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Firms are accountable for upholding worker rights and well-being in their supply base. The authors unpack the evolution in lead firm thinking and practice about how to assure labor conditions at suppliers.

The authors conducted interviews with the social sustainability leaders at 22 global corporations (“lead firms”) and their sustainability consultants to understand how they think about, and enact efforts, to support labor in their supply base. The authors complement this with an analysis of stated practice in proprietary supplier codes of conduct for the manufacturing and extractive-related firms in the S&P 500 and FTSE 350.

The authors’ interviews suggest firms follow two distinct and cumulative approaches: a transactional-based approach leveraging collective buyer power to enforce supplier compliance and a relational-based approach focused on mutual capacity building between lead (buyer) firms and their suppliers. The authors also see the emergence, in a small subset of firms, of a bottom-up approach that recognizes supplier workers as rights-holders and empowers them to understand and claim their rights.

The authors identify systematic convergence in supplier codes of conduct. While the transactional and relational approaches are well documented in the supply chain social sustainability literature, the rights-holder approach is not. Its emergence presents an important complement to the other approaches and enables a broader recognition of human rights, and the duty of Western firms to assure those rights.

In the case of Poiret & Anor v Seychelles Pension Fund & Anor (2022), the Court of Appeal, the highest court in Seychelles, took judicial notice of the fact that “[c]ommon law relationships are more prevalent in our society than those between married persons.” In this chapter, the author discusses the law relating to common law marriages in Seychelles by focusing on the following issues: the right to form a family (as a background to understanding common law marriages); requirements for a valid common law marriage; and the rights of parties in a common law marriage. These rights include “court granted” rights and “statutory rights” such as property rights (parties invoking the claim of unjust enrichment in the 1979 Civil Code and property orders and succession under the 2021 Civil Code at the dissolution of common law marriages). I also deal with the remedy of unjust enrichment in the context of the 2021 Civil Code; marital privilege (in case where one of the parties in a common law relationship is accused of committing an offence); and termination of a common law marriage. The author demonstrates the measures taken by courts and the legislators to protect some of the rights of people in common law marriages. The author suggests ways in which courts can interpret the relevant provisions of the 2021 Civil Code. Where necessary, the author highlights how courts or legislators in some African countries such as Kenya, Mauritius, Malawi, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Zambia, South Africa, Namibia, Rwanda, and Uganda have approached some of the issues above.

This study aims to investigate beneficial right as a new legal concept and term accepted by the Indonesian legal system. The new concept was ratified to endorse government decision to use ṣukūk (as an Islamic financial instrument) in the financing of state budget deficit. Some legal issues emerged after the ratification such as the necessity to synchronize the beneficial right with other property rights in Indonesia and the disharmony between laws related to sovereign ṣukūk issuance.

The study uses a qualitative method with library study and interviews with relevant legal experts in Indonesia as the data collection techniques.

The findings show that the passage of Sovereign Ṣukūk Law 2008 that ratified beneficial right deemed as a concession point by the government to solve conflicts between legal restriction and employment of state-owned assets as the underlying asset of sovereign ṣukūk. The study deemed the necessity to improve the use of beneficial right in the Indonesian legal system which by the concept is not exercised for the issuance of sovereign ṣukūk only. There is the need to harmonize the administration of this right with other property rights in Indonesia.

The scope of study will be limited to the Indonesian regulation related to the use of beneficial right concept in the issuance of sovereign ṣukūk in Indonesia. The regulation as mentioned will be in the form of statutes, presidential or ministerial regulations, and also opinions of Indonesian legal and sharīʿah scholars regarding the matter.

This study may explore significantly the use of beneficial right for the issuance of sovereign ṣukūk by the Government of Indonesia. Specifically, the study reveals and addresses the issues that are following the ratification of beneficial rights originated from the common law system into the Indonesian civil law system.

This study explores a hegemonic alliance and the role of relational forms of accounting and accountablity in the making of contemporary capitalism.

We use the WikiLeaks “Cablegate” documents to provide an account of the detailed machinations between interest groups (corporations and the state) that are constitutive of hegemonic activity.

Our analysis of the “Cablegate” documents shows that the US and Chevron were crafting a central role for Turkmenistan and its president on the global political stage as early as 2007, despite offical reporting beginning only in 2009. The documents exemplify how “accountability gaps” occlude the understanding of interdependence between capital and the state.

The study contributes to a growing idea that official accounts offer a fictionalized narrative of corporations as existing independently, and thus expands the boundaries associated with studying multinational corporate activities to include their interdependencies with the modern state.

The study traces how global capitalism extends into new territories through diplomatic channels, as a strategic initiative between powerful state and capital interests, arguing that the outcome is the empowerment of authoritarian states at the cost of democracy.

The study argues that previous accounting and accountability research has overlooked the larger picture of how capital and the state work together to secure a mutual hegemonic interest. We advocate for a more complete account of these activities that circumvents official, often restricted, views of global capitalism.

Firms are increasingly pressured to comply with mandatory supply chain transparency (SCT) regulations. Drawing on information processing theory (IPT), this study aims to show how blockchain technology can address information uncertainty and equivocality in assuring regulatory compliance in an interorganizational network (ION).

IPT is applied in a single case study of an ION in the mining industry that aimed to implement blockchain to address mandatory SCT regulations. The authors build on a rich proprietary data set consisting of interviews and substantial secondary material from actors along the supply chain.

The case shows that blockchain creates equality between actors, enables compliance and enhances efficiency in an ION, reducing information uncertainty and equivocality arising from conflict minerals regulation. The system promotes engagement and data sharing between parties while protecting commercial sensitive information. The lack of central authority prevents larger partners from taking control. The system provides mineral provenance and a regulation-compliant record. System cost analysis shows that the system is efficient as it is inexpensive relative to volumes and values of metals transacted. Issues were identified related to collecting richer human rights data for assurance and compliance with due diligence regulations.

The authors provide some of the first evidence in the operations and supply chain management literature of the specific architecture, costs and limitations of using blockchain for SCT. Using an IPT lens in an ION setting, the authors demonstrate how blockchain-based systems can address two key IPT challenges: environmental uncertainty and equivocality.

The primary objective of this study is to unveil the relationships that interconnect ESG and three pillars disclosures with technological innovation while also investigating the moderating impact of product market competition. The paper seeks to identify the underlying mechanisms that facilitate technological innovation in sustainable management.

Using data from 8,738 Chinese firms from 2011 to 2019, this study employs quantitative analysis to examine the relationship between ESG disclosure and technological innovation and the moderating effect. Moreover, this study explores the heterogeneous impacts while considering factors such as property rights and firm size.

The findings reveal a positive correlation between ESG disclosure and technological innovation. The study also investigates the moderating role of product market competition and finds that increasing competition mitigates the positive effects of ESG disclosure on technological innovation. Additionally, the conclusions reveal that the relationship between ESG and three pillars disclosures and technological innovation, as well as the moderating role of product market competition, exhibits inconsistency across firms with different property rights and sizes.

This study offers a clear understanding of the relationship between ESG disclosures and technological innovation, and how it varies across businesses of different sizes and ownership structures. It also provides fresh perspectives on the influence of product market competition on this relationship, with implications for strategy development in corporations.

This paper aims to adopt a comparative method using case law, statutes and secondary literature across both jurisdictions. This paper also draws on various theories of property ownership.

This paper conceptualises the legal relations embedded within condominium housing and the various theories of property ownership to ascertain how children’s interest fit within this framework. The laws of two jurisdictions, New South Wales and Singapore, are examined to determine how their strata law responds when children’s safety is at stake.

Drawing on pluralist moral theories of property law, the thesis advanced is that children’s issues within condominiums should not be subject to majoritarian rule especially when their safety is at stake. The paramount guiding value should be ensuring their safety within multi-owned housing communities. Using the law of two jurisdictions, New South Wales and Singapore, the central argument of this paper is that the law in these jurisdictions has rightfully adopted a protective approach towards children in multi-owned properties where their safety is at stake.

The literature on the law of multi-owned housing has largely focused on governance issues such as mediating between the majority owners’ interest with that of the minority owners’ interest. Children in multi-owned developments remain an under investigated area as children’s interests do not fit within the paradigm of majority versus minority interests. The paper advances the argument that children’s interest should be viewed through either a rights-based theory or pluralists’ theories of property law. Lessons from the New South Wales and Singapore experience are also drawn which might prove useful to other jurisdictions.

This chapter examines the shifting significance of data ownership and athlete rights as they pertain to the growth and expansion of the global sports gambling industry. It provides a nuanced overview of the ‘datafication’ of society, tracing how the omnipresent embrace of digital technologies has expediated new forms of organisational, political and corporate surveillance from which concerns over privacy, rights to ownership and the misuse of personal data arise. The chapter moves on to discuss how the extraction and trade of data has revolutionised how elite sport is performed, manufactured, broadcast and consumed, shedding critical light on the role of the gambling industry in the exchange of human data as a market commodity. These insights inform a series of socio-legal and ethical questions about the relationships between athlete data and the sports gambling industry for the purpose of signposting emerging issues and opportunities for critical sociological research and intervention.

Current research about American Indians of all ages is in short supply, yet design and allocation of public services and resources are increasingly guided by ‘evidence’ provided by research. The health and wellness of this population is persistently poorer than that of other marginalized populations. American Indian tribes have been beset progressively since the earliest arrival of European settlers by both malevolent and well-intentioned assaults on their cultures and peoples. This long history of cultural and physical genocide continues into the present and undermines the effectiveness of Eurocentric processes for research that have been shaped by values and beliefs antithetical to those of most tribes (e.g. individualism, proprietary ownership, science as the way of knowing). Individual and collective historical trauma is present in all of the more than 500 federally recognized tribes in the United States of America, and a lack of trust further compromises the validity and positive impact of most research. This chapter describes the roots and foundations of flawed and successful research and identifies practical resources and approaches that are valid and beneficial for conducting research with indigenous people. The processes described in this chapter are grounded in the experiences of tribes in the United States of America; however, parallel experiences of indigenous populations that have a continuing legacy of trauma are found in many other countries (such as in Brazil and New Zealand) and the insights and approaches found in this chapter may be applicable to some degree.

Business rescue, as a mechanism to aid financially distressed companies in South Africa, has received considerable academic and practical recognition. However, the business rescue plan is an overlooked and, perhaps, underdeveloped aspect of the regime. For stakeholders, this is the ultimate decision-making document. Creditors are the most influential stakeholders in business rescue proceedings owing to their voting rights. For creditors to make informed decisions and exercise their votes meaningfully, the business rescue plan should be transparent and adequately disclose relevant and reliable information. This study aims to identify creditors’ primary information needs to enhance the sufficiency and decision-usefulness of business rescue plans, not only to entice the vote of creditors but to enforce accountability from practitioners.

Using a qualitative research design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 executives from 10 South African financial institutions.

The findings reveal that comprehensive disclosure of financial, commercial and legal information in business rescue plans was a critical antecedent for stakeholder decision-making. Additionally, leadership and social impact information were influential determinants. This study advances academic knowledge and, for practitioners, adds value to the development of business rescue plans. This can enhance creditors' confidence in supporting the rescue effort and approving the plan.

This study advances academic knowledge and, for practitioners, adds value to the development of business rescue plans. This can enhance creditors' confidence in supporting the rescue effort and approving the plan.

The originality of this article lies in its investigation of how creditors assess the information in BR plans as a precursor to supporting the company’s reorganisation in a creditor-friendly business rescue system such as South Africa. This study provides novel insights into the decision-making process, particularly how creditors assess BR plans, address information asymmetry and vote on the plan.