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In the public debate, companies are confronted with conflicting expectations regarding their responsibility. An inconsistent understanding of the responsibility of corporations may affect the acceptance of corporate actions. The purpose of this study is to take this observation as a starting point and to analyze corporate responsibility assessments of different actors.

In the course of two online surveys conducted by a polling institute at the end of January 2017, 1,003 German citizens were asked about their expectations concerning the responsibility of corporations. One survey was mainly focused on clothing manufacturers, the other one on banks. Moreover, a content analysis of nationwide German quality newspapers aims at showing the media perspective. By using an extensive combination of keywords, 1069 articles were analyzed for the period from 1 January to 31 December 2016. The coding revealed 345 relevant articles containing 717 responsibility-related judgments.

Overall, the systematic comparison of both perspectives show differences between societal perspectives and therefore presents an explanation for conflicting expectations concerning the responsibility of corporations.

The measurement of judgments on responsibility is a complex endeavor. Findings may be limited due to an extensive coding process and a restricted comparability of the two surveys and the content analysis. Moreover, findings are focused on clothing manufacturers and banks only.

A focus on responsibility assessments delivers a deeper understanding of different perspectives concerning the responsibility of corporations in the public debate.

The purpose of this paper is to study how individuals assess responsibility during an uncontrollable event requiring collective action, using crises affecting service workers as contexts. Specifically, the authors examine what parties consumers hold responsible for ensuring service worker welfare following an uncontrollable event and determine what factors make customers more open to accepting responsibility for ensuring worker welfare themselves.

The authors surveyed a nationally representative sample of US consumers regarding their attitudes toward protecting service workers during COVID-19 and used regression analysis to identify factors that predict attributions of responsibility to customers. The authors also conducted an experiment (using a new crisis context) to determine whether certain key factors impact customer perceptions of their own responsibility for helping employees during an uncontrollable event.

The survey results show US consumers hold firms most responsible for worker welfare, followed by customers and, finally, government. When examining factors that drive attributions of responsibility for customers, perceptions of how sincere firms are in their efforts to help employees predict higher responsibility attributions, and experimental results confirm that higher perceived firm sincerity increases consumers’ own sense of responsibility toward workers.

This research identifies factors that affect consumer support for efforts to help service employees and collective action problems more generally.

This research highlights an under-studied crisis context – uncontrollable events that require collective action – and shows how consumers make assessments about their own responsibility (in addition to the responsibility of the service firm) in these contexts.

Student populations in higher education in the United States have become increasingly diverse as a result of demographic changes. As a result, educators need an understanding of the background and characteristics of these demographic subgroups in order to improve the quality of their education. Students’ approaches to learning affect their quality of learning and are influenced by their perceptions of the learning environment and assessment. The present study extends prior research by examining the approaches to learning, assessment preferences, and the relationship between approaches to learning and assessment preferences of intermediate accounting students enrolled in a public university in the United States with a diverse student population. Students with higher deep approaches to learning had higher preferences for assessment involving higher-order thinking tasks, integrated assessment, and nonconventional assessment. Students with higher surface approaches to learning had lower preferences for assessment involving higher-order thinking tasks. The differences in these relationships for subgroups of students defined by citizenship, age, gender, and race are presented. The implications of the results for teaching and learning in accounting education are discussed.

In the UK, there are around 1.5 million carers of people with mental health problems providing substantial amounts of free care. Despite having a legal right to a ‘carer's assessment’, only a minority of mental health carers have had such an assessment. To try and understand why the uptake is so low, we undertook a small (n = 8) qualitative study exploring what mental health staff acting as ‘care co‐ordinators’ thought the barriers to, and facilitators of, carers' assessments might be, and how subsequent practice might be improved.We found that there was some confusion over the definition of ‘carer’ and over who should take responsibility for carer assessments. The main barriers to carers' assessments were the documentation used, the attitudes of staff (especially managers) and the fact that the needs of mental health carers often differed from those caring for people with a physical disability. Practice could be improved through: clarifying the definition of ‘carer’; education and training; redesigning the documentation; dovetailing service user and carer needs assessments; and through offering a wider choice of evidence‐based services as assessment outcomes. Improvements are unlikely to be successful, however, without the active support, expertise and engagement of carers.

The purpose of this paper is to assess elements that affect social responsibility in supply chains and beyond. The elements are classified into drivers, facilitators and inhibitors.

This paper presents an assessment of supply chain management research published over the period of 2009-2013.

Sixteen elements are identified and presented in a framework along with their proposed constituents. The elements capture structures and management principles of supply chains that are important for social responsibility.

The elements provide a basis to better understand how social responsibility in supply chains is related to contextual factors. The framework of elements is still only an initial step toward enhanced understanding of how the context affects social responsibility in supply chains.

The framework may guide companies to acknowledge elements that are known to improve or deteriorate social responsibility in supply chains.

This paper contributes to capture the state-of-the-art knowledge based upon recent research. It is also a stepping stone toward improved insights on what drives, facilitates and inhibits individuals in social responsibility.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the process of developing an academic library assessment plan and its relation to the furtherance of a culture of assessment.

Qualitative study of a university library’s assessment planning process; findings based on documentary evidence as well as an employee survey; analysis framed in relationship to relevant literature.

Planning for the future of assessment offered the Jerry Falwell Library a significant opportunity for organizational change. Evaluations of the planning process were mixed, but generally revealed evidence of conditions associated with the development of a culture of assessment. Participants saw planning as the product of both external and internal factors. The plan’s orientation toward value and impact, though clearly understood, was not universally appreciated. Implementation of the plan remains a substantial challenge.

Reliability is subject to the limitations inherent to qualitative methods. Single case study design limits generalizability to different contexts.

The goal of developing a culture of assessment is not to be achieved easily or quickly. Library employees may be most inclined to support an assessment agenda when it is driven by internal factors such as quality improvement and the pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness.

The study emphasizes the process of developing an assessment plan at a university with a strong teaching mission. Additionally, it provides insight into the relationship between assessment planning and a culture of assessment.

In crafting Auditing Standard No.3 (AS3), a primary objective of the PCAOB was to reduce auditors' exposure to litigation by raising the standard of care for audit documentation. We examine whether the increased documentation requirements of AS3 affect legal professionals' perceptions of audit quality and auditor responsibility in the event of an audit failure. Our experiment consists of a 3 × 2 between-participants design with law students serving as proxies for legal professionals. The results of our experiment indicate that when an audit procedure, namely the investigation of inconsistent evidence, is not required to be documented, legal professionals perceive the performance of the work itself but not its documentation to significantly increase audit quality and reduce the auditor's responsibility for an audit failure. When documentation of the procedure is required, as per AS3, legal professionals perceive enhanced audit quality and reduced auditor responsibility only if the performance of the work is documented.

Using the Association of Research Libraries' SPEC KIT 303 library assessment framework, this study examines and evaluates academic libraries' efforts toward establishing a culture of assessment.

A quantitative questionnaire is employed to collect data. The sample comprises 70 library staff working in eight academic libraries in public and private universities in Kuwait.

The findings document a readiness to create a culture of assessment in Kuwaiti academic libraries, though this was greater in private universities. Resources to develop this culture, such as assessment and analysis methods and the requisite skills and knowledge, are available, but commitment from academic leaders and plans for a shift toward culture of assessment were not evident. Overall, participating academic library staff acknowledged the value of developing a culture of assessment, but this seems not to be an institutional priority

The methodology and findings address gaps in library and information science education and library management on creating a culture of assessment and suggest future research avenues.

Library assessment is a core function of libraries, but guaranteeing the continuity and consistency of related activities requires an organizational culture that facilitates and supports such assessment. While many articles have focused on the requisites for building a culture of assessment in higher education, few, if any, have assessed academic libraries in the cultural context of the Middle East.