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This paper aims to analyze the current state of integration of sustainable development (SD), in the academic curricula of Business Sciences degrees, including matters about Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability. In this way, the paper explores how Portuguese public higher education institutions (HEI) contribute to teaching about sustainable development (TSD).

The study focuses on Business Sciences degrees. The webpages of all public HEI with BSc and MSc degrees in those areas in Portugal were analyzed, to obtain curricular plans and syllabus. Content analysis was performed on each of these elements of Accounting and Taxation and Management and Business Administration courses.

There is already some concern about addressing SD in Business Sciences, inasmuch as SD-related topics are taught in Accounting and Taxation and in Management and Business Administration degrees and courses. However, the analysis shows that TSD was integrated into the academic curricula in only 95 degrees (48.5%). Additionally, in these, there are only 79 compulsory curricular units that address this theme. Given the fact that the subject of SD is increasingly relevant, the paper evidence still much room for improvement, indicating that TSD is yet a big challenge for HEI.

TSD is increasingly important because of the growing globalization that requires skilled professionals able to assess the complex and controversial issues related to the topic, to achieve and implement the SD goals in 2030. The literature evidence lack of studies addressing the integration of the SD theme in academic curricula. This paper makes here a contribution by showing what HEI is teaching in the area of business studies. It also brings good implications for society, while showing that sustainability content is becoming more apparent within certain HEI courses. This could be used to create follow up research on what type of sustainability content is being included within the courses and the learning that is happening in students in regard to this sustainability content.

The paper aims to analyse the engagement in sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) by a sample of Portuguese firms between 2008 and 2011.

Bivariate and multivariate non-parametric statistics is used to analyse some factors that influence the decision to have sustainability reports assured.

Results indicate that size, leverage, profitability, listing status and industrial affiliation are determinants of SRA, whereas type of ownership is not. A downward trend in sustainability reporting and its assurance was also detected.

The sample is small.

It adds to the scarce research on SRA by providing new empirical data in a context of crisis and extends prior research by analysing the effects of listing status and type of ownership.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a descriptive comprehensive analysis of sustainability reporting (SR) and assurance in Portugal after the onset of the most recent economic crisis.

The authors analyze 290 sustainability reports for the years 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, and find those that include assurance statements and characterize them.

The authors present evidence supporting the view that the Portuguese sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) market follows the international trends and suggest that the most recent economic crisis had a negative effect in terms of publication of sustainability reports but not in terms of its quality and assurance.

The authors merely provide descriptive evidence of SR and the assurance thereof in Portugal.

The authors contribute significantly to the literature on SRA in peripheral countries and in the period of crisis.

In the twenty-first century, the family has been turning towards a greater plurality of training paths, situations, family and parental arrangements. However, despite changes in legislation, values, representations and practices, the word family remains inexorably associated with the heterosexual bi-parental model. This paper aims to contribute to the knowledge of the family dynamics of non-heterosexual people, mainly concerning the process of transition to parenting, in relation to family changes in Portuguese society. To do so this study aims to analyze four in-depth interviews¹ with young adults, women and men who have a homoconjugality relationship and a project of parenting in mind.

Based on a qualitative methodology the study intends to discuss issues related to the challenge of heteronormativity, equality within the couple, projects and gender representations of parenthood and in particular what it means for the men and women interviewed, to be a father and to be a mother in a same sex couple and how they project themselves as fathers and mothers.

The study discusses all these issues always in relation to the biographical trajectories, the history and life as a couple and the structural and individual resources, such as school and professional qualifications. It also analyzes the main difficulties experienced in revealing their sexuality to the significant others and the difficulties / strategies they anticipate in relation to the parenting project.

The authors conclude that female interviewees show greater independence of a male figure in relation to their parental projects and anticipate less difficulty in their parental skills compared with the gay man interviewed.

To analyze the dynamics of parenting in same-sex couples, this study also points out to the need to construct a model of analysis capable of articulating structural factors, such as job insecurity and heteronormativity, biographies and individual resources and profiles of conjugal interactions.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

The purpose is to analyse the nutritional adequacy and carbon footprint of intermediated meals provided to preschool children and primary-level students in a Portuguese municipality.

An observational cross-sectional study was conducted with a convenience sampling consisting of school snacks from a Portuguese municipality. The nutritional assessment used food labels and a Portuguese food composition table. The literature review for carbon footprint assessment was conducted by searching for the products under analysis or similar ones.

The results showed that 80% of snacks have a higher energy value than recommended. The majority of options are below recommendations for protein and fat and above recommendations for carbohydrates. The intermediated meals with more dairy products in composition have the highest carbon footprint. The carbon footprint included the packaging of the products, and it wasn't possible to determine the influence of non-food products.

This study has limitations in the fact that we do not know the carbon footprint of Portuguese products and we had to compare them with others, from different countries, with possibly different types of production.

Intermediate meals are inadequate, and the carbon footprint is higher when the intermediated meals include products of animal origin – the reason why the composition of intermediated meals should be redesigned considering the achievement of these targets.

The promotion of intermediated meals that promote the Mediterranean eating pattern contributes to health and well-being and is a vehicle for nutrition education and healthy food consumption in schools.

Many studies have been conducted to analyse the carbon footprint and environmental impact of school meals, but commonly lunch is the meal evaluated and the assessment of intermediated meals' impact is an open field.

This research investigated the impact that environmental disasters have on the volume of socio-environmental disclosure and investments of Brazilian companies from 1997 to 2012. News on environmental disasters was collected through a search engine, the companies responsible for the disasters were identified, and the research technique of content analysis was used to analyze the research data, which included the sustainability reports, annual reports, and management reports of the companies responsible, and also of other enterprises belonging to the same economic sector, dating from two years before and two years after the accident. The sentences were categorized according to the methodology used by Deegan, Rankin, and Voght (2000). The Mann–Whitney test was used in order to set the level of socio-environmental disclosure and investment before the occurrence of the accident and then compare it to the level of disclosure and investment after the accident. As a result, it was shown that the companies reported a higher volume of socio-environmental disclosure in the two years after the occurrence of the accidents – with statistical significance of 2.9%. Statistically significant variations of 8.2% and 0.7% were found in the totals of contributions to society and in environmental investments, respectively. On the other hand, there was no statistically significant variation in the internal social indicators. The relevance of this research is the study of events to understand how environmental disasters can influence voluntary disclosure practices of Brazilian companies, through the lens of the legitimacy theory.

This paper aims to critically analyse the content of the assurance statements of corporate sustainability reports to examine the degree to which assurance statements enhance and uphold organisational transparency and accountability to stakeholders.

This framework of content analysis draws on a research instrument developed by O’Dwyer and Owen (2005), as well as the most recent assurance guidelines (Global Reporting Initiative) and standards AA1000AS, 2008 and ISAE 3000.

Due to the lack of stakeholders’ engagement in the assurance process, due to the scope limitation placed on the assurance engagement and due to the reluctance of the assuror to address the assurance statements to the stakeholders groups, sustainability assurance practice cannot be considered as the accountability enabler. With persistent focus on internal systems, process, data generation and data capture, assurance practice is serving more as an internal control tool than as a social accounting/auditing instrument.

A single country context is studied. However, to the extent that assurances are conducted using common sets of assurance standards and guidelines, there is external validity of the findings.

Despite the institutional initiatives by the global and local institutions regarding social and environmental sustainability reporting and assurance, the assurance practice has not yet emerged as a tool of social accountability.

This study provides a comprehensive and up-to-date empirical assessment of the degree to which the sustainability assurance practice encompasses the issue of stakeholders’ interests and forms the potential basis for policy implications to the assurance practice and to the assurance standard setting process.

Journalists construct a public image through each of their produced texts. Regarding cinema journalism, the feature stories are the result of multiple semiotic relationships established between the cinematographic products, the artists involved with the cinema production, and the possible expectations of the readers related to the journalistic texts, as well as viewers of the films and the depicted artistic contexts. A semiotic analysis of a feature story on the documentary Todos os Paulos do Mundo, written by the journalist Luiz Carlos Merten, reveals the construction of what semiotics calls signic actions. Such actions recover the film creation process and its produced meaning related to contemporary Brazilian production of cinematography.