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To review the literature and identify research gaps in the role and influence boards of directors of companies have in occupational health and safety (OHS).

This was done in a scoping review built on a structured search in MEDLINE (PubMed), EMBASE, PsycINFO, Sociological Abstracts, CCInfoWeb, EconLit, Web of Science, CINAHL and gray literature. Citations and reference lists were tracked. Inclusion criteria were publication in English. Exclusion criteria were studies covering companies using subcontractors to arrange OHS, or with <250 employees.

Forty-nine studies were included. The majority contained empirical data (n = 28; 57%), some were entirely normative (n = 16; 33%), and a few contained normative claims far beyond empirical data (n = 5; 10%). Empirical studies gave no insight into the scope of impact of board activities on OHS, and no studies assess the causal mechanisms by which board activities influence OHS outcomes. Most studies focused on both health and safety (n = 20; 41%) or only safety (n = 15; 31%). Context might explain the focus on safety rather than health, but is not clearly elucidated by the studies. Several studies are describing leadership behavior, although not framed as such. A narrative summary is presented to facilitate future research.

Future research should include: (1) which board activities influence OHS, (2) how board activities influence OHS, (3) the influence of context and (4) the leadership role of boards of directors.

This study identifies a total lack of research on the basic mechanics of the relationship between boards and OHS.

The study examines the social and environmental responsibility indicators disclosed by three International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) corporate mining members in their social and environmental reporting (SER) from 2006 to 2014. To achieve this aim, the author limits the data two years before (i.e. from 2006 to 2007) and six years after (i.e. from 2009 to 2014) the implementation of the Sustainable Development Framework in the mining sector in 2008.

Using the techniques of content analysis and interpretive textual analysis, this study examines 27 social and environmental responsibility reports published between 2006 and 2014 by three ICMM corporate mining members. The study develops a disclosure index based on the earlier work of Hackston and Milne (1996), together with other disclosure items suggested in the extant literature and considered appropriate for this work. The disclosure index for this study comprised six disclosure categories (“employee”, “environment”, “community involvement”, “energy”, “governance” and “general”). In each of the six disclosure categories, only 10 disclosure items were chosen and that results in 60 disclosure items.

A total of 830 out of a maximum of 1,620 social and environmental responsibility indicators, representing 51% (168 employees, 151 environmental, 145 community involvement, 128 energy, 127 governance and 111 general) were identified and examined in company SER. The study showed that the sample companies relied on multiple strategies for managing pragmatic legitimacy and moral legitimacy via disclosures. Such practices raise questions regarding company-specific disclosure policies and their possible links to the quality/quantity of their disclosures. The findings suggest that managers of mining companies may opt for “cherry-picking” and/or capitalise on events for reporting purposes as well as refocus on company-specific issues of priority in their disclosures. While such practices may appear appropriate and/or timely to meet stakeholders’ needs and interests, they may work against the development of comprehensive reports due to the multiple strategies adopted to manage pragmatic and moral legitimacy.

A limitation of this research is that the author relied on self-reported corporate disclosures, as opposed to verifying the activities associated with the claims by the sample mining companies.

The findings from this research will help future social and environmental accounting researchers to operationalise Suchman’s typology of legitimacy in other contexts.

With growing large-scale mining activity, potential social and environmental footprints are obviously far from being socially acceptable. Powerful and legitimacy-conferring stakeholders are likely to disapprove such mining activity and reconsider their support, which may threaten the survival of the mining company and also create a legitimacy threat for the whole mining industry.

This study innovates by focusing on Suchman’s (1995) typology of legitimacy framework to interpret SER in an industry characterised by potential social and environmental footprints – the mining industry.

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse the extent of protection available for whistleblowers in South African criminal cases.

This paper first provides a brief background of crime in South Africa and argues that the concept of the whistleblower is just a buss word or collective noun. The methodology of this paper consists of a literature review of whistleblowers and relevant laws that can be used to protect whistleblowers in South African criminal cases.

This paper concludes that the existing law as primarily contained in the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977 provides appropriate protection for whistleblowers in South African criminal cases.

Whistleblowers provide information on criminal, civil and disciplinary wrongdoings. This study focuses on the protection of whistleblowers pursuant to mainly the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977.

The originality of this paper lies in the approach to the handling of whistleblowers in South African criminal cases. This is the first research done with the emphasis on the use of mainly the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977 to protect whistleblowers in South African criminal cases. The contribution of the study is that, by using this approach, it can provide protection and save lives, and it may enhance the willingness of whistleblowers to blow the whistle, which will be beneficial to the community of South Africa as a whole.

Many companies in Indonesia already have completed sustainability reporting (SR) in their corporate reporting eventhough the regulation has not required public companies to disclose Integrated Reporting (IR) in their report. Are companies with excellent sustainability reporting ready to release integrated reporting? This question is the main concern of this paper. The published guidelines by IIRC are divided into two categories: guidelines which can be assessed objectively and those that cannot be measured objectively. Content analysis is used for data collection and analysis for annual reports of the companies used as sample in this research. The result of this research showed that companies that won Indonesia Sustainability Reporting Award are ready to disclose Integrated Reporting with few modification which adds the value of their report. The implication of the study for public companies is a encouragement to publish integrated reporting and for researchers is being preliminary research for developing research about integrated report in Indonesia.

This study explores the scope, materiality and extent of environmental and social sustainability disclosure – as benchmarked against the Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI-G4) – of the top 10 logistics firms operating in Australia. It also investigates the relationships between the extent of environmental and social sustainability disclosure of these firms and their actual financial performance.

The authors adopted an inductive case study approach for an in-depth investigation of the relationships among concepts. A content analysis of the firms' sustainability reports was performed to determine their pattern and extent of sustainability disclosure against the GRI framework. A disclosure–performance analysis (DPA) matrix was employed to relate the extent of environmental and social sustainability disclosure of these 10 firms with their actual financial performance (i.e. return on assets [ROA] and total revenue growth).

This study found that the extent of sustainability reporting was relatively high on the labour practices and decent work subgroup, followed by the environmental dimension of the GRI-G4 framework. However, it was relatively low on the society, human rights and product responsibility subgroups of the GRI framework. The DPA revealed that “Leaders” (firms with higher sustainability disclosure levels) achieved significantly higher ROA. However, “Opportunists” (firms with lower sustainability disclosure levels) achieved higher levels of financial returns (i.e. ROA and total revenue growth) with less attention to sustainability issues, which contradicts the win-win view of the sustainability disclosure–financial performance relationship.

First, this study contributes an in-depth review of sustainability disclosure practices of top logistics firms operating in Australia. Second, using DPA, it identifies the novel effects of environmental and social sustainability disclosure levels on these firms' financial performance. It also sheds further light on the potential effect of investments beyond substantial profitability for sustainability growth and corporate governance on the sustainability disclosure–financial performance relationship.

This paper aims to analyse the extent to which health and safety action controls, results controls and informal controls affect the integration of health and safety issues into management actions, which in turn leads to improve health and safety performance. It also investigates the extent to which those health and safety control mechanisms contribute complementarily to the integration of health and safety issues.

A survey of 108 Italian non-listed firms tests a set of hypotheses based on complementarity theory and object of control framework.

Not all the health and safety control mechanisms positively influence the integration of health and safety issues into business practices and external stakeholder relations. Complementarity between health and safety control mechanisms is significant only for higher health and safety performance companies, indicating that the health and safety control mechanisms operate as a package.

The health and safety performance measure could be replaced in future research by improved inter-subjectively testable information, although collecting health and safety quantitative data is difficult. An additional limitation is the response rate.

The findings encourage companies to design and use a comprehensive set of health and safety control mechanisms to promote a healthy workplace.

The paper contributes to the management control, sustainability management control and health and safety accounting literature. The paper provides an in-depth interdisciplinary analysis of the effectiveness of different control mechanisms in the context of health and safety that hitherto has rarely been investigated despite the multiple importance of the topic.

The main purpose of the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) sustainability case is to allow students to explore how nonfinancial information reported in sustainability plays a vital role in maintaining a trade-off between current economic pressure and future environmental needs.

This is an exploratory study in nature using a qualitative case study approach. The case requires an examination of DEWA's sustainability reporting (SR) in the context of Global Reporting Initiatives (GRIs). This case is designed to assist students in gauging DEWA's sustainability and explore how the company evaluates the materiality of sustainability issues.

With stakeholders' and investors' increased interest in sustainability, the authors argue that accounting programs should incorporate this topic into their curricula. The case enables students to focus on sustainability-related initiatives with DEWA that are aligned with GRI initiatives. The case might be instructive for both undergraduate and postgraduate students studying environmental and management accounting.

This case study is the first of its kind in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region to comprehensively analyze DEWA's sustainability practices concerning GRI-based SR. This study widens the understanding of DEWA's implementation of GRI standards in the preparation of its sustainability reports.

This paper aims to identify the key issues that healthcare knowledge-intensive organizations (KIPOs) should focus on to define themselves as socioenvironmentally and governance responsible for integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) logic into their business strategy. At the same time, this provides an understanding of how healthcare KIPOs contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda.

Taking a cue from the model developed by the World Economic Forum, an “ESG Processing Map” was constructed to identify qualitative disclosures that a healthcare company should consider when implementing sustainability logic. The aspects investigated were processed, considering national and international standards, frameworks and disclosures. The social network analysis technique was used to systemize and combine the outcomes of these processes and analyze their consistency with sustainable development.

Through the “ESG Processing Map,” 13 areas of action and 27 topics specific to the health sector were defined on which to intervene in sustainability in order to concretely help HCOs to place specific corrective and improvement actions over time concerning socioenvironmental and governance aspects.

The paper provides contribute, on the one hand, to enriching and updating the academic literature on ESG logic in a still underexplored field and, on the other hand, to provide these types of organizations with a “compass” to guide and orient their business strategies towards sustainability.