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This paper focuses on the market for sustainability assurance (SA) services. The aims of this paper are to review academic efforts in the field, highlighting ground covered, provide a comprehensive understanding of the market for this new form of assurance and identify potential avenues for future research.

These objectives were met through a review of 50 academic journal articles identified as relevant to the SA field.

SA is a voluntary exercise in most jurisdictions, and engagements are structured to meet the needs (demands) of the market and the capabilities (supply) of assurance providers. This has given rise to a diverse landscape with engagements of differing scopes and objectives. From a demand side, the literature reveals a number of drivers (both at the macro and micro levels) and inhibitors for SA services. From a supply side, the literature sheds light on the assurance providers operating in the market and the standards they use when undertaking SA services. These practitioners include accountants (the big four) who use ISAE3000 and non-accountants who prefer AA1000AS. The review reveals five broad areas which have been the focus of existing studies. Finally, the study identifies seven avenues for future research in the SA field.

The findings of this paper will prove valuable to practitioners as it will assist them in understanding this new form of assurance. Researchers will benefit from an understanding on ground covered and future avenues for research.

The study seeks to address the research question: “How can Gadamerian and Ricoeurian hermeneutics be operationalized in an interpretive accounting research project”? The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to review the key hermeneutic concepts of philosophers Gadamer and Ricoeur; and second, to share insights from the researcher’s experience of applying Gadamerian and Ricoeurian hermeneutics to an interpretive accounting research project.

The paper draws on the extant literature and the researcher’s own experience using hermeneutics theory in an interpretive accounting research project involving in-depth interviews with organisational managers.

The process of interpretation is described using the core concept of the hermeneutic circle where the reader and the text engage in dialogue. The readers’ pre-understandings play a key role in this dialogue and assist in drawing meaning from the text. However, it is necessary for the reader to adopt a critically reflexive approach remaining alert for both unproductive pre-understandings and hidden power structures and ideologies in the text being interpreted. Each reading of a text involves the completion of one cycle of the hermeneutic circle in which the reader transitions from pre-configuration to configuration and ultimately re-configuration concluding with the reader acquiring new horizons of understanding. The researcher’s experience of applying hermeneutic theory to an interpretive accounting research project are reflected on and nine lessons are offered.

These insights will prove valuable to interpretive researchers within the social sciences, including accounting and management studies, as well as those working in the natural sciences.

The aims of this study are to review the literature examining the arguments for and against the telephonic qualitative research interviews, to develop criteria for assessing when the use of the telephone is suitable in qualitative research and if suitable to offer detailed strategies for the effective use of this data collection instrument.

The study is a thematic analysis of the literature, informed by the researchers’ experiences using the telephone, computer-based audio and face-to-face interviews for an accounting research project involving 50 semi-structured interviews with managers.

The study identifies five criteria to determine the suitability of using the telephone in qualitative research interviews. In addition, the study offers a set of detailed strategies on what to do before, during and after a telephonic qualitative research interview.

The study can assist qualitative researchers in deciding when to use the telephone and how to use it effectively.

The study builds on the limited prior research and provides a more complete list of strategies on the effective use of the telephone in qualitative social sciences research. These strategies are a synthesis of existing studies and observations drawn from the author's study, which examines the work of organisational managers. In comparison, prior studies have been based on research projects that explored sensitive personal issues and emotive experiences not always related to managerial work.

This study aims to examine why tax reforms fail and explores how tax collection can be improved within a developing country context.

Data comprise 28 semi-structured interviews with taxpayers, tax experts and tax authority personnel based in Pakistan. The results are analysed using a combined lens of taxpayer trust and tax agencies’ capabilities.

Tax reforms failed to build taxpayers’ trust and tax agencies’ capabilities. Building trust is challenging and demands extensive ongoing engagement with taxpayers while yielding gradual permanent results. This requires enhancing confidence in government; educating taxpayers; removing complexities; introducing transparency and accountability in tax agencies’ operations and the tax system; promoting procedural and distributive justice; and reversing perceptions of corruption through reconciliation and stakeholder inclusivity. Developing tax agencies’ capabilities requires upgrading outdated technologies, systems and processes; implementing governance and organisational reforms; introducing an oversight board; and recruiting and training skilled professionals.

The findings can assist policymakers and tax collection authorities in understanding why tax reforms fail and identifying potential solutions.

This study contributes to the emerging literature by exploring tax administration failures in developing countries. It contributes to the literature by engaging stakeholders to understand why reforms fail and potential solutions to stimulate tax revenues.

The purpose of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis of the short- and long-term financial strategies to augment SMEs’ performance in emerging markets. Using a resource-based theoretic perspective; the analysis has investigated the mediating role of distinctive management competencies (DMCs) between efficient financial strategies and SMEs’ business growth.

The empirical data were drawn from a cross-industrial panel of 273 SMEs from Spain and 224 SMEs from Pakistan across all manufacturing sectors over the period of 2006-2013. Multivariate tests are conducted to estimate the impact of efficient financial strategies on SMEs’ performance. The advanced mediation version of Kenny and Judd (2013) is used to test mediation confirmation of DMCs; while Sobel test is applied to examine robustness of mediation results.

The robustness check of 497 privately held SMEs confirmed that practicing efficient financial strategies has significant influence on SMEs’ performance. Stimulatingly, mediating effect of DMCs, that are used for executives’ prudent financial decisions have been traced in both respondent countries. Based on the findings, it is argued that efficient financial strategies realistically translate into DMCs, which taken together are likely to lead more effective and significant to improve SMEs’ performance.

The results suggest that power of distinctive managerial decisions is a crucial factor in the employment process besides efficient financial strategies identified in previous studies. The results of this study are of great importance to managers and major stakeholders, such as investors, creditors, financial analysts and policymakers, to inflate their efforts to reduce the incidence of business failure and for survival and growth of SMEs.

The paper raises a new theoretic explanation by determining the intervening role of DMCs in translating EFS into improved SMEs’ performance, thereby supplementing the extant theories.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the influence of perceived organizational support on employees’ performance in information technology (IT) firms in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Organizational support is critical as it ensures support given by the organization to workers and to complete one’s job proficiently and effectively.

Data were collected from IT firm employees through a self-administered questionnaire survey where a total of 400 questionnaires were distributed, i.e. 200 in each country’s IT firms. A total of 383 completed questionnaires were received (190 from Pakistan and the remaining 183 from Saudi Arabia) representing a response rate of 95%. The hypothesis was tested using confirmatory factor analyzes and direct relations were confirmed using AMOS v24.

The results indicate that perceived organizational support and affective commitment have a significant positive impact on employee performance. Findings of the study show that perceived organizational support and affective commitment directly and significantly correlated (r = 0.439**; p < 0.05) (r = 0.489**; p < 0.05) with employee performance. On other hand, results of structural equation modeling indicate that perceived organizational support and affective commitment have a significant and positive impact (ß = 0.284; p < 0.01) and (ß = 0.370; p < 0.01) on employees’ performance. Moreover, affective commitment partially mediates the relationship between perceived organizational support and employee performance.

The outcomes are not generalized, as the researcher analyzed working employees in the IT firms in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The relationship between perceived organizational support and employees’ performance may be checked in a longitudinal study. If all items are considered because of the ambiguity of human feeling and acknowledgment, it is hard to precisely assess employees’ performance and their needs. This research proposes a straightforward and handy model that supports managers to feature the most powerful factors in building up their employees’ performance.

This study proposes managers to give chances to proficient advancement, improved occupation and satisfying the necessities identified through deference, mindfulness and endorsement. Furthermore, they ought to make more good working conditions, for example, preparing chances to support workers in their wants for self-improvement and accomplishment. The research additionally recommends recording the unmistakable standard operation procedure to clarify the understanding of the employees. In addition, managers ought to invest sensible energy with their front-line employees through socialization and training. These efforts could limit fatigue work, enhance organizational duty and performance.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the dynamic causal relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI), gross domestic product (GDP) and trade openness (TO) on a set of five selected South Asian countries.

This study used newly developed bootstrap auto regressive distributed lags (ARDL) cointegration test to examine the long-run relationship among FDI, GDP and TO for selected South Asian countries for 1975–2016.

The economic growth (EG) is significantly related to TO for Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka and the expansion of TO is crucial for growth in these countries. The results show that all countries (except Bangladesh) found the existence of long-run cointegration between FDI, GDP and TO, whereas FDI is a dependent variable. These results concluded that FDI and TO are contributing to EG in these selected countries.

This study is one of the first attempts to investigate the causal relationship and address the short and long dynamic among FDI, GDP and TO regarding five south Asian countries such as Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the studies of momentum and transmission of heat on mixed convection boundary layer Darcy‒Forchheimer flow of Casson liquid over a linear extending surface in a porous medium. The belongings of homogeneous‒heterogeneous retorts are also affianced. The mechanism of heat transmission is braced out in the form of Cattaneo‒Christov heat flux. Appropriate restorations are smeared to revolutionize coupled nonlinear partial differential equations conforming to momentum, energy and concentration of homogeneous‒heterogeneous reaction equations into coupled nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs).

Numerical elucidations of the transmogrified ODEs are accomplished via a dexterous and trustworthy scheme, namely optimal homotopy analysis method. The convergence of planned scheme is exposed with the support of error table.

The exploration of mixed convection Darcy‒Forchheimer MHD boundary layer flow of incompressible Casson fluid by the linear stretched surface with Cattaneo‒Christov heat flux model and homogeneous‒heterogeneous reactions is checked in this research. Imitations of the core subsidized flow parameters on velocity, temperature and concentration of homogeneous‒heterogeneous reactions solutions are conscripted. From the recent deliberation, remarkable annotations are as follows: non-dimensional velocities in x_a− and x_b− directions shrink, whereas the non-dimensional temperature upsurges when the Casson fluid parameter ameliorates. Similar impact of Casson fluid parameter, magnetic parameter, mixed convection parameter, inertia parameter, and porosity parameter is observed for both the components of velocity field. An escalation in magnetic parameter shows the opposite attitude of temperature field as compared with velocity profile. Similar bearing of Casson fluid parameter is observed for both temperature and velocity fields. Enhancement in concentration rate is observed for growing values of (N_s) and (Sc), and it reduces for (k₁). Both temperature and concentration of homogeneous‒heterogeneous upturn by mounting the magnetic parameter. Demeanor of magnetic parameter, Casson fluid parameter, heat generation parameter is opposite to that of Prandtl number and thermal relaxation parameter on temperature profile.

In many industrial and engineering applications, the current exploration is utilized for the transport of heat and mass in any system.

As far as novelty of this work is concerned this is an innovative study and such analysis has not been considered so far.

Islamic finance and Halal product sectors are thriving successfully. This chapter is a general review of the perception of Asian consumers on Islamic finance and Halal sectors in the global Halal economy.

The first section will briefly describe the Halal concept in both Islamic finance and Halal industries, and the growth of both sectors in Asian countries. The second part highlights the review of Asian consumers’ perception towards Islamic finance products and Halal products.

The review found that the consumers’ perception towards the Islamic finance products and Halal products is distinctive. This is due to the diversity of Asian countries in terms of geography, religion, culture, ethnic, school of thoughts (madzahib), income per capita and government’s involvement.

The third part of the chapter concentrates on planning towards Halal marketing, which involves the move and future challenges in different layers of industries to gear up and strengthen the Halal economy.