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Open Access
Article
Publication date: 19 July 2023

Sara Moggi, Glen Lehman and Alessandra Pagani

This paper aims to critically analyse the transposition implications of Union Directive 2014/95. This Directive identified the need to raise the transparency of the social and…

1016

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to critically analyse the transposition implications of Union Directive 2014/95. This Directive identified the need to raise the transparency of the social and environmental information provided by the undertakings to a similarly high level across all Member States.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper considers how the European Member States of the European Union (EU) have transposed Directive 2014/95 into their regulations. The focus is on the juridification of social accounting in the pursuit of creating an overlapping consensus through Habermas’s concept of internal colonisation. The paper uses qualitative content analysis to scrutinise the national laws that transpose Directive 2014/95, discussing both what has been accomplished and what can be achieved by the release of future legislative provisions.

Findings

Despite the aim of Directive 2014/95 to create a common language for disclosing non-financial information, this study shows an implementation gap among and between Member States and an inconsistent picture of the employment of this Directive. Its implementation in the 28 European countries was considered a process of colonisation in implementing Union directives among European undertakings. However, the implementation process, which exemplifies Habermas’s juridification, has failed due to the lack of balance between moral discourse and actions.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to the ongoing debates concerning the implementation of mandatory disclosure of environmental and social information in the EU Member States, promoting new directions for the EU’s democratic laws on social accounting. In addition, it offers an example of how internal colonisation only catalyses effects when moral laws are legitimised through the provision of procedures.

Details

Meditari Accountancy Research, vol. 31 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2049-372X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 21 May 2018

Emilio Passetti, Lino Cinquini and Andrea Tenucci

The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent the implementation of internal environmental management and voluntary environmental information is related to…

3380

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent the implementation of internal environmental management and voluntary environmental information is related to organisational change.

Design/methodology/approach

Organisational change literature provided a framework for the analysis of the materials which were collected through a mixed method. Data on internal environmental management were collected through a survey, while a quality disclosure index was used to assess the quality of the environmental voluntary disclosure. Interviews were used to enhance the quantitative results interpreted according to the four pathways proposed by Tilt (2006) and characterised by several levels of internal environmental management and voluntary disclosure.

Findings

The results indicated that companies implement more internal activities than external disclosure. Environmental planning and operational practices were the most important changes carried out. When environmental management accounting and environmental disclosure were also implemented, environmental aspects were more integrated within companies, thus revealing that a more structured integration of sustainability aspects within organisational values had taken place. The results underline the importance of primarily establishing a set of internal changes, driven by environmental planning, to promote organisational change.

Research limitations/implications

The study presents a larger empirical analysis of the organisational change pathways followed by companies, showing similarities and differences among the four pathways. The results underline the importance of both dimensions for studying organisational changes. The framework of Tilt has been enriched, considering a more precise explanation of the internal aspects and adding the concept of the quality of disclosure as proxy to assess organisational change.

Originality/value

Organisational change is investigated through an extensive analysis of internal and external aspects and collecting quantitative and qualitative evidence. The analysis complements previous sustainability accounting literature focussed on the analysis of internal environmental management and external disclosure.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 31 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 14 August 2017

Atif Awad and Ishak Yussof

The purpose of this paper is to extend the gravity model to examine the role of infrastructure (including human capital (HC)), macroeconomic policies, the institutional quality…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to extend the gravity model to examine the role of infrastructure (including human capital (HC)), macroeconomic policies, the institutional quality and the colonial regimes on intra-African trade during the period 1990-2013. The results show that the basic gravity variables have substantial influence on the bilateral trade in the continent. Most interestingly, whilst internal conflicts appear to have harmful and significant impacts on the flow of such trade, HC, the flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the British colonial regime appear as encouraging factors. The results of the study imply that devoting more resources to HC and creating a favourable investment environment should come as a top priority in current efforts to facilitate Africa’s economic regionalism.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper employs Tobit technique on a semi-log extended form for the gravity model.

Findings

The results show that the basic gravity variables have substantial influence on the bilateral trade in the continent. Most interestingly, whilst internal conflicts appear to have harmful and significant impacts on the flow of such trade; HC, the flow of FDI and the British colonial regime come out as encouraging factors.

Originality/value

The results provided can be useful to design policies oriented to facilities intra-trade between African economies. So far, this is the first study that incorporates the soft type of infrastructures, colonization and institutional quality in the investigation of the factors that can influence intra-Africa trade.

Details

Journal of Economic Studies, vol. 44 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-3585

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 19 May 2023

Sara Moggi

The porpose of this study is to critically consider the use of global reporting initiative (GRI) guidelines in universities’ sustainability reports.. In light of the recent…

6399

Abstract

Purpose

The porpose of this study is to critically consider the use of global reporting initiative (GRI) guidelines in universities’ sustainability reports.. In light of the recent literature and Habermas’s thinking, the study advances the research field by considering the process of internal colonisation from steering institutions and makes suggestions regarding the future role of GRI in the higher education (HE) context.

Design/methodology/approach

This study presents a systematic literature review and content analysis for enhancing the critical reading of GRI applications in HE studies. The results are analysed in light of Habermas’s thinking, considering the GRI as a steering institution and its guidelines as steering mechanisms.

Findings

This study updates the literature review on sustainability reporting (SR) at universities and underlines the general trend in the employment of the GRI in this context. The results highlight the need to adapt the GRI to enhance its applicability in the HE context by considering additional dimensions such as research, teaching and operations. In doing so, the framework loses effectiveness and weakens the role of the GRI as a steering institution.

Practical implications

The results suggest that the GRI guidelines should be reframed to enhance comparability among reports and increase its wider employment at universities.

Social implications

Universities need to be guided in their accountability process towards SR by dedicated frameworks. This study suggests the potentially pivotal role that the GRI could play in providing dedicated tools for HE to steer and enhance the development of SRs at universities.

Originality/value

This study presents an updated review of studies on SR at universities and suggests possible paths for the future of the GRI framework applicability to universities’ SR.

Details

Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, vol. 14 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-8021

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 19 April 2024

Lars Mjøset, Roel Meijer, Nils Butenschøn and Kristian Berg Harpviken

This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial…

Abstract

This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.

Details

A Comparative Historical and Typological Approach to the Middle Eastern State System
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-122-6

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 July 2022

Balwant Kaur

This paper explores the contextual factors that support the necessity of a diversified curriculum. The author draws on the findings of the author's doctoral research to consider…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper explores the contextual factors that support the necessity of a diversified curriculum. The author draws on the findings of the author's doctoral research to consider the complexities underpinning the educational narratives of South Asian Muslim women. The paper critically examines South Asian Muslim women's position as migrant daughters and how South Asian Muslim women navigated colonial systems and the practices and behaviours inherent in these. Situated in a racialised inner-city area with a framing by policymakers as one that creates spatial anxiety, participants shared empowered and agentic narratives. These demonstrated a resistance to the othering and stigma that often ensues through stereotyping.

Design/methodology/approach

The project adopted a feminist participatory approach and made use of hauntology as both a theoretical and methodological framework. In keeping with this, four participants who had grown up in the area and still lived there were spoken in the form of research conversations, a walking tour and photographs of significant sites.

Findings

The paper provides empirical insights into how these four participants encountered education. By frequenting both formal and informal educational settings, these spaces became a crucial third space which alleviated unsettlement though allowing a more embodied occupation with learning. Teachers played a critical role in cultivating appropriate and supportive environments and were described and inferred to be moral agents and figures who assisted participants' navigation of a space, often embodying a more mentor-like disposition. Teachers proved to embody a practical wisdom, acting as anchors for offering spaces in and outside of the classroom that invited occupation and construction. Such spaces at school enabled the encountering of difference through recognising first the similarities with peers. Whether these commonalities were cultural or otherwise, those commonalities provided a firm foundation from which to imagine and push the parameters of the space and identity, and so school was likely another crucial space for hybridity.

Research limitations/implications

The research approach is specific to the context(s), narratives and migratory moment of the participants, and although participants' accounts have been re-storied to honour participants' voices, the accounts may lack generalisability. The paper raises two key implications: first, by recognising educational settings as a third space for students to create a hybrid identity, and second, through familial, community and navigational capitals which have the potential to shift the pedagogical approaches underpinning the conditions created for students.

Originality/value

Pointing out that hybrid identities without the frequenting of space are hauntological is crucial, and hybrid identities cannot reconcile cultural differences because hybrid identities are out of place, and without location, hybrid identities remain troubled and alienated. This is a situation that the author describes as cultural hauntology – a condition which draws on both hybridity and hauntology to illuminate unsettlement long after colonisation. The native culture is never fully banished or forgotten. The native culture exists behind the closed doors of homes, within communities and perhaps even within the demarcation lines of a given geographical area. Cultural hauntology comes about as a deep-seated internal colonisation that appears as traces, marks and murmurs that cannot be deleted. Perhaps what alleviated the extent of what might have been more extreme in cultural hauntology's dissonance, were the teachers, mentors and role models that participants repeatedly referenced as agents that bridged and enabled the participants.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 22 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 2005

Jane Broadbent and Richard Laughlin

There has been considerable interest in the theory and practice of organisation change. Similarly there has been a great deal of attention given to the processes that lead to and…

4117

Abstract

There has been considerable interest in the theory and practice of organisation change. Similarly there has been a great deal of attention given to the processes that lead to and result from accounting change within organisations. There has also been a more limited interest in the interaction and interrelationship between these two literatures. In this paper we explore these different literatures and provide a perspective on this extensive research. The contents are not intended to be a systematic summary of this voluminous literature but rather a recounting of our own views on how we have engaged with this material, as a precursor to thoughts on a future research agenda for these important issues. The paper starts by posing four questions related to organisational and accounting change, the answers to which circumscribe how these themes can be approached theoretically and empirically. Based on our answers to these questions we then move into perspectives on understanding organisations, understanding organisational change and understanding accounting change within an organisational change context. From this analysis the paper concludes with some suggestions on a possible future research agenda on these important organisational issues.

Details

Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, vol. 1 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1832-5912

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 11 December 2023

Muhammad Azeem

Pakistan had never been a place of serious and nuanced debate and contestation of politics of postcolonial critique, that is, the continuity of economic, political, and cultural…

Abstract

Pakistan had never been a place of serious and nuanced debate and contestation of politics of postcolonial critique, that is, the continuity of economic, political, and cultural dependency of newly independent countries (NICs) on ex-colonizers as pointed out by neocolonialism, dependency theory, and postcolonial theory, respectively. Instead, Pakistan is presented by extant liberal academic literature as a “failed nation” and a state dominated by the military and plagued by religious extremism. As opposed to this, through the literary and activists writings of Aziz-ul-Haq, this chapter will try to illustrate how cultural contestation of the nation-building project postindependence from British rule was a lot more complex and interesting in Pakistan. This was so because the nation-building project of Pakistan was, on the one hand, an amalgamation of Indo-Persian, Arab, Indian, and Western colonial and civilizational influences and, on the other hand, entailed suppression of resilient local and national cultures of its constituent nationalities developed over centuries. This was later expressed in ethno-nationalist politics. However, when it came to the politics of the marginalized in the late 1960s, there were important political, theoretical, and literary insights which caused a change in the direction of political practice in Pakistan, which paralleled the politics expressed by writers like Fanon and early Subaltern Studies influenced by the Naxal Movement in India. The contestation and confusion arising from this dialectic also entered Pakistan's literary and cultural sphere. This chapter not only tries to give a different postcolonial critique of the failure of nation-building project in Pakistan but, though at a preliminary level, is an attempt to separate the original postcolonial theory in its radical tradition from contemporary postmodern/poststructuralist postcolonial theory marked with pessimism and resignation.

Book part
Publication date: 17 October 2023

S. Janaka Biyanwila

The political crisis related to two main factors internal to the public revenue system, namely financial markets and the commercialisation of the state, and three related external…

Abstract

The political crisis related to two main factors internal to the public revenue system, namely financial markets and the commercialisation of the state, and three related external factors, pertaining to the pandemic, popular discontent and inequality. The emphasis on financial markets since the mid-1990s expanded the commercialisation of the state while neglecting public accountability and government oversight. The efforts to shore up public finances through the tax system is increasingly undermined by the global tax architecture, enabling financial secrecy and illicit financial flows.

The pandemic revealed the significance of women’s work, paid as well as unpaid care work. The pandemic also exposed the limitations of a domestic economy, based on export-oriented development, over-reliant on tourism and remittances from migrant workers. Combining with the on-going dengue epidemic, the pandemic highlighted the urgency of climate adaptation. Meanwhile, the popular discontent conveyed an accumulation of grievances linked with cultural discrimination, political misrepresentation as well as economic maldistribution. The participation of new middle-class segments in the protests foregrounded new tendencies significant for strengthening the labour movement as well as working-class parties in their demands for redistribution, reframing democracy as well as citizenship.

Details

Debt Crisis and Popular Social Protest in Sri Lanka: Citizenship, Development and Democracy Within Global North–South Dynamics
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83797-022-3

Keywords

Content available
Article
Publication date: 6 May 2014

Ribut Wahyudi

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