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The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that a deliberate effort to link course content to students’ personal or professional goals results in increased student perceptions of relevance.

Self-report data were collected using questionnaires that were administered to students in a research methods course over a period of three semesters. Results were compared in order to determine whether the introduction of guest speakers, hands-on activities, and pertinent video clips fostered greater perceptions of relevance in specific learning units.

Although there was some variation, data revealed that students reported the greatest increases in their perceptions of specific course content as relevant if that content was explicitly and clearly linked to a potentially practical professional application.

The sample size was inconsistent and self-report studies may be viewed as unreliable. The instrument used may benefit from the inclusion of concrete behavioral frequency statements.

If faculty members can make explicit connections and persuade students’ perceptions of the relevance of course content, students may develop greater motivation to learn, a deeper understanding of the material, and a propensity for long-term transfer.

Although a number of studies have investigated the causal link between perceived relevance of course content and the attainment of academic or professional goals, none have tracked changes in student perceptions of relevance as a direct result of deliberate faculty efforts to make the relevance of course content explicitly clear for students.

The rapid growth of tourism prior to the COVID-19 pandemic prompts the need for critical reflection of tourism’s “local-global” responsibility in the wake of that pandemic. Conceptually driven by the ancient Greek notion of hubris, this study reflects on the perception of tourists as actors disconnected from citizens’ necessities, safety and well-being. In so doing we develop further knowledge on the relationship between the spaces of tourism and citizenship and how this might build a sustainable future-proof tourism.

Data were collected daily for two weeks via three Google Alert queries set to mine Italian online news media contents immediately after the Italian Government’s adoption of mobility restrictions due to COVID-19. This study uses a thematic narrative analysis to examine the contents related to tourists during the COVID-19 outbreak.

The exploratory findings reveal how tourists are largely presented as taking over the space of local residents and, by breaking the rules set by national and local authorities, as disregarding those residents’ safety and well-being. Hence, they appear disconnected from any sense of belonging to a local or global community, and from a space to which they owe a duty of care.

By framing tourists as hubristic subjects ontologically belonging to a neoliberal leisure space disentangled from the citizenship space, this study establishes a novel theoretical grounding from which a sustainable future-proof tourism that is rooted in citizenship space can be rethought.

This paper aims to interrogate the accountabilities of the foreign companies which have directly invested in the Iraqi oil and gas industry.

Using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, the authors first map the stakeholder accountabilities (qualitative) of foreign oil and gas companies and second, the authors seek to demonstrate quantitatively – through structural break tests and publicly available sustainability reports – whether these companies have accounted for their environmental and social impacts both to Iraqi people and to the global community.

The authors find that the Western democratic values embedded in stakeholder theory, in terms of sustainability, do not hold the same meaning in cultural contexts where conceptions and application of Western democratic values are deeply problematic. This paper identifies a crucial problem in the global oil supply chain and problematises the application of traditional theoretical approaches in the context of the Iraqi oil and gas industry.

Implications of this study include the refocus of attention onto the local and global environmental impacts of the Iraqi oil and gas industry by foreign direct investments. Such a refocus highlights the reasons and ways that decision makers should accommodate these less salient stakeholders.

The primary contribution is the critique of the lack of environmental accountability of foreign direct investment companies in the Iraqi oil and gas industry. The authors also make theoretical and methodological contributions via the problematisation of the cultural bias inherent in traditional stakeholder theories, and by introducing a quantitative method to evaluate the accountabilities of companies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the expectations and reality perspectives accrued in a preliminary management course and understand if they impart and embed real-world skills and develop work readiness.

Primary data collected for the research were qualitative. A total of six focus groups were conducted with a total of 52 students enrolled at a large metropolitan university in Australia. NViVO was used to code and analyse the data.

The study found that at the commencement of university studies, the expectations were simple like, making new friends, getting around the campus and settling well into the university culture, which over time extended to getting a part-time job, securing internships, memberships of associations, desire to participate in exchange programs and get work-ready by the close of the first year. The research outcomes show that those who held a part-time job while studying demonstrated a better understanding of the preliminary management subject matter taught in class and obtained better grades. Primarily, the preliminary management course did not specifically impart work-ready skills and it would be fitting to embed employability skills in the management curriculum from the commencement of their programs in the first year.

Qualitative research is used to comprehend a research problem from the outlook perspectives of the local population it involves. The limitations of this methodology includes no objectively verifiable result, adept interviewing skills for interviewers, slow and time consuming during interviewing process and intensive category process also as qualitative inquiry is normally open-ended, the participants have more control over the content of the data collected.

The lack of skill mismatch and graduates who are not work-ready incurs significant economic and social costs. A number of policy implications emerge due to university-labour market links and skills mismatches and the impact on students and the labour market. The rise in unemployment and the skills mismatch seen after the economic crisis requires immediate attention. Job creation is crucial but so is the need to develop graduate with appropriate matching skills and qualities to do the job. Mandatory internships, apprenticeships and on-the-job training for university students would help. Governments can provide financial incentives and subsidies to organisations providing the above services and working cooperatively with the universities to get students work-ready. Universities must raise the educational requirements over time as jobs become more complex. Universities can build communities of practice with the assistance of this scheme to enable students to interact with the industry professionals. An additional year of vocational training could be recommended for the graduating students. This would help the young graduates to get work-related skills. Wheelahan et al. (2015) state that building better links between education and work can help provide a more rational approach to vocational development. They propose the use of vocational streams and productive capabilities in the education system and labour market to achieve this.

This requires a combined effort from all stakeholders. A systematic approach needs to be adopted. First, the gap between the knowledge provided by the universities and the skills required by the employers need to be reduced. Second, the employers and the universities should keep a watch on the labour market and develop strategies to meet the dynamic requirements of the labour market collaboratively. Third, career guidance will help inform students make a career choice to match the labour market opportunities. This should be a part of the policy agenda for responding to the lack of work-ready graduates in the labour market.

Learning and teaching activities must include industry interface and engagement right from the first year at university. The main findings from this research indicated the need for better understanding of first-year students’ expectations. The two significant student expectations that emerged were “need for collaborations” and “industry interface”.

Environmental Management Accounting (EMA) information has become synonymous with win-win decision settings, but this paper aims to consider how EMA support can be extended to company managers who face the dynamics of win-wins and trade-offs.

Based on extant literature, the paper suggests an important extension of the use of EMA in support of management decision-making. The need for extended consideration and use of EMA to help overcome trade-offs is illustrated using the case of a wine bottling plant location decision by an Australian company in a global supply chain transporting wine from Australia to North America and Europe.

Results confirm the need to add to the broader use of EMA to assist managers attempting to solve real world trade-off problems between economic performance, carbon equivalent emissions reduction and water risk reduction.

Generalisation of the single wine company case illustration to other companies and similar industry settings remains to be investigated.

Trade-offs are considered between economic benefit and two environmental performance matters of concern to the company, carbon equivalent emissions reduction and water risk reduction.

The paper introduces the notion of extending the use of EMA as a pragmatic way for managers to assess trade-off situations with environmental alternatives where no optimal solution is available. Value is added through the real case study of an Australian wine company.

This study seeks to identify how professional accountants in France are educated in sustainability; we examine the French accounting programs in regard to sustainability accounting education recommendations.

We analyze a variety of documents to ascertain what comprises the typical accounting education program in France. Additionally, we conduct five interviews of various stakeholders to understand the importance of sustainability accounting and education in the French context.

We note an interesting paradox in the French context: while the government requires the reporting and auditing of corporate sustainability information, we find that sustainability is not greatly present in the government-funded French accounting education program. We determine that the government’s power in setting the education agenda combined with its budget restrictions and ability to defer responsibility to other parties has resulted in this paradox in the French setting.

This research draws attention to the consequences of society ignoring sustainability education for professional accountants.

This paper contributes to the discussion on how to educate responsible professional accountants and the implications for the planet if accountants are not trained in sustainability.

This research contributes to the important domain of sustainability accounting education. We also explore additional implications for the accounting profession and the general public.

This study explores how Canadian CPAs (Chartered Professional Accountants) are trained in sustainability. The main research questions are: What place should sustainability take in the accounting program? What place does sustainability occupy in the CPA accounting program? And, over time, has sustainability gained or lost ground within the Canadian professional accounting education program?

Content analysis and interviews.

We find that sustainability is not a key component of the CPA education program since its sustainability content has shrunk over the years. We believe that the groupthink phenomenon may have influenced the selection of CPA Competency Map participants (whose backgrounds reveal a lack of sustainability expertise) as well as the participants’ discussions. Additionally, a lack of consideration for society as a key stakeholder may have also influenced the shortage of sustainability content. Finally, power dynamics might have contributed to the financial accounting and reporting competencies dominating the new map.

We did not have access to the live meetings when the Map was created, although we conducted interviews with representatives involved in the process. This research is bound by a confidentiality agreement that limits us from providing sensitive details. However, we do not consider that these limitations undermine our contribution or reduce the relevance of our research.

Our research contributes to the under-researched domain of sustainability education and to understanding how groupthink, stakeholder theory and power dynamics may have contributed to the dearth of sustainability coverage in the new Canadian CPA program.

Family life can be seriously disrupted when a mother is imprisoned. The separation changes and often reduces the type, frequency and quality of contact that can be achieved between family members, and especially for children when their mothers were their primary carers and living with them before her imprisonment. In England and Wales, prisoners are permitted contact with children and families through prison visits, telephone contact and letter-writing through the post, and in some prisons via email. Despite the recent policy interest in supporting prisoners' family ties, research has highlighted the challenges that families and prisoners face using these communicative mechanisms. Building on this, the chapter contributes new knowledge by shifting the lens to explore how family members construct and adjust their practices to promote mother–child contact during maternal imprisonment.

The empirical study draws on semistructured interviews with mothers in prison and family members (caregivers) to children of female prisoners. Guided by a ‘family practices’ theoretical framework (Morgan, 2011), the findings show innovative adjustments, a willingness to make sacrifices and alternative routes to improve contact utilised by mothers and caregivers to prioritise mother–child contact. We see the strength, resilience and autonomy shown by family members to promote their relationships in spite of communicative barriers. There are important lessons to be learned from the families' lived experience for policy and practice, which, without due and genuine consideration, might further hinder opportunities for mother–child contact during maternal imprisonment.

This paper aims to better understand how accountability for sustainability takes shape within organisations and specifically, what makes employees act in a Swedish local authority. This aim moves beyond the prevalent external face of accountability in social and environmental accounting research by observing how employees understand and act upon their multiple accountability demands.

This paper adopts a single case study approach within a Swedish local authority, drawing from qualitative data including semi-structured interviews, site visits and governing documents.

Sustainable action is not only the product of hierarchically enforced structural accountabilities and procedures but often must be reconciled with the personal perspectives of the public sector employees involved as part of an accountability dynamic. Additionally, the findings reveal that hierarchical accountability, rather than serving to individualise and isolate employees, acts as a prompt for the more practical and personal reconciliations of accountability with the ethics and experiences of the individual involved.

Greater consideration to employee socialisation processes in public sector organisations should be given to reinforce organisational governance systems and controls, and thus help ensure sustainable behaviour in practice.

Employee socialisation processes are important for the development of sustainable practices both within and beyond organisational boundaries.

This study considers the interrelatedness of hierarchical and socialising accountability measures and contributes towards the understanding of the relationship between these two accountability forms, contrary to previous understandings that emphasise their contrasting nature and incompatibility.

Motivated to know more about the internal means through which accountability for sustainability takes shape within organisations (in what ways and by whom), this paper aims to explore how accountability for sustainability is constructed within an organisation during a process of establishing a control system for sustainability.

This paper adopts a qualitative case study approach of a decentralised industrial group, operating mainly in Scandinavia, between 2017 and 2020. Both primary and secondary data are used (e.g. document analyses, semi-structured interviews, informal conversations and site visits) to inform the findings and analysis.

The findings reveal a multi-faceted path towards accountability for sustainability that involves several concerns and priorities at organisational and individual levels, resulting in a separate sustainability control systems within each subsidiary company. Although hierarchical structures for accountability exist, socialising accountability activities are needed to (further) mobilise sustainable accounts.

Successful sustainable control systems require employees making sense of formalised accountability instruments (e.g. policies and procedures) to establish their roles and responsibilities in organisations.

This paper proposes socialisation processes as important for driving forward sustainability solutions.

This study elaborates on the internal accountability dynamic for the construction of sustainable accounts. Its novelty is built upon the interaction of hierarchical and socialising accountability forms as necessary for establishing a control system for sustainability. It furthermore illustrates the relationship between the external and internal pathways of accountability.