditional conservatism. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine this relationship. Theoretically, the research integrates the theories of audit risk and agency to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the drivers of audit fees.

This paper aims to map the antecedents and precursory contexts regarding the four principles of management. Moreover, a description of its codification and coalescence as a unified teaching framework is provided, critically reviewing key theoretical underpinnings of management principles in academic research and management textbooks.

A historiographic approach reviewed seminal works for theory origins of the four principles of management, by analyzing 260 management textbooks from 1935 to 2013 to document their adoption in management education. This study used critical hermeneutics (Prasad, 2002) to explore the framework’s progression by providing the context of cultural, political and economic influences.

This research study tracked and mapped the creation of the four principles of management, as it became the commonly accepted teaching framework in management education. Today, every predominant management principles textbook uses the four principles of management – plan, lead, organize and control – as the basis for teaching students.

There is limited research on the application of the four principles of management in contemporary management, despite its ubiquity in management education. The study’s historical account of its formation provides insights into its adoption and utilization in modern education context. The study’s primary limitation stems from the generalization of the representative sample of textbooks used in the study (1917–2013). However, data saturation was achieved for the scale of textbooks and writings which was reviewed.

Through a critical analysis into the formation of the four principles of management, this research not only provides a historical account of its construction but, as importantly, the influencing factors that led to its development. This research fills a gap in critical literature, as a post mortem exegesis has never been conducted on the four principles of management in the afteryears of its amalgamation.

Using a dynamic capability view, this study examined the relationships between big data analytics capability (BDAC), entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and sustainable supply chain performance (SSCP) by exploring the moderating role of trust among supply chain partners.

Questionnaires were collected from 300 manufacturing organizations using snow sampling. The moderating connections and direct relationships were examined using Hays' process macro and structural equation modeling.

BDAC was positively related to EO and SSCP. When supply chain partners experienced low levels of trust, an increase in BDAC did not enhance SSCP. As trust increased, the relationship between BDAC and SSCP became more positive, underpinning the moderating effects of trust. Moreover, trust did not moderate the relationship between BDAC and EO. The moderating effect of trust on the relationship between EO and SSCP showed a positive relationship between EO and SSCP when trust was low; however, the relationship became negative when trust was high.

Developing technology alone may not be sufficient, as supply chain managers need to establish a strong business relationship based on mutual trust. However, they also need to be aware of the dangers of high levels of trust because these may negatively affect performance. Therefore, supply chain managers need to achieve an optimal level of trust that is neither excessive nor insufficient.

Advances in technology and entrepreneurial drive for supply chain sustainability make it pertinent to examine trust levels among supply chain partners and the varying impact on BDAC, EO and SSCP. The current study shows the negative aspects of too much trust among supply chain partners.

This paper aims to investigate whether the two dominant financial reporting regimes, US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), are associated with audit pricing and audit report lags.

In 2007, the US SEC eliminated the requirement for foreign registrants to reconcile their financial statements to US GAAP from IFRS. In this post-reconciliation setting in the USA, the authors use panel ordinary least square regressions to examine a sample of foreign firms cross-listed in the USA reporting under IFRS and US domestic firms reporting under US GAAP during the fiscal year 2007–2019.

The authors find that the firms reporting under IFRS have longer audit report lags than firms reporting under US GAAP. In addition, the authors find that firms reporting under IFRS pay higher audit fees than their US GAAP counterparts. The results are robust after controlling for the firm- and country-specific characteristics as well as using propensity-score matching.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to provide empirical evidence that the differences between the two reporting regimes are associated with auditor behavior, possibly through additional audit efforts and audit complexity associated with auditing the principle-based IFRS relative to the rule-based US GAAP.

Following the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), firms are required to recognize gains or losses from investment property revaluation in the income statement, instead of equity in the balance sheet. This results in both a “materiality effect” (as auditors set a higher materiality level and require lower audit efforts) and a “cushion effect” (as revaluation gains serve as a cushion and reduce earnings manipulation incentives). Utilizing this unique setting, this study investigates whether the use of fair value measurement for investment property affects audit pricing before and after IFRS convergence in the Hong Kong real estate industry.

Using a sample of 78 real estate companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in the pre-IFRS period (2001–2004) and the post-IFRS period (2005–2008), this study employs multivariate regression analyses to test the research hypotheses with respect to the association between investment property revaluation and audit fees and the role of corporate governance structures in the context of family control.

The empirical results suggest that audit fees decrease with revaluation gains or losses from investment property revaluation after IFRS convergence, but not before. Furthermore, the negative association is stronger in companies controlled by founders, with proportionally more independent directors on the board and with a smaller board size. This is consistent with the moderating effect of corporate governance.

The findings shed more light on the consequences of fair value accounting for non-financial assets and are of interest to regulators for assessing the benefits of the wide use of fair value measurement under IFRS in emerging markets, especially where the corporate ownership structure is typically controlled by founding families. This study also provides recommendations for the audit community to fully consider the impact of asset revaluation on audit procedures and audit pricing.

This paper aims to examine the role of social media communication, tourist satisfaction and destination brand equity components in enhancing destination brand equity based on the Stimulus – Organism – Response (S-O-R) theory.

The conceptual model and research hypotheses were assessed using covariance-based structural equation modeling (SEM). An online survey was used to collect data from 369 domestic tourists who had traveled to Danang and knew about content related to Danang generated by either DMOs or other users on social media.

Except for the effect of DMO-generated social media communication on tourist satisfaction and the impact of destination brand awareness on destination brand loyalty, the findings confirmed the sequential causal relationships between research concepts based on the S-O-R model.

Future research should explore the proposed model based on comparisons of different nationalities to better understand the impact of cultural factors.

DMOs should associate social media with their marketing strategies to enhance destination brand equity, using cutting-edge technologies to create content and update information in a significant way to make communications by DMOs more effective. The findings especially suggest that UGC plays a vital role in improving brand equity dimensions, so DMOs could exploit UGC to engage existing customers and build relationships with potential customers. This research provides guidance for DMOs to improve their brand equity based on social media.

This study has contributed to the destination marketing literature by applying the S-O-R theory to propose a pathway for effectively increasing destination brand equity and highlight the importance of social media communication as a driver to achieve a hierarchical relationship between destination brand equity components and tourist satisfaction from stimulus to organism (e.g. cognition to affect).

The purpose of this study is to explore the support needs surrounding intimate relationships and sexuality of autistic adults accessing funded social care in England.

Semi-structured interviews with 15 autistic adults who were accessing funded social care examined their support needs surrounding intimate relationships and sexuality, with subsequent data analysis using reflexive thematic analysis.

Four themes were generated: Help at hand, but not too close for comfort, No “cookie-cutter rules”: personalised, inclusive approaches, Playing it safe, not leaving it too late, and Autism-informed education and support.

The authors produced an online learning module for social care staff in England on best practice in supporting autistic adults without learning disabilities with relationships and sexuality.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, there has been no other UK-based research published to date on the social care support needs of autistic adults without learning disabilities surrounding relationships, gender and sexuality.

Entrepreneurial activity is a phenomenon that increases the economic growth of countries and improves their social welfare. The economic development levels of countries have significant effects on these entrepreneurial activities. This research examines which institutional and macroeconomic variables explain early-stage entrepreneurship activities in developed and developing economies.

The authors conducted panel data analysis on the data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) surveys covering the years 2009–2018.

First, the authors' results reveal that cognitive, normative and regulatory institutions and macroeconomic factors affect early-stage entrepreneurial activity in developed and developing countries differently. Second, the authors' findings indicate that cognitive, normative and regulatory institutions affect early-stage entrepreneurship more positively in developed than developing countries. Finally, the authors' results report that macroeconomic factors are more effective in early-stage entrepreneurial activity in developing countries than in developed countries.

This study provides a better understanding of the components that help explain the differences in entrepreneurship between developed and developing countries regarding institutions and macroeconomic factors. In this way, it contributes to developing entrepreneurship literature with the theoretical achievements of combining institutional theory and macroeconomic indicators with entrepreneurship literature.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the prejudice and discrimination constructs through the lens of a transcendent knowledge concept.

The paper seeks to demonstrate that Spiritism or Spiritist Doctrine (SD) – regarded here as a source of transcendent knowledge – offers compelling arguments and provides suitable explanations (i.e. transcendent ontology) in relation to the issue of discrimination

Overall, this paper contributes to a better understanding of diversity and inclusive perspectives by examining the antecedents and consequences of discrimination through the insightful lens of SD tenets. In this sense, the findings suggest that the discriminators and prejudiced people may ironically pass through – as a result of the law of cause and effect – the same hard situations (i.e. ordeals or nightmares) – even though in their future lives – that they impose in their current victims to forcefully open their minds, support universal values, enhance their own feelings and spiritual intelligence.

Evidence presented here (although conceptually in nature) could be somewhat integrated into training sections of diversity management. At a minimum, it may encourage the shift of attitudes, revision of embedded values and reflections about the spiritual consequences to the perpetrators of discrimination against minorities.

Taken as a whole, the SD tenets prompt us to understand that the acts of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination engender suffering for their perpetrators, even in their future lives (i.e. reincarnations). Broadly speaking, the SD principles compel us to consider transcendent knowledge even in the context of organizational life.

This paper aims to explore the interplay between methods and methodologies in the field of international relations (IR) over the 100 years of its lifetime reflecting on the relationship between the rise of new research methods and the rise of new methodologies.

This paper looks in retrospect into the field’s great debates using a historiography approach. It maps chronologically the interplay of methods and methodology throughout the stages of the development of the study of IR.

This paper argues that inspite of narratives of triumph being common in the field, the coexistence of competing research methods and methodologies is the defining feature of the field. All theories, all methods and all methodologies have undergone a process of criticism, self-criticism and change. New methodologies have not necessarily accompanied the rise of new research methods in the field.

Drawing a map of the field’s methodologies and methods reveals necessarily its dynamism and its plurality. An honest map of the field is one that highlights not only theoretical differences but also ontological, epistemological and methodological differences embedded in the field’s debates.