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Sociologists have long thought of the integration of people in communities – social integration – and hierarchical social systems – systemic integration – as contradictory goals. What strategies allow organizations to reconcile social and systemic integration? We examine this question through 40 in-depth, longitudinal interviews with leaders of nonprofit organizations that engage in the dual pursuit of social and systemic integration. Two processes reveal how the internal structure of organizations often mirrors the ways in which organizations are embedded in their local environments. When organizations engage in loose demographic coupling, relegating those who “match” the community to the work of social integration, they produce internal inequalities and justify them by claiming community building as sacred work. When engaging in community anchoring, organizations challenge internal and external inequalities simultaneously, but this process comes with costs. Our findings contribute to a constructivist understanding of community, the mechanisms by which organizations produce inequalities, and a place-based conception of organizations as embedded in community.

This paper aims to explore the extent, nature and communication potential of companies’ use of three popular social media platforms (Facebook, X and LinkedIn) to report on sustainability.

Qualitative methodology through the use of the netnography approach was adopted to evaluate the use of social media for sustainability communication by the Top 50 ASX companies. Content analysis of all company posts determined those with social and environmental content. A thematic analysis was performed using the global reporting initiative (GRI) framework to examine the nature of the reporting. The media richness framework was used to measure the communication potential of the social media platforms for sustainability communication.

The results indicated that the extent of sustainability posts on social media represented less than 20% of total social media posts. The nature of posts by the Top 50 ASX companies was higher on social issues than on environmental issues, which is contradictory to many previous studies. The study also found that while the social media platforms afforded high levels of media richness, most companies failed to exploit the platforms’ full potential to disseminate sustainability information.

This work provides both empirical and theoretical contributions to the ongoing debate concerning the use of social media for sustainability communication. The paper extends Lodhia et al.’s (2020) study of social media use for legitimation purposes and adapts Lodhia’s (2004) media richness framework to social media for sustainability reporting. It adds empirical insights into social media’s communication potential and value for communicating sustainability information.

The extent and nature to which organisations use social media to disclose their sustainability performance has significant practical implications for a variety of stakeholders. The results reveal to these stakeholders and the companies themselves the level of utilisation of social media along with the potential that can be harnessed. These results can potentially improve the quantity, timeliness and usability of sustainability reporting using social media platforms.

The study provides valuable evidence to increase understanding of the sustainability social media communication landscape, which organisations can potentially leverage to communicate their messages. Additionally, sustainability awareness is increased across various demographics by disseminating sustainability information to the wider public. This study will assist policy-setters in developing guidance for using social media for sustainability reporting.

This study extends existing literature, particularly the Lodhia et al. (2020) study, which has primarily focused on examining sustainability content in the media with limited exploration of the communication potential of social media platforms to communicate sustainability content.

This work aims to integrate the concepts generated by a systematic literature review on patient flows in emergency departments (ED) to serve as a basis for developing a generic process model for ED.

A systematic literature review was conducted using PRISMA guidelines, considering Lean Healthcare interventions describing ED patients’ flows. The initial search found 141 articles and 18 were included in the systematic analysis. The literature analysis served as the basis for developing a generic process model for ED.

ED processes have been represented using different notations, such as value stream mapping and workflows. The main alternatives for starting events are arrival by ambulance or walk-in. The Manchester Triage Scale (MTS) was the most common protocol referred to in the literature. The most common end events are admission to a hospital, transfer to other facilities or admission to an ambulatory care system. The literature analysis allowed the development of a generic process model for emergency departments. Nevertheless, considering that several factors influence the process of an emergency department, such as pathologies, infrastructure, available teams and local regulations, modelling alternatives and challenges in each step of the process should be analysed according to the local context.

A generic business process model was developed using BPMN that can be used by practitioners and researchers to reduce the effort in the initial stages of design or improvement projects. Moreover, it’s a first step toward the development of generalizable and replicable solutions for emergency departments.

This study analyzes the performance implications of adopting blockchain to support supply chain business processes. The technology holds as many promises as implementation challenges, so interest in its impact on operational performance has grown steadily over the last few years.

Drawing on transaction cost economics and the contingency theory, we built a set of hypotheses. These were tested through a long-term event study and an ordinary least squares regression involving 130 adopters listed in North America.

Compared with the control sample, adopters displayed significant abnormal performance in terms of labor productivity, operating cycle and profitability, whereas sales appeared unaffected. Firms in regulated settings and closer to the end customer showed more positive effects. Neither industry-level competition nor the early involvement of a project partner emerged as relevant contextual factors.

This research presents the first extensive analysis of operational performance based on objective measures. In contrast to previous studies and theoretical predictions, the results indicate that blockchain adoption is not associated with sales improvement. This can be explained considering that secure data storage and sharing do not guarantee the factual credibility of recorded data, which needs to be proved to customers in alternative ways. Conversely, improvements in other operational performance dimensions confirm that blockchain can support inter-organizational transactions more efficiently. The results are relevant in times when, following hype, there are signs of disengagement with the technology.

This paper aims to unravel the puzzle that the United Kingdom’s high-quality government accounting and fiscal architecture is associated with low-quality outcomes, including poor productivity growth, high public debt, public services which do not meet citizen expectations and historically high levels of taxation. It contributes to public sector accounting research in the fields of fiscal transparency and governance.

This paper uses Miller and Power’s (2013) economization framework and Dunsire’s (1990) concept of collibration to explain why being a global leader in public sector accounting reform and in fiscal and monetary architecture has not protected the UK from weak governance. The intersection of economization’s roles of accounting with modes of government accounting clarifies the puzzle.

Whereas accruals government accounting contributes to fiscal transparency, this is not a sufficient condition for well-judged policy and its effective application. Collibration is the dominant mechanism for mediation in the fiscally centralized UK, but it has failed to deliver stable outcomes, in part because Parliament is limited in its ability to hold back inappropriate behaviour by the Executive. Subjectivization has disrupted adjudication because governments at all levels resist constraints on their behaviour, with unpredictable and often damaging consequences.

This paper provides insights through the combined lens of economization and modes of government accounting, demonstrating the practical value of this conceptualization. Although some causes for unsatisfactory outcomes are specific to the UK, there are cautions for accounting and fiscal reformers in other countries, such as Member States of the European Union.

The study aims to identify the practical borders of AI legal personality and accountability in human-centric services.

Using a framework tailored for AI studies, this research analyses structured interview data collected from auditors based in Poland.

The study identified new constructs to complement the taxonomy of arguments for AI legal personality: cognitive strain, consciousness, cyborg paradox, reasoning replicability, relativism, AI misuse, excessive human effort and substitution.

The insights presented herein are primarily derived from the perspectives of Polish auditors. There is a need for further exploration into the viewpoints of other key stakeholders, such as lawyers, judges and policymakers, across various global contexts.

The findings of this study hold significant potential to guide the formulation of regulatory frameworks tailored to AI applications in human-centric services. The proposed sui generis AI personality institution offers a dynamic and adaptable alternative to conventional legal personality models.

The outcomes of this research contribute to the ongoing public discourse on AI’s societal impact. It encourages a balanced assessment of the potential advantages and challenges associated with granting legal personality to AI systems.

This paper advocates for establishing a sui generis AI personality institution alongside a joint accountability model. This dual framework addresses the current uncertainties surrounding human, general AI and super AI characteristics and facilitates the joint accountability of responsible AI entities and their ultimate beneficiaries.

Blockchain technology and its applications have recently received the attention of practitioners and academics. Visualizing the full impact these technologies will have on the world is challenging since their adoption is still in the early stages. This chapter explores how blockchain can disrupt the general business and financial world. Blockchain offers information transparency, live data synchronization, and immutable records that prevent fraud. Digital contracts and digital asset management may heavily depend on the development of blockchain and the adoption of smart contracts. Smart contracts can execute financial transactions automatically and enforce all parties' obligations without needing an intermediary and its cost. They can increase speed and simplify processes, reducing licensing ticketing costs and overhead charges. Blockchain also offers technology adoption solutions, like fair payment, cloud storage, smart contracts for financial assets, and international transactions with bilateral double taxation. It has further facilitated the creation of decentralized finance.

This chapter first reviews some of the background concepts on central bank digital currency (CBDC) to provide a broad context, before diving into wholesale CBDC often a starting point for central banks to build CBDC prototypes based on distributed ledger technology (DLT), as it involves less complexity in experimentation. This chapter also examines cross-border CBDC, often an extension of wholesale CBDC prototypes based on DLT. The next chapter will then discuss retail CBDC as well as the prospects of economy-wide roll out of CBDC going forward.

The service environment is becoming increasingly turbulent, leading to calls for a systemic understanding of it as a set of dynamic service ecosystems. This paper advances this understanding by developing a typology of service ecosystem dynamics that explains the varying interplay between change and stability within the service environment through distinct behavioral patterns exhibited by service ecosystems over time.

This study builds upon a systematic literature review of service ecosystems literature and uses system dynamics as a method theory to abductively analyze extant literature and develop a typology of service ecosystem dynamics.

The paper identifies three types of service ecosystem dynamics—behavioral patterns of service ecosystems—and explains how they unfold through self-adjustment processes and changes within different systemic leverage points. The typology of service ecosystem dynamics consists of (1) reproduction (i.e. stable behavioral pattern), (2) reconfiguration (i.e. unstable behavioral pattern) and (3) transition (i.e. disrupting, shifting behavioral pattern).

The typology enables practitioners to gain a deeper understanding of their service environment by discerning the behavioral patterns exhibited by the constituent service ecosystems. This, in turn, supports them in devising more effective strategies for navigating through it.

The paper provides a precise definition of service ecosystem dynamics and shows how the identified three types of dynamics can be used as a lens to empirically examine change and stability in the service environment. It also offers a set of research directions for tackling service research challenges.