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Despite women comprising around 50 per cent of the UK population and workforce, they only account for 20 per cent of workers in the transport sector. This chapter focusses on the key issues for women working in transport and explores how government policy and industry initiatives can support improving gender balance within the transport industry workforce. The chapter presents the findings of recent research examining experiences of women working in transport, and perceptions of men – which seeks to better understand culture, career opportunities, and (perceived) gender issues within the transport sector. It also presents case studies of successful initiatives that have been implemented to address gender (im)balance in transport organisations. Drawing on these findings, the chapter provides evidence-based recommendations, that have been presented to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Women in Transport in the UK and evaluates the role of government in enacting meaningful change to improve gender balance in the transport industry.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze whether information asymmetry (ASYM) plays a mediating role in the relationship between corporate disclosure and cost of equity capital (COEC) in emerging markets such as Indonesia.

Design/Methodology/Approach: This study is a quantitative study using secondary data obtained from listed manufacturing firms from 2015 to 2017. Purposive sampling was used to select 105 firms. The design of this study was causality research, and the analysis was performed through ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and path analysis.

Findings: The results show that the level of disclosure for corporate social responsibility (CSR), intellectual capital, and enterprise risk management (ERM) reduces the COEC by suppressing ASYM. This finding confirms the argument that managers can reduce their companies’ COEC by reducing ASYM through increased disclosure. These results are controlled by earnings quality (EQL) because that is most relevant to the COEC, as well as corporate size, leverage, and differences in institutional factors.

Originality/Value: This research is based on the central assumption that disclosure enhances the level of information while EQL remains the focus for investors. This research is also the first to study CSR disclosure, intellectual capital disclosure, and ERM disclosure together as a proxy for disclosure. The findings confirm that managers can reduce their companies’ agency conflict by increasing their level of disclosure. Managers can also reduce the COEC by reducing ASYM through increased disclosure. This also implies that increasing the level of disclosure will be effective in reducing the COEC for companies in emerging markets, such as Indonesia.

Earnings management is a common term in the academic community and is likely understood by managers and professional investors, but how the large community of non-professional investors interprets this term is less clear. We examine non-professional investors’ attitudes toward earnings management and their resulting investing behaviors using a 2 × 2 mixed design. We manipulate investor role (prospective vs current) between participants and the method of earnings management within participants. We believe that different investment goals (prevention vs promotion) between current and prospective investors should lead to different investing behaviors. Consistent with our expectations, we find that current investors are more likely to maintain an equity than prospective investors are to invest in the same opportunity. Further, the consistent link between investors’ attitudes and actual investment behavior is only present for prospective investors. The prevention goal drives the current investors to maintain their investment, while the prospective investors remain more objective and focus on a goal of promotion. Importantly, prior research examining investor attitude toward earnings management has failed to link investors’ attitudes with actual investing decisions; our study attempts to fill this void by examining attitudes toward earnings management as well as subsequent investment behavior.

From the standpoint of a policy maker who has access to a number of expert forecasts, the uncertainty of a combined or ensemble forecast should be interpreted as that of a typical forecaster randomly drawn from the pool. This uncertainty formula should incorporate forecaster discord, as justified by (i) disagreement as a component of combined forecast uncertainty, (ii) the model averaging literature, and (iii) central banks’ communication of uncertainty via fan charts. Using new statistics to test for the homogeneity of idiosyncratic errors under the joint limits with both T and n approaching infinity simultaneously, the authors find that some previously used measures can significantly underestimate the conceptually correct benchmark forecast uncertainty.

In the face of increasing resource insecurity, environmental degradation and climate change, more governments and businesses are now embracing the concept of the circular economy. This chapter presents some historical background to the concept, with particular attention paid to its assumed opposite, the ‘linear’ or growth economy. While the origins of the circular economy concept are to be found in 1960s environmentalism, the chapter draws attention to the influence of the then ‘new’ sciences of ecology and ‘cybernetics’ in shaping the public environmental discourse of the period. It also draws attention to the background of the present linear economy in postwar policies that encouraged reconstruction and a social and economic democratisation across the West, including an expansion of mass-consumption. It emphasises the role of the 1960s counterculture in generating a popular reaction against this expansionary growth-based agenda, and its influence in shaping subsequent environmentalism, including the ‘metabolic’ and ecological economic understanding of the environmental crisis that informs the concept of the circular economy. Reflecting upon this historical preamble, the chapter concludes that more attention should be paid to the economic, cultural and social contexts of consumption, now more clearly the main driver of our global environmental crisis. Without now engaging more directly with the ‘consumption problem’, the chapter argues, it seems unlikely that the goals of the circular economy can be met.

This chapter explores the phenomenon of organizational resilience. A comprehensive model was advanced and tested while utilizing a quantitative study conducted in the education system in Israel with 98 schools, involving 1,132 educators. Statistical analysis based on structural equation modeling revealed significant relationships between three antecedents (social capital, team empowerment, goal interdependence) and organizational resilience. In addition, a positive significant relationship was found between organizational resilience and organizational functioning in crisis. Organizational resilience was found to be a mediator between three of the antecedents (social capital, team empowerment, goal interdependence) and organizational functioning in crisis. Furthermore, organizational functioning in crisis was found to mediate the relationship between organizational resilience and organizational innovation. Implications for policymakers, managers, and change leaders in organizations are discussed.