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This chapter focuses on the international aspects of auditing in the context of the airline industry for the year 2018. This chapter finds that International Standards on Auditing have been widely adopted in the global context. This chapter also analyses several observations related to the composition of audit firms (Big 4 vs. non-Big 4), types of audit opinions, emphasis of matter, other matters, material uncertainty related to going-concern, and types of auditors (single or joint auditor). This chapter covers the frequency of the four elements of describing key audit matters (KAM) in the audit reports in the global and auditor context as well as the KAMs observed in the airline industry and classifies them as industry-specific KAMs and entity-specific KAMs. In addition, this chapter analyses the requirements of the expanded audit report of the UK which includes the declaration of materiality threshold and scope of the audit in connection with the materiality and KAMs considering UK and non-UK airlines.

Introduction: Information technology is a field with particular importance in the activity of companies, which requires additional procedures in the audit of financial statements.

Aim: The purpose of the chapter is to identify the reports in which the financial auditors considered the impact of information technology on the financial statements of companies as a Key Audit Matter (KAM) and what was the approach in assessing this issue.

Method: The sample consists of companies listed on the primary market on European stock exchanges for 2013–2021 from 25 countries. Data were synthesised, systematised and analysed according to auditor type, audit year, countries and industries.

Findings: During the analysed period, 465 KAMs were identified for 174 distinct companies that referred to information technology, of which a Big4 auditor issued 97 per cent. The most KAMs were issued on companies from countries such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Norway, and the least in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Italy. Also, most KAMs were issued by auditors in 2018 (19 per cent), and the least in 2013 (2 per cent). The industry that recorded the most KAMs related to information technology was finance, insurance, and real estate (64 per cent), and those which identified a single KAM on this topic were agriculture, forestry, fishing.

Conclusion: Information technology and its impact on audit quality and automation remain a growing topic especially in this pandemic period that caused more changes in the financial audit planning and risk assessment. The auditors were forced to perform remote audits and use information technology more than in previous years.

The aim of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the complexities of marketing organization especially in bigger firms. This chapter draws attention to one of these major drivers for change — globalization. This is done with the help of an in-depth case study of ABB Robotics.

The case describes how a change is achieved through a major marketing reorganization process. Initially, there are major difficulties grasping the organizational problem and identifying its causes. Many different organizational “issues” are part of the problem in the multifaceted case. Relying on complexity theory, the case suggests that a more complex environment with greater number of relevant players, which are — themselves — interconnected through networks, will also exhibit a greater range of change. Change and reorganization processes like the one confronting the case company would rather be the normal situation for companies embedded in complex global networks.

Though environmental management accounting (EMA) is a globally recognized accounting practice, its application and development within several developing economies remain stunted. The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the extent to which EMA practices have been implemented by local manufacturing companies in Nairobi, Kenya.

We measure the degree to which EMA methods have been adopted by manufacturing entities and hypothesize that firm size, financial performance, and regulation are positively associated to the extent to which EMA techniques are applied by Kenyan corporations. The chapter employs a mixed methods research approach and combines the use of surveys with semi-structured interviews to gain insights into drivers of EMA and the extent to which these methods are applied locally.

We find environmental regulation and financial performance are positively associated with the level of EMA practices applied by manufacturing entities.

The findings illustrate the complexities of applying EMA practices within an emerging context and provide evidence that EMA practices are still predominantly used by entities to meet local regulatory requirements. The qualitative findings indicate there could be some companies who engage with EMA at a more sophisticated level.

This chapter evaluates the readiness of the higher education system to contribute to the competitiveness of African countries in the knowledge economy. Using institutions of higher learning in Kenya and Uganda as case studies, the study demonstrates that the higher education system in Africa is ill-equipped to fulfill the role of knowledge production for the advancement of African economies. The chapter proposed promising ways through which higher education in the region can play a more fulfilling role to the global knowledge economy through the formation of relevant skills for the growth of African economies. In an era where knowledge assets are accorded more importance than capital and labor assets, and where the economy relies on knowledge as the key engine of economic growth, this chapter argues that higher education institutions in Africa can assist in tackling the continent’s challenges through research in knowledge creation, dissemination, and utilization for improved productivity. These institutions need to engage in design-driven innovation in the emerging knowledge economy. To enhance their contributions toward human capital development and knowledge-intensive economies in the region, it is imperative to employ public-private initiatives to bridge and address various challenges and gaps facing universities and research institutions in Africa.

The present study approaches multinational corporations as internal networks that are constantly newly organized on the basis of relationships, operations, activities, and tasks at hand. It combines MNCs-as-networks view with the research on supplier–customer relationship development to conceptualize the relational dynamics in the MNCs. The dynamics are seen created as the interplay of organizing within internal networks and managing of the global customer relationships. Through an empirical study on a project business MNC and analysis of the events in its global customer relationship the study defines strategies of political compromising in MNC internal networks.