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Lately, sustainability issues are increasingly affecting all sectors, even if oil and gas industry is highly required to improve its social performance because of the societal pressure to environmental protection and social welfare. Sustainability concerns and corporate governance features and practices are more and more connected because sustainability has been perceived as a crucial topic by owners and managers. In this perspective, the empirical analysis aims to explore whether and to what extent, sustainability-oriented corporate governance model is linked with social performance.

By adopting a multi-theoretical framework that includes the legitimacy theory, the stakeholder theory and the resource-based view theory, this analysis used a sample of 42 large European-listed companies belonging to the oil and gas industry. The authors run fixed effects regression models by using a dependent variable, i.e. the social score, available in ASSET4 Thomson Reuters, and some independent variables focused on sustainable corporate governance models, stakeholder engagement, firm profitability, market value and corporate risk level.

Drawing upon the investigation of a moderating effect, findings display that stakeholder engagement is positively associated with corporate social performance and it can be considered an important internal driver able to shape a corporate culture and most likely to address corporate social responsibility issues.

This study confirms the need to develop an organizational and holistic approach to corporate governance practices by analyzing internal and external governance mechanisms. From the managerial perspective, managers should opt for a sustainable corporate governance model, as it is positively correlated with corporate social performance.

There is an urgent need to investigate sustainability issues and their potential association with firm internal mechanisms, particularly in the oil and gas industry. This paper can extend the current body of knowledge by pointing out a positive relationship between stakeholder engagement and firm social performance.

The debate about whether corporate reports should focus on numbers or narrative is long-standing. The recent push for business model information to be included in corporate reports has revitalised the debate. Many scholars suggest this constitutes a move towards narrative-based reporting. This study aims to investigate the debate and draws a comparison with the juxtaposition of the narrative and rational paradigms. This study also investigates how accountingisation influences the way business model information is presented in corporate reports.

This study analyses data from the financial and non-financial reports from 86 globally listed companies. This study first uses content analysis to code the data. This study then uses a partial least squares-structural equation model to test how accountingisation influences how firms report their business model information.

This study finds that accountingisation and a rational paradigm shape how companies present information about their business model in their financial and non-financial reports. This suggests that the dominance of quantitative measures in accounting affects even the presentation of narrative-based information. Despite the much-touted shift towards qualitative reporting, this study argues that companies find it difficult to cast off the yoke of a traditional numbers-based mindset.

This paper contributes to the debate on numbers- versus narrative-based corporate reporting and the workings of narrative and rational paradigms. In it, this study lays out theoretical and empirical findings of accountingisation. This study also makes a case for freeing corporate reports from the shackles of an accountingisation mindset.

This study provides new insights into how companies report information about their business models and the influence of narrative and rational paradigms on financial and non-financial reporting.

The purpose of this paper is to review studies on the use of virtual reality (VR) and gamification to engage students in higher education for marketing issues to identify the research topics, the research gaps and to prepare a future research agenda.

A literature review is performed based on two search terms applied to Web of Science, resulting in a final pool of 115 articles. A text-mining approach is used to conduct a full-text analysis of papers related to VR and gamification in higher education. The authors also compare the salient characteristics presented in the articles.

From this analysis, five major research topics are found and analysed, namely, teaching methodologies and education, experience and motivation, student engagement, applied theories in VR and gamification. Based on this and following the theory concept characteristics methodology framework, the paper provides directions for future research.

There is no comprehensive review exploring the topics, theories, constructs and methods used in prior studies concerning VR and gamification applied to higher education services based on all the articles published in well-regarded academic journals. This review seeks to provide deeper insights, to help scholars contribute to the development of this research field.

En este documento se revisan los estudios sobre el uso de la realidad virtual (RV) y la Gamificación para involucrar a los estudiantes en la educación superior en marketing, se identifican los principales temas de investigación tratados, las lagunas de investigación y se sugiere una agenda futura de investigación.

Una revisión de la literatura basada en dos búsquedas en Web of Science (WOS) permitió identificar 115 artículos. La minería de textos se utilizó para realizar un análisis de texto completo de los artículos relacionados con RV y gamificación en la educación superior. Los autores también compararon las características más destacadas de los artículos.

A partir de este análisis, se encuentran y analizan cinco grandes temas de investigación: metodologías de enseñanza y educación, experiencia y motivación, compromiso de los estudiantes, aplicadas a la RV y la gamificación. Basándose en esto y siguiendo el marco del TCCM, el artículo proporciona una agenda futura de investigación.

No hay una revisión exhaustiva que explore los temas, las teorías, construcciones y métodos utilizados en estudios anteriores relativos a RV y gamificación aplicados a servicios de educación superior basados en todos los artículos publicados en revistas académicas. Esta revisión proporciona una panorámica más detallada y sugiere a los académicos nuevas líneas de trabajo para seguir desarrollando este campo de investigación.

本文的目的是回顾为了提高学生参与高等教育而使用虚拟现实(VR)和游戏化的营销方面的研究，以确定它们的研究主题，研究差距，并以此准备未来的研究议程。

本文的文献综述是基于Web of Science的两个搜索词进行的，最终搜索出115篇文章。本文采用文本挖掘方法，对与高等教育中的虚拟现实和游戏化相关的论文进行全文分析。作者还比较了这些文章中呈现的显著特征。

从这一调查中，我们发现并分析了五大研究主题，即教学方法与教育、体验与动机、学生参与、虚拟现实应用理论和游戏化。在此基础上，遵循理论概念、特征、方法论框架，为今后的研究提供了方向。

目前，在权威学术期刊上发表的所有文章，都没有对以往关于虚拟现实和游戏化应用于高等教育服务的研究的主题、理论、结构和方法进行全面的综述。本文旨在提供更深刻的见解，以帮助学者们为这一研究领域的发展做出贡献。

Learning as the way in which labor acquire new knowledge and skills has important strategic implications for the competitive advantage of an organization. The purpose of this paper is to present an agent-based modeling (ABM) approach to investigate the learning behavior of workers. The effect of interactions among different workers as well as the factors affecting the workers’ learning behavior is assessed using the proposed ABM approach.

For this purpose, the processes through which the competency value of worker is changed are understood and the workers’ learning behavior is modeled, taking account of various influencing factors such as knowledge flow, social ability to teach and forgetting factor.

The proposed model is implemented on a real steel structure project to evaluate its applicability and performance. The variation in the competency value of different workers involved in the project is simulated over time taking account of all the influencing factors using the proposed ABM approach.

In order to assess the effect of interactions among welders as well as the welders’ characteristics on their learning behavior, the competence value of different welders is evaluated.

This research presents an ABM approach to investigate the workers’ learning behavior. To evaluate the performance of the proposed ABM approach, it was implemented on a real steel structure project. The learning behavior of different welders (agents) was simulated taking account of their interactions as well as the factors affecting the welders’ learning behavior. The project involved the welding of a 240-ton steel structure. The initial project duration was estimated as 100 days. In this project, it has been planned to execute the welding process using three different welders namely welder A, B and C.

This paper aims to clarify whether assurance on non-financial corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports impacts the perceptions and decisions of banks as capital providers. The authors investigate the effects of the type of assurance provider and the level of assurance provided on decisions by banks to grant credit, make their own personal investments or recommend share purchases to their customers. The study aims to expand the domain of assurance on CSR reports (CSRR) by taking up a call by Cohen and Simnett (2015), who ask for behavioral research on how non-financial report’s intended users interpret and react to assurance.

The paper is based on an experiment case on a fictitious company with a 2 × 2 + 1 between-subjects design. To overcome concerns regarding external validity and to prove results in a real-world setting, the authors selected German bank directors as subjects due to the extremely high relevance of banks to the German economy. The authors investigated the perceptions of 69 bank directors and analyzed the influence of CSR assurance on their decisions.

The findings suggest that assurance positively influences confidence in CSRR and that, consequently, bankers are more likely to make favorable decisions toward the reporting companies, such as approving applications for credit, investing themselves in the company or recommending the purchase of shares to their clients. These effects are stronger when an accounting firm provides the assurance and when the assurance level is reasonable rather than limited.

The arguments presented are, strictly speaking, limited to the case in the experiment and the views held by the bank directors at the time the authors sent out the questionnaires. Moreover, the cell sizes are quite small. Nevertheless, the authors were able to find highly significant results.

The main implication of the paper is that the purchase of CSRR assurance services has a positive effect on bank directors’ perceptions and decisions. They favor the provision of such services by accounting firms and they prefer a reasonable assurance level. Thus, it can be concluded that bank directors perceive quality differences between assurance providers, are able to recognize the difference between reasonable and limited assurance and that the related information is relevant for their decisions.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study the influence of CSRR assurance on decisions by bank directors. The observation of a high decisions-usefulness of CSRR assurance suggests that regulators should consider mandating some form of assurance on non-financial reports throughout the EU member states.