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The purpose of this study is to analyse historical events to argue the improbable prospect of radical accounting reform in corporate financial reporting (CFR) due to the absence of abstract accounting knowledge as part of accountancy professionalisation (AP).

A historical database of CFR and AP events in the UK is categorised and analysed to observe the evolution of accounting in CFR from the perspective of the sociology of professions relating to abstract knowledge in professionalisation.

CFR has always been a statutory function in the UK dependent on arbitrary accounting rules rather than expert measurements based on abstract accounting knowledge. Accounting rules have evolved as part of AP and currently form part of the statutory regulation of CFR. The accountancy profession has eschewed abstract accounting knowledge in a mutually beneficial and uncompetitive relationship with the law profession in CFR.

The study is limited to the history of CFR and AP in the UK and its findings are contrary to the sociology of professions regarding abstract knowledge, consistent with the accountancy profession’s 19th-century experience of court-related services, and indicative of normative accounting research’s redundancy.

Regarding CFR and AP in the UK, the accountancy profession is an expert subordinate branch of the law profession and has no incentive to alter the status quo of statutory accounting rule compliance prevailing over abstract accounting knowledge-based expertise in CFR.

The study questions the optimism of prior research of accounting in CFR that suggests the possibility of radical reform using abstract knowledge.

The worldwide imposition of lockdown measures to control the 2020 coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has shifted most executive communications with external stakeholders online, resulting in quick responses from stakeholders. This study aims to understand how presentational styles exhibited in online communication induce immediate audience responses and empirically test the effectiveness of reactive impression management tactics.

The authors analyze presentational styles using MP3 files containing executive utterances during earnings call conferences held by S&P 100-listed firms after June 2020, the quarter after the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Using timestamps, the authors link each utterance to a 1-minute interval change in the ask/bid prices of the stocks that occurs a minute after the corresponding utterance begins.

Exhibiting an informational presentation style in earnings calls leads to positive and immediate audience responses. Managers tend to increase their reliance on promotional presentation styles rather than on informational ones when quarterly earnings exceed market forecasts.

Drawing on organizational genre theory, this research identifies the discrepancy between the presentation styles that audiences positively respond to and those that managers tend to exhibit in earnings calls and provides a reactive impression management typology for immediate responses from online audiences.

This paper presents the biography of one of Australia’s earliest female accountants, Miss Evelyn Maude West (aka Eva). The paper uses this history sub-genre to understand the significant impacts Eva West made across several fields. Eva West was not only a pioneer woman accountant but also an active philanthropist with an interest in social issues and a nature lover who promoted and encouraged an appreciation of the environment.

The paper leverages a diverse array of qualitative resources, responding to Carnegie and Napier's (1996) call to expand the concept of the accounting-based archive. Notably, rare nature study diaries and a book detailing camping adventures serve as poignant examples, illustrating Eva West's profound social and environmental engagement. Additionally, personal and business letters, digitised newspapers, pamphlets, annual reports, minute books and even poems contribute to the comprehensive exploration of Eva West's life and impact. Collectively, these varied sources offer a rich tapestry of evidence, facilitating the documentation of this unique narrative.

Throughout her life, Eva West made significant contributions as a pioneering woman in the field of accounting, a dedicated philanthropist and a passionate environmentalist. Together, these offer a multifaceted portrait of a well-rounded individual. With a solid foundation in accounting, Eva utilized her expertise to benefit numerous charitable organisations, leaving a lasting impact on the community. Moreover, her deep love for the environment is illustrated in nature study diaries and books documenting her camping adventures, highlighting the interconnectedness between her accounting pursuits and her commitment to environmental stewardship.

While previous studies briefly mention the additional contributions of early women to various organisations and movements, none provide the depth of insight seen in the portrayal of Miss Eva West. Rather than critiquing these earlier narratives, this observation presents an opportunity for further research to honour pioneering individuals for their multifaceted roles beyond accounting. Future studies could spotlight trailblazers as accountants with diverse interests and societal contributions, whether in social or environmental spheres. Additionally, this paper demonstrates how archives maintained by individuals, such as nature or travel diaries and camping books, can enrich accounting and accountability-based historical research.

Biographical studies in accounting have played a significant role in advancing historical research, yet there remains a call for additional studies to gain deeper insights into specific individuals. Few biographical narratives have explored how accountants integrate their professional careers with other interests, particularly highlighting the well-roundedness of individuals, especially women. Furthermore, this paper contributes to filling the gap in research that examines the intersection of accounting professionals and environmental concerns.

Following the lead of neighboring fields such as strategy and organization studies, entrepreneurship is gradually joining in the adoption of a practice perspective. Entrepreneurship as practice (EaP) is thus a nascent domain of investigation where the methodological debate is still unsettled and very fluid. In this paper, the authors contribute to this debate with a focus on family entrepreneurship.

The authors develop a conceptual paper to discuss what it entails to look at family entrepreneurship through a practice lens and why it is fruitful. Moreover, the authors propose a research strategy novel to the field through which such investigation can be pursued, namely process tracing, and examine its inferential logic.

Process tracing is a strategy of data analysis underpinned by an ontology of causal mechanisms. The authors argue that it complements other practice methods by inferring social mechanisms from empirical evidence and thereby establishing a connection between praxis, practices and practitioners.

Process tracing helps the articulation of an “integrated model” of practice that relates praxis, practices and practitioners to the outcome they jointly produce. By enabling the assessment of impact, process tracing helps providing prima facie evidentiary grounds for policy action and intervention.

Process tracing affinity with the practice perspective has been so far acknowledged only to a limited extent in the social sciences, and it is, in fact, a novel research strategy for the family entrepreneurship field.

This article explores whether six broad categories of activities undertaken by Canadian business scholars’ academics: publications record, citations record, teaching load, administrative load, consulting activities, and knowledge spillovers transfer, are complementary, substitute, or independent, as well as the conditions under which complementarities, substitution and independence among these activities are likely to occur.

A multivariate probit model is estimated to take into account that business scholars have to consider simultaneously whether or not to undertake many different academic activities. Metrics from Google Scholar of scholars from 35 Canadian business schools, augmented by a survey data on factors explaining the productivity and impact performances of these faculty members, are used to explain the heterogeneities between the determinants of these activities.

Overall, the results reveal that there are complementarities between publications and citations, publications and knowledge spillovers transfer, citations and consulting, and between consulting and knowledge spillovers transfer. The results also suggest that there are substitution effects between publications and teaching, publications and administrative load, citations and teaching load, and teaching load and administrative load. Moreover, results show that public and private funding, business schools’ reputation, scholar’s relational resources, and business school size are among the most influential variables on the scholar’s portfolio of activities.

This study considers simultaneously the scholar’s whole portfolio of activities. Moreover, the determinants considered in this study to explain scholars’ engagement in different activities reconcile two conflicting perspectives: (1) the traditional self-managed approach of academics, and (2) the outcomes-focused approach of university management.

This study aimed to find possible answers to whether U.S. universities are merely looking good or doing good regarding their third mission using elements of the triple bottom line (people, planet, prosperity) and the 2030 Agenda.

Qualitative exploratory empirical study based on an in-depth analysis of publicly available documents (i.e. mission statements and strategic planning) and information from the Impact Rankings 2020 edition (webpages). The study uses a multilevel analysis to capture the parameters “looking good” and “doing good.” The sample consists of 15 U.S. universities.

The findings demonstrate that universities are looking good in terms of their effort to support their third mission. Data show that all universities covered themes related to people and prosperity in their mission statements and strategic planning. However, when the authors dived into the managerial metrics, KPIs, benchmarks and other evidence to characterize them as doing good, the authors encountered some challenges in identifying evidence. The data suggest that universities most likely participated in the Impact Ranking act as “cherry pickers” and might participate in unproblematic goals for their organization.

The 3Ps and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals used in this study to examine the university public mission never used in other studies. The goal in this study was not to evaluate those universities in terms of looking good and doing good but rather to contribute to the gap in the literature and provide suggestions to university C-suite.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) holds the potential to significantly improve capabilities and performances for architectural, engineering, construction and operation and maintenance (AECO) companies in India. The top management of such companies seems unsure and reluctant to implementation of the 4IR applications. The objective of this research is to identify the 4IR technology applications, which would have a significant impact on the operation of the AECO companies in India. Moreover, the paper further attempts to give a conceptual roadmap for the implementation of these 4IR technologies in the AECO value chain.

The nascent level of research in 4IR in construction necessitated the adoption of mixed methodologies in research. Hypothesis testing has been carried out on the quantitative data to ascertain the potential of 4IR technologies, which could significantly impact the AECO companies. Subsequently, qualitative research has been used to explore the reasons impacting the technology adoption and generate a possible road map for the implementation of the significant 4IR technology applications.

The AECO value chain is challenged due to its complexity, uncertainty, fragmented supply chains, myopic thinking and a culture reluctant to change. The study provides insights into the dilemmas of practitioners in the Indian context while exploring possible approaches to carry out the transformation in AECO.

The study validation relied on the opinions, perspectives and recollections of respondents. The opinion of practicing professionals was limited to the Indian context.

The article may help leaders of AECO firms, industry associations, policymakers and academia to take steps in relevant directions to enable digital transformation.

This study aims to examine anti-corruption disclosure (ACD) following government legislation, specifically the UK Bribery Act, 2010, through focusing on the UK extractive industry.

This study uses content analysis for data analysis with an ACD checklist developed to capture ACD in annual reports during the period 2003–2019.

The study found an increase in ACD following 2010, with companies answering ACD questions and addressing categories that they previously ignored.

Most of the previous studies have examined voluntary ACD; this study contributes to the literature by applying an index developed from government regulation to investigate the difference that regulation can make to disclosure. Hence, this study provides evidence of how, from an institutional perspective, legislation plays an important role in facilitating and endorsing anti-corruption reporting.

Though daycare centres are built to facilitate children's social and physical growth, divergent stakeholder perceptions yield conflicts while managing risks for each space due to the minimal guidelines in the Republic of Korea. Due to the unclearly defined knowledge and experience gap between representative stakeholders, teachers have difficulties in operating it with high satisfaction. This study therefore was conducted to systematically identify which parts of performance should be increased to preferentially increase end-user satisfaction in limited resources.

This research conducted quantitative analysis gradually. Importance–performance analysis (IPA) grasped the perceptions of construction practitioners and end-users after identifying space composition and representative risks of daycare centres. Based on the factors influencing perception differences, principal component analysis and structural equation modelling (SEM) were conducted to determine which space improves the performance preferentially to increase overall end-user satisfaction.

As the utilisation of indoor spaces increases after COVID-19, improvement of indoor spaces except for indoor playroom is necessary, especially, advancement of the quality of teachers' rooms.

Outputs by reflecting the end-user experiences support to understand which spaces are managed from the limited resources.

Theoretical framework for daycare centre was established in Korea where guidelines were insufficient, and differences in perception of each risk of stakeholders were identified. Moreover, gradual statistical analysis was set to construct end-user-focused centres by extracting where the performance of space should be improved in prior.

The present work investigated the effect of corporate social responsibility and top management support on employee ecological behaviour (EEB) with the mediating role of green culture and green commitment. Social identity theory (SIT) was used to describe the association between green culture, green commitment and EEB. Further, a conceptual model that summarises the interaction between perceived corporate social responsibility, top management support, green commitment, green culture and the adoption of ecological behaviour was developed.

The paper opted for a quantitative design using convenience sampling by collecting the data through a structured questionnaire gathered from 308 academics working in five Malaysian higher education institutions.

Corporate social responsibility and top management support positively influence green culture and commitment. Moreover, green commitment positively influenced EEB and fully mediated the relationship between corporate social responsibility and EEB and between top management support and EEB.

The academic staff of universities was the target population of this research. Nevertheless, universities have a diverse population with complex activities that can affect the implementation of a sustainable workplace within the campus. Future research should also examine non-academic staff, including administrative, technical and operational staff, due to different employees' perceptions.

As far as the authors know, this is the first study to assign the mediator role to green culture in a relationship between top management support and EEB amongst academic staff in the Malaysian context. Future research should consider other intervening variables that influence adopting ecological behaviour.