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This study investigates the progress of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Act 2003, and its associated Chartered Accountancy Profession Sector Code. In doing so, we explore why B-BBEE affirmative action has not yet achieved the Code's representational intentions, including systemic subtleties inhibiting this success.

Using semi-structured interviews, we explore the lived experiences of Black aspirant Chartered Accountants (CAs) undertaking articles in global audit firms. The experiences are thematically analysed, embracing a comprehensive theoretical approach that encompasses professional and social closure, as well as boundary work, to adequately understand why affirmative transformational endeavours persistently face uphill tasks. The utilisation of multifaceted theorisation is deemed essential for a more nuanced portrayal of the intricacies inherent in the CA profession in South Africa.

The narratives presented by Black aspiring CAs unveil a complex web of exclusionary practices entrenched in institutionalised historical, professional, and social contexts. The multifaceted nature of closures, symbolised by racial, cultural, and linguistic factors, significantly impacts the experiences of Black trainees. The findings furthermore show that deliberate intervention beyond compliance with the Government’s framework is necessary for meaningful transformation.

The paper brings to the fore the current lived experiences of underrepresented Black CAs in global auditing firms. In doing so, these firms are empowered with incremental knowledge of the prevailing challenges and can thus make tangible improvements towards authentic transformation. Additionally, the results help in tracking the advancements made through affirmative action, acting as a feedback loop for future developments in transformation policy.

Contributing to the critical accounting literature, our study extends scholarship on the barriers faced by CAs and the limitations in their capacity to challenge these obstacles within global audit firms. We offer practical policy-focused recommendations that, if implemented, can address the complex socio-political realities obstructing the success of affirmative action. By sharing first-hand accounts, our study aims to empower auditing firms and other related stakeholders with actionable insights, enabling them to improve genuine inclusivity and foster equitable representation in the accounting profession.

This study aims to enhance the understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on corporate tax performance in the context of a large emerging country like Indonesia.

This study uses a quantitative approach with multiple regression methods on a data set of 2,366 firm-year observations registered on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) from 2017 to 2022.

The primary empirical findings from the multivariate regressions suggest a positive and significant association between the COVID-19 pandemic and corporate tax performance in Indonesia. In other words, these listed firms have increased their tax avoidance activities during the pandemic. As firms face financial hardships due to the pandemic's effects, they tend to engage in tax avoidance practices to reduce current income tax payments, thereby enhancing their liquidity. In addition, over time, firms have adapted to use various tax policies introduced by the government in response to the pandemic to mitigate the adverse impacts of the crisis.

This study draws on a sample solely from one emerging country.

The results of this study can aid governments, policymakers, tax authorities and companies in evaluating their strategies concerning preparedness and emergency responses during crises, particularly those caused by pandemics.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is considered one of the initial efforts to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on corporate tax avoidance in an emerging country like Indonesia.

This study seeks to comprehend how sociomateriality influences the openness paradox within the context of open strategising.

We adopted a qualitative approach and developed a case study as a research method. The data included 10 semi-structured interviews, direct observation and documentary analysis, including virtual documents, collaborative platforms and communication systems.

We found that sociomateriality influences the transition between openness and closure in open strategy (OS) dimensions, namely inclusion, participation and transparency, once organisational practitioners actively build on social relationships and engage with material elements within this paradoxical context.

The primary limitation was the challenge of managing extensive data, especially tracking all meetings and interactions. Nonetheless, we aimed to provide a comprehensive view and meaningful insights from the data. Future research could employ mixed methods to achieve a more holistic understanding of the phenomenon.

By understanding the role of formalisation and legitimation played by sociomateriality during open strategising, practitioners can navigate the complexities of balancing openness and closure, fostering innovation and engagement while ensuring the legitimacy of strategising. Recognising the coexistence of exclusions in social practices enables society to comprehend this paradox and highlight the need to address it, fostering an inclusive environment and promoting balanced openness in various social contexts.

Our study contributes to the OS literature by highlighting the role of sociomateriality in shaping the openness and closure interplay. Additionally, we emphasise the importance of formalisation and legitimation practices involving materiality in the balance between openness and closure in a context where openness is deemed essential for strategic success.

This paper seeks to understand how a new elite, known as the cork aristocracy, emerged in the Bordeaux wine field, France, between 1850 and 1929 as wine merchants replaced aristocrats. Classic class and status perspectives, and their distinctive social closure dynamics, are mobilized to illuminate the individual and organizational transformations that affected elite wineries grouped in an emerging classification of the Bordeaux best wines. We build on a wealth of archives and historical ethnography techniques to surface complex status and organizational dynamics that reveal how financiers and industrialists intermediated this transition and how organizations are deeply interwoven into social change.

The purpose of this paper is to address four interrelated questions: what is the prevalence of ageism amongst employers? What are the factors conditioning employers’ age stereotypes? To what extent are ageist attitudes among employers translated into discriminatory recruitment, retention and firing practices? And what factors can moderate the stereotype–discrimination interaction?

The paper draws on a survey conducted among Danish employers; 2,525 completed the survey questionnaires; response rate 25 per cent.

The major finding is that ageist stereotypes among employers do not translate into discriminatory personnel management practices.

The findings may be specific to Denmark. Denmark is renowned to be a non-hierarchical, egalitarian society, which may have implications for personnel management practices.

Contrary to this study, most studies analysing ageist stereotypes do not assess the extent to which stereotypes are translated into discriminatory personnel management practices in the workplace.

Scientific knowledge is rich with literature on the antecedent role of social capital on resilience. However, empirical evidence has overlooked the role of the individual dimensions of bonding and bridging social capital on its outcomes. This study aims to extend empirical research on the influence of social capital facets of bonding social capital and bridging social capital on financial resilience and more specifically in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic where women SMEs mostly need bonding.

The study uses an explanatory research design to determine the hypothesized effect of social capital on financial resilience. The authors used regression to test the hypothesized relationship using a sample of three hundred and eight four women-owned SMEs in Kampala registered with Kampala City Traders Association.

According to the findings, the social bonding provides female entrepreneurs with emotive encouragement and inspiration through personal connections and responsibility sharing. Furthermore, women entrepreneurs bridging, which consisted of business networks, made it easier for them to identify new financial opportunities, which ultimately led to an increase in their financial resilience. The findings placed an emphasis on the significance of fellow business owners as sources of knowledge and assets that are crucial to maintaining one's financial resilience.

Data were collected from women owned SMEs, and the application of the findings may be limited to women SMEs in Kampala District. Therefore, future research should replicate the current study findings using a sample drawn from other SMEs owned by both male and female from outside Kampala because of changes in operating environment. The study was cross-sectional, and financial resilience of a firm changes was periodical. This study paves the way for future longitudinal research in the same topic area, which will allow for a more complete comprehension of the financial resiliency of SMEs throughout a range of different time periods.

Research findings shape trajectory for current practitioners of SMEs to establish relevant social bonding and bridging as social capital in preparation for financial resilience in case of any pandemic.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to establish the antecedent role of social capital on financial resilience during an economic crisis induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, using a sample of women-owned medium- and small-sized businesses in Kampala.

Before COVID-19, Kenya was among the countries in sub-Saharan Africa already dealing with high Gender-Based Violence (GBV) issues. Kenya had experienced prior convoluted emergencies and endemics, which had an inordinate impingement on women and girls that heightened their vulnerability to GBV. The Kenyan Ministry of Public Service and Gender reported that in 2020, there was an increase of 36% in GBV cases (Roy et al., 2021). COVID-19 had a devastating effect in rural communities, whereby women were most impacted. This study aims to understand the lessons learned from public leaders in implementing policies that could address GBV through better leadership approaches.

This is an exploratory-qualitative study in which six participants comprised of policymakers or government representatives that were interviewed in semi-structured interviews.

The qualitative narratives provided evidence that suggests a complex relationship between the COVID-19 lockdowns and movement restrictions policies and played a direct factor in the rise in GBV in vulnerable populations. The individual country policies and sectoral policies varied in how vulnerable women's needs were addressed, which led to diverse socioeconomic and health consequences.

This research delineates the impacts of the failure of Kenyan leaders to implement gender focused COVID-19 policies and guidelines that considered the physical, mental, violence and the economic impact such emergencies have on women and girls in rural communities.

We propose and test a theoretically grounded structural model of our postulation, providing insights into how students’ COVID experiences affect their general learning experiences, specific learning experiences and specific class performance post-COVID.

Numerous studies have reported how COVID-19 has impacted student learning in higher education during the pandemic from Spring 2020 to Fall 2021. Students were found to be disengaged, unmotivated, isolated, anxious, having difficulty with emergency remote teaching (ERT) and dealing with financial, physical and/or mental health issues. Against this backdrop, we conduct our own investigation to ascertain what the lasting impacts of COVID-19 are on student learning using a survey instrument. Specifically, we postulate that the academic and social disruptions of COVID-19 affected students’ social connectedness and mental well-being, which in turn, affected their affective and cognitive learning outcomes. We used structural equation modeling to validate a structural model grounded in self-determination theory that capatures the complex relationships between genaral and specfiic COVID-19 impact factors on student learning as seven hypotheses.

All seven of our hypotheses are supported suggesting that both class-specific factors and broader general factors beyond the classroom affect student's satisfaction with and learning in the class, as postulated in our structural model.

We advance the work of self-determination theory by conceptualizing and modeling the roles that all three self-determination needs play in investigating COVID-19's impact on learning. Overall, our study confirms the value of considering affective factors such as anxiety and satisfaction in learning research.

This study aims to investigate the use of voluntary disclosure on mainstream social media platforms to examine strategic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines the influential factors and institutional pressures organisations faced when making disclosures on social media during the pandemic.

A two-stage qualitative approach was adopted. Stage one used content analysis to examine voluntary disclosures made by international organisations on social media during the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stage two comprised semi-structured interviews with individuals who were involved in the decision-making process around the social media disclosures.

This study’s findings reveal significant changes in disclosure practices due to COVID-19-related pressures. In addition to the utilisation of social media for signalling conformance with new pandemic-related norms and connecting with stakeholders, the evidence also reveals how organisations made use of strategic responses to COVID-19-related institutional pressures.

The findings reveal how social media was used as a means of timely voluntary disclosure during the examined crisis. The findings can inform the development of organisational guidelines and policies for the use of social media as a disclosure medium.

This study reveals how organisations used voluntary disclosure on social media as a strategic response to institutional pressures and the COVID-19 pandemic; this context is under-researched. The study also extends the application of the strategic response framework regarding voluntary disclosure via social media.