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Technical Information Systems (TIS) is the department responsible for the flow of techno‐commercial information in the Strip Mills Division of the British Steel Corporation (BSC). To give some idea of its size, the Division employs 64,000 people, has a gross turnover of around £600 million and has a number of steelmaking and finishing plants in the U.K., the majority being in Wales. TIS has been operating in its present form since 1968 when the industry was nationalised, and its initial aim from which it has not deviated was to set up small localised information units at each large works with a major back‐up facility at the Research Centre, Port Talbot.

Drawing on managerial innovation model proposed by Abrahamson (1991), this chapter tries to gain a better understanding of how the UN SDGs have impacted the practice of sustainability reporting of Spanish public universities. Data were collected from a variety of sources, such as: several email structured interviews with university managers, an examination of the Chancellor letters of sustainability reports of Spanish public universities, a detailed reading of some sustainability reports and a consultation of the website of each Spanish public university. The findings reveal that there has been an increasing number of Spanish public universities that have started to publish stand-alone sustainability reporting since the appearance of the UN SDGs. According to Abrahamson's framework, our findings reveal that governmental-policy forces have shaped the sustainability reporting landscape in the Spanish public university setting, and their behaviour is mostly explained by the forced-selection and fad/fashion perspectives.

Based on institutional theory, this paper aims to examine whether, and if so which, institutional forces influence the quality of China’s listed financial institutions’ (FIs) sustainability disclosures.

Using univariate statistical and multiple regression analyses, this study quantitatively examines the impacts of coercive pressure from the government and stock exchanges, imitation within subsectors and normative pressure from industry associations and regulators on the quality of China’s listed FIs’ sustainability disclosures. Assessment of the robustness of regression results uses panel random-effects and generalized methods of moments estimation.

Financial sector corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure quality did not increase dramatically following issue of the “Guiding Opinions on Establishing a Green Finance System.” However, a convergence in quality is found over time. State ownership concentration and state links to dominant shareholders negatively impact the quality of financial sector sustainability disclosures, whereas stock exchange index listing requirements and industry association reporting guidance have positive influences.

First, data availability limits the sample to listed financial firms with RKS quality scores. Thus, results may not be generalizable to the broader listed and unlisted financial sector. Second, this study only examines the influence of external forces based on institutional theory. However, internal institutional forces, such as corporate governance, may require examination. This study’s results indicate that coercive pressure, as represented by issue of the “Green Finance” policy, has not yet prompted the financial sector to improve reporting quality; however, normative pressure has had significant influence in influencing FIs’ CSR practices, with China’s banks potentially taking a leading role.

The financial sector has a lower direct environmental impact than traditional polluting industries and different operating and reporting structures, features often used to argue for its exclusion in prior studies. However, its indirect environmental impact via lending and investing activities is significant, suggesting evidence on the determinants of sustainability disclosure quality is required. This study uses evidence from China’s financial sector to reduce this gap in the literature.

Perhaps the marvel is that there should exist at all a department in a British official body at national level dedicated to the support of research into information needs and the problems of providing and operating library and information services. That it does exist may be regarded as the product of a typically British combination of conscious decision‐making and historical accident.

The paper aims to examine Indonesian accounting students’ intention to become sustainable accountants (ISAs) using a modified theory of reasoning action model.

Primary data were collected from 239 respondents from five reputable universities in Semarang, Indonesia, using a structured questionnaire. A random sampling technique was employed and used in selecting respondents. The data were then analyzed using smart PLS (version 3.2.9) to obtain the final results.

The results show university sustainability (US) and attitudes toward sustainability (ATS) affect students' intentions to become ISAs. Knowledge has no direct correlation with students' intention to become ISAs. Path analysis shows a significant correlation between US and students' knowledge, attitudes and intentions regarding sustainability.

This is different from previous studies, which only focused on factors influencing students' intentions to pay attention to sustainability. This study focuses on prospective accountants because, in the future, they will be the technical executors of reporting using path analysis. This study further analyzes the relationship between existing antecedent variables. The results show that sustainability at the university is a variable that can influence all other variables.

Based on some of the results and definitions provided in the paper “system linkage: structural functions and hierarchies” and adding new definitions that are in keeping with the spirit of the same paper, new results have been obtained that explore the utility of the structural input‐output function.

Our approach is based principally on the application of graph theory to the study of relationships between variables using specific set theory concepts.

A result such as the fact that A covers B, for example, can be interpreted in terms of the latter set being formed of direct influences from elements in the former set in relation to one or more than one relationships. Analogously, the invariant set concept may be interpreted as the set maintaining its structure and status, remaining constant with respect to any possible relationships.

From a practical point of view, in the context of the study of networks within an ecosystem, authors (such as Patten et al. and Patten) have demonstrated that indirect effects between the variables of an ecosystem outweigh direct effects. This is the notion that the present authors have borne in mind in order to extend previous results to indirect influences from a discrete perspective.

The objective of this chapter is to analyse the impact of France’s ‘Grenelle 2’ law of 2010, which applies to environmental accounting disclosures (EADs). More specifically, it seeks to observe whether the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ‘comply or explain’ model, transposed into the French regulatory framework, influences the disclosure strategies of firms that are listed on a regulated market.

Drawing on the theoretical framework of legitimacy and the concept of normativity, an empirical study is conducted on a sample of 96 French firms listed on the SBF index between 2009 and 2014. The effect of regulation is assessed by a content analysis of EAD in annual reports, examining changes in disclosure practices and the contents of disclosures.

The main results show that explanations for the absence of EAD showed a significant increase after the introduction of the law. We also observe that the new rules had no effect on the number of firms making EADs, although the quality of the disclosures declined. Finally, the results also concern practices of non-disclosure without any accompanying explanation.

The limitations of this study relate to the choices underlying the classifications and observations made during the content analysis.

This study has social relevance in that it supplies information for assessing the transposition of European directives into French law.

This study extends research concerning environmental disclosures by examining a recent accounting object. It also continues the debate on normativity, with its analysis of disclosures subject to a changing regulatory framework.

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

This study investigates the reaction to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) 2010 interpretative guidance on climate risk disclosures. Issued on February 8, 2010, the release represents one of the few examples of authoritative requirements for environmental disclosure in filers’ 10-K reports. As such, we attempt to determine the effect of the new requirement on companies’ disclosures as well as how the market reacted to the guidance announcement. Based on a sample of 155 large companies drawn randomly from the Fortune 500, we find first, that, as expected, climate change disclosures increased significantly following the release, but overall, the information provision remained quite limited. We further find that, presumably as intended, companies from industries facing greater climate change exposures exhibited significantly larger increases in disclosure (controlling for prior levels of information provision). Finally, we document that the market reaction to the release of the SEC guidance was significantly positive and driven by more positive returns from firms in climate risk industries. We interpret these unexpected findings as potentially being due to investors believing the new requirements were less demanding than might have been anticipated or that they believe firms facing climate risks were in a better position to respond than other companies.

This paper aims to examine the differences in quality and quantity of disclosures dealing with greenhouse gas emissions among companies with a relatively large or small carbon footprint. It also considers whether disclosures are being included in the primary report to stakeholders (an integrated report) or in a secondary source (a sustainability report).

A comprehensive carbon disclosure checklist was constructed based on professional and academic literature to identify and categorise carbon disclosures. Quality is gauged according to a multi-dimensional assessment derived from prior research based on density of reporting, disclosure attributes, management orientation, integration of information, ease of analysis, reporting on strategy, use of independent assurance and repetition. A content analysis is used to gauge the quantity and quality of carbon disclosures of 50 companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Differences in the quantity and quality scores of high- and low-carbon companies are tested using a Mann–Whitney U test.

Carbon disclosures are used as part of a legitimacy management exercise. This involves not just the use of additional environmental disclosure to placate stakeholders as environmental impact grows. The quality of reporting and location of disclosures are, perhaps, more important for understanding how companies are responding to stakeholder expectations for reporting on carbon emissions and climate change.

Despite mounting scientific evidence on the risks posed by climate changes, companies remain reluctant to commit to high-quality reporting on specific steps being taken to reduce carbon emissions. Even when disclosures are being targeted at key stakeholders, the possibility of impression management remains. It may, therefore, be necessary to have carbon reporting regulated and independently assured. More guidance on how companies should be managing and reporting on carbon emissions and climate change may also be required.

Despite mounting scientific evidence on the risks posed by climate changes, companies remain reluctant to commit to high-quality reporting on specific steps being taken to reduce carbon emissions. Even when disclosures are being targeted at key stakeholders, the possibility of impression management remains. It may, therefore, be necessary to have carbon reporting regulated and independently assured. More guidance on how companies should be managing and reporting on carbon emissions and climate change may also be required.

The study merges the traditional approach of focusing on the quantity of disclosures to illustrate the application of legitimacy theory in a sustainability/integrated reporting setting with less-seldom-studied quality and location of reporting. This result provides a more nuanced perspective of how carbon disclosures are being used to manage stakeholders’ reporting expectations.