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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 aims to investigate how a firm’s sustainable competitive advantage is influenced by the combination of entrepreneurial ecological orientation, digital transformation and dynamic capabilities.

Based on the qualitative comparative analysis method, this study systematically explores the significant key conditions and configuration effects that affect the growth of sustainable competitive advantage. This study uncovers the causal relationship and complex mechanisms underlying the sustainable and unsustainable competitive advantages for new ventures, by examining the grouping effects of the above three factors – entrepreneurial ecological orientation, digital transformation and dynamic capabilities on those advantages.

A single factor fails to constitute a necessary condition for sustainable competitive advantage. Three types of configurations are beneficial to sustainable competitive advantage, namely, flexible and responsive type, dynamically adjusted type and type of opportunity resource integration, whereas four types of configurations lead to the unsustainable competitive advantage of new ventures, namely, type of organizational rigidity, informal entrepreneurial type, information-blocking type and technology-deficient type.

According to this study, adopting an entrepreneurial ecological orientation is a novel strategic move. This study offers an extensive review of three aspects of entrepreneurial ecological orientation, dynamic capacities and digital transformation and their mutually synergistic cascading effects on the sustainable competitive advantage of new ventures. This study investigates how three dimensions interact to achieve sustainable competitive advantage for firms, ultimately contributing to the study of sustainable competitive advantage strategies from an entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective.

The current study aims to empirically analyze the influence of different information sources, together with the persuasiveness of recommender systems (RSs) on the consumer’s purchase intention (PI). It also expands the research on RSs from the point of view of consumer behavior and psychology, considering perceived usefulness and relevance. In addition, it analyzes how different types of personalized recommendations, along with non-personalized ones, influence PI.

The proposed model has been validated using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), based on the data collected from 597 online shoppers.

This study proves that both information search and RSs influence PI, being complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Recommender systems’ findings indicate that the PI is primarily influenced by the perceived relevance of RSs, the information provided by manufacturers and reviews. Moreover, only the influence of the perceived usefulness of personalized recommendations strongly affects PI. Conversely, non-personalized recommendations do not affect PI.

Developers should focus on increasing the perceived usefulness and relevance of RSs. Thus, they could adopt the hybridization of RSs with the aggregation of both personal shopping behavior and social network contacts. It should integrate information signals from multiple sources to include sentiment extracted from reviews or links to the manufacturer’s page. Furthermore, the recommendation of discounted products must be only for products preferred by customers, because only these influence the PI.

This research provides a structural model that examines together, for the first time, the influence on the PI of the main RSs and sources of information.

To explore the project-specific information-seeking pathways of Chinese parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and understand the information seeking in their daily lives.

This study utilized the interview, critical incident technique and information horizon mapping to gather data from 27 Chinese parents of children with ASD during project-specific information seeking. These data were then examined using content analysis and descriptive statistics methods.

First, the information-seeking pathways of parents of children with ASD show the significant importance of both interpersonal and online sources, characterized by the combined use of multiple types of information sources. Second, information-seeking pathways considerably vary across project contexts. For diagnosis and school selection, parents had fewer pathways and primarily relied on interpersonal sources. Meanwhile, they utilized interpersonal and online sources combined for selecting rehabilitation institutions and methods, with the most information-seeking pathways for rehabilitation methods.

This study presents novel insights into the information-seeking pathways of Chinese parents of children with ASD in seeking project-specific information. It provides valuable references for relevant governments and rehabilitation institutions in building information service platforms, strengthening information quality regulation and providing information resources for parents of children with ASD.

This study examines the role of CEO communication in effective crisis management. Specifically, it examines whether the communication of private information about a CEO can create a positive pre-crisis image that serves as a buffer during actual crises.

This study uses a 2x2 experimental design to analyze the effect of CEO communication (private information vs no private information) on pre-crisis image and its effectiveness in different types of crises (victim crisis vs preventable crisis).

The results of this research show that the communication of private information about a CEO contributes to the improvement of public image perceptions when a crisis occurs. This effect is influenced by the recipient’s identification with the organization as well as perceptions of empathy and competence toward the CEO. Notably, stronger effects are observed in the context of a victim crisis.

This study contributes to the field by highlighting the importance of CEO communication in crisis management and its potential to proactively build a positive pre-crisis image. In addition, it examines how this mechanism varies by crisis type, providing valuable insights for crisis communication strategies.

By focusing on the perspective of politicians, this paper aims to question the change brought about by local government financial statements for accountability. It applies the Burns and Scapens’ (2000) framework of accounting change to explore politicians’ routines when using the accrual accounting information and which type of change was induced by financial statements on financial accountability to politicians and citizens.

Considering that accounting reforms take time to unfold their effects, this paper studies two countries that have 11 years of difference in the reform implementation and thus a different accounting maturity. A qualitative research approach was used based on 55 semistructured interviews in five Finnish and six German municipalities with 25 councilors from Finland and 30 from Germany.

Councilors with a longer period of time to adjust to the accounting reforms seem to have developed more routines in using financial statements to assess the financial situation and performance. The change induced in accountability to politicians is partly formal and more evolutionary than revolutionary. The complexity of financial statements can lead to regressive change, especially in financially distressed local governments. As for accountability to citizens, a real change is not observed, reflecting a regressive type of change.

The study contributes to the empirical studies on financial accountability in the public sector context by analyzing the use of financial statements in two-way accountability relations from the perspective of politicians. Thereby, the paper adopts a transnational comparative approach and draws on old institutional economics.

This study aims to develop and test a framework of the antecedents to and performance outcomes of exporters’ use of different services offered by Internet-based Business-to-Business (I-B2B) platforms.

We test the model based on a unique survey dataset of 350 Chinese exporters who subscribed to Alibaba.com, a major I-B2B platform.

Drawing on the signaling theory, export and I-B2B platform literature, we develop a typology of exporters’ use of services offered by I-B2B platforms. We find that the extent to which firms have cost efficiency advantages, adopt an export diversity strategy, operate under high levels of psychic distance and experience high levels of domestic regulatory uncertainty are all positively related to exporters’ use of I-B2B platform services. The use of those services is either positively or negatively related to export success depending on the services in question. The magnitudes of these performance relationships are contingent on the exporters’ transparency strategies.

This is the first study to examine the antecedents to and consequences of exporters’ use of the services offered by I-B2B platforms.

Drawing on the personalization–privacy paradox and guided by means–end analysis, this study explores how consumers balance their concerns for privacy and the benefits of smart home device personalization and the role that trust plays in the process. More specifically, this study aims to investigate how perceptions of smart device personalization and privacy concerns are shaped by consumers’ experiences and the role of trust in the deliberation process.

In-depth interviews were conducted across diverse demographic groups of smart device users to shed light on the balancing act between personalization and privacy.

The study found that product experience, ownership type, perceived value of convenience and control and quality of life via “smart things” are key motivators for product usage. The benefits of tailored recommendations and high relevance are balanced against the risks of echo chamber effects and loss of control. The results also show the role of active involvement in the privacy calculus and trust level. The study points to the significance of an ecosystem-based service/business model in gaining consumer confidence when they balance between personalization and privacy.

Although many studies have explored trust, privacy concerns and personalization in an artificial intelligence (AI)-related context, few have addressed trust in the context of both smart devices and the personalization–privacy paradox. As such, this study adds to the existing literature by incorporating the concept of trust and addressing both privacy concerns and personalization in the AI context.

This study aimed to uncover the characteristics of both misinformation and refutations as well as the associations between different aspects of misinformation and corresponding ways of rebutting it.

Leveraging Hovland's persuasion theory as a research lens and taking data from two Chinese refutation platforms, we characterized the topics of COVID-19-related misinformation and refutations, misinformation communicator, persuasion strategies of misinformation, refutation communicators and refutation strategies based on content analysis. Then, logistic regressions were undertaken to examine how the characteristics of misinformation and refutation strategies interacted.

The investigation into the association between misinformation and refutations found that distinct refutation strategies are favored when debunking particular types of misinformation and by various kinds of refutation communicators. In addition, several patterns of persuasion strategies were identified.

This study had theoretical and practical implications. It emphasized how misinformation and refutations interacted from the perspective of Hovland's persuasion theory, extending the scope of the existing literature and expanding the classical theory to a new research scenario. In addition, several patterns of persuasion strategies used in misinformation and refutation were detected, which may contribute to the refutation practice and help people become immune to misinformation.

This research is among the first to analyze the relationships between misinformation and refutation strategies. Second, we investigated the persuasion strategies of misinformation and refutations, contributing to the concerning literature. Third, elaborating on Hovland’s persuasion theory, this study proposed a comprehensive framework for analyzing the misinformation and refutations in China during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study aims to reveal the triggering mechanism and boundary conditions of tourists’ cross-border travel anxiety (CBTA) from different crisis information sources.

Drawing on the heuristic-systematic model (HSM), this study constructs a theoretical formation path of tourists’ CBTA. Based on competence-based and moral-based crises, hypotheses were examined through three situational experiments, targeting Chinese and Malaysian potential tourists.

Organization-released crisis information triggers higher tourists’ CBTA than government ones, with perceived uncertainty mediating it. Crisis communication message appeals (CCMAs) (rational vs emotional) negatively moderate the above relationships. Rational CCMAs work for governmental crisis communication, while emotional CCMAs work for organizational ones.

This study proposes a heuristic cross-border tourism crisis information dissemination strategy for destination management organizations and highlights the advantages of CCMAs in preventing secondary crises.

This study reexamines the cause-and-effect and the intervention mechanisms of tourists’ reactions to crisis information, which expands the cross-border tourism crisis management research and the application of the HSM in such a context.

本研究旨在从不同的危机信息源中揭示游客跨境旅行焦虑的触发机制和边界条件。

本研究借鉴启发式-系统式模型（HSM）, 构建了游客跨境旅游焦虑的理论形成路径。基于能力型和道德型目的地危机事件, 以中国及马来西亚潜在游客为例, 通过三组情境实验验证所提出的假设。

与政府发布的危机信息相比, 组织发布的危机信息会引发更高的游客跨境旅游焦虑, 而感知不确定性会对该路径起到中介作用。危机沟通信息诉求（理性vs.感性）对上述关系起负向调节作用。理性的信息诉求适用于政府危机沟通, 而感性的信息诉求适用于组织危机沟通。

本研究为目的地管理组织提出了启发式跨境旅游危机信息传播策略, 并强调了危机沟通信息诉求在预防二次危机方面的优势。

本研究重新审视了游客对危机信息反应的因果关系和干预机制, 拓展了跨境旅游危机管理研究和HSM在此背景下的应用。

Este estudio pretende revelar el mecanismo desencadenante y las condiciones límite de la ansiedad de los turistas ante los viajes transfronterizos (CBTA) a partir de diferentes fuentes de información sobre crisis (CIS).

Basándose en el modelo heurístico-sistemático (HSM), este estudio construye una vía teórica de formación de la CBTA de los turistas. A partir de las crisis basadas en la competencia y en la moral, se examinaron las hipótesis mediante tres experimentos situacionales, dirigidos a turistas potenciales chinos y malayos.

La información sobre crisis difundida por organizaciones desencadena una mayor CBTA de los turistas que la gubernamental, con la incertidumbre percibida como mediadora. Los recursos de los mensajes de comunicación de crisis (CCMA) (racionales frente a emocionales) moderan negativamente las relaciones anteriores. Los CCMA racionales funcionan para la comunicación de crisis gubernamental, mientras que los CCMA emocionales para las organizativas.

Los resultados proponen que las organizaciones de gestión de destinos (OGD) deberían considerar estrategias heurísticas a la hora de difundir información sobre crisis turísticas transfronterizas. Prestar atención al efecto diferencial de las CCMA ayuda a prevenir crisis secundarias.

Este estudio reexamina la causa-efecto y los mecanismos de intervención de las reacciones de los turistas a la información sobre crisis, lo que amplía la investigación sobre la gestión de crisis turísticas transfronterizas y la aplicación de la HSM en dicho contexto.