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The purpose of this study is to investigate the moderating role of honesty-humility of financial managers on aggressive financial reporting behavior.

To test the research hypotheses, a scenario-based questionnaire taken from Brink et al. (2018) was used. Using a cross-sectional survey design, the authors collected primary data of 160 financial managers of firms in Iran using structured questionnaires. The research sample selected was based on Cohen et al.’s (2000) table. To test the research hypotheses, analysis of variance was used.

The results showed that increasing honesty-humility of financial managers decreases the impact of social pressure and risk appetite interaction on aggressive financial reporting. In addition, the results of further analysis showed that reducing the honesty-humility of financial managers increases the impact of risk appetite on aggressive financial reporting. Moreover, the results indicate that reducing the honesty-humility of financial managers increases the impact of social pressure on aggressive financial reporting.

This finding provides significant evidence for auditor, managers and policymakers in Iran. Policymakers, auditor and company managers can emphasize compliance with the code of ethics, internal control and corporate governance to increase ethics and reduce negative economic consequences.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first case in an emerging economy to survey the moderating role of honesty-humility of financial managers on aggressive financial reporting behavior. Also, this study contributes to understanding how factors at the individual, social and organizational level combine to influence financial managers’ aggressive financial reporting behavior.

With the worldwide open government data (OGD) movement and frequent public health emergencies in recent years, academic research on OGD for public health emergencies has been growing. However, it is not fully understood how to promote OGD on public health emergencies. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the factors that influence OGD on public health emergencies.

The technology–organization–environment framework is applied to explore factors that influence OGD during COVID-19. It is argued that the effects of four key factors – technical capacity, organizational readiness, social attention and top-down pressure – are contingent on the severity of the pandemic. A unique data set was created by combining multiple data sources which include archival government data, a survey of 1,034 Chinese respondents during the COVID-19 outbreak and official COVID-19 reports.

The data analysis indicates that the four factors positively affect OGD, and pandemic severity strengthens the effects of technical capacity, organizational readiness and social attention on OGD.

This study provides theoretical insights regarding how to improve OGD during public health emergencies, which can guide government efforts in sharing data with the public when dealing with outbreak in the future.

Drawing on institutional theory, this study investigates the role of individual cultural values on the adoption of socially sustainable supply chain management (socially SSCM) for Chinese suppliers facing the normative institutional pressures of guanxi (interpersonal relationships).

Using empirical data collected in three waves from 205 Chinese manufacturers supplying international markets, the proposed theoretical model is tested through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results indicate that guanxi has a positive impact on socially SSCM, and this positive effect is strengthened when the individual cultural values of the supplier's representative embody high collectivism and low uncertainty avoidance.

This study highlights the leading role of guanxi in improving socially SSCM practices due to its normative institutional force. In addition, the findings suggest that future studies should consider individual differences in supply chain partners, which may lead to distinct reactions when facing normative institutional pressures.

This study suggests international buyers should adopt guanxi management with their Chinese suppliers to encourage them to adopt socially SSCM. In addition, managers should note that the guanxi strategy is more effective when the supplier's representative collectivism is high and uncertainty avoidance is low.

This study contributes to socially SSCM research in emerging economies by unveiling the role of guanxi as a key driver of socially SSCM in the Chinese market and providing empirical evidence of the moderating effect of individual culture on the guanxi normative institutionalization process.

Despite the dramatic increase in people's use of social media, relatively few studies have examined its effect on careers. Drawing upon social comparison theory and self-regulation theory, this study aims to investigate how career-oriented social media usage interacts with social comparison orientation (SCO) to influence the career exploration of university students.

Three waves of survey data are collected from 482 university students in China. Hypotheses are tested through ordinary least squares analysis.

Results show that career-oriented social media usage increases career anxiety, which in turn promotes career exploration. Furthermore, SCO strengthens such influence of career-oriented social media usage.

Given the limited attention paid to the effects of social media in career contexts, this study distinguishes career-oriented social media usage and proposes insights into its effect on career exploration. In doing so, this study extends social media literature and provides implications for the transition of university students from school to work in the digital era.

This study aims to investigate the impact of board skill diversity (BSD) on corporate environmental responsibility (CER). In addition, this study explores the moderating effects of formal regulatory pressure and informal media pressure.

This study uses Chinese high polluting companies as the sample and uses regression analysis. Robustness checks, including instrumental variable regression, Heckman two-stage model and propensity score matching method, are performed to test the robustness of the results.

The findings suggest that BSD significantly improves CER performance. Both formal regulatory pressure and informal media pressure strengthen the positive impact of BSD on CER. Further channel analyses reveal that BSD improves CER performance by promoting corporate proenvironmental behaviors rather than by restricting environmental violations; skill diversity of executive directors has a more significant effect on CER than that of independent directors. Finally, the moderating effect of regulatory pressure is only significant after the implementation of the Environmental Protection Law, and the moderating effect of media pressure mainly concentrates on negative media coverage.

The involvement of directors with more diverse skills is essential to improve corporate proenvironmental behaviors. Companies should select qualified directors with different skills to further improve their performance on environmental protection and sustainable development.

Regulators and standard-setters should develop efficient guidelines on corporate board governance to enhance the positive role of companies in environmental and sustainable development.

This study broadens the research on the determinants of CER by examining the influence of BSD on CER and the moderating roles of various stakeholder pressures, thereby providing a deeper understanding of corporate environmental performance and sustainable development.

Of critical concern to the world is the need to reduce consumption and waste of natural resources. This study provides a multi-level exploration of the ways situational and transformational links between levels and challenges are related to the adoption and utilization of material flow cost accounting in Vietnam, to encourage green productivity.

Based on triangulation of public documents at different institutional levels and a set of semi-structured interviews, situational and transformational links and challenges for material flow cost accounting in Vietnam are examined using purposive and snowball sampling of key actors.

Using a multi-level framework the research identifies six situational and transformational barriers to implementation of material flow cost accounting and suggests opportunities to overcome these. The weakest links identified involve macro-to meso-situational and micro-to macro-transformational links. The paper highlights the dominance of meso-level institutions and lack of focus on micro transformation to cut waste and enable improvements in green productivity.

The paper identifies ways for companies in Vietnam to reduce unsustainability and enable transformation towards sustainable management and waste reduction.

The paper is the first to develop and use a multi-level/multi-time period framework to examine the take-up of material flow cost accounting to encourage transformation towards green productivity. Consideration of the Vietnamese case builds understanding of the challenges for achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 12, to help enable sustainable production and consumption patterns.

This paper aims to investigate the influence of sustainable enterprise resource planning (S-ERPs) systems implementation on sustainability performance.

A 1 × 2 experiment was conducted, involving a sample of 72 professional accountants enrolled in MPA, MBA and DBA programs at two prominent Egyptian universities. Simple linear regression was used to analyze the data.

The results reveal positive relationships between the implementation of S-ERPs and economic, environmental and social sustainability performance.

Considering the research methodology used, which relies on a laboratory experiment design; nevertheless, empirical data derived from a quasi-experiment conducted in a real-world context would offer valuable insights into the existing literature.

For manufacturing sector managers, the results offer value as organizations can benefit from S-ERP adoption in the internal and external integration of sustainability functions. The findings also provide decision-makers in the manufacturing context, particularly in emerging countries, with tangible reasons to consider S-ERP adoption for holistic sustainability benefits including waste management, resource consumption reduction and management of sustainable supply chain complexities. Further, the findings provide valuable insights for ERP vendors on how they can develop their ERP packages to align with software sustainability criteria.

This study is among the few that experimentally investigates the influence of S-ERPs implementation on sustainability performance within the manufacturing sector, especially in an emerging context such as Egypt. This unique contribution provides valuable insights into the complex connection between technology adoption and sustainability outcomes.

This study examines the dualities of digital services – that is, how customers’ favorite everyday digital services can positively and negatively contribute to their well-being. Thus, the study describes the meanings of favorite digital services as part of customers’ everyday lives and the types of well-being to which such services can contribute.

We used a qualitative research approach through semi-structured interviews conducted in 2021 to collect data from 14 young adults (22–31 years old) who actively used digital services in their daily lives.

Our findings revealed that customers’ favorite everyday digital services can contribute to their mental well-being, social well-being, and intellectual well-being. Within these three dimensions of well-being, we identified nine dualities of digital services that describe their positive and negative contributions: (1) digital escapism versus digital disruption, (2) digital relaxation versus digital stress, (3) digital empowerment versus digital subjugation, (4) digital augmentation versus digital emptiness, (5) digital socialization versus digital isolation, (6) digital togetherness versus digital exclusion, (7) digital self-expression versus digital pressure, (8) digital learning versus digital dependence, and (9) digital inspiration versus digital stagnation.

These findings suggest that everyday digital services have the potential to contribute to customer well-being in various aspects – both positively and negatively – accentuating the need for service providers to decipher the impacts of their offerings on well-being. Indeed, understanding the relationship between digital services and customer well-being can help companies tailor their services to customers’ needs. Companies that prioritize customer well-being not only benefit their customers but also create sustainable growth opportunities in the long run. Further, companies can use the derived information in service design to develop marketing strategies that emphasize the positive impacts of their digital services on customer well-being.

Although prior transformative service studies have investigated the well-being of multiple stakeholders, such studies have focused on services related to the physical and healthcare domains. Consequently, the role of everyday digital services as contributors to customer well-being is an under-researched topic. In addition, the concept of well-being and its various dimensions has received limited attention in previous service research. By investigating everyday digital services and their multidimensional contribution to customer well-being, this study broadens the perspective on well-being within TSR and aids in refining a more precise conceptualization.

This study aims to explore the strategies corporations use in engaging stakeholders to sustain healthy corporate partnerships and create value for the corporate entity and the society in which they operate and their influence on the corporate manager’s cognitive abilities and decision-making.

The authors used an interpretive research approach leveraging the strengths of qualitative method of content analysis and comparative and critical analyses to report the results. Interpretive methods incorporate social theories and standpoints that view reality as the social construction of understandable events in the context of organizational communication.

The findings of this study suggest that corporations are assumed to follow and execute the principles of engaging stakeholders to achieve corporate social responsibility (CSR) claiming to manage a sustainable and responsible business practices that recognize local cultures, human rights and protect the environment. However, little attention has been paid to the cognitive reasoning of the individuals responsible for CSR and corporate sustainability (CS) as opposed to the growing concerns about strategies corporations use in engaging stakeholders to sustain healthy corporate partnerships and create value – especially the processes that take place during engagement and decision-making including cognitive offloading.

Stakeholder engagement requires practical approaches that enable corporations and individuals charged with decision-making responsibilities to understand, respond and fulfill their CSRs. To achieve CSRs, corporations and managers responsible for relevant decision-making would need to involve stakeholders in social performance planning, as social reporting/auditing has long been advocating for preventing managerial biasness, groupthink and increased information dissemination via detailed reporting practices toward more collaborative stakeholder relationships. Thus, it is crucial for corporations to implement enhanced stakeholder and managerial decision-making strategies such as integrative approaches to achieve balance in the trio elements of sustainability as well as the growing use of paradox perspective to understand the nature of the tensions being sought to balance and, in the process, provide opportunity for a better evaluation of complex sustainability issues for innovative approach to resolving them. While cognitive decision-making is at play, in practice, managers tasked with making decisions must ensure the most effective stakeholder engagement strategies that are transparent and inclusive are used.

The main contribution of this study is its argument regarding the tools corporations use in engaging key stakeholders and the cognitive reasoning of the individuals responsible for CSR and CS. The study further contributes to interpreting the integrative approach to achieving balance in the trio elements of sustainability as well as the growing use of paradox perspective to understand the nature of the tensions being sought to balance and, in the process, provide an opportunity for a better evaluation of complex sustainability issues for an innovative approach to resolving them.

Microfinance programs across the countries are designed on the self-help and peer pressure model, aim at microentrepreneurship development. Despite of significant studies on microfinance-supported microentrepreneurship (MSM), not a single literature examines it from the systems thinking. In addition to that, the extant literature did not look MSM from the behavioral perspectives. To address the above gaps, the present study aims to examine self-help group (SHG)-based microfinance programs from the systems approach using the Stimulus-Organism-Behavior-Consequence (SOBC) model.

Information gathered from 786 women SHG members from four states of India through a structured interview schedule. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were conducted to process data. Additional statistical tests were performed to test the reliability and validity.

It was found that the “positive stimulus” (social intermediation, financial intermediation and business development services) positively impacted; and “negative stimulus” (intermediation accountability, and intermediation assumption) negatively impact, to “motive” (attitude, subjective norms, and perceived control) for micro-entrepreneurship in the SHG-based microfinance. Further, “motive” positively predicted “behavioral intention”; the “behavioral intention” positively determined “consequences” of micro-entrepreneurship. Intermediation as stimuli acted as “input”; the motive and behavioral intention acted as the “process”, and the consequence acted as the “output” in the SHG-based microentrepreneurship system.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this paper is the first one to examine the behavioral systems of microentrepreneurship programs through the Stimulus-Organism-Behavior-Consequence (SOBC) model.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-12-2022-0801