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This paper investigates whether democracy plays a mediating role in the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The empirical analysis is conducted using fixed effects and system GMM (Generalised Method of Moments) on a panel of 38 Sub-Saharan African countries covering the period of 1990–2018.

The results find that FDI has no direct effect on inequality whereas democracy reduces inequality directly in both the short run and the long run. The sensitivity analyses find that democracy improves equality regardless of the magnitude of FDI, resource endowment or democratic deepening whereas FDI only reduces inequality once a moderate level of democracy has been achieved.

The results discussed above thus have four policy implications. First, these results show that although democracy has inequality reducing benefits, SSA is unlikely to significantly reduce inequality unless the region purposefully diversifies its trade and FDI away from natural resources. Second, the region should continue to expand credit access to reduce inequality and attract FDI. Third, policymakers should undertake reforms that will reduce youth inequality. Lastly, the region should focus on long-run democratic reforms rather than on short-run democratization to improve governance and investor confidence.

Although there are existing studies that examine the association between FDI and inequality, FDI and democracy and democracy and inequality, this is the first study to explicitly examine the effect of democracy on the association between FDI and inequality in SSA, and the first study to separately consider the possible varied effects of contemporaneous democratization versus the long-run accumulation of democratic capital. In addition, rather than measure inequality by income alone, this study uses the more appropriate Human Development Index to account for SSA's sociological, education and income disparities.

Is the need for stability pre-empting the need for democratic values? How can the EU cope with two contradictory security requirements: the need to promote democratic norms and to secure geostrategic interests? This paper takes on the security-democracy dilemma in a complex way that transcends the realpolitik frame overshadowing the analysis of the EU’s policy orientation in the Southern Mediterranean while considering its normative role as a fig leaf for security interests.

This paper investigates the EU’s foreign policy orientation reflected in the ENP in terms of the two logics of action of consequentialism and appropriateness. Tracing changes at the policy level over time between 2011 and 2015, the paper zooms into the implementation of the “new” ENP in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia to highlight additional variation across countries.

Building on a document analysis of the official declarations for the policy-making level and of ENP action plans for the implementation level, the paper argues that local political dynamics and the level of the EU’s threat perception shape the EU’s response to the partner countries.

Collaboration is significant but difficult for the development of youth organizations, this research aims to explore whether the online collaboration process is suitable for youth organizations' collaboration and improve their effectiveness and efficiency.

This research has applied a design approach using the collaboration engineering method, to design an online collaboration process for youth organizations to improve their effectiveness and efficiency. Using a self-developed group support systems (GSS) tool, the authors have tested the new collaboration process through an experiment among four youth organizations and conducted a survey afterwards.

The new process improves the collaboration effectiveness and efficiency. The research also identifies the detailed relationships among influencing factors in the online collaboration process.

There is little research in the context of computer mediated youth organization collaboration. This research designs an online collaboration process for the effective and efficient collaboration of youth organizations and has it tested among representative youth organizations, providing practical instructions for digital youth organization collaboration in the context of global pandemic.

Empathy is part of what makes us human and humane, and it has become a core component of the Social Awareness competency of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) (CASEL, 2019). SEL fosters the understanding of others’ emotions, is the basis of Theory of Mind skills and frames the development of empathy. The purpose of this paper is to trace the links between empathy development and social and emotional learning when using real versus virtual environments. Empathy is a uniquely human emotion facilitated by abstract thinking and language. Virtual play is a teaching tool for acquiring prosocial behaviors. And finally, human-mediated (traditional and virtual) play is most favorable for SEL growth. Recognition of emotions such as empathy and other socio-communication skills have been taught to children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Therefore, technology can be a venue for acquiring empathy.

This paper uses a qualitative interpretive methodology to advocate for the use of technology with human mediation to teach Social and Emotional Learning skills, based on the premise that cognitive and social-emotional development occurs synergistically and mediated by speech and interaction with the environment.

Technology is best seen as an instrument of assessing and teaching socio-emotional skills, but not as the only means to an end, because what makes us human can only be taught within an ecology of human interaction in real-life situations.

This paper reviews previous research works (both empirical and theoretical) that bring to light the connection between socio-emotional development, specifically empathy development, and virtual environments.

Is there a specific way of thinking about organisational learning in Nordic countries? Are concepts such as organisational learning and learning organisations imported, or do they emerge with specific meanings from more local discourses? Beyond that, are they supported by specific learning theories? The purpose of this paper is to trace the way that the concepts of organisational learning and learning organisations appear in research and policy documents in Norway and to identify what sort of learning theories pertain to those concepts. The authors discuss whether Norway’s case exemplifies a Nordic way of thinking about learning in organisations.

Through an archaeological investigation into the concepts of organisational learning and learning organisations, the authors explore the theoretical and cultural framing of the concepts in research and policy. The authors limit our work to large industrial field experiments conducted in the 1960s and to large education reform in the 2000s.

During the industrial field experiments in the 1960s, the concept of organisational learning evolved to form participatory learning processes in non-hierarchical organisations able to contribute to democracy at work. Education policy in the 2000s, by contrast, imported the concept of the learning organisation that primarily viewed learning as an instrumental process of knowledge production. That strategy is incommensurable to what we define as a Nordic way, one in which learning is also understood as a cultural and social process advanced by democratic participation.

The authors add to organisational learning theories by demonstrating the importance of cultural context for theories and showing that the understanding of learning is historically and culturally embedded.

This paper aims to shed light on the impact of personalized news media on the shared issue agenda that provides democracies with a set of topics that structure the public debate. The advent of personalized news media that use smart algorithms to tailor the news offer to the user challenges the established way of setting the agenda of such a common core of issues.

This paper tests the effects of personalized news use on perceived importance of these issues in the common core. In particular, the authors study whether personalized news use leads to a concentration at the top of the issue agenda or to a more diverse issue agenda with a long tail of topics.

Based on a cross-sectional survey of a representative population sample (n = 1,556), we find that personalized news use does not lead to a small common core in which few topics are discussed extensively, yet there is a relationship between personalized news use and a preference for less discussed topics. This is a result of a specific user profile of personalized news users: younger, more educated news users are more interested in topics at the fringes of the common core and also make more use of personalized news offers.

The results are discussed in the light of media diversity and recent advances in public sphere research.

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about algorithmic news dissemination. While, currently, much attention is reserved for the role of platforms as information gatekeepers in relationship to the news media, maybe their ability to enable or hinder the audience in discovering and distributing news content is part of what really characterizes their influence on the market place of ideas.

The study aims to analyse annual reports of the non-financial European firms listed at the EURO STOXX 50 index over the period of 2007 and 2011.

This study intends to address two main issues: to what extent the country-level institutional forces compel (directly) firm's risk reporting (RR) behaviour and in which way these country-level institutional forces moderate the relationship between RR and firm-level characteristics.

Main findings indicate that, during this period, the European listed companies disclosed more risk information on a voluntary basis (such as operational and strategic risks) and with better informative content (more forward-looking and focused on positive news). Consistent with institutional theory, findings confirm that the country-level institutional forces explain variations on RR. Additionally, it also indicates that the relationship between RR and leveraged firms is weaker among countries with stronger institutional forces. These findings have several implications for investors and regulators in Europe basically in helping achieve efficiency in investment decisions and to stimulate further efforts to improve RR regulations.

This study makes two major contributions. First, it extends Elshandidy's et al. (2015) work by using other country-level institutional forces that capture the efficacy of corporate boards, the protection of minority shareholders' interests, country's level of democracy, law enforcement mechanisms and press freedom. Second, it uses firms that are considered as a blue-chip representation of super-sector leaders in the Eurozone (but from different institutional contexts). This research setting can be more insightful in shedding some light towards our understanding on how these leading firms can promote innovative and high quality level of RR and how country-level driving forces influence these variables.

The study aims at examining the level of financial transparency of local governments in a sub-Saharan African country and how financial transparency is affected by democracy in the sub-region.

The study applied a panel regression model to data collected from public accounts of 43 local authorities in Ghana from 1995 to 2014. Financial transparency was measured using a transparency index developed based on the Transparency Index of Transparency International and the information disclosure requirements of public sector entities under the International Public Sector Accounting Standards.

The study finds the low level of financial transparency among the local governments in Ghana, creating information asymmetry within the agency framework of governance. Further, evidence from the study suggests a strong positive relationship between democracy and financial transparency in the local government.

Deepening democracy is necessary for promoting the culture of financial transparency in local governance in sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps in entire Africa.

There is a need for the local governments and governments, in general, to deepen democracy to ensure proactive disclosure of the financial information to the citizens to improve participation trust and eventual reduction in corruption. Effective implementation of the Right to Information Act would also help promote financial and other forms of transparency in the sub-region.

The study contributes to the public sector accounting literature by linking democracy to financial transparency in the local government. Hitherto, studies concentrate on how entity level variables impact on the level of financial information flow in the local government without considering the broader governance infrastructure within which local governments operate.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the work practices of Big 4 firms in Bangladesh with the aim of exploring the extent to which global professional service firms (GPSFs) can be thought of as being genuinely “global”.

Interviews were undertaken with the vast majority of Big 4 partners in Bangladesh. These interviews explored a number of themes related to the professional service work context in Bangladesh and the relationship between local and global firms.

The central finding of this paper is that although the Big 4 have a long-established presence in Bangladesh, local societal factors heavily influence the realities of work for accountants there. In most cases the Big 4 firms establish correspondent firms (instead of full member firms) in Bangladesh and tend to offer restricted service lines. Additionally, the paper identifies professional, commercial and cultural barriers to greater Big 4 involvement in the local market. Conceptually, the chief contribution of this paper is to explore how the effects of globalizing capitalism and standardised “best practices” in global professional service work are mediated through the societal effects of Bangladeshi society, resulting in the Big 4 having only a tentative presence in the Bangladeshi market.

The findings cast doubt on the extent to which self-styled GPSFs are truly “global” in nature. Future work examining the Big 4, or accounting more generally, in the context of globalization, would do well to pay greater attention to the experience of professionals in emerging markets.

Whilst there has been much work looking at accounting and accountants in the context of globalization, this work has tended to privilege “core” western empirical settings. Very little is known about professional service firms in “peripheral” emerging markets. Furthermore, this study extends the application of the system, society and dominance framework by mapping the interactions and dynamics of these three sources of influence in the setting of PSFs.

This paper investigates the determinants of subjective well-being in Europe using the European Living, Working and COVID-19 (ELWC) Survey carried out by Eurofound (2021). Socio-demographics characteristics, employment status, measures of economic distress, inequality and work life balance are considered. Particular attention is paid to how quality of government support (QGS), that considers the dimensions of good governance such as integrity, fairness, reliability, responsiveness and influences subjective mental well-being (WHO-5) through the mediation of trust in other people and in institutions.

To this end, the authors estimate a moderated mediation model for analysing the indirect role of QGS on WHO-5 through institutional trust and trust in people.

The results support the hypothesis that the reduction in WHO-5 in the European population during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID--19), particularly marked in the 18–34 age group, is related to the perceived inadequacy of government interventions in managing economic and social uncertainty through supportive measures. This outcome is also due to reduced trust in institutions and other people, as both are significant mediators that reinforce the impact of public support on WHO-5.

Government should pay greater attention to this relationship amongst good governance, trust and mental health of citizens because a healthy human capital is a significant factor for the long-run economic growth, in a special way when the authors refer to the young workforce with a greater life expectancy.

In the literature, the role of trust as a mediator has been analysed in the relationship between individual economic situations and subjective well-being before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no studies have examined the role of perceived QGS on subjective mental well-being using the mediating and backing effects of trust in people and institutions.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-08-2022-0549.