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This study illustrates the economic and financial dynamics of the sector, analysing the evolution of the main ratios of profitability and financial structure of 1,559 Italian real estate companies divided into the three macro-regions: North, Centre and South, in the period 2011–2020. In this way, it is also possible to verify the responsiveness to the 2020 pandemic crisis.

The analysis uses descriptive statistics tools and the ANOVA method of analysis of variance, supplemented by the Tukey–Kramer test, to identify significant differences between the three Italian macro-regions.

The study shows the increase in profitability after the 2008 crisis, despite its reverberation in the years 2012–2013. The financial structure of companies improved almost everywhere. The pandemic had modest effects on performance.

In the future, other indices should be considered to gain a more comprehensive view. This is a quantitative study based on financial statements data that neglects other important economic and social factors.

Public policies could use this study for better interventions to support the sector. In addition, internal management can compare their company's performance with the industry average to identify possible improvements.

The research analyses an economic field that employs a large number of people, especially when considering the construction and real estate services covered by this analysis.

The study contributes to the literature by providing a quantitative analysis of industry dynamics, with comparative information that can be deduced from financial statements over the years.

The purpose of this study is to gain empirical insights into whether accounting information systems (AIS) usage matters among Jordanian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) during the period of COVID-19 pandemic.

The suggested research model in the current study is based on the extending technology acceptance model (TAM) to test the antecedents’ factors that impact on AIS usage among SMEs. To test the proposed research model, partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used.

The empirical findings revealed all postulated hypotheses were accepted except H3. Contrary to what is expected, the empirical outcomes confirmed that perceived compatibility does not affect the perceived usefulness of AIS, and hence, the related hypothesis was rejected.

The results of the current research could be beneficial to a number of managers (owners) to obtain a better understanding of the benefits of AIS success usage among Jordanian SMEs performance during crises time as the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

The purpose of this study is to examine how lenders alter their behavior when faced with real earnings management.

This study uses the incremental R-square approach as in Kim and Kross (2005) to examine how much lenders rely on income statement and balance sheet ratios as the degree of real earnings management increases.

As real earnings management affects mostly the income statement, the authors find that lenders rely less on income statement ratios in making credit decisions in the presence of real earnings management. The authors also find that lenders do not alter their reliance on balance sheet ratios when faced with real earnings management.

This paper is the first to study how lenders alter their reliance on financial statements in making credit decisions in the presence of real earnings management. The findings of this paper could help the regulators set standards to improve the usefulness of financial statements. The findings of this paper could also help practitioners (borrowers and lenders) understand how real earnings management affects credit decisions.

Geopolitical risks associated with the return of great power politics and growing nationalism have generated new challenges for foreign investors across industries. Oil and gas companies are well acquainted with such risks and have developed strategies to manage them. This paper reviews five of these strategies: divorcing ownership control from operating control in designing collaborative ventures; proactively managing stakeholder relationships; ensuring transparency and communication; diversifying risks while proactively positioning for emerging opportunities; and deliberately planning for exit should such an eventuality arise. Firms outside of oil and gas can draw on these strategies as they navigate the emerging geopolitical context.

This paper reviews five strategies that oil and gas companies can use to manage geopolitical risk: divorcing ownership control from operating control in designing collaborative ventures; proactively managing stakeholder relationships; ensuring transparency and communication; diversifying risks while proactively positioning for emerging opportunities; and deliberately planning for exit should such an eventuality arise.

This study identifies several strategies that oil and gas companies have used to manage geopolitical risks. These tools will be increasingly important in the shifting global political landscape.

Drawing on the experiences of oil and gas companies, this study has identified several strategies that companies can use to shield themselves from the risks that are currently emanating from geopolitics. While these best practices originate in the experiences of oil and gas firms, the ability to deftly manage geopolitical risks is becoming an important prerequisite for companies across industries.

This study aims to focus on the five most relevant and discursive emerging technologies in accounting (cloud computing, big data and data analytics, blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics process automation [RPA]). It investigates the adoption and use of these technologies based on data collected from accounting professionals in a technology-developed country – Canada, through a survey.

The study investigates the adoption and use of emerging technologies based on data collected from accounting professionals in a technology-developed country – Canada, through a survey. This study considers the said nature and characteristics of emerging technologies and proposes a model using the factors that have been found to be significant and most commonly investigated by existing prior technology-organization-environment (TOE)-related technology adoption studies. This survey applies the TOE framework and examines the influence of significant and most commonly known factors on Canadian firms’ intention to adopt the said emerging technologies.

Study results indicate that Canadian accounting professionals’ self-assessed knowledge (about these emerging technologies) is more theoretical than operational. Cloud computing is highly used by Canadian firms, while the use of other technologies, particularly blockchain and RPA, is reportedly low. However, firms’ intention about the future adoption of these technologies seems positive. Study results reveal that only the relative advantage and top management commitment are found to be significant considerations influencing the adoption intention.

Study findings confirm some results presented in earlier studies but provide additional insights from a new perspective, that of accounting professionals in Canada. The first limitation relates to the respondents. Although accounting professionals provided valuable insights, their responses are personal views and do not necessarily represent the views of other professionals within the same firm or the official position of their accounting departments or firms. Therefore, the exclusion of diverse viewpoints from the same firm might have negatively impacted the results of this study. Second, this study sample is limited to Canada-based firms, which means that the study reflects only the situation in that country. Third, considering the research method and the limit on the number of questions the authors could ask, respondents were only asked to rate the impact of these five technologies on the accounting field and to clarify which technologies are used.

This study’s findings confirm that the organizational intention to adopt new technology is not primarily based on the characteristics of the technology. In the case of emerging technology adoption, the decision also depends upon other factors related to the internal organization. Furthermore, although this study found no support for the effect of environmental factors, it fills a gap in the literature by including the factor of vendor support, which has received little attention in prior information technology (IT)/ information system (IS) adoption research. Moreover, in contrast to most prior adoption studies, this study elaborates on accounting professionals’ experience and perceptions in investigating the organizational adoption and use of emerging technologies. Thus, the findings of this study are valuable, providing insights from a new perspective, that of professional accountants.

The study findings may serve as a guide for researchers, practitioners, firms and other stakeholders, particularly technology providers, interested in learning about emerging technologies’ adoption and use in Canada and/or in a relevant context. Contrary to most prior adoption studies, this study elaborates on accounting professionals’ experience and perceptions in investigating the organizational adoption and use of emerging technologies. Thus, the findings of this study are valuable, providing insights from a new perspective, that of professional accountants.

The study provides insights into the said technologies’ actual adoption and improves the awareness of firms and stakeholders to the effect of some constructs that influence the adoption of these emerging technologies in accounting.

To achieve sustainable development objectives, managers are encouraged to implement best practices in corporate social and environmental responsibility within their establishments. The main objective of this chapter is to assess the quality of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) communication for Moroccan financial institutions. This chapter is devoted to the content analysis of the annual reports of 14 financial institutions listed in Morocco regarding ESG strategies between 2017 and 2021. The reference assessment tool we used is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards (2016), based on six principles. Each principle contains requirements and guidance on how to apply it. These principles are summarized in the following: Accuracy, Balance, Clarity, Comparability, Reliability, and Timeliness. The sample is composed of 14 financial institutions listed on the Casablanca Stock Exchange. After checking the content of the annual reports of listed Moroccan financial institutions, we detected several shortcomings in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting behavior. Companies avoid disclosing information about negative events and performance. We saw this as a bad sign for stakeholders. The results showed a significant gap between the GRI standards and the content of the annual reports. These weaknesses mainly concern accuracy, comparability, and, timeliness, hence the need to carry out corrective measures to improve the quality of ESG practices within Moroccan financial institutions. One of the limitations of this research is its focus on financial institutions. However, it is possible to broaden the scope of the research by assessing the quality of ESG communication for nonfinancial companies.

This case is based on primary and secondary data collection. ABCo’s Founder, Jocelyn Sheppard, sat down with the author for a 75-min recorded interview in July 2022, and she provided follow-up information via email. Interview data was supplemented with secondary data from publicly available sources to fill in portions on the founder, the company’s history and its location; and triangulate the collected interview data (Creswell and Poth, 2018). There are no conflicts of interest that the author needs to disclose related to the founder or company.

The case was piloted at one institution in the Fall 2022, Spring 2023 and Fall 2023 semesters, with 59 undergraduates in an in-person social entrepreneurship course and 165 undergraduates and 33 graduate students in an online asynchronous social entrepreneurship course. All students worked through the case in groups, and as a requirement of their corresponding assignment submission, they provided feedback that was de-identified. In total, 60 groups reported their feedback, which was considered during the subsequent drafts of the case and instructors’ manual IM.

According to the anonymized feedback, the protagonist, product line, desired social impact and experienced challenges of ABCo were all said to be interesting, approachable and relatable for students, and the case piqued the interest of students coming from different majors (e.g. business, environmental issues, human services and criminal justice). Students from rural areas, or those who have family in rural areas, felt the case was particularly interesting; a handful of the students in the asynchronous online class who were unfamiliar with such settings suggested providing students with some additional contextualization of rural environments, either through class discussion with other students who had experience in those environments or additional media or text-based supports. Further adjustments also included removing a reading and a corresponding question and revising elements within the Teaching Approaches section of the IM to support the additions they suggested within the feedback (i.e. spending time to define and walk through the provided model and highlight the differences of rural entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship in the rural as a class before engaging in the related write-ups for that question).

Jocelyn Sheppard, Founder of Appalachian Botanical Company (“ABCo”), had built her company not just on a vision of revitalizing reclaimed coal mine land through planting and producing products with lavender, but also to have a social impact on the rural town of Ashford and its greater region of Boone County in West Virginia, USA. While she understood that hiring workers in need of a second chance would present its challenges, she was shocked by the depth of social need her new employees presented, which contributed to many employees’ disruptive behaviors and turnover. To approach the problem at hand, Sheppard needed to reflect on the resources around her, namely, other entities and organizations who might be able to support her efforts to improve how ABCo delivers on its social mission and, thus, helps to improve the local community and its economy. The case draws upon literature and models within rural entrepreneurship and community development to have students advise Sheppard on what she should do next to improve the social outcomes for ABCo and its employees.

This case is geared for both upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in entrepreneurship, including in social, environmental and rural entrepreneurship courses and course modules. The case introduces students to a social enterprise struggling to get its footing in a rural context. The case would be suitable for both introductory and advanced courses, especially when placemaking/place-based entrepreneurship or ecosystem building are discussed.

This study aims to explore how sustainable business models (SBM) can be developed within agri-innovation systems (AIS) and emphasize an integration of the two with a systemic understanding for reducing food loss and value loss in postharvest agri-food supply chain.

This study conducted longitudinal qualitative research in a developing country with food loss challenges in the postharvest supply chain. This study collected data through multiple rounds of fieldwork, interviews and focus groups over four years. Thematic analysis and “sensemaking” were used for inductive data analysis to generate rich contextual knowledge by drawing upon the lived realities of the agri-food supply chain actors.

First, this study finds that the value losses are varied in the supply chain, encompassing production value, intrinsic value, extrinsic value, market value, institutional value and future food value. This happens through two cumulative effects including multiplier losses, where losses in one model cascade into others, amplifying their impact and stacking losses, where the absence of data stacks or infrastructure pools hampers the realisation of food value. Thereafter, this study proposes four strategies for moving from the loss-incurring current business model to a networked SBM for mitigating losses. This emphasises the need to redefine ownership as stewardship, enable formal and informal beneficiary identification, strengthen value addition and build capacities for empowering communities to benefit from networked SBM with AIS initiatives. Finally, this study puts forth ten propositions for future research in aligning AIS with networked SBM.

This study contributes to understanding the interplay between AIS and SBM; emphasising the integration of the two to effectively address food loss challenges in the early stages of agri-food supply chains. The identified strategies and research propositions provide implications for researchers and practitioners seeking to accelerate sustainable practices for reducing food loss and waste in agri-food supply chains.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of product offering and other service quality (SQ) dimensions on the satisfaction of the customers of both Islamic and conventional banks, using evidence from an oil-based economy that is based on a prolonged SERVQUAL model with 11 dimensions and other statistical analysis methods.

The data were collected from 461 Islamic and conventional bank customers in Qatar via a survey and several tests were used to test certain hypotheses. Component analysis, factor analysis and gap and ascendency analysis were used in this study. Afterward, a correlation analysis and regression model were used to examine the hypotheses and validate the instruments used.

The results show that regardless of the type of bank, customers always have greater expectations of the services than they had perceived. A customer’s expectation of the product on offer is the only dimension that is significantly different in relation to the two types of banks. However, reliability, competence, responsiveness, credibility and empathy dimensions are significantly different of the two types of banks in customers’ perception of quality. In addition, the results suggest that both types of banks need to concentrate their efforts on the product offering, competence and courtesy dimensions.

The size of our sample of Islamic and conventional banks is unequally balanced. Future studies might therefore choose an equally balanced sample.

Bank managers in both types of banks need to continue improving the quality of their service including product offering and to adopt advanced methods to enhance customer satisfaction (CS) and reduce the gaps in quality in the dimensions used. Furthermore, managers in both types of banks need to put more emphasis on product offering, competence, courtesy and communication if they wish to improve SQ. Moreover, Islamic banks must guarantee that they possess competent, highly trained personnel who are familiar with Islamic finance products, so as to enhance the quality of service and attract customers.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the effect of product offering and other dimensions of SQ on CS in both Islamic and conventional banks by using 11 dimensions of SQ. In addition, it provides evidence of gaps in SQ, at the dimensions level, for both types of banks in an oil-based economy. The results of this study are valuable in helping decision-makers and bank managers who wish to raise the level of SQ and improve CS and in validating the results from other countries with a dual financial system.

The current study uses an advanced machine learning method and aims to investigate whether auditors perceive financial statements that are principles-based as less risky. More specifically, this study aims to explore the association between principles-based accounting standards and audit pricing and between principles-based accounting standards and the likelihood of receiving a going concern opinion.

The study uses an advanced machine-learning method to understand the role of principles-based accounting standards in predicting audit fees and going concern opinion. The study also uses multiple regression models defining audit fees and the probability of receiving going concern opinion. The analyses are complemented by additional tests such as economic significance, firm fixed effects, propensity score matching, entropy balancing, change analysis, yearly regression results and controlling for managerial risk-taking incentives and governance variables.

The paper provides empirical evidence that auditors charge less audit fees to clients whose financial statements are more principles-based. The finding suggests that auditors perceive financial statements that are principles-based less risky. The study also provides evidence that the probability of receiving a going-concern opinion reduces as firms rely more on principles-based standards. The finding further suggests that auditors discount the financial numbers supplied by the managers using rules-based standards. The study also reveals that the degree of reliance by a US firm on principles-based accounting standards has a negative impact on accounting conservatism, the risk of financial statement misstatement, accruals and the difficulty in predicting future earnings. This suggests potential mechanisms through which principles-based accounting standards influence auditors’ risk assessments.

The authors recognize the limitation of this study regarding the sample period. Prior studies compare rules vs principles-based standards by focusing on the differences between US generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and international financial reporting standards (IFRS) or pre- and post-IFRS adoption, which raises questions about differences in cross-country settings and institutional environment and other confounding factors such as transition costs. This study addresses these issues by comparing rules vs principles-based standards within the US GAAP setting. However, this limits the sample period to the year 2006 because the measure of the relative extent to which a US firm is reliant upon principles-based standards is available until 2006.

The study has major public policy suggestions as it responds to the call by Jay Clayton and Mary Jo White, the former Chairs of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to pursue high-quality, globally accepted accounting standards to ensure that investors continue to receive clear and reliable financial information globally. The study also recognizes the notable public policy implications, particularly in light of the current Chair of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) Andreas Barckow’s recent public statement, which emphasizes the importance of principles-based standards and their ability to address sustainability concerns, including emerging risks such as climate change.

The study has major public policy suggestions because it demonstrates the value of principles-based standards. The study responds to the call by Jay Clayton and Mary Jo White, the former Chairs of the US SEC, to pursue high-quality, globally accepted accounting standards to ensure that investors continue to receive clear and reliable financial information as business transactions and investor needs continue to evolve globally. The study also recognizes the notable public policy implications, particularly in light of the current Chair of the IASB Andreas Barckow’s recent public statement, which emphasizes the importance of principles-based standards and their ability to address sustainability concerns, including emerging risks like climate change. The study fills the gap in the literature that auditors perceive principles-based financial statements as less risky and further expands the literature by providing empirical evidence that the likelihood of receiving a going concern opinion is increasing in the degree of rules-based standards.