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This study aims to critically examine the effects of COVID-19 social discourses and policy decisions specifically on older adult volunteers in the UK, comparing the responses and their effects in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, providing perspectives on effects of policy changes designed to reduce risk of infection as a result of COVID-19, specifically on volunteer involvement of and for older adults, and understand, from the perspectives of volunteer managers, how COVID-19 restrictions had impacted older people’s volunteering and situating this within statutory public health policies.

The study uses a critical discourse approach to explore, compare and contrast accounts of volunteering of and for older people in policy, and then compare the discourses within policy documents with the discourses in personal accounts of volunteering in health and social care settings in the four nations of the UK. This paper is co-produced in collaboration with co-authors who have direct experience with volunteer involvement responses and their impact on older people.

The prevailing overall policy approach during the pandemic was that risk of morbidity and mortality to older people was too high to permit them to participate in volunteering activities. Disenfranchising of older people, as exemplified in volunteer involvement, was remarkably uniform across the four nations of the UK. However, the authors find that despite, rather than because of policy changes, older volunteers, as part of, or with the help of, volunteer involving organisations, are taking time to think and to reconsider their involvement and are renewing their volunteer involvement with associated health benefits.

Working with participants as co-authors helps to ensure the credibility of results in that there was agreement in the themes identified and the conclusions. A limitation of this study lies in the sampling method, as a convenience sample was used and there is only representation from one organisation in each of the four nations.

The paper combines existing knowledge about volunteer involvement of and for older adults.

The authors seek to analyze the impact of weak corporate governance by top executives of a firm on the firm's earnings reports. This research is meant to further emphasize the impact of co-opted executives on a firm, primarily through their impact on earnings management.

Using financial data from 11,473 firm-year observations, the authors utilize ordinary least squares (OLS), 2-stage IV regressions, propensity score matching (PSM) and entropy balancing to analyze the impact of a co-opted top management team on discretionary accruals and restatements.

The authors find empirical evidence that firms with weak corporate governance from top executives are more likely to manipulate reported earnings and have lower financial reporting quality. The authors also find that the effect of co-opted executives on earnings management is weaker when a chief executive officer's (CEO’s) incentives are not aligned with those of top executives, suggesting that executives prevent earnings management due to reputational concerns. Co-opted chief financial officers (CFOs) increase the magnitude of earnings management in a firm but are not solely responsible for the authors' results.

The authors' results suggest that the top executive team provides an important first defense in the prevention of earnings management and corporate wrongdoing. Co-option of the top executive team may be an important consideration when doing research into corporate governance.

This paper investigates the dynamics between state affect and trusting cognitive beliefs on post-adoptive information technology (IT) use behaviors in the form of intention to explore and deep structure usage. That state affect can influence behaviors is recognized in practice. In fact, some studies examine the impact of affective constructs, but the way state affect impacts how individuals use IT remains largely unexplored. The authors theorize that state affect, in the form of positive and negative affect, will influence trusting cognitive beliefs regarding an IT artifact (in terms of perceived helpfulness, capability and reliability) and, more importantly, directly influence intention to explore and deep structure usage.

The authors test the model using a sample of 357 IT users. Survey items were derived from established measures, and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Results of this study suggest that positive affect and negative affect impact trusting cognitive beliefs. Trusting cognitive beliefs positively impact intention to explore with an IT and deep structure usage of an IT. Even in the presence of trusting beliefs, though, positive affect directly impacts intention to explore. Positive affect and negative affect both also have various indirect, mediated effects on intention to explore and deep structure usage.

In order to maximize value from workplace IT, the results suggest managers foster an authentic, positive work environment in order to harness or redirect employees' emotional energies.

Drawing primarily on the Japanese context, this study aims to highlight this setting to emphasise the potential for tertiary-level self-access language centres to develop lifelong global citizenship, self-reflection and cross-cultural collaboration.

This inquiry calls on the community of practice approach to account for the shared interests motivating lifelong cross-cultural participation, the quality of social engagement between actors, and the material and cognitive tools called upon to realise global citizenship’s shared enterprise.

As argued here, embracing various cultures and inclusive participation can lead to a broader understanding of global citizenship, avoiding narrow-minded views of globalism through shared knowledge and critical practices. Further, self-access provides a cost-effective, technology-mediated alternative to bilateral student mobility, whereby digital community-building occasions cross-cultural practice that may be extended throughout a learner’s life, irrespective of their financial status or place of study.

This study is one of a select few drawing on the community of practice framework within the context of lifelong global citizenship. Nevertheless, such an approach remains primed for future development. With a social constructivist philosophy in view, the authors suggest complementary qualitative research approaches that highlight the socially situated nature of both disciplines.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better, empirically grounded and theoretically informed understanding of data analytics (DA) use and nonuse in accounting for decision-making. To that end, it explores the links between accounting logic, commercial logic and DA use in financial due diligence (FDD).

The paper reports the findings of a case study of DA use in the FDD practice of a Big Four accounting firm in Sweden (Pseudonym: DealCo). The primary data comprises semistructured interviews, observations and additional meetings. Institutional logics is mobilized as method theory.

First, accounting logic and commercial logic both drove and hindered DA use in DealCo’s FDD practice in different ways. Second, conflicting prescriptions for DA use existed mostly within commercial logic rather than between accounting logic and commercial logic. Third, accounting logic and commercial logic, as perceptual and conceptual filters, seemed to shape DealCo’s advisors’ understanding of DA and give rise to an efficiency-centric DA logic. This logic, in turn, as a high-level model of how to use DA in the context of FDD, governed DA use broadly.

The paper draws attention to direct and indirect links between accounting logic and commercial logic, on the one hand, and DA conceptions and use, on the other hand. It, thereby, advances prior theorization of DA use in accounting for decision-making.

In recent years, in research and policy circles, there is growing interest in the subject of speaking up (and silence) within the health sector, and there is a consensus that it is a major issue that needs to be addressed. However, there remain gaps in our knowledge and while scholars talk of a voice system – that is the existence of complementary voice channels designed to allow employees to speak up – empirical evidence is limited. We seek to explore the notion of a voice system in a healthcare organisation as comprising structures and cultures as seen from different stakeholder perspectives. What do they see and how do they behave and why? To what extent do the users see a voice system they can access and easily navigate?

Interviews and focus groups were conducted with a voice stakeholder group (e.g. designers of the system from senior management and HR, which comprised 23 staff members) as well as those who have to use the system, with 13 managers and 26 employees from three units within a metropolitan hospital: an oncology department, an intensive care unit and a community health service. Overall, a total of 62 staff members participated and the data were analysed using grounded theory to identify key themes.

This study revealed that although a plethora of formal voice structures existed, these were not always visible or accessible to staff, leading to confusion as to who to speak up to about which issues. Equally other avenues which were not designated voice platforms were used by employees to get their voices heard.

This papers looks at the voice system across the organisation rather than examining a specific scheme. In doing so it enables us to see the lived perceptions and experiences of potential users of these schemes and their awareness of the system as a whole.

This paper aims to investigate the association between negative tone in annual report narratives and future performance in the UK context. Under the principle-based approach in the UK, managers tend to bias the tone of narrative reports upward, as the reporting regime is more flexible than the rule-based approach in the USA. Consequently, any negative disclosure not mandated by regulators conveys credible information about a firm’s prospects.

This paper uses a sample of UK FTSE all-share non-financial companies from 2010 to 2019. The authors use the textual-analysis approach based on Loughran and McDonald (2011)’s wordlist (LM) to measure the negative tone in UK annual reports.

The results show a significant negative association between negative tone and future performance. Moreover, our further analyses suggest that only the negativity in the executive section of the annual disclosures correlates significantly with future performance. In summary, this study suggests that negativity does matter under the principle-based approach and can be used as an indicator of future performance.

In contrast to the literature arguing that only positivity has the power to affect a firm’s outcomes under the principle-based approach, the authors provide new empirical evidence suggesting that negativity also matters within the UK context and can be used as an indicator for future performance. Also, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to identify which section of the annual report is more informative about a firm’s future performance.

This chapter is dedicated to understanding the idea of international as a key notion to the development of globalisation and to promoting the rescaling of spaces and subjects in contemporary higher education. The author discusses the concept of scale as a performative device that activates the capacities of bodies. Instead of seeing scale as a naturalised and hierarchical structure of spatial distribution, the author understands it as an ensemble of discourses and practices that produce scalar effects. Globalisation uses scale to promote the idea that subjects would become ‘international’ by being linked to privileged spaces and bodies in the Global North. In this sense, globalisation is not merely about nodes where certain flows converge. Rather, the author understands it as the political conditions that control and constrain the space for certain flows to occur and not others. Using assemblage analysis, the author presents and analyses three scenes taken from his ethnographic records that have as a guiding line the materialisation of the international. These scenes report the experience of being a Latin American doctoral student attending a congress in the United States, a tense situation experienced at a Chilean university academic event, and the unpretentious manifestation of an elaborate idea of internationality from a personal experience of a trip to India. The results point to three elaborations of the international: an optimistic view of a shared world, a geopolitical internationality and the production of a global corporeality.

This study explores the work practices of managers who increased working from home during the pandemic to determine what, if any, impact there was on the conditions for vertical leadership development.

The project utilized a survey approach. Each of the participants completed an anonymous online questionnaire using Google Forms. The questionnaire included four sections. The first section included informed consent and required participants to agree before completing the questionnaire. Participants provided general demographic information in the second section, including gender, age, race, job title, company size, average project team size and industry. The third section asked if there had been any change in their work location following the pandemic. The last section asked participants about their work practices.

This study demonstrates that managers continued to be engaged in vertical leadership development activities while working from home. It also suggests that managers faced challenges working from home following the COVID-19 pandemic, which were prime vertical leadership development opportunities.

To capitalize on these opportunities, organizations can more intentionally support the development of their remote staff.

This study aims to provide insights into US and Australian analysts' views regarding the relative importance of disclosing the direct method (DM) or indirect method (IM) statement of cash flows and forecasting firm performance.

Evidence is collected from responses to 104 surveys and 52 interviews completed by US and Australian analysts from 2017 to 2022. The survey and interview questions are developed with reference to the literature.

US and Australian analysts believe that the DM format provides incremental benefits compared to the IM for (1) confirming the reliability of earnings; (2) improving earnings confidence; (3) more accurate ex ante forecasts of operating cash flow and earnings; and (4) identifying opportunistic accruals manipulation. Analysts view that DM disclosure can lower firm-level cost of equity, although US interviewees more uniformly expect lower costs of equity under DM disclosure when firms yield low earnings quality. DM disclosure is also more important during unstable economic periods, as proxied by COVID-19.

Limited research currently exists regarding disclosure of the DM or IM and its impact on analysts' forecasting accuracy, earnings quality, economic uncertainty and cost of equity. Previous research has relied on archival research to examine differences between the DM and IM methods and are limited by data availability. Our findings are particularly relevant to the US market with few US firms reporting the DM format.