Search results

This study aims to focus on the five most relevant and discursive emerging technologies in accounting (cloud computing, big data and data analytics, blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics process automation [RPA]). It investigates the adoption and use of these technologies based on data collected from accounting professionals in a technology-developed country – Canada, through a survey.

The study investigates the adoption and use of emerging technologies based on data collected from accounting professionals in a technology-developed country – Canada, through a survey. This study considers the said nature and characteristics of emerging technologies and proposes a model using the factors that have been found to be significant and most commonly investigated by existing prior technology-organization-environment (TOE)-related technology adoption studies. This survey applies the TOE framework and examines the influence of significant and most commonly known factors on Canadian firms’ intention to adopt the said emerging technologies.

Study results indicate that Canadian accounting professionals’ self-assessed knowledge (about these emerging technologies) is more theoretical than operational. Cloud computing is highly used by Canadian firms, while the use of other technologies, particularly blockchain and RPA, is reportedly low. However, firms’ intention about the future adoption of these technologies seems positive. Study results reveal that only the relative advantage and top management commitment are found to be significant considerations influencing the adoption intention.

Study findings confirm some results presented in earlier studies but provide additional insights from a new perspective, that of accounting professionals in Canada. The first limitation relates to the respondents. Although accounting professionals provided valuable insights, their responses are personal views and do not necessarily represent the views of other professionals within the same firm or the official position of their accounting departments or firms. Therefore, the exclusion of diverse viewpoints from the same firm might have negatively impacted the results of this study. Second, this study sample is limited to Canada-based firms, which means that the study reflects only the situation in that country. Third, considering the research method and the limit on the number of questions the authors could ask, respondents were only asked to rate the impact of these five technologies on the accounting field and to clarify which technologies are used.

This study’s findings confirm that the organizational intention to adopt new technology is not primarily based on the characteristics of the technology. In the case of emerging technology adoption, the decision also depends upon other factors related to the internal organization. Furthermore, although this study found no support for the effect of environmental factors, it fills a gap in the literature by including the factor of vendor support, which has received little attention in prior information technology (IT)/ information system (IS) adoption research. Moreover, in contrast to most prior adoption studies, this study elaborates on accounting professionals’ experience and perceptions in investigating the organizational adoption and use of emerging technologies. Thus, the findings of this study are valuable, providing insights from a new perspective, that of professional accountants.

The study findings may serve as a guide for researchers, practitioners, firms and other stakeholders, particularly technology providers, interested in learning about emerging technologies’ adoption and use in Canada and/or in a relevant context. Contrary to most prior adoption studies, this study elaborates on accounting professionals’ experience and perceptions in investigating the organizational adoption and use of emerging technologies. Thus, the findings of this study are valuable, providing insights from a new perspective, that of professional accountants.

The study provides insights into the said technologies’ actual adoption and improves the awareness of firms and stakeholders to the effect of some constructs that influence the adoption of these emerging technologies in accounting.

The study explores diverse and critical understandings of “international” in a higher education curriculum context, situated in a curriculum review of a postgraduate taught programme entitled “International Education” at a university located in England. Our study problematises and decentres some dominant, normalised notions of “international”, exploring critical possibilities of engaging with the term for higher education internationalisation.

We examined a set of programme curriculum documents and conducted a survey exploring teaching staff’s uses and interpretations of “international” in their design and delivery of course units. Through a thematic analysis of the dataset, we identify what “international” might mean or how it may be missing across the curriculum.

Our findings suggest a locally-developed conceptualisation of “international” beyond the normalised interpretation of “international” as the inclusion or comparison of multiple nations, and different, other countries around the global world. More diverse, critical understandings of the term have been considered, including international as intercultural, competences, ethics, languages and methods. The study provides an example approach to reflective scholarship that programmes can undergo in order to develop clarity, depth and purposefulness into internationalisation as enacted in a local curriculum context.

The study provides a first step towards establishing clearer guidelines on internationalising the curriculum by higher education institutions and individual programmes in order to challenge a superficial engagement of “international” within internationalisation. It exemplifies a starting point for making purposeful steps away from normalised notions and assumptions of international education and facilitates development towards its critical, ethically-grounded opportunities.

Food sustainability is a world-acknowledged issue that requires urgent integrated solutions at multi-levels. This study aims to explore how food firms can improve their sustainability performance through digital traceability practices, considering the mediating effect of sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) and the moderating effect of supply chain learning (SCL) for the food supply chain therein.

Hierarchical regression with a moderated mediation model is used to test the proposed hypotheses with a sample of 359 food firms from four provinces in China.

Digital traceability has a significant positive impact on the three pillars of sustainability performances among food firms. SOI (product innovation, process innovation and organisational innovation) mediates the relationship between digital traceability and sustainability performance. SCL plays moderating roles in the linkage between digital traceability and both product and process innovation, respectively.

This paper contributes as one of the first studies to develop digital traceability practices and their sustainability-related improvements for Chinese food firms; it extends studies on supply chain traceability to a typical emerging market. This finding can support food sustainability practice in terms of where and how to invest in sustainability innovation and how to improve economic, environmental and social performance.

This paper aims to explore how young students experience the contribution of a pedagogical assemblage based on design thinking (DT) while contributing to the transition to a more just and sustainable university.

This qualitative research considers the case of two pedagogical experiences developed at Universitat Politècnica de Valencià, Spain. In both experiences, a methodological proposal that includes practices of care, just transitions and DT was implemented. The data obtained through in-depth interviews, surveys and digital whiteboard labels was analyzed under the lens of three relational categories in the context of sustainability.

Learnings are acquired through five categories: place-based learning, prior learning, embodied learning, collaborative teamwork and intersectionality. The research shows how the subjective knowledge of young students positions them as co-designers and leaders of a University that drives a more just and sustainable transition.

The originality of the paper lies in the shift of DT from a human-based approach to a justice-oriented relational approach.

The use of technology in 4th industrial revolution is at its peak. Industries are trying to reduce the consumption of resources by effectively utilizing information and technology to connect different functioning agents of the manufacturing industry. Without digitization “Industry 4.0” will be a virtual reality. The present survey-based study explores the factual status of digital manufacturing in the Northern India.

After an extensive literature review, a questionnaire was designed to gather different viewpoints of Indian industrial practitioners. The first half contains questions related to north Indian demographic factors which may affect digitalization of India. The latter half includes the queries concerned with various operational factors (or drivers) driving the digital revolution without ignoring Indian constraints.

The focus of this survey was to understand the current level of digital revolution under the ongoing push by the Indian government focused upon digital movement. The analysis included non-parametric testing of the various demographic and functional factors impacting the digital echoes, specifically in Northern India. Findings such as technological upgradations were independent of type of industry, the turnover or the location. About 10 key operational factors were thoughtfully grouped into three major categories—internal Research and Development (R&D), the capability of the supply chain and the capacity to adapt to the market. These factors were then examined to understand how they contribute to digital manufacturing, utilizing an appropriate ordinal logistic regression. The resulting predictive analysis provides seldom-seen insights and valuable suggestions for the most effective deployment of digitalization in Indian industries.

The country-specific Industry 4.0 literature is quite limited. The survey mainly focuses on the National Capital Region. The number of demographic and functional factors can further be incorporated. Moreover, an addition of factors related to ecology, environment and society can make the study more insightful.

The present work provides valuable insights about the current status of digitization and expects to facilitate public or private policymakers to implement digital technologies in India with less efforts and the least resistance. It empowers India towards Industry 4.0 based tools and techniques and creates new socio-economic dimensions for the sustainable development.

The quantitative nature of the study and its statistical predictions (data-based) are novel. The clubbing of similar success factors to avoid inter-collinearity and complexity is seldom seen. The predictive analytics provided in this study is quite elusive as it provides directions with logic. It will help the Indian Government and industrial strategists to plan and perform their interventions accordingly.

This study aims to investigate causes of sustainability failures of ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems in Botswana.

The research employed qualitative and quantitative methods, including literature review and secondary data analysis to understand trends relating to Botswana, and a survey to identify gaps leading to certification sustainability failures, focusing on; motives for certification, causes of decertification and issues in the certification process.

ISO 9001 adoption in Botswana is slow, with low acceptance rate in the public sector at 13% compared to the private sector at 87%. Termination rates have been high at 55% over two decades. Manufacturing dominates certification with 45% of total certification. While micro and small companies struggle to sustain certification, often failing within 2 years, medium-sized companies demonstrate better sustainability, lasting beyond 6 years. Product/service quality and process improvement drive certification while decertification is influenced by management factors, financial constraints, and process management. The study recommends a model for effective integration of ISO 9001.

Integrated systems are crucial for consistent process performance and continual improvement in all sectors for sustainable organizational success. Although the ISO 9001 Quality Management System has shown positive impacts globally, the impact of its adoption in Botswana remains questionable with high failure rates post implementation. There appears to exist a significant gap in development, implementation, and maintenance of the QMS. The public domain has no evidence of any past investigation on causes of sustainability failures of ISO 9001 post certification. The current study sought to close that knowledge gap.

Networks linking tourist attractions or organizations are a major focus of tourism research. Despite extensive research on tourism networks, academic research on the spatial structure and formation of wine tourism networks is limited. This study aims to investigate the spatial structure and factors influencing the development of a network among Ningxia wineries, an emerging wine tourism destination in China.

This study uses social network analysis to uncover “what” the spatial structure of wine tourism networks looks like. Sixteen in-depth interviews were conducted among key stakeholders to explain the “why” of such structural characteristics.

The results show that in an emerging wine tourism destination, popular tourist attractions enjoy high centrality and hold key positions in the wine tourism network. Small wineries exhibit high closeness centrality, and only one winery serves as a network broker. According to the stakeholders, the importance of network actors will increase as their economic and political importance increase, while small wineries that lack differentiation in the network may perish.

Local governments can implement the suggested measures for improving network connections, and wineries are advised to find suitable positions to improve the experiences of tourists.

This study pioneers the identification of the distinct structure and factors influencing the network of an emerging wine tourism destination, thus enriching the understanding of the interplay and roles of different actors.

This study explores a hegemonic alliance and the role of relational forms of accounting and accountablity in the making of contemporary capitalism.

We use the WikiLeaks “Cablegate” documents to provide an account of the detailed machinations between interest groups (corporations and the state) that are constitutive of hegemonic activity.

Our analysis of the “Cablegate” documents shows that the US and Chevron were crafting a central role for Turkmenistan and its president on the global political stage as early as 2007, despite offical reporting beginning only in 2009. The documents exemplify how “accountability gaps” occlude the understanding of interdependence between capital and the state.

The study contributes to a growing idea that official accounts offer a fictionalized narrative of corporations as existing independently, and thus expands the boundaries associated with studying multinational corporate activities to include their interdependencies with the modern state.

The study traces how global capitalism extends into new territories through diplomatic channels, as a strategic initiative between powerful state and capital interests, arguing that the outcome is the empowerment of authoritarian states at the cost of democracy.

The study argues that previous accounting and accountability research has overlooked the larger picture of how capital and the state work together to secure a mutual hegemonic interest. We advocate for a more complete account of these activities that circumvents official, often restricted, views of global capitalism.

Contemporary technological disruptions are espoused as though they stimulate sustainable growth in the built environment through the Green Internet of Things (G-IoT). Learning from discipline-specific experiences, this paper articulates recent advancements in the knowledge and concepts of G-IoT in relation to the construction and smart city sectors. It provides a scoping review for G-IoT as an overlooked dimension. Attention was paid to modern circularity, cleaner production and sustainability as key benefits of G-IoT adoption in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs). In addition, this study also investigates the current application and adoption strategies of G-IoT.

This study uses the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) review approach. Resources are drawn from Scopus and Web of Science repositories using apt search strings that reflect applications of G-IoT in the built environment in relation to construction management, urban planning, societies and infrastructure. Thematic analysis was used to analyze pertinent themes in the retrieved articles.

G-IoT is an overlooked dimension in construction and smart cities so far. Thirty-three scholarly articles were reviewed from a total of 82 articles retrieved, from which five themes were identified: G-IoT in buildings, computing, sustainability, waste management and tracking and monitoring. Among other applications, findings show that G-IoT is prominent in smart urban services, healthcare, traffic management, green computing, environmental protection, site safety and waste management. Applicable strategies to hasten adoption include raising awareness, financial incentives, dedicated work approaches, G-IoT technologies and purposeful capacity building among stakeholders. The future of G-IoT in construction and smart city research is in smart drones, building information modeling, digital twins, 3D printing, green computing, robotics and policies that incentivize adoption.

This study adds to the normative literature on envisioning potential strategies for adoption and the future of G-IoT in construction and smart cities as an overlooked dimension. No previous study to date has reviewed pertinent literature in this area, intending to investigate the current applications, adoption strategies and future direction of G-IoT in construction and smart cities. Researchers can expand on the current study by exploring the identified G-IoT applications and adoption strategies in detail, and practitioners can develop implementation policies, regulations and guidelines for holistic G-IoT adoption.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between Lean manufacturing and Industry 4.0 for small and medium size of enterprise in Japan and Brazil.

The authors conducted a quantitative survey (20 companies in Japan and 30 companies in Brazil) combined with a qualitative interview (2 companies in Japan and 15 companies in Brazil).

According to the quantitative study, 90% of them practice Lean manufacturing and 40% of them practice Industry 4.0. In the qualitative study in Brazil, four managers responded that the Lean manufacturing is a prerequisite for Industry 4.0 since any production process with waste cannot be productive, even with sophisticated digitalization technology.

The authors explored further the relationship between “defensive Digital Transformation (DX),” which is based mainly on Lean manufacturing, and “offensive DX,” which relates to customer value creation through Industry 4.0. This study clarifies the relationship and plays as a roadmap to develop better the manufacturing from current status to the vision of Industry 4.0.