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The study aims to examine the impact of corporate governance in terms of certain board characteristics on the level of universities’ voluntary sustainability disclosure.

A content analysis based on a comprehensive disclosure index – that also accounts for the impact that COVID-19 exerted on the social dimension of university activities – is performed on a sample of Italian public universities’ websites for the year 2020. An ordinary least squares regression model is estimated to test the association between universities’ board characteristics, namely, board size, board independence and board gender diversity (including the presence of a female rector), and online sustainability disclosure.

This study provides evidence that websites represent a valid tool used by universities to highlight their social performance and demonstrate their commitment to dealing with the pandemic’s social and economic disruption by supporting their stakeholders. Board gender diversity and female Rector’s presence are crucial factors that positively impact voluntary sustainability disclosure levels.

Policymakers and regulators can benefit from the study’s findings. Using the results of this study, they may reflect on the need to regulate sustainability reporting in universities. In addition, findings may offer policymakers inspiration for regulating the presence of women on university boards.

This study offers novel contributions to existing literature analysing the university’s voluntary sustainability disclosure practices through alternative communication tools such as websites. Moreover, it provides novel insight into the role of the board gender diversity in university sustainability disclosure practices.

The study examines the association between board gender diversity and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) disclosure from an international and longitudinal perspective. It also investigates the role of the Sustainability Committee (SC) as a possible factor that can mediate the relationship between board gender diversity and SDG disclosure.

The authors focused on the annual Communication on Progress (CoP) prepared annually by a sample of 526 companies from 39 countries and ten industry sectors along the 2017–2020 period to evaluate the SDG disclosure. Baron and Kenny's (1986) three-step model is estimated to test the impact of the presence of an SC on the SDG disclosure level and the mediating effect exerted by the SC on the relationship between board gender diversity and SDG disclosure.

Findings shed light on the usefulness of the CoP as an alternative reporting tool to communicate progress against SDGs achievement, especially regarding SDGs 13 and 8. This study evidences that board gender diversity positively influences SDG disclosure. The relationship between board gender diversity and SDG disclosure is not only direct but also mediated by the presence of an SC.

Companies need to consider the role of women in enhancing the effectiveness of their governance mechanisms and their ability to meet stakeholder information needs. Establishing a specific SC represents a valid mechanism that ensures greater transparency about corporate actions tackled to contribute toward SDGs and enhances the relationship between board gender diversity and SDG disclosure among International companies.

The study's findings offer stimuli for policy-makers and regulators to reflect on the relevance of the CoP as a possible alternative communication tool to provide SDGs information and overcome the limitations of the Sustainability Reports.

This is the first study that examines companies' SDG disclosure practices focusing on CoPs. Further, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that tests the relationship between gender diversity and SDG disclosure, considering the mediating effect of an SC committee.

Recent regulatory changes in Europe have promoted non-financial reporting practices (e.g., Directive, 2014/95/EU) and gender diversity in decision-making positions. Special attention is devoted to promoting the gender balance on corporate boards as a key mechanism to enhance corporate governance effectiveness and better address multiple stakeholders' needs. With this in mind, this study intends to examine the impact of boardroom gender diversity on Environmental Social Governance (ESG) disclosure practices in the European listed firms' context.

The study applies different panel data models on an extended sample of 1,392 firms from 21 European Union (EU) countries for six years (2014–2019).

Findings allow to spotlight the positive role exerted by the presence of women directors on the boards in enhancing ESG disclosure, both at the overall and specific (individual ESG scores) level.

Policymakers and regulators might consider the study's evidence as a stimulus to continue in promoting strategic actions and reforms that foster gender equality and balance in corporate decision-making positions.

Creating a heterogeneous and diversified board of directors may support implementing a “sustainable corporate governance” recently claimed by the EC.

The study contributes to the literature by disentangling the links between gender diversity and ESG disclosure over a period that covers a long season of European regulations and measures that affected both non-financial reporting practices and the board of directors' composition. Accordingly, it can contribute to enhancing the practical and theoretical understanding of the pivotal role that gender diversity may exert in strengthening corporate governance and, in turn, corporate transparency and accountability behaviours about non-financial issues.

This study aims to analyse the extent and type of online intellectual capital (IC) disclosure provided by a sample of 117 Italian listed companies. The study also seeks to identify possible determinants of the extent and type of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) practiced by Italian listed companies via the Web.

A content analysis is conducted to investigate the extent and type of online ICD provided through websites by a sample of 117 Italian listed companies. Two multivariate ordinary least squares regression models are applied to estimate the associations proposed in the research hypotheses.

The results show that Italian listed companies are exploiting the potential of websites to satisfy the information needs of investors and other stakeholders in relation to strategic IC-based corporate resources, with a particular focus on external capital. For the most part, ICD is conveyed in narrative form. Moreover, while the size and board independence positively affect both the extent and type of ICD, profitability exerts a positive influence only on the extent of online ICD.

Unlike previous ICD studies, which focussed on annual reports, this study explores an emerging and innovative tool to convey ICD, namely, the website. In today’s world, websites are considered to be the most expedient and effective tools for sharing and transmitting information, including IC; they are a vehicle that can shift the IC focus from the organisation to the wider ecosystem.

Building on the existing literature and on a series of interviews conducted in very diverse coworking spaces, this article attempts at analyzing coworking by focusing on the historical evolution and heterogeneity of its interpretations, as well as the plurality of its realization in practice and prospective developments.

The theoretical framework adopted is Cultural Historical Activity Theory – a dialectical approach which allows the study of human activities as historically evolving and complex systems which change under the impulse of their inner contradictions. The analysis presented here starts with an overview of the history of the theoretical elaborations and discussions of coworking. The authors then focus on the experiences and interpretations of this phenomenon as conveyed by coworkers and coworking managers in the north of Italy – one of the most active coworking areas in Europe.

Coworking first emerged as a way of promoting forms of work and organization that require simultaneous, multidirectional, and reciprocal work, as understood in contrast to forms that incorporate an established division of labor, demarcated communities, and formal and informal sets of rules. However, with time, coworking has evolved toward novel directions, giving rise to heterogeneous interpretations of it. Inquiry constitutes a deeper investigation of the heterogeneity of coworking. The take-away message here is that the prefix co- in coworking can be interpreted, through a play of words, to evoke multiple positions and views conveying internal contradictions.

The historical overview of coworking shows a strong differentiation and multisided interpretation of this phenomenon along two dimensions of historical development, namely, social and business, and outward and inward. The qualitative analysis of the interviews traces the different lived interpretations and conceptions of coworking. The analysis confirms, on the one hand, the complexity and heterogeneity described in the literature, and on the other hand, it enriches the literature by depicting the contradictory nature of the phenomenon, including how the historical and inner tensions of coworking are dynamically evolving in the concrete experiences reported by the managers and users in the coworking spaces.

The study refers to a health-care organization engaged in adopting “home health care” as a new object of activity. This study aims to explore how the reconfiguration of the object influences the transformative perspective, affecting not just a service but a broader approach and meaning behind patient care. It also investigates the main contradictions at play and the levers to support inter-organizational learning while facing the new challenges and change processes.

The work is based on a qualitative and ethnographic methodology directed to examine cultural, practical and socio-material aspects. The activity theory is assumed as a powerful approach to understand collective learning and distributed agency processes.

The renewal of the new object of work is analyzed as a trigger for shifts in representations, cultural processes and collective support implemented by the organization. Three agentic trajectories – technical, dialogical and collaborative agency – were cultivated by the management to deliver home health care through joint exercises of coordination and control, dialogical spaces and collaborative process.

The data collection was disrupted by the pandemic. A follow-up study would be beneficial to inquire how the learning processes shifted or were influenced by the contextual changes.

This contribution provides a practical framework for health-care organizations aiming to navigate and explore the physiological tensions and contradictions emerging when the object of work is changed.

The paper develops the field of intra- and inter-organizational learning by presenting an intertwined and structural connection between these processes and the renewing of the object of work. It advises that processes of transformation must be handled with attention to the critical and collective dynamics that accompany sustainable and situated changes.

The present study aims to extend the knowledge of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) disclosure practices in the Italian Healthcare Organisations (HCOs) context. The ultimate goal of the study is to provide fresh insight into the possible explanatory factors that may drive the extent of ICD provided by Italian HCOs via the web.

The present study applies a manual content analysis on the websites of a sample of 158 HCOs to determine the level of voluntary ICD. A multivariate regression model is estimated to test the association between different variables – size, gender diversity in top governance positions, financial performance and indebtedness – and the level of ICD provided by sampled HCOs through their official websites.

Content analysis results reveal that – in the absence of mandatory requirements – Italian HCOs tend to use websites to disclose information about IC. Particular attention is devoted to Structural and Relational Capital. The statistical analysis pinpoints that size and indebtedness negatively influence the level of ICD. In contrast, the presence of a female General Manager (GM) positively drives ICD. Also, it is observed that Research and University HCOs and those located in the Italian Northern Regions are particularly prone to discharge accountability on IC through websites.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that examines voluntary ICD practices through websites in the Italian HCOs' context. Also, since prior studies on IC in the healthcare context are mainly descriptive or normative, this is the first study examining the potential determinants of ICD provided by HCOs in terms of size, gender diversity in top governance positions, financial performance and indebtedness.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how public sector accounting has changed and is changing due to public governance development.

This paper conducts a traditional literature review based on selected studies in the fields of accounting, public administration and management. The aim of the review is to explain how diverse forms of public governance influence the fate of public sector accounting, including accountability, performance measurement, budgeting and reporting practices.

Public governance is developing into more inclusive but also complex forms, resulting in network, collaborative and digital governance. Consequently, the focus and practices of public sector accounting have changed, as reflected in new types of accountability, performance measurement, budgeting and reporting practices.

Drawing upon literature from different fields enables a deeper understanding of the changes in public sector accounting. Nevertheless, the intention is not to execute a systematic literature review but to provide an overview and resolve the scattered body of knowledge generated by previous contributions. The areas of risk management and auditing were not included and deserve further attention.

This paper discusses the need to continually redefine and reassess public sector accounting practices, by recognising the interdependencies between different actors, citizens and digital technologies.

The purpose of this study is to explore the usefulness of popular reporting (PR) in an Italian city as a dialogic accounting tool for promoting citizens’ engagement with digital platforms. This study aims to contribute to the debate on democratic accounting technologies with a focus on PR and digital platforms, using the theoretical lens of dialogic accounting.

A longitudinal case study is used to analyse the implementation and evolution of PR in the city of Turin, Italy and explore how the city involved its citizens with digital platforms.

This study contributes to the debate on public accountability through dialogic accounting tools.

Multiple sources (surveys, interviews and interventionist workshops) are used to analyse Turin, Italy as a longitudinal case study.

This study offers practical reflections for legislators, politicians and public managers who need new knowledge and empirical analysis of the effective implementation of the PR as a tool for dialogue and empowering public accounting to hold continuous dialogue with the citizens.

PR can be considered a useful dialogic accounting tool for politicians, managers and government experts to encourage citizens’ engagement in a pluralistic society.