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This paper aims to offer insight into how strategies within the accounting profession, which has been becoming more global, might be changed by the recent outbreak of the Second Cold War between the West and the Rest of the World.

We explore the strategies of those who called themselves “Confucian accountants” in China, a country which has recently discouraged its state-owned enterprises from using the services of the Big 4. We do this by employing qualitative research methods, including reflexive photo interviews, in which Big-4 accountants, recognised as the most Westernised accounting actors in China, and Confucian accountants are asked to take and explain photographs representing their professional lives. Bourdieu’s notions of “economy of practices” and “vision-of-division strategy” are drawn upon to understand who the Confucian accountants are and what they do strategically in their pursuit of a higher revenue stream and improved social standing in the Chinese social space.

The homegrown Confucian accountants share cultural-cognitive characteristics with neighbouring social actors, such as their clients and government officials, who have been inculcated with Confucianism and the state’s cultural confidence policy in pursuit of a “socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics”. Those accountants try to enhance their social standing and revenue stream by strategically demonstrating their difference from Big-4 accountants. For this purpose, they wear Confucian clothes, have Confucian props in their office, employ Confucian phrases in their everyday conversations, use Confucian business cards and construct and maintain guanxi with government officials and clients.

This paper is the first attempt to explore Confucian accountants’ strategies for increasing their revenue and social standing at the start of the Second Cold War.

This paper aims to seek accounting graduates' perspectives on the demand for accounting in their workplaces, on the gaps in accounting education (AE), and on the future of the accounting profession, inspired by the new definition of accounting proposed by Carnegie et al. (2021, 2022, 2023a), to adopt a strong focus on sustainable development goals (SDGs) in AE to inculcate tertiary students with the skills that lead them to approach and apply accounting as a multidimensional technical, social and moral (TSM) practice.

The online qualitative survey was distributed to 100 randomly selected New Zealand accounting graduates in order to gather insights from their workplaces. All responses from the 30 graduates who completed the questionnaire underwent qualitative analysis using Leximancer software, which automatically identifies high-level concepts and insights and offers interactive visualizations without bias.

The graduates’ experiences underscore the ongoing significance of technical skills in the New Zealand workplace. They emphasized the lack of non-technical skills training, stressed the necessity of diverse business knowledge and highlighted the importance of automation and digital skills.

The implications for transforming AE involve adopting an activist approach to integrate a TSM perspective into teaching and learning and being open to an interdisciplinary approach to expose tertiary students to the impact of accounting on sustainable development, including collaboration with professional bodies for real-world experiences.

The importance of engaging with SDG-related narratives is stressed to stimulate further discussion, debate and research aimed at identifying practical solutions for AE as a facilitator for SDGs in realizing accounting as a TSM practice.

This paper aims to critically compare the impact and preparedness for practice of two types of mental health nurse training in the UK. One being a hospital-based apprenticeship model from the 1980s; the other a university-based and more academically focussed approach from this millennium.

This autoethnographic reflective commentary describes and reviews the effectiveness of two training curricula for Registered Mental Nurse (RMN) training. The first being the certificate-level 1983 syllabus of the UK Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting, which was replaced in the late 1990s by diploma and degree-level Project 2000 training of the General Nursing Council. Using a reflective narrative approach to describe the lived experience of two qualified nurses, it compares, reviews and critiques both initiatives.

The author/researchers found both benefits and negatives inherent in each model. These were grouped into five key headings, which are a sense of belonging/identity; exposure to clinical practice; differences in training modality; development of clinical management skills and clinical preparedness; and academic merit. The older curriculum lacked an academic or research base, whereas the more recent approach encouraged and enhanced this element. However, with regard to preparing the clinician/registered nurse to feel confident in addressing a range of clinical and managerial challenges, the older style training seems to deliver better outcomes. They conclude that a move towards a “middle ground” between the two models may be of benefit to future RMN preparation.

This study reports on the experience of two registered nurses. Therefore, the sample size is small. However, autoethnography is acknowledged as an effective means of delivering qualitative research; in addition, the authors access and use material from the wider literature to triangulate and critique their approach. This paper adds to the literature but also allows for duplication by others to further test the findings.

This type of study provides an opportunity for others to review, compare and contrast nursing or other multi-discipline changes in training/curriculum. The research method is one that is transferable and can be used within areas of practice, which have resource limitations. It provides an opportunity to replicate it in other services or jurisdictions.

Nursing in the UK has experienced significant change over the past four decades. For RMNs, the move from hospitals into the community has been transformational. In addition, the influence of higher academic standards and the influence of the recent pandemic have challenged the profession and individuals within it. This study demonstrates positive and negative elements of the dilemma faced by nurses and offers a further contribution to this area.

There are a number of academic papers, media stories, statutory reports and guidance that explore the impact of changes within nurse training. This paper uses a first person autoethnographic study of the impact and effectiveness of these changes at a human level, the nurse on the ground. It uses the ward medicine keys as the vehicle to represent the huge responsibility that newly qualified nurses must face; this is not widely represented elsewhere in the literature!

In 2000, Cañibano et al. published a literature review entitled “Accounting for Intangibles: A Literature Review”. This paper revisits the conclusions drawn in that paper. We also discuss the intervening developments in scholarly research, standard setting and practice over the past 20+ years to outline the future challenges for research into accounting for intangibles.

We conducted a literature review to identify past developments and link the findings to current accounting standard-setting developments to inform our view of the future.

Current intangibles accounting practices are conservative and unlikely to change. Accounting standard setters are more interested in how companies report and disclose the value of intangibles rather than changing how they are determined. Standard setters are also interested in accounting for new forms of digital assets and reporting economic, social, governance and sustainability issues and how these link to financial outcomes. The IFRS has released complementary sustainability accounting standards for disclosing value creation in response to the latter. Therefore, the topic of intangibles stretches beyond merely how intangibles create value but how they are also part of a firm’s overall risk and value creation profile.

There is much room academically, practically, and from a social perspective to influence the future of accounting for intangibles. Accounting standard setters and alternative standards, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and European Union non-financial and sustainability reporting directives, are competing complementary initiatives.

Our results reveal a window of opportunity for accounting scholars to research and influence how intangibles and other non-financial and sustainability accounting will progress based on current developments.

The paper aims to carry out a comprehensive literature mapping to synthesise and descriptively analyse the research trends of biodiversity accounting, providing implications for managers and policymakers, whilst also outlining a future agenda for scholars.

A bibliometric analysis is carried out by adopting the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses protocol for searching and selecting the scientific contributions to be analysed. Citation analysis is used to map a current research front and a bibliographic coupling is conducted to detect the connection networks in current literature.

Biodiversity accounting is articulated in five thematic clusters (sub-areas), such as “Natural resource management”, “Biodiversity economic evaluation”, “Natural capital accounting”, “Biodiversity accountability” and “Biodiversity disclosure and reporting”. Critical insights emerge from the content analysis of these sub-areas.

The analysis of the thematic evolution of the biodiversity accounting literature provides useful insights to inform both practice and research and infer implications for managers, policymakers and scholars by outlining three main areas of intervention, i.e. adjusting evaluation tools, integrating ecological knowledge and establishing corporate social legitimacy.

Currently, the level of biodiversity reporting is pitifully low. Therefore, organisations should properly manage biodiversity by integrating diverse and sometimes competing forms of knowledge for the stable and resilient flow of ecosystem services for future generations.

This paper not only updates and enriches the current state of the art but also identifies five thematic areas of the biodiversity accounting literature for theoretical and practical considerations.

The Agenda 2030 have drawn a lot of interest in academic studies. This necessitates accounting research on nonfinancial reporting and sustainable development goals (SDG) disclosure in an under-investigated context. The purpose of this study is to examine the contribution of nonfinancial reporting practices to SDG disclosure by 120 companies from 12 African nations for the years 2016 to 2020.

The study uses a content analysis to gauge how much information are disclosed on SDG by the selected firms. The authors carried out content analysis using the global reporting initiative frameworks to determine the level of SDG disclosure across the companies by examining the selected nonfinancial reports.

Sustainability reports account for 50% of such SDG disclosure making it the highest. This is followed by corporate social responsibility report which accounts for 23%, while environmental reports account for 20% and Chairman’s statement accounts for 7%. The result is expected since corporate sustainability report has been the major channel for disclosing activities relating to social and governance issues in recent times.

The results of this study demand that corporate entities in Africa take responsibility for their actions and exert significant effort to achieve the SDG. While the government has the main responsibility, corporate entities must support the SDG to be realized.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the few studies that examines nonfinancial reporting practices with a focus on SDG disclosure. In addition, this study offers novel insight into how accounting research contributes to nonfinancial reporting practices and SDG disclosure.

This paper is a systematic review that aims to collect and review studies on library users’ smartphone use to access library services and resources. Another objective of the systematic review is to identify the challenges and benefits (reported in the reviewed literature) regarding using smartphones to access library resources and services.

The researchers searched the relevant literature from four databases: Scopus, Library and Information Science Technology Abstracts, Web of Science and Google Scholar. A total of 20 studies were selected, out of the 2,416 retrieved titles, for review in light of the PRISMA guidelines. This systematic review also used the quality assessment guidelines of Boynton and Greenhalgh (2004), to analyze the quality of the publications reviewed in the study.

The results highlighted that library users used smartphones to access a wide range of library services, including directions help, fresh arrivals, library news notifications, room and course reservations, library account management, circulation and the Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC). The libraries offered their users multiple mobile-supported services related to searching for resources and account management. The challenges, as well as the benefits associated with the use of smartphones for accessing and using library services, have also been reported. Most reviewed studies scored high (9–13 out of 13) in the quality assessment.

This research has some limitations. First, only the English-language research studies were included in the review. Therefore, it is possible that a significant study conducted in a language other than English was missed. Second, researchers performed a comprehensive search to collect the maximum number of relevant studies; there is a chance that an important study was missed during the search and retrieval process.

This research fills the research gap by advancing the literature on mobile device use for accessing library services and resources. The findings might help library professionals understand the current trends in accessing library services through smartphones. This also helps them plan the latest mobile-supported library services to meet the ever-changing demands of library users. Policymakers could also benefit from this research, as it could help them understand current trends in library services and facilitate them in making appropriate policies, funding allocations and implementing mobile services in libraries.

The researchers found that the use of mobile phones to access library services and resources impacts society in a discernible way. It provides a rich environment as users access a wide range of library services, including directions help, fresh arrivals, library news notifications, room and course reservations, library account management, circulation and the OPAC without any hindrances or hurdles.

This is the first review, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, that has systematically collected and reviewed the literature on the topic under study. This study also shares the theoretical and practical implications of the research and future research directions for researchers.

This study investigated the visibility of carbon emissions allowances accounting in the financial reports of 32 clean development mechanism (CDM) projects in the UAE to uncover the obstacles to setting consistent standards for carbon emission accounting. As carbon emissions are monetized as credits, consistent accounting standards can aid decision-makers in the development of carbon emission mitigation strategies.

This study used a grounded theoretical framework for exploring the terms used in the policy documents of international accounting bodies regarding accounting standards and guidelines for carbon emission credits. Raw qualitative data were gathered, and an inductive approach was used by analyzing documents from various sources using the qualitative data text analysis software QDA Miner 6.

The findings showed that the financial statement reports of the corporations did not include disclosure of the carbon credit account. This omission was due to the lack of global standardization of carbon credit accounts and emission allowance recognition. This may hinder the production of a comprehensive report containing accurate and valuable financial information relevant to all stakeholders.

The study is among the first to use a grounded theoretical framework to investigate whether corporations are applying common standards and guidelines for carbon emissions accounting.

This paper applies a stakeholder salience theoretical framework to facilitate the understanding of the roles salient stakeholders can have in the integration of education for sustainable development, one of the important Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), into Jordan’s university accounting education.

We used stakeholder salience theory to inform our study. This study adopted a qualitative research method. The study used semi-structured interviews to collect qualitative, open-ended data that explored the salient stakeholders’ thoughts, beliefs and feelings about their roles in influencing the integration of education for sustainable development into the Jordanian accounting curriculum.

The results indicate that education for sustainable development in accounting is important; however, most Jordanian salient stakeholders indicate their inability to integrate sustainable education into the accounting curriculum due to their lack of power to do so. The findings show that there is currently an inappropriate distribution of power, legitimacy and urgency amongst the salient stakeholders, who indicate that a progressive education solution is required in the critical area of education for sustainable development in accounting. This research indicates that a significant number of salient stakeholders would like the Jordanian government to provide power, legitimacy and urgency to enable accounting educators to become definite stakeholders as this will enable them to integrate sustainable education into the accounting curriculum.

The study is limited to Jordan only. The paper draws attention to the need for an appropriate distribution of power, legitimacy and urgency amongst salient stakeholders in Jordan.

This paper provides evidence that the salient stakeholders in this emerging economy want to make changes in their education system to address climate change concerns, an important SDG, through a better education curriculum for sustainable development in Jordanian universities.

Accounting educators should be given the power to make changes in the accounting curriculum, such as integrating education for sustainable development.

There is an inappropriate distribution of power, legitimacy and urgency amongst the Jordanian salient stakeholders and this imbalance hinders the integration of education for sustainable development into the accounting curriculum.

This study aims to investigate the adoption of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the new performance perspective in cities. It also aims to understand how accounting for SDGs begins in city administrations by following Power’s (2015) fourfold development schema composed of policy object formation, object elaboration, activity orchestration and practice stabilization.

Focusing on a network of cities coordinated by the Finnish local government association, we analyzed the six largest cities in Finland employing a holistic multiple case study strategy. Our data consisted of Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs), city strategies, budget plans, financial statements, as well as results of participant observations and semi-structured interviews with key individuals involved in accounting for SDGs.

We unveiled the SDG framework as an interpretive scheme through which cities glocalized sustainable development as a novel, simultaneously global and local, performance object. Integration of the new accounts in city management is necessary for these accounts to take life in steering the actions. By creating meaningful alignment and the ability to impact managerial practices, SDGs and VLRs have the potential to influence local actions. Our results indicate further institutionalization progress of sustainability as a performance object through SDG-focused work.

While prior research has focused mainly on general factors influencing the integration of the sustainability agenda, this study provides a novel perspective by capturing the process and demonstrating empirically how new accounts on SDGs are introduced and deployed in the strategic planning and management of local governments.