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This paper is prompted by an analysis of accounting and accounting education by Lawrence et al. (2013) in this journal. In that paper, the authors use the theory of autopoiesis to articulate and explore, what they argue is, an inappropriate conservatism in accounting. This aims to develop the insights offered by Lawrence et al., to advance the understanding of autopoiesis and to use the insights from the theory of autopoiesis to try and confront (what we see as) the resistance shown in business and accounting to the possibilities of a more substantive sustainability agenda.

The essay takes its departure point as the paper by Lawrence et al. and uses the theory of autopoiesis as a metaphorical lens through which to re-examine accounting, business and educational practice with respect to sustainability.

This paper depart somewhat from Lawrence et al.’s arguments and inferences but broadly supports their contentions that accounting and accounting education are autopoietic. Some advances are offered to the theory and some issues for future research are briefly speculated upon. The analysis succeeds in highlighting that the accounting, business and educational systems may well be protecting their “cores” but are doing so by ignoring crucial and life-threatening information. In autopoietic terms, the sub-systems are behaving as closed systems that are causing self-harm and are being psychopathic. It is speculate that accounting educators may be, themselves, acting as autopoietic persons.

The essay, in identifying some of the empirical weaknesses inherent in the theory of autopoiesis in a social science context, suggests that the persuasiveness or otherwise of the theory will probably lie in the extent to which a reader finds the heuristic plausible and not in any easily testable propositions. The implications, if this limitation is accepted, are, broadly, that accounting and accounting education are acting psychopathically in the face of (arguably) life-threatening data.

There are extensive implications for research and policy but only those for education are explored here.

If the analysis is persuasive, the implication for engagement with the exigencies of sustainability is profound and disturbing.

The paper has two primary purposes: to challenge and develop debate around Lawrence et al.’s arguments and to use autopoiesis as one explanation for the inertia around sustainability, business and accounting. The paper extends the theory of autopoiesis as articulated in accounting to embrace both the issue of nesting systems and the autopoietic person. The combination of these contributions is combined with Lawrence et al., in offering a substantive challenge to accounting educators: albeit a substantively different one than those authors offered. It is these matters of difference that ultimately challenge the authors’ roles as educators, researchers and accountants.

This chapter examines the involvement of finance companies in the purchasing and leasing of Australian farmlands. This is a new global phenomenon as, in past decades, finance companies have lent money to farmers, but have rarely sought to purchase land themselves. We investigate and discuss the activities of the Hancock company – an asset management firm that invested in farmland in northern NSW. Material on the activities of Hancock and other investment firms were obtained from documents on the public record, including newspaper reports. Semi-structured interviews with community members were conducted in the region of NSW where Hancock operated. Australian agriculture is being targeted for investment by companies in the finance industry – as part of a growing ‘financialization’ of farming. While it is financially beneficial for companies to invest, they do not do so in ‘empty spaces’ but in locations where people desire to live in a healthy environment. The Hancock company was criticized by community residents for failing to recognize the concerns of local people in pursuing its farming activities. To date, there have been few studies on the financialization of farming in Australia. By investigating the operations of the Hancock company we identify a number of concerns emerging, at the community level, about an overseas company running Australian-based farms.

While inter-organizational collaboration concerns processes of organizing between firms, it is always initiated and enacted by individual people who perceive a need for collaboration. This chapter takes the perspective of these actors and their efforts to seek collaboration as they pursue an agenda for change. Collaboration processes are thus conceptualized as path creation and internal strategizing. The chapter focuses specifically on how actors sell the need for collaboration internally and how they draw on their external network to promote change. It illustrates this process of issue selling and collaboration with six case studies in the area of new product development, new forms of network governance, and network-wide change of business practices. Comparing these more or less successful trajectories highlights the relevance of the relational context in issue selling, the role of intentionality within emerging processes, and interplay between external collaboration and internal strategizing.

The resurgence of interest in public sector accounting has been evident in the significant growth of the literature concerning both developed and developing countries. Literature reviews in the area, however, have only focused on the former thus leaving a gap which has been overlooked for some time. This paper begins to respond to this lack in the literature by critically assessing research on public sector accounting and financial management in developing countries. The paper elaborates the various views expressed by writers in the field and also identifies omissions in terms of themes, methodologies, and methods. In particular, we argue that most of the mainly non‐empirical studies in the literature have been influenced to a very large extent by development economics thinking (including theories the relevance of which have been significantly questioned in that discipline). We conclude by offering some suggestions for future research in the area.

This chapter develops a productivity analysis of the US pharmaceutical industry via Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). This study concerns itself with 16 US pharmaceutical companies. The output variables are profit margin, operating margin, return on assets, and return on equity. The input variables are corporate workers and market capital. Since negative data appear in DEA, a directional distance approach was applied.

This paper aims to test the extent to which downward bias due to a floating-point exception in probability of informed trading (PIN) estimates obtained using the Easley, Hvidkjaer and O’Hara (EHO; 2002) method is remedied using the Yan and Zhang (YZ; 2012) method. The paper also aims to test the sample-size sensitivity of EHO PIN and identify PIN determinants for acquirers and targets in the biotech sector.

EHO and YZ PIN performances are compared for US biotech acquirers and targets around their mergers and acquisition (M&A) announcements. The sampling method of Kryzanowski and Lazrak (2007) is used to assess sample-size sensitivity of announcement window EHO PIN estimates. Cross-sectional regressions are estimated to identify PIN determinants.

EHO and YZ PIN are not significantly different. EHO PIN exhibits significant sample-size sensitivity. Information leakage prior to M&A announcements is strongly affected by some firm characteristics. Significant determinants of PIN behavior around M&A announcements include insider and institutional holdings and research and development (R&D) expense.

Findings imply that PIN partially reflects the activities of insiders and other informed investors about takeover intentions. Subsequent research can examine PIN behavior around pre-announcement rumors for M&As in the same or other industries and for potential targets that are peers of the M&A targets.

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate in the empirical finance literature on whether PIN measures informed trading by examining its behavior and the importance of some methodological issues associated with its use in examining market behavior around M&A announcements.

A pressing educational concern is how to provide effective education for the growing population of dual language learners (DLL) in early childhood settings. Given the robust findings that family involvement promotes children’s academic success as well as recognition of parents’ “funds of knowledge,” one pathway to provide a culturally and linguistically responsive classroom environment for DLLs is to form collaborative relationships between parents and teachers of DLLs. The purpose of this chapter is to describe Project TAPP (Teachers and Parents as Partners), a community of practice (CoP) composed of parents and teachers of preschool dual language learners. The chapter describes the framework of Project TAPP, findings related to participation, and lessons learned.

Nowadays, social and environmental reporting is approached in different ways, paths and fields by either large-, small-, or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, as demonstrated by previous scholars, SMEs have been critically discussed because they provide lack of proper sustainability disclosure. The fact that the predominant approach of SMEs toward social responsibility is often “sunken” and not “explicit” can drive the lack of disclosure. Furthermore, unstructured communication practices create difficulties in measuring and reporting the sustainability reporting phenomenon in SMEs. The aim of our study is to shed light on the activity of SMEs’ sustainability reporting and disclosure, specifically, by addressing the variables that influence the choice of the guidelines used to prepare sustainability reports.

The research has been carried out by using qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The empirical evidence is based on all the Italian companies, mostly SMEs, that were certified in 2011 as having adopted both environmental (i.e., ISO14001 or EMAS) and social (i.e., SA8000) management systems. A multivariate linear regression model has been developed to address the influence of several variables (i.e., financial performance, size, time after achievement of the certifications, group/conglomerate control, etc.) on the guidelines’ choice for preparing sustainability reports.

Our findings demonstrate that SMEs prefer to use simple guidelines such as those guidelines that are mandatory under management system certifications. However, the sustainability disclosure driven by the adoption of international guidelines may be more complex if the SME is controlled within a group of companies or if a significant amount of time has passed since the certification date. As such, we developed a taxonomy of their different behavioral drivers according to a legitimacy theory approach.

At this stage, our study didn’t focus on the contents’ quality of the disclosure and reporting practices adopted by SMEs, which is obviously a worthwhile and important area for further research. Furthermore, the analysis took into account the impact of a number of easily accessible variables; therefore, it can be extended to investigate the effect on disclosure of other relevant variables (i.e., nature of the board of directors, age, and industrial sector in which the company operates) as well as contexts prevailing in other countries.

The study represents an important contribution for understanding how and why managers might use externally focused disclosure on social and environmental issues to benefit the company’s legitimacy.

Our study provides interesting insights for policy makers who require social or environmental certification when calling for tenders or specific EU contracts, in order to put aside the “brand” or “symbol” and really focus on the disclosed practices.

Previous studies have provided only a few evidence about reporting practices and related influencing features of SMEs’ sustainability actions. As such, the study wishes to make a significant contribution to the existing literature on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by providing relevant insights about the factors which influence the guidelines used by SMEs in preparing their sustainability reports.