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This study aims to investigate the impact of diverse practices in sustainability reporting and assurance on the disclosure of sustainable development goals (SDGs). Specifically, the authors examine the disclosure of SDGs along two dimensions: disclosure breadth, denoting the number of goals mentioned, and disclosure depth, encompassing the extent of actions disclosed to advance these goals.

Using a panel Tobit regression analysis, the authors analyse the communication on progress questionnaires from 299 companies (resulting in 1,015 firm-year observations) participating in the United Nations Global Compact from 2017 to 2021.

The findings revealed that greater adherence to Global Reporting Initiative standards increases SDG disclosure breadth; external assurance using publicly recognised standards, more than proprietary methods, is associated with SDG disclosure breadth and depth; and the review of information by multiple stakeholders improves the depth of SDG disclosure more than evaluation by a panel of peers.

The originality of this study lies in its examination of the intricate interplay between sustainability disclosure and assurance practices, on the one hand, and the disclosure of SDGs, on the other. Uniquely, the authors consider the various levels of implementation of these practices, allowing for a comprehensive assessment of their influence on SDG disclosure.

Integrated reporting enhances the meaningfulness of non-financial information, but whether this enhancement is progressive or regressive from a sustainability perspective is unknown. This study aims to examine the influence of the Integrated Reporting (<IR>) Framework on the disclosure of financial- and impact-material sustainability-related information in integrated reports.

Using a disclosure index constructed from the Global Reporting Initiative’s G4 Guidelines and UN Sustainable Development Goals, the authors content analysed integrated reports of 40 companies from the International Integrated Reporting Council’s Pilot Programme Business Network published between 2015 and 2017. The content analysis distinguished between financial- and impact-material sustainability-related information.

The extent of sustainability-related disclosures in integrated reports remained more or less constant over the study period. Impact-material disclosures were more prominent than financial material ones. Impact-material disclosures mainly related to environmental aspects, while labour practices-related disclosures were predominantly financially material. The balance between financially- and impact-material sustainability-related disclosures varied based on factors such as industry environmental sensitivity and country-specific characteristics, such as the country’s legal system and development status.

The paper presents a unique disclosure index to distinguish between financially- and impact-material sustainability-related disclosures. Researchers can use this disclosure index to critically examine the nature of sustainability-related disclosure in corporate reports.

This study offers an in-depth understanding of the influence of non-financial reporting frameworks, such as the <IR> Framework that uses a financial materiality perspective, on sustainability reporting. The findings reveal that the practical implementation of the <IR> Framework resulted in sustainability reporting outcomes that deviated from theoretical expectations. Exploring the materiality concept that underscores sustainability-related disclosures by companies using the <IR> Framework is useful for predicting the effects of adopting the Sustainability Disclosure Standards issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board, which also emphasises financial materiality.

Despite an emphasis on financial materiality in the <IR> Framework, companies continue to offer substantial impact-material information, implying the potential for companies to balance both financial and broader societal concerns in their reporting.

While prior research has delved into the practices of regulated integrated reporting, especially in the unique context of South Africa, this study focuses on voluntary adoption, attributing observed practices to intrinsic company motivations. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first study to explicitly explore the nature of materiality in sustainability-related disclosure. The research also introduces a nuanced understanding of contextual factors influencing sustainability reporting.

This study investigates the association between board gender diversity and multiple directorships, two board characteristics representing human, social and relational capital and the extent to which corporate reporting (using the double materiality principle) explains value creation for the organization, environment, society and the economy, which we define as total value reporting.

This study uses a disclosure index developed based on the Integrated Reporting Framework and the Global Reporting Initiative (G4) guidelines to analyze disclosures made using the double materiality principle and reflect the value created by companies. The sample includes corporate reports of 102 Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) companies in the Health Care sector. Ordinary least squares regression analyses test the relationship between board gender diversity and multiple directorships and the quality of total value reporting (and its subcomponents) with appropriate control variables.

Findings reveal that human, social and relational capital formed through multiple directorships and gender-diverse boards is positively related to the quality of total value reporting. Results hold for alternative measures and sensitivity tests of gender diversity and multiple directorships.

Our study reveals that (1) the <IR> Framework, when combined with the GRI Framework, effectively measures connected information quality under a double materiality perspective for total value reporting; (2) enhancing board effectiveness for total value reporting is achievable by increasing female directors and those with multiple directorships; (3) limitations in accessing experienced directors, particularly women, do not disadvantage countries like Australia and (4) directors holding multiple board positions are pivotal in disseminating best practices in corporate governance and reporting across various companies and industries.

Our research reveals that gender diversity on corporate boards transcends mere representation, significantly enhancing how firms articulate their value to stakeholders. This finding underscores the urgency for public policies to advocate for increased female board representation. Additionally, our findings indicate that board diversity, encompassing gender, experience, industry background and cultural perspectives, can elevate transparency in reporting, crucial for attracting global investors, particularly in emerging markets.

Our study is an early attempt to examine total value reporting – underpinned by double materiality – which reports on how companies create value for themselves, the environment and society. It is one of the first to identify drivers of reporting based on double materiality.

This paper aims to analyze what Samarco and Brazilian magazines speak and say about Mariana’s environmental crime. Discover their doxa in this subject. Interpret the speakings, sayings and doxas through the theories of the treadmills of production, crime and law.

It is a qualitative and documental research and a narrative analysis. Regarding the documents: 45 were from public authorities, 14 from Samarco Mineração S.A. and 73 from Brazilian magazines. Theoretically, the authors resorted to Bourdieusian sociology (speaking, saying and doxa) and the treadmills of production, crime and law theories.

Samarco: speaking – mission statements; saying – detailed information and economic and financial concerns; doxa – assistance discourse. Brazilian magazines: speaking – external agents; saying – agreements; doxa – attribution, aggravations, historical facts, impacts and protests.

The absence of discussions that addressed this fatality, with its respective consequences, from an agenda that exposed and denounced how it exacerbated race, class and gender inequalities.

Regarding Mariana’s environmental crime: Samarco Mineração S.A. speaks and says through the treadmill of production theory and supports its doxa through the treadmill of crime theory, and Brazilian magazines speak and say through the treadmill of law theory and support their doxa through the treadmill of crime theory.

To provoke reflections on the relationship between the mining companies and the communities where they settle to develop their productive activities.

Concerning environmental crime in perspective, submit it to a theoretical interpretation based on sociological references, approach it in a debate linked to environmental criminology, and describe it through narratives exposed by the guilty company and by Brazilian magazines with high circulation.

This study aims to determine research performance in Islamic business ethics and explore future research directions from leading articles and scholars.

This paper used bibliometric and content analysis to analyze 250 articles from reputable Scopus and Web of Sciences journals.

To date, the normative style still dominates Islamic business ethics research. Asian countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia are the center of discussion on Islamic business ethics. This study also suggests that researchers and academics study aspects of the economy that Islamic values have not touched, such as the theme of art, artificial intelligence for labor relations, workers' rights and language.

This research aims to contribute knowledge to Muslims as a reference guide for ethical business behavior. Non-Muslim managers can use this paper as a guide in forming a global company that is pluralistic and respectful of religious communities.

This research makes a scholarly contribution by providing a comprehensive exploration and detailed future research directions in each subtheme of Islamic business ethics.

Since the withdrawal of IFRIC 3 in 2005, there has been a regulatory freeze in accounting for emission rights that contrasts with the international momentum of climate-related financial disclosures. This paper explores how different narratives and institutional dynamics explain the failure to produce guidance on accounting for emission rights.

This paper mobilises the notion of field-configuring events to examine a sequence of six events between 2003 and 2016, including four public consultations and two dialogues between standard setters. The paper presents a qualitative analysis of documents produced in this space that investigates how different practices and narratives configured the field's positions, agenda, and meaning systems.

Accounting for emission rights was gradually decoupled from climate change and carbon markets, relegated to the research pipeline, and forgotten. The obstacles that the IASB and EFRAG found in presenting themselves as central in the recurring events, the excess of representations, and the increasingly technical and abstract debates eroded the 2003 momentum for regulation, making the different initiatives to revitalise the project vulnerable and open to scrutiny. Lukes (2021) refers to nondecision-making to express that some issues are suffocated before they are expressed.

The regulation of accounting for emission rights, an area that has received scant attention in the literature, provides some insights into the different narrative mechanisms that, materialising in specific times and spaces, draw regulatory attention to particular accounting issues, which are problematised and, eventually, forgotten. This study also illustrates that identifying interests is problematic as actors shift from alternative positions over a long period. The case examined also raises some doubts about the previous effectiveness of international standard setters in dealing with matters of connectivity between the environment and finance, as is the case for accounting for emissions rights.

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on corporate and leadership responsibility by proposing a relational business model for shared responsibility.

First, a literature review on corporate and leadership responsibility is presented and discussed. This is followed by an overview of existing public and private regulations and future perspectives that enforce and/or foster corporate and leadership responsibility. Based on the concepts of relational economics, relational leadership and proactive regulation, the theoretical foundations of a relational business model are derived. In addition, a decision model for the empirical application of the relational business model in ethical dilemma situations is developed and presented.

Theoretical elaboration of a relational business model and an associated relational decision-making approach.

This study contributes to a new way of doing business in terms of shared responsibility. Furthermore, corporate responsibility and leadership responsibility are usually researched as two distinct fields, with the former referring to the meso level and the latter to the micro level. A relational approach, which views leadership as a relational phenomenon, contributes to bridging both concepts.

The implementation of the digital economy has had a considerable influence on the manufacturing industry, and this paper aims to address the important issues of how to capture the opportunities presented by digital innovation and promote the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry, as well as the improvement of quality and efficiency.

Using panel data from 30 Chinese provinces and cities between 2010 and 2021, this study establishes the panel vector autoregression (PVAR) model and uses impulse response function analysis to evaluate the influence of the digital economy on the high-quality transformation and upgrading of China's small home appliance industry across five dimensions under the digital economy.

The development of digital infrastructure has not demonstrated a noteworthy capacity for advancing the transformation and upgrading of the small home appliance industry. Furthermore, digital industrialization has exerted a minimal restraining influence on this process. Nevertheless, digital governance has consistently exhibited a substantial impact on facilitating the transformation and upgrading of the small home appliance industry. While both industrial digitization and digital innovation hold significant potential for promoting the transformation and upgrading of the small home appliance industry, their sustainability remains limited.

The organization should logically join independent innovation and open innovation, construct an industrial ecosystem for the profound convergence of the digital economy and compact household appliances, use digital-wise science and technology to empower the establishment of brand effects, strengthen the portrayal of the digital standard framework for the intelligent compact household appliance industry, advance the development of a public stage for computerized administrations in the compact household appliance industry and develop a strategy ecosystem for computerized assets in the compact household appliance industry.

This study offers systematic evidence of the relationship between the digital economy and the development of the small home appliance industry. The results of this research contribute to the literature on the impact of the digital economy on the manufacturing sector and provide a logical explanation for the transformation and upgrading of the small home appliance industry within the context of the digital economy.

Amid multiple crises and increasing volatility, sustainable development is a pressing concern. Higher Education for Sustainable Development, especially Responsible Management Education (RME), drives transformative change by fostering new perspectives on work, decision-making and leadership. Conferences serve as pivotal sustainability discussion platforms, yet many remain traditional and lack interactive student engagement. This hinders active involvement and collaborative problem-solving. The Global Goals Design Jam, a dynamic, nontraditional format explored in this study offers an alternative approach. By blending design thinking and playful learning and constructivist learning methods, the Global Goals Design Jam offers a space for collaborative and creative Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) solutions. At the ninth Responsible Management Education Research Conference (RMERC) in September 2022, students from various universities took part in a Global Goals Design Jam. The current prestudy postulates that participation in a Global Goals Design Jam is primarily associated with positive attributes related to emotions and a sense of coherence. The potential for empowering learners to navigate real-world complexities and contribute to sustainability is highlighted, establishing formats like the Global Goals Design Jam as a valuable addition to educational conferences with a sustainability focus. The results also highlight potentials and limitations of the format and provide insights into further research requirements.

This paper aims to analyse the influence of board characteristics on corporate reputation.

In total, 128 Brazilian publicly traded companies from Refinitiv Eikon were analysed between 2016 and 2020. The dependent variable was corporate reputation, whereas the independent variables were board size, gender diversity, board independence and audit committee presence. Multivariate analysis was used.

The results presented empirical evidence that board members can impact corporate reputation. Findings showed that board size, gender diversity and independence positively influence Brazilian companies’ corporate reputation. Conversely, an audit committee had no significant impact on corporate reputation.

The paper presents a contribution to the significance of board members in shaping a company's corporate reputation, using the signalling theory and the resource-based view (RBV) theory.

Regarding practical implications, this work provides subsidies for managers to value board characteristics because they directly reflect on corporate reputation and competitive advantage, leading to more sustainable performance.

The research findings highlight that a diverse board encourages the organisation to improve its workforce, human rights, relations with the community and responsibility for manufactured products.

The relationship between board characteristics and corporate cooperation is poorly established in the literature. Furthermore, the results prove the RBV theory in an emerging context. Similarly, the signalling theory proved helpful in improving Brazilian firms’ corporate reputation.