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This chapter offers a comprehensive review the literature on authentic leadership (AL). The authors employ a bibliometric approach to identify, classify, visualise and synthesise relevant scholarly publications and the work of a core group of interdisciplinary scholars who are key contributors to the research on AL. They review 264 journal articles, adopting a clustering technique to assess the central themes of AL scholarship. They identify five distinct thematic clusters: authenticity in the context of leadership; structure of AL; social perspectives on AL; dynamism of AL; and value perceptions of AL. Velt and Sinkovics assert that these clusters will help scholars of AL to understand the dominant streams in the literature and provide a foundation for future research.

Recognizing the severity of COVID-19 on the US economy, the authors investigate the behavior of US-listed firms towards leverage speed of adjustment (SOA) during the pandemic. While prior evidence (based on an international study) shows that firm leverage increased during the pandemic leading to a higher SOA toward leverage ratios, leverage for US firms during the same period reduced drastically. Yet there is a dearth of empirical studies on the behavior of US-listed firms' SOA during the pandemic. The authors fill this void.

The study includes US-listed non-financial and non-utility firms for the period 2015Q1-2021Q4, covering a total sample of 45,213 firm-quarter observations. The authors’ empirical strategy is based on the generalized method of moments (GMM) and firm-fixed effect methodology, controlling for firm- and quarter-fixed effects.

Three main findings are established: (1) while the SOA toward book target increased during the pandemic, SOA toward market target increased significantly only for less valued and cash-constrained firms; (2) firms in states most impacted by the pandemic adjusted faster towards target ratio; and (3) while the emergence of the pandemic and the overall firm-level risk increased (decreased) the deviation from book (market) target, firm-level risk partially mediated the effect of the pandemic on how far firms deviated from target ratio.

This study enhances our understanding of leverage adjustment during the crisis and shows that risk avoidance motive and the market value of firms are key determinants of convergence rate during the crisis and further demonstrates that market leverage is more sensitive to market dynamics. As such, caution must be taken when dealing with and interpreting market leverage SOA.

Although prior evidence based on international study provides insights into how firms behave toward their leverage ratios because of the pandemic, little is known about how US firms react to the pandemic in terms of the target ratios, particularly (1) since the USA is one of the severely affected countries and (2) firms in the USA reduced their leverage ratios as against what prior evidence shows. The authors provide evidence to explain how and why US firms reacted toward their SOA during the pandemic.

This chapter critically reviews the literature on authentic leadership (AL) that emerged in response to scandals in private- and public-sector organisations, drawing on theories, concepts and methods from other disciplines. The author finds that AL lacks a consensus definition, and that quantitative research has largely been at the level of employees rather than executives or board members. The review reveals 12 categories of criticisms. Schaefler advocates inductive qualitative research on the major concerns of executive leaders and means of addressing them via group dynamics, maintaining that exploring processes of AL in real-world settings would complement existing quantitative research and contribute to the development and extension of AL theory.

This paper aims to explore the prevalence, motivations and support for student sex work within North East higher education institutions. With limited existing research in this area, this study fills a crucial gap in understanding student sex work in the UK and its specific manifestation in the North East region.

To achieve its objectives, this study adopted an exploratory, cross-sectional design conducted entirely online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A mixed-methodology approach was used, inspired by previous research, gathering quantitative data through a semi-structured questionnaire and qualitative data through open-ended survey questions.

The study revealed that 11.4% of students engaged in sex work, primarily in indirect and online-based forms. lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ)+ students were more likely to participate in sex work compared to heterosexual students. Financial difficulties and lifestyle preferences were identified as significant motivations for student sex work.

A limitation of the study was the lack of diversity in the sample, with predominantly young, white, heterosexual and cis-gender females, potentially neglecting other demographics' struggles. Future research should include larger and more diverse samples to ensure representative findings.

The research highlights the need for greater awareness and support for student sex workers within North East universities. Policies and services should consider the unique challenges faced by LGBTQ+ student sex workers to reduce stigma and potential dangers.

Understanding the prevalence of student sex work sheds light on the need to challenge societal assumptions and stigmas surrounding sex work, particularly concerning gender and sexuality.

This study breaks new ground by providing novel insights into an understudied research area – the prevalence of student sex work in North East England. The findings lay the foundation for future research and can inform policies and support systems to improve the safety and well-being of student sex workers. Furthermore, the study contributes to broader discussions on gender, sexuality and sex work in academic settings.

This study aims to explore the direct and indirect effects of sales opportunism and sales conflict as well as of non-economic and economic satisfaction in business-to-business (B2B) sales relationships. This understanding offers B2B buyers enhanced knowledge of sales business expectations towards sustainable business relationships in the future.

Through self-administered questionnaires, data were obtained from 237 sales or marketing managers/directors of small- and medium-sized companies across industries in Spain, who were randomly contacted via LinkedIn. The multivariate analysis of measurement and structural models was based on IBM SPSS Amos 27.

The study confirms that sales opportunism positively affects sales conflict. Moreover, sales opportunism is negatively associated with non-economic sales satisfaction, whereas non-economic sales satisfaction is positively associated with economic sales satisfaction. Consequently, if all associates are pleased with the relationship and the gains it can provide, a long-standing orientation can be achieved.

The study expands existing theory on seller–buyer relationships in a B2B context. It contextualises direct and indirect relationships between two antecedents (sales opportunism and sales conflict) and two postcedents (economic sales satisfaction and non-economic sales satisfaction) in sales business–buyer settings.

The study guides buyers in B2B relationships towards an improved understanding of how sales businesses perceive opportunism and conflict (as negative precursors) to impact non-economic satisfaction and how it can influence economic satisfaction.

Most studies explore B2B relationship building from the perspective of the buyer, thereby creating a shortfall in developing an understanding of all partner expectations in B2B relational intent. Moreover, the measurement of satisfaction as a multidimensional construct secured the integration of non-economic satisfaction and economic satisfaction within a single model allowing the constructs measured in this study to be holistically assessed.

This paper is determined to examine the role of body image and materialism in predicting the identity exploration of university students when conspicuous consumption is a mediator variable.

The study used a quantitative method. Data were collected from students of three federal universities in Nigeria. The sample size was 331. A self-report questionnaire was used to collect data and analysis was performed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling.

Findings reveal that materialism has a negative association in predicting the identity exploration of students. At the same time, there was a significant full and partial mediating effect of conspicuous consumption on the relationship between body image and materialism on identity exploration, respectively.

The study provides valuable information for parents in understanding how conspicuous consumption may influence their children’s identity formation. The findings can also be helpful for educators in the design of discussions and interventions for students on the social-psychological antecedents of conspicuous consumption and identity exploration. Government and regulatory agencies can use the study’s findings to shape student financial literacy and consumer protection policies.

This study makes both theoretical and methodological contributions to the existing literature. It provided concrete empirical evidence establishing a subtle connection between the symbolic self-completion theory and the identity status paradigm. It is also amongst the first single research conducted within the scope of these two theories in the Nigerian higher education context.

Mindfulness is the human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we're doing. This study explores on the impact of mindfulness on different elements of knowledge management, knowledge creation, knowledge sharing and knowledge hiding.

The authors undertake an inductive reasoning approach whereby they try to generate themes from specific observations and conceptualize the theory of mindfulness and knowledge transfer.

This study finds out that mindfulness critically facilitates an open environment and enhances the clarity of thought which aids in effective knowledge creation. Such a realistic understanding about the present scenario encourages employees to share knowledge and equips them to collaborate and effectively work in teams. Surprisingly, this study also finds that mindfulness increases the result orientation to the extent that employees tried to hide knowledge from their co-workers targeting certain self-desired outcomes. In other words, similar to knowledge creation and knowledge sharing, mindfulness increases agenda-based knowledge hiding.

The theory of mindfulness and knowledge transfer states that mindfulness increases knowledge creation, knowledge sharing and agenda-based knowledge hiding.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that aims to present a comprehensive view of the auditing ethics literature by unboxing 40 years of efforts in the field.

This study combined bibliometric, social network and content analysis by analyzing 114 articles published in accounting and top business ethics journals on the Web of Science database from 1980 to 2021.

The results show a rising interest in this topic and reveal auditors’ ethical decision-making and moral reasoning as the most discussed topics in the literature. The work also clusters the literature according to keywords and scopes, identifying literature gaps and suggesting new avenues for future research.

The research results assist provide an overarching image of the auditing ethics field. In addition, these results draw possible future avenues to bridge the void in the current auditing ethics literature by presenting indispensable directions for potential research. For example, future research could pay more attention to whistleblowing, fraud, personal auditor characteristics, auditor ethical sensitivity, auditor ethical conflict, ethical climate and underreporting of time. Moreover, the rapidly changing business environment necessitates the auditing ethics research to move to more practical implications to mitigate previous mistakes and avoid any future risks.

All crises are an ideal breeding ground to motivate fraud and audit failures. In fact, auditing ethics research has been subordinated to the different economic crises. However, despite increasing awareness of the topic’s relevance, no comprehensive study focuses on auditing ethics literature. Now, the devastating effects of the COVID-19 crisis are producing a new wave of financial distresses and avoiding former mistakes is timelier than ever. With this novel and integrated approach, this work goes one step forward, developing a comprehensive picture of the auditing ethics literature.

This study examines how customer-linking capabilities, the flexibility of back-end management systems, strategic agility and the perceived absorptive capacity of e-commerce influence the organizational performance of online sellers.

A performance model based on the adaptive structuration theory was employed to test the hypotheses using structural equation modeling (SEM) on a dataset of 325 samples with acceptable responses.

The results reveal that the customer-linking capability and flexibility of back-end management systems, strategic agility and assimilation of e-commerce activity significantly influence organizational performance in a virtual environment.

The agility of online sellers is becoming increasingly important, and from the perspective of adaptive structuration theory, back-end management systems have been built to manage buyer orders for online sellers.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of audit quality and environmental auditing on integrated reporting and the effect of environmental auditing on audit quality.

Data was collected from a sample of 300 international companies during the period 2010–2019. The author collected the data from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database, sustainability reports and annual reports. A multiple regression analysis was performed to test the hypotheses.

The finding of this study confirms a positive and significant relationship between audit quality and integrated reporting. It is also found that environmental auditing has a positive and significant effect on integrated reporting. Thus, this study found a positive and significant relationship between environmental auditing and audit quality.

The findings in this paper identify strategies for improving integrated reporting as a crucial element in the processing of financial and nonfinancial information, to help managers and investors and shareholders take a long-term perspective. Therefore, the results encourage companies to invest in economic, environmental and social aspects. This enables accounting professionals, stock exchange authorities and users of environmental and social information to be aware of the factors associated with environmental reporting, to improve the efficiency of those producing the audit service.

The originality of this study lies in its consideration of a particular aspect of auditing, namely, environmental auditing. However, despite the large body of research on auditing and integrated reporting, to the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to examine the relationship between environmental auditing and integrated reporting. Furthermore, in this research, the author has emphasized the importance of the role played by environmental auditing on audit quality. This design has been neglected in previous studies. Finally, the choice of the field of investigation for the reliability of the data used and the generalization of the results obtained, enables us to make important contributions to the user of the information.