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This study aims to prove the complexity of the relationship between CSR and financial performance (FP) and to decompose the complexity of the relationship using neo-institutional theory.

This research employs a meta-analysis that integrates 55 various contexts studied between 1998 and 2017 using correlation coefficient as the effect size.

This study proves that the nature of the relationship between CSR and FP is complex and suggests that the analysis of the relationship between the two variables includes institutional factors to produce generalizable conclusions. Country characteristics, forms and dimensions of CSR, CSR measurements and FP measurements explain the complexity of the relationship between CSR and FP.

Future research is expected to include industry characteristics and the corporate governance model in the analysis of the relationship between CSR and FP. Differences in industry characteristics affect the selection of CSR forms and dimensions, bringing it the potential to influence the relationship between CSR and FP. The corporate governance model adopted by developing countries and developed countries also has the potential to be an institutional factor to influence the relationship between CSR and FP.

This research proves that the complexity of the relationship between CSR and FP is nature given. This research explores the factors causing the complexity of the relationship using neo-institutional theory, which, to the author's knowledge, has not been done by other researchers.

The purpose of this study is to situate information and communications technology (ICT) “transparency reports” within the theoretical framework of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting. The self-denominated transparency report serves a dual purpose of highlighting an ICT company’s socially responsible behavior while also holding government agencies accountable for surveillance and requests for user data. Drawing on legitimacy theory, neo-institutional theory and stakeholder theory, this exploratory study examines how ICT companies are implementing industry-specific voluntary disclosures as a form of CSR.

A content analysis of ICT voluntary nonfinancial reporting (N = 88) was used to identify motivating principles, the company positioning to stakeholders, the relevant publics and intended audience of these disclosures and the communication strategy used to engage primary stakeholders.

Key findings suggest that most ICT companies used transparency reporting to engage consumers/users as their primary stakeholders and most used a stakeholder information strategy. A majority of ICT companies signaled value-driven motives in their transparency reports while also positioning the company to stakeholders as a protector of user data and advocate for consumer rights.

This study enriches the literature on CSR communication strategies and reporting practices by extending it to an underdeveloped topic of study: novel voluntary disclosures as CSR activities of prominent ICT companies (i.e. “Big Tech”). These polyphonic reports reflect varied motives, varied positioning and varied stakeholders. For market-leading companies, transparency reporting can serve to legitimize existing market power. And for midsize and emerging companies, transparency reporting can be used to signal adherence to industry norms – set by market-leading companies.

In identifying both the topics of interest and key limitations of the extant organizational security research, both opportunities for future research as well as some underlying challenges for conducting this research may be revealed.

To identify the leading organizational cybersecurity research topics of interest and their key limitations, the author conducted a topic modeling analysis of the organizational level studies published in the Association for Information Systems (AIS) senior scholars' “basket of eight journals” (Association for Information Systems, 2022) over the past five years.

Leading topics include (1) organizational security research concerns governance and strategic level decision-making and their role in shaping organizational security successes and failures, (2) cybercriminals and organizations' ability to monitor and detect them from both within and outside the firm; (3) cost, liability and security negligence, (4) organizations' innovation dispositions for security products and services and (5) organizational breach response efficacy; while key limitations of this study include the following: (1) scholars' ability to propose and assess strategic and operational level threat response recommendations, (2) their understanding how influence is formed and maintained among employees and groups and (3) their measurement instruments and models.

Organizations remained plagued by an ever-emerging set of threats to the security of their digital and informational assets. New threats are regularly discovered and remedies to existing threats are continually proven ineffective against these new threats. Providing an orientation to the current research on organizational security can help advance their security efforts.

This paper undertakes a structured literature review to analyse the literature on performance management and measurement (PMM) in universities over the last four decades. Over that time, PMM has emerged as an influential force in universities that impacts their operations and redefines their identity.

A structured literature review approach was used to analyse a sample of articles on PMM research from a broad range of disciplines over four decades. This was undertaken to understand the impacts of PMM practices on universities, highlight changes over time and point to avenues for future research.

The analysis highlights the fact that research on PMM in universities has grown significantly over the 40 years studied. We provide an overview of published articles over four decades regarding content, themes, theories, methods and impacts. We provide an empirical basis for discussing past, present and future university PMM research. The future research avenues offer multiple provocations for scholars and policymakers, for instance, PMM implementation strategies and relationships with various government programs and external evaluation and the role of different actors, particularly academics, in shaping PMM systems.

Unlike a traditional literature review, the structured literature review method can develop insights into how the field has changed over time and highlight possible future research. The sample for this literature review differs from previous reviews in covering a broad range of disciplines, including accounting.

This study examines whether and how a client's business strategy can affect the relationship between auditor characteristics and financial reporting quality.

In this study, auditor industry specialization and tenure were used as proxies for auditor characteristics. The client business strategy was measured using the resource allocation index method. Finally, discretionary accruals are used to assess financial reporting quality. This study includes 1,450 firm-year observations and 145 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) over a ten-year period from 2011 to 2020. The research hypotheses were analyzed using a multivariate regression model and panel data.

The results show that auditor industry specialization increases financial reporting quality. This relationship improves when the client's business strategy deviates from the industry–normal strategy. The research findings state that auditor tenure has a positive association with financial reporting quality, and this relationship is strengthened when the company's business strategy deviates from the normal industry strategy.

The findings of this study provide important evidence for investors, firm management, and auditing firms. Investors must consider the auditor characteristics when selecting companies listed on the TSE. Managers of Iranian companies are advised to consider the auditor's characteristics when choosing an audit firm to increase financial reporting quality. Audit firms should evaluate their business strategies in audit planning to increase the quality of financial reporting.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study to examine the relationship between auditor characteristics and the financial reporting quality in the emerging capital market by considering the clients' business strategy.

The purpose of this polyphonic paper is to report on interdisciplinary discussions on the state-of-the-art and future of public sector accounting research (PSAR). The authors hope to enliven the debates of the past and future developments in terms of context, themes, theories, methods and impacts in the field of PSAR by the exchanges they include here.

This polyphonic paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach. It brings into conversation ideas, views and approaches of several scholars on the actual and future developments of PSAR in various contexts, and explores potential implications.

This paper has brought together scholars from a plurality of disciplines, research methods and geographical areas, showing at the same time several points of convergence on important future themes (such as accounting as a mean for public, accounting, hybridity and value pluralism) and enabling conditions (accounting capabilities, profession and digitalisation) for PSA scholarship and practice, and the richness of looking at them from a plurality of perspectives.

Exploring these past and future developments opens up the potential for interesting theoretical insights. A much greater theoretical and practical reconsideration of PSAR will be fostered by the exchanges included here.

In setting out a future research agenda, this paper fosters theoretical and methodological pluralism in the interdisciplinary research community interested in PSAR in various contexts. The discussion perspectives presented in this paper constitute not only a basis for further research in this relevant accounting area on the role, status and developments of PSAR but also creative potential for practitioners to be more reflective on their practices and also intended and united outcomes of such practices.

The purpose of the study is to perform a scientific mapping and detect the evolution pattern of two emerging fields, organizational capabilities and sustainable supply chain management (SSCM), to detect and visualize the existing conceptual domains and identify less-explored areas.

This study uses a methodological combination involving systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis. The methodology was implemented in the following order: definition and selection of the material using an electronic database, descriptive analysis of the material, category selection using bibliographic coupling analysis by VOSviewer (clusterization), material evaluation and content analysis.

The research results clarify the intellectual structure within the academic field. The authors’ identified three main clusters: (1) sustainable capabilities and practices in supply chain management (SCM), (2) green SCM and performance and (3) information technology and innovation. The findings reveal that there is a rich field to be explored, especially regarding issues involving sustainable technological capabilities, sustainable initiatives and key resource development.

This study facilitates researchers’ and practitioners’ understanding and their ability to map the different paths and evolution of SSCM and organizational capabilities. It can encourage managers and policymakers alike to conceive new approaches to engage in the adoption of SSCM.

This work employs a singular approach to identify the intellectual knowledge and topics related to the implementation of SSCM by adopting the theoretical approach of sustainable organizational capacity. It contributes to the debate on distinguishing specific sustainable organizational capabilities from traditional capabilities.

Electric utility companies (EUC) are expected to play a key role toward implementing ambitious climate change aims being under critical scrutiny by regulators and stakeholders. However, EUC provide an under-researched field regarding sustainability reporting with the focus on economic, social and ecological concerns. This paper aims to gain insights of the sustainability reporting practice of EUC and the coverage of indicators based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)-Guidelines.

A twofold documentary analysis of 186 GRI-G4 sustainability reports by EUC globally is conducted to investigate the coverage rates of G4-indicators. Neo-institutionalism and strategic stakeholder theory serve as theoretical lenses. A regression analysis is used to examine ownership, stock-exchange listing, area of activity and region as potential drivers of sustainability reporting.

Results show that the coverage of indicators based on triple-bottom-line dimensions is moderate in EUC leaving room for improvement. The coverage of sector-specific indicators lacks behind the coverage of standard disclosure indicators. Results show that private and listed EUC show better coverage rates than public and not-listed EUC.

Neo-institutionalism shows limited homogenization in the sector. Strategic stakeholder theory demonstrates insufficient stakeholder compliance of public and not-listed EUC.

This study contributes to sustainability reporting research by focusing on the under-researched electricity sector. It provides practical reporting insights for EUC, the GRI and regulators.

Institutions play a central role in service-dominant logic. However, the discussion regarding how institutional theory supports service-dominant logic advancements is still insufficient. This paper aims to contribute to a discussion on the multiple service-dominant logic approaches to institutions.

This conceptual paper presents the characterization of the existing streams in the broad institutional literature, highlighting the differences among those streams and elaborates on how one of the discussed streams – neo-institutionalism – is suitable to support service-dominant researchers in understanding the role of institutions in markets and value co-creation.

The paper shows that the three institutional perspectives presented are used indistinctly by service-dominant logic and a greater fit between the service-dominant logic and the neo-institutionalism stands out.

The paper proposes that service-dominant researchers should look at the neo-institutional stream as a particularly fertile ground for furthering their research.

Existing public–private partnership (PPP) literature that explicitly adopts neo-institutional theory, tends to elucidate the impact of isomorphic pressures and organizational fields and structuration on PPP projects. This paper advances this literature by presenting the institutional work and micro-level dynamics through which actors initiate and implement a new form of project delivery. The authors show how actors enact responses to institutional structuration in the expansion and transformation of an airport from a public entity into a PPP in Saudi Arabia.

The authors use a single case study design that offers an empirically rich and thick description of events such as the dynamic processes, practices and types of institutional work carried out by actors and organizations to deliver the project under investigation.

Religious symbolic work as social integration triggered system integration work, which expanded the power capabilities of individual actors leading the project. Repair work then followed to alleviate the negative effects of disempowering the agency of actors negatively affected by the PPP model and to streamline the project implementation process.

This research offers several practical implications. For PPPs to operate successfully in contexts similar to the Gulf region, policymakers should provide strong political support and be willing to bear a considerable risk of losses or minimal outcomes during the early phases of experimentation with PPPs. Also, policymakers should not only focus their attention on technical requirements of PPPs but also associate new meanings with the normative and cultural-cognitive elements that are integral to the success of PPP implementation. In order to design strategies for change that are designed to fit the unique cultural and sociopolitical settings of each country, policymakers should empower capable individual actors and provide them with resources and access to power, which will enable them to enforce changes that diverge from institutionalized practices.

This research connected the PPP literature with theoretical frameworks drawn from neo-institutional theory and power. It would be valuable for further research, however, to connect ideas from the PPP literature with other disciplines such as psychology and social entrepreneurship. PPP research examines a recent phenomenon that can potentially be combined with non-traditional streams of research in analyzing projects. Expanding the realm of PPP research beyond traditional theoretical boundaries could potentially yield exciting insights into how the overall institutional and psychological environments surrounding projects affect their initiation and implementation.

The paper contributes new insights regarding the roles of religious symbolic work, allied with social and system integration of power relations in implementing PPP projects. It suggests a theoretical shift from structures and organizational fields – macro- and meso-levels of analysis – to individuals – micro-level – as triggers of new forms of project delivery that break with the status quo.