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This study examines how technical drivers as well as social drivers influence organic communication and top management involvement (TMI) in new product development (NPD) projects. Technical drivers are of strategic importance and product innovativeness and social drivers are of intrinsic and extrinsic relevance. Organic communication is defined as continuous, bidirectional and informal communication between top management and the NPD teams. Further, arguing that TMI must be studied as a multifaceted construct, it is conceptualized to occur as guidance, active motivation and providing resources and creating a tolerant climate. Subsequently, the effect of TMI and organic communication on NPD performance is investigated.

The data set, collected via surveys from top managers and project managers involved in 86 NPD projects in 85 firms, is analyzed using PLS structural equation modeling.

The authors show that the strategic importance of the project has a positive influence on TMI through active motivation, providing resources and creating a tolerant climate for innovation, but does not have an effect on guidance. Results also show that active motivation and organic communication improve budget and schedule adherence, whereas providing guidance and stimulating a tolerant climate have detrimental effects. In summary, the results show that only active motivation enhances all types of performance while stimulating a tolerant climate appears to have the opposite effect. The results revealed that organic communication between top management and the NPD team has a strong positive effect on all elements of TMI (providing guidance, actively motivating the NPD team, providing resources and creating a tolerant climate). In other words, when top management communicates with the NPD team throughout the project in an informal way and listens to them in addition to engaging in a one-way communication, they are more likely to be seen by the team as being deeply involved in the project.

Executives must walk a managerial tightrope to actively motivate and to assist in providing resources, yet they must not be overbearing with direct guidance and must limit their tolerance for failures.

Involvement of key organizational actors such as top management and the link to project performance has attracted significant attention in research. However, nuanced empirical insights into the dyad of top management and project teams has so far been absent. The study’s findings detail the effect of technical and social drivers of top management involvement in new product development projects. Most notably, (1) the effect of motivation and stimulating a tolerant climate on performance, and (2) the effect of organic communication on top management involvement. Moreover, this study is unique in that it empirically examines TMI from both top management and team perspectives.

This paper aims to explore how accounting is fostering neoliberal citizenship through the participants of Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). More specifically, this paper aims to understand how accounting discourse and the management accounting technique of budgeting, when intertwined with automated administrative processes of the NDIS, are giving rise to a pastoral form of power that directs people’s behaviour toward certain ends.

Publicly available data has been crafted into an autoethnographic case study of one fictitious person’s experiences with the NDIS – Mina. Mina is an amalgam created from material submitted to the Joint Parliamentary Standing Committee on the NDIS. Mina’s experiences are then analysed through the lens of Foucault’s concept of pastoral power to explore how accounting has contributed to marketising and digitising public disability services.

Accounting rhetoric appears to be a central part of rationalising the decision to shift to individualised disability funding. Those receiving payments are treated as self-governable, financially responsible subjects and are therefore expected to have knowledge of management accounting techniques and budgeting. However, NDIS’s strong reliance on the accounting concepts of funds, budgets, cost and price is limiting people’s autonomy and subjecting them to intervention and control.

This paper addresses calls to explore the interplay between accounting and current disability policies. The analysis shows that incorporating accounting into the NDIS’s algorithms serves to conceal the underlying ideology of the programs, subtly driving behaviours towards neoliberal objectives. Further, this research extends the Foucauldian accounting literature by revealing the contribution of accounting to reinforcing the authority of digital pastors in contemporary times.

Introduction: The Republic of Moldova’s economy faces risks caused by the war in Ukraine and the economic crisis, proving that citizens’ prosperity is essential for national stability and that financial knowledge influences the standard of living. A minimum financial education provides information, knowledge, and tools to make correct decisions based on informed consent in an increasingly complex financial system. In the financial-banking and academic environment, in-depth research of consumers’ financial education level helps to optimise, streamline, and balance bank–client relations with fairness. This work is the consequence of studying the level of financial education among consumers of financial-banking services, with direct implications for their financial well-being.

Purpose: The main aim of this research is to measure the financial knowledge of consumers of financial-banking services, developing recommendations for measures to improve the situation.

Methodology: To explain the factors of influence, the following research techniques were used: analysis and synthesis of conceptual approaches to financial education; deduction and induction; analysis of the findings of sociological research on the level of financial education of users of financial-banking services; and recommendation synthesis.

Findings: The research validates that enhancing financial education has a positive effect on individuals and the economy, reinstates confidence in financial markets, makes an innovative contribution to accurately assessing consumers’ financial knowledge enabling the implementation of proactive measures.

Implications: This chapter provides insights into consumers’ financial education level, serving as a crucial indicator for institutions and public authorities in formulating and promoting effective educational initiatives to ensure minimal skill gaps.

This study aims to explore possible behavioural change venues, beyond the traditional approach to financial education, using the capability-opportunity-motivation behaviour theoretical framework of behavioural change.

The study included 45, semi-structured, in-depth interviews of young adults to explore which elements of financial behaviour formation should interventions target to be effective.

To strengthen capability, the study recommends behavioural education and training for boosting financial knowledge and skills, enablement of financial independence and modelling for empowering self-control and reducing impulsiveness. To boost motivation, gamification of modelling is advised for boosting responsible financial behaviour as part of the identity and inducing consideration of future consequences. Persuasion is advised for inducing positive emotions while incentivization and coercion are advised for empowering self-conscious intentions. To rise opportunity, the study proposes incentivization and coercion imposed by parents, and governmental efforts regarding restriction, enablement and environmental restructuring.

The study brings recommendations for developing efficient interventions for strengthening responsible financial behaviour that may help design type-specific education programmes to promote responsible financial behaviour.

The present study attempts to explore new venues in intervention design that break away from the traditional approach of financial education focused on knowledge and skills that is proven to be ineffective

This study aims to observe people’s decisions to commit fraud. This study is important in the current time because it provides insights into the development of fraudulent intentions within individuals.

The information used in this study is derived from semi-structured interviews, conducted with 16 high-ranking officials who are employed in Indonesian local government positions.

The study does not have strong evidence to support prior studies assuming that situational factors or social enablers have direct effects on fraud intentions. As suggested, individual factors which are related to moral reasoning (moral judgment and rationalisation) emerge as a consequence of social enablers. The significant role of that moral reasoning is to rationalise any fraud attempt as permissible conduct. As such, when an individual is capable of legitimising his/her fraud attempt into appropriate self-judgement, s/he is more likely to engage in fraudulent behaviours.

This study offers practical prescriptions in guiding the management to develop strategies to curb fraudulent behaviours. The study suggests that moral cognitive reasoning is found to be a parameter of whether fraud is an acceptable option or not. So, an understanding of observers’ moral reasoning is helpful in predicting the likelihood of fraud within an organisation or in detecting it.

This study provides a different perspective on the psychological pathway to fraud. It becomes a complement work for the fraud triangle to explain fraudulent behaviours. Specifically, it provides crucial insights into the underlying motivations that lead individuals to accept invitations to engage in fraudulent activities.

Mobile travel apps (MTA) smart features were identified based on recent travel application (app) trends and a literature review of MTA smart features. Subsequently, the MTA features that could be prioritised to increase user interest in MTA were determined. The MTA smart feature development challenges that should be mitigated were also identified.

The app identification and selection were based on the one-stop solution characteristics containing the common function of travel apps and eight MTA smart features. A total of 193 Apple apps and 250 Google apps were identified, where 36 apps that met the inclusion and exclusion criteria based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses flowchart were selected for evaluation.

The high user ratings for apps from both app stores revealed the acceptance of smart technology in the tourism industry. Geolocation tracking services, travel itinerary generators, and real-time personalisation and recommendation were the three major features available in the included MTA. The challenges of MTA with smart features were highlighted from the tourism organisation, app developer and user perspectives.

The findings can guide tourism organisations and app developers on the smart features that MTA should offer for user engagement. Technological organisations could optimise their technology stack by considering the identified smart features. The findings are valuable for scholars in terms of MTA aesthetics and usability to gain acceptability. The development challenges included significant investment in technology, location accuracy and privacy concerns when implementing MTA smart features.

The previous literature mainly focused on evaluating app quality, assessing app functionality, and user ratings using the Mobile Application Rating Scale, and scoping reviews of MTA articles. Contrastingly, this study is among the first in which MTA smart features were examined from a developer-centric perspective. Moreover, it is suggested that MTA includes integrated smart features for better tourism services and market penetration in the tourism industry.

This conceptual paper aims to explore the current state of sustainability communication research, focusing on the challenges of communicating inconvenient truths in an era of scientific mistrust. Therefore, this study aims to (1) examine the existing research landscape in sustainability communication, (2) identify unresolved problems and challenges, and (3) propose strategies for counteract misinformation through targeted communication.

For this, the authors conducted a critical literature review and analyzed the resulting sample (n = 473 journal articles) by means of qualitative content analysis to (1) evaluate existing communication approaches dealing with the communication of sustainability's inconvenient truth, (2) identify stakeholder groups involved in sustainability communication, (3) discuss limitations of current communication approaches and (4) present recommendations on (more) effective communication strategies to address the unresolved issues in sustainability communication.

The analysis reveals that when it comes to sustainability communication and its unresolved problems, literature refers to four key stakeholder groups: (1) science deniers; (2) adaptation skeptics; (3) whitewashers and (4) world saviors. Furthermore, the analysis provides valuable insights into the complex dynamics involved in communicating sustainability, emphasizes the need for tailored approaches to engage and address the concerns of each stakeholder group, and exposes limitations in current communication methods and approaches. Accordingly, the analysis highlights the necessity of developing new theories, models and methods specific to sustainability communication to tackle its unique challenges effectively.

Like our society, communication sciences need a fundamental transformation to meet sustainability communication's new challenges induced by the necessary shift toward sustainable development.

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of sustainability communication in research, specifically addressing the challenges of effectively communicating unpleasant news in the context of scientific mistrust. It fills a gap in existing literature by examining the progress made in addressing these issues and identifying the emerging challenges that need to be addressed.

The purpose of this study is to explore and understand, how strong financial literacy influences the cognitive biases of students in Germany while investing. Second, it also evaluates the most influential cognitive biases that students encounter when undertaking their investment decisions within this environment.

A quantitative approach is used to assess the relationship between financial literacy and students’ investment-related cognitive biases by using the frameworks proposed by Clercq (2019) and Pompian (2012).

The results advocate that the students’ financial literacy positively impacts their cognitive biases within the investment process. It additionally revealed the most significant biases regarding students’ investment decision-making and proposed the possible reasons behind their behavioral distortions.

The study provides a detailed review of the behavioral tendencies of the younger generation while investing and creates recommendations for prospective researchers.

This research lies at the junction of the behavioral finance field, suggesting that it assists in developing a theoretical framework of cognitive biases within students’ financial decisions. Furthermore, it serves as an addition to the financial management subject course that would provide valuable insights about, first and foremost, financial literacy and subsequently, the theory behind the investment process.

This study aims to examine the nexus between digital financial literacy and customers’ perceived financial behavior within the Kuwaiti context. Moreover, it will further explore how digital financial literacy relates to financial behavior dimensions.

Data collection was facilitated by creating a questionnaire derived from multiple literature sources. This study used a cross-sectional, time-based dimension. Data was analyzed using the partial least square (PLS) structural equation modeling approach, using the Smart-PLS 4 software for computation.

Findings demonstrated a significant relationship between digital financial literacy and financial behavior, with a path coefficient of 0.542, a p-value of 0.000 and an R² value of 0.581. The explorative model revealed substantial relationships between many dimensions of digital financial literacy and various dimensions of financial behavior. More precisely, financial knowledge, awareness and decision-making were the factors that had the most significant impact on financial behavior.

Kuwaiti policymakers should consider including digital financial literacy programs in comprehensive financial education programs to improve public understanding of digital financial instruments and their consequences.

As the authors know, this is the initial endeavor to evaluate the relationship between digital financial literacy, financial behavior and their respective dimensions.