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Internal control mechanisms are fundamental to organizational governance; particularly, to the agency relationship associated with decentralization of decision rights. Management accounting and organizational literatures provide conflicting predictions on the association between decentralization and internal controls, with some research arguing that internal controls be tightened to mitigate the risks associated with greater decentralization of decision rights while other work avers that tighter internal controls defeat the purposes of decentralization. In this chapter, we argue that managers choose these two organizational design variables jointly. Capitalizing on a unique database of control practices in the purchasing and payment process within the procurement function, this chapter examines the relationship between control tightness – a critical characteristic of internal controls – and decentralization. Using a simultaneous equation model, the study finds that decentralization and internal control design are endogenously determined. Tight control is negatively associated with the level of decentralization, while decentralization has a positive effect on the tightness of control. These results reconcile the apparently contradictory results relating these two variables. The chapter also finds that decentralization and tight control mechanisms operate both independently and synergistically to improve performance.

The current world is characterized by VUCAT (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity, and Technology). These elements provoke in workers a need for leadership that must be addressed continuously (Deepika & Chitranshi, 2021). Companies must dedicate efforts to leading their employees in a homogeneous way for team integration (Contreras et al., 2020; Sandeep & Latasri, 2021). It should be noted that remote work is a permanent feature for more organizations. Despite the difficulties that workers at all levels have had to adapt to remote work, an adaptation has been achieved in general terms based on communication technology. However, in many cases, it has altered the traditional performance of resources in companies, which makes the leading global and local institutions design new rules in favor of the health of workers and, at the same time, contribute to their better performance. For that, managers in the areas of Human Resources, Finance, and Information Technology (IT) must be able to propose strategies to take care of the human capital of companies in all their departments. For the process to work efficiently, leadership is necessary. The transition of workers from the Asia Pacific region to teleworking, the influence of leadership, and the impact on job satisfaction, which is a measure that shows the optimal management of this new way of working in companies, are described. The organizational models related to business management, the barriers in the first steps of teleworking, the strategies used, the legislation created, and the results achieved by the company are described.

This volume explores an expansive array of organizational imaginaries, or understandings of organizational possibilities, with a focus on how collectivist-democratic organizations offer alternatives to conventional for-profit managerial enterprises. These include worker and consumer cooperatives and other enterprises that, to varying degrees, (1) emphasize social values over profit; (2) are owned not by shareholders but by workers, consumers, or other stakeholders; (3) employ democratic forms of managing their operations; and (4) have social ties to the organization based on moral and emotional commitments. The contributors to this volume examine how these enterprises generate solidarity among members, network with other organizations and communities, contend with market pressures, and enhance their larger organizational ecosystems. In this introductory paper, the authors put forward an inclusive organizational typology whose continuums account for four key sources of variation – values, ownership, management, and social relations – and argue that enterprises fall between these two poles of the collectivist-democratic organization and the for-profit managerial enterprise. Drawing from this volume’s empirical studies, the authors situate these market actors within fields of competition and contestation shaped not just by state action and legal frameworks, but also by the presence or absence of social movements, labor unions, and meta-organizations. This typology challenges conventional conceptualizations of for-profit managerial enterprises as ideals or norms, reconnects past models of organizing among marginalized communities with contemporary and future possibilities, and offers activists and entrepreneurs a sense of the wide range of possibilities for building enterprises that differ from dominant models.

This study establishes a baseline evaluation of sustainability reporting (SR) and integrated reporting (IR) practices among groups of companies globally using a combined evaluation matrix. We evaluate a sample of high performance companies (HPC), global reporting initiative (GRI) companies, international integrated reporting committee (IIRC) companies, and a control group of companies that do not belong to any of these groups. We test for high performance and compliance with a 30-point evaluation matrix for financial reporting, corporate governance, integrated disclosure, SR, and assurance developed from the standards set by GRI and IIRC. This chapter provides evidence as to the current IR and SR states, and shows that considerable variation exists even among companies that have pledged to improve reporting in this arena. The analysis also shows that companies that belong to no special group do in fact score on a level that shows that SR and IR standards are being implemented by many companies in the world, not just those in special groups like the HPC, GRI, and IIRC. Finally, this study provides direction for global regulators and professional associations, and to the management of companies that aspire to HPC status while meeting the IR and SR standards.

Many companies struggle with the assessment of customer experience. This chapter aims to demonstrate how mobile ethnography tackles this issue by assessing data in a holistical way, in-situ, and in real-time.

The chapter describes the implementation of a mobile ethnography project in a tourist destination, including participant recruitment, data collection, data analysis, and the derivation of insights.

The mobile ethnography project allowed to gain deep insights into the customers’ journeys.

Future research will need to further investigate questions of participant recruitment, the effectiveness of incentives as well as the performance of the data collection process. Furthermore the findings of this case need to be replicated in the context of other industries, as well as in other cultural contexts.

Mobile ethnography allows companies to gain more information on customer experience in real-time, thus with reduced cognitive and emotional bias. Therefore, the method can help to improve the touristic service offering and, consequently, customer experience.

As companies are searching for new approaches to research and manage customer experience, this chapter is of high value for both academia and practice.

European countries have the world’s most redistributive tax and transfer systems. While they have been well equipped to deal with vertical inequality – fostering redistribution from the rich to the poor – less is known about their performance in dealing with horizontal inequality, that is, in redistributing across socioeconomic groups. In a context where individuals may not only care about vertical redistribution, but also about the economic situation of the specific groups they belong to, the horizontal dimension of redistribution becomes politically salient and can be a source of social tensions. The authors analyse the performance of the 28 EU countries for redistribution across (i) age groups; (ii) occupational groups; and (iii) household types over the period 2007–2014 using counterfactual simulation techniques. We find a significant degree of heterogeneity across countries: changes in the tax and transfer system have particularly hit the young and the losers of occupational change in Eastern European countries, while households with greater economic security have benefited from these changes. The findings of this study suggest that horizontal inequality is a dimension which policy-makers should take into account when reforming tax and transfer systems.

Changes are occuring at a startling fillip in our society and our world. One of the changes is the need to revamp how persons with disabilities are treated and educated. In the United States of America, laws have been pulmulgated to reduce the plight of learners with disabilties. As a result, myriad intervention strategies have been instituted to identify, assess, label, place, and educate these learners. However, some interventions continue to be very traditional. To go beyond tradition and adequately maximize the fullest potential of learners with disabilties, we must value the “specialness” of special education as a powerful intervention program, listen to new voices with new ideas, and debunk deficit thinking that are prejudicial, especially in helping people with disabilities to survive in our competitive society. Interestingly, the chapters in this book have exposed the different intervention options for learners with disabilities. Clearly, without innovative interventions for these learners, special education will be a failure.