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This chapter provides preliminary evidence to show that financial accounting students would use generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools to improve their learning if given the opportunity to do so by their instructors. Most students who completed the exercises we used in the study did so diligently and modified their answers after using a generative AI tool in a manner that suggests beneficial effects. It appears that the more prior knowledge a student had about the subject matter, the more beneficial was the experience. Pitfalls still exist, however. For example, students without knowledge of the subject matter struggled with crafting queries and judging the efficacy of their answers. Moreover, although a minority, some students tended to duplicate their original answers without utilizing the responses generated by the generative AI tool. Additionally, certain students merely copied the answers generated by the AI tool without providing any additional critique or analysis. Implications for teaching and learning and opportunities for future research are discussed.

When reporting wrongdoing internally, whistleblowers are confronted with the dilemma of weighing up their loyalty toward the organization (e.g., ethical standards) and their co-workers (e.g., the social norm of not snitching on peers). However, the role played by peers in the whistleblowing decision process and in the aftermath has rarely been addressed in existing reviews. We therefore perform a systematic review that identifies seven thematic clusters of peer factors, offering researchers an informative overview of (a) the peer factors that have been examined to influence the whistleblowing decision, and (b) the extent to which the whistleblower experiences adverse consequences from peers in the aftermath of whistleblowing. As peer factors seem to be important to explain and predict internal whistleblowing, researchers are encouraged to address in future works the research gaps our review unraveled.

We investigate how firms’ responses to misconduct change when the institutional environment becomes more stringent. Organizational theory offers conflicting perspectives on whether new legislation will increase or decrease pressure on firms to take remedial action following misconduct. The dominant perspective posits that new legislation increases expectations of firm behavior, amplifying pressure on them to take remedial action after misconduct. A more recent perspective, however, suggests that the mere necessity to meet more stringent regulatory requirements certifies firms as legitimate to relevant audiences. This certification effect buffers firms, reducing the pressure for them to take remedial action after misconduct. Using a temporary, largely arbitrary exemption from a key provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, we show that firms that were not required to meet all the regulatory standards of good governance it required became 45% more likely to replace their CEOs following the announcement of an earnings restatement after Sarbanes-Oxley. On the other hand, those that were required to meet all of Sarbanes-Oxley’s provisions became 26% less likely to replace their CEOs following a restatement announcement. Ironically, CEOs at firms with a legislative mandate intended to increase accountability for corporate misconduct shoulder less blame than do CEOs at firms without such legislative demands.

China’s foreign aid efforts in Africa remain contentious. Chinese foreign aid tends to be different from “traditional” development assistance in that it frequently involves firms as the implementing agents of projects. Firms bring unique resources to public–private partnerships (PPPs) formed with government agencies, but their possible self-interested nature also gives rise to concerns over their development impact. Yet, on a larger scale, little is known about the characteristics of Chinese PPPs in foreign aid. Using project-level data available for 1,308 Chinese aid projects in 50 countries across Africa, the author characterizes the projects undertaken by firms and government agencies in a PPP and contrasts them to those executed by Chinese government agencies without firm involvement. This exploratory data analysis suggests that important differences apply, as Chinese PPPs tend to target different sustainable development goals (SDGs), work on the basis of distinct aid conditions, and implement projects that tend to be larger than those that are solely run by government agencies. Such observations raise important questions of an ethical, theoretical, and international nature, and warrant further research. The author develops a research agenda that aims at issues particularly important for business ethics scholars, organization theorists, and international business scholarship.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) promotes society, reduces risk, and encourages ethical business practices. Due to its relevance, we study how CSR influences firms' sustainable development. We analyze data from 427 New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)-listed firms from 2008 to 2022. The Refinitiv environmental and social score is used to measure CSR, whereas for firms' sustainable development we rely on corporate sustainable growth rate (SGR) and market-based metrics. The analysis employs various econometric techniques, including ordinary least square, fixed effect regression, two-stage least square, generalized method of moment, and simultaneous quantile regression. The results indicate that CSR has a positive and significant effect on firms' sustainable development across all models. This relationship supports the notion that socially responsible business can contribute to long-term financial sustainability in line with “stakeholder theory”, indicating that companies should accommodate the concerns of various stakeholders, including society and the environment, to achieve sustainable development. We evaluate how the conditional distributions of SGR and firms’ value are affected by CSR, categorizing them into high, moderate, and low regimes. The quantile regression estimates indicate that the effect of CSR is more pronounced at upper quantiles, followed by moderate and low regimes. These findings underscore the importance of considering CSR in assessing the SGR and enterprises market value. We also confirm that our results are robust under range of different econometrics' methods. Finally, we enlighten current literature, and our research has useful policy implications for management and investors.

A quick search of the headlines of major newspapers reveals a treasure trove of technology procurement gone wrong. While the private sector seems to adopt and implement new technology seamlessly and quickly to deliver for customers, the government struggles to accomplish technology purchases and integrations with the same ease. As governments in the United States are looking to retain their current workforce and attract the next generation of workers, the technological capabilities and ethos of governments will be paramount. With nearly every industry being transformed by technology and Generation T being the first generation to have an ingrained “technology first” mindset, the ability of governments to attract these workers depends, in large part, on the ability to transform their government technology culture, policies, and practices.

In this chapter, the authors examine the administrative branch and observe two key components at the root of most technology failures: poor organizational structure in the bureaucracy and the lack of an empowered Chief Information/Technology Officer. Building upon case studies from Massachusetts and California, this chapter looks at the factors related to failure or success to understand the technology procurement culture. The chapter concludes by presenting four key “best practice” principles of public policy and administration that can be implemented by almost any governmental entity to improve their acquisition and implementation of technology.

Behavioral economics poses a challenge for the welfare evaluation of choices, particularly those that involve risk. It demands that we recognize that the descriptive account of behavior toward those choices might not be the ones we were all taught, and still teach, and that subjective risk perceptions might not accord with expert assessments of probabilities. In addition to these challenges, we are faced with the need to jettison naive notions of revealed preferences, according to which every choice by a subject expresses her objective function, as behavioral evidence forces us to confront pervasive inconsistencies and noise in a typical individual’s choice data. A principled account of errant choice must be built into models used for identification and estimation. These challenges demand close attention to the methodological claims often used to justify policy interventions. They also require, we argue, closer attention by economists to relevant contributions from cognitive science. We propose that a quantitative application of the “intentional stance” of Dennett provides a coherent, attractive and general approach to behavioral welfare economics.

This chapter focuses on exploring challenges encountered by the neglected group of employees who live alone and do not have children, particularly in relation to work-life balance (WLB). We first question the conventional WLB discourse – predominately surrounded by addressing work-family conflicts. We next discuss how this formulates debates about the equality and fairness of HR policies affecting various groups of employees, with solo-living individuals being excluded. In addition to previously documented work-life issues, we articulate difficulties related to the pursuit of independence, freedom, balancing, and healthy work-life experiences for and specific to solo-living women academics. We conclude that our insights on “vulnerability” may lead to feminist approach being incorporated into work-life policy development in order to better engage underrepresented groups of employees, accommodate the needs of “others” and promote collective flourishing.

With the increase in population, the energy needs of countries are also increasing. These countries have difficulties in meeting these increasing needs. Countries that cannot meet this need have to import energy from abroad. This situation adversely affects the current account balance of countries. Nuclear energy investments allow countries to obtain their own energy, although there are some criticisms. In this framework, while some countries in the world increase their nuclear energy investments, some countries do not have any nuclear power plants (NPP). There are 32 such countries where nuclear energy projects are running till date. Therefore, it is very important to determine the socio-economic variables of countries that have nuclear energy investments. In this context, a detailed literature analysis will be made first to determine socio-economic criteria. Then, the importance weights of these factors will be calculated using the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method. The profiles of the countries that make nuclear energy investments demonstrate that education level is the most essential socio-economic factor for the improvement of nuclear energy investments. Also, income inequality is another important variable in this regard. However, consumption behaviour and saving behaviour have the lowest weights.