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The law of catastrophic wildfire prevention and response in the Mediterranean member states of the European Union stands in stark contrast to that of common law nation states such as Australia and the United States. This is due primarily to the higher levels of reciprocal moral and legal obligations between governments and citizens established in various sources of European law. Focusing on the relationship between the EU, Spain, and the Autonomous Community of Catalonia within Spain, this chapter describes these three legal frameworks as they are nested within each other, followed by some case law examples of these laws in action. We compare and contrast the philosophical assumptions underlying the utilitarian cost–benefit approach to regulatory justification used in the United States with the precautionary principle model emblematic of the European Union, the member state of Spain, and its Autonomous Community of Catalonia. Regardless of approach, protection of the public health, safety, and welfare will only be as robust and effective as the government agencies that have that responsibility, and the degree of cooperation with those agencies of the citizens they serve.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the amount of online information reported by Spanish municipal-owned enterprises (MOEs) according to the legal requirements indicated in the Spanish Law 19/2013 on Transparency and Good Governance. In addition, the authors analyze how different variables can affect the extent of online information reported by such enterprises.

To do this, we conducted a content analysis of the web pages of Spanish MOEs located in cities with more than 100.000 habitants, as well as those cities that are provincial capitals. To find information about these enterprises, the authors accessed the General Intervention Board of the State Administration (IGAE) webpage (www.igae.pap.minhafp.gob.es/sitios/igae/es-ES/Paginas/inicio.aspx). This sample was composed of 273 enterprises majority owned and controlled by local governments.

The findings reveal that the amount of information reported by Spanish MOEs, in accordance with the legal requirements, is quite reduced. The most influential variables for explaining Spanish MOEs’ commitment to information disclosure are population size, political positioning of the local government and reputation.

This study seeks to contribute to the scarce literature on mandatory transparency in the public sector as well as to reinforce the degree of compliance with requirements of information disclosure.

This paper aims to investigate the extent of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) through websites and social media in Spanish local government (SLG) and analyze the factors that explain their disclosure.

The study applies content analysis and regression techniques. The ICD is analyzed for Spanish municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants and provincial capitals over a period from January 2018 to February 2020.

Findings emphasize that the quantity of disclosed information on intellectual capital (IC) is in the low level, particularly with regard to human capital (HC). Furthermore, the results show that the information provided via social media mainly concerns the relational capital (RC). On the other hand, results obtained indicate that larger municipalities, with lower financial autonomy and whose citizens have a high income level use the online media (both websites and social media) more actively to disclose information about IC. Finally, municipalities led by women and with high level of citizens' education exert a positive influence in the ICD only on websites.

This paper makes a number of key contributions to the existing body of knowledge, focusing on ICD, a neglected area in the public sector accounting literature. It explores and identifies the supply-side and demand-side determinants of information affecting the ICD in local governments. The results of this research could be useful for policymakers, regulators and governments' managers to improve the online information addressing ICD issues.

This paper adopts an innovative perspective by investigating the use of alternative tools for ICD in local government context (websites and social media). To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that focuses on investigating the determinants of online ICD in local governments.

Relying on institutional theory and Oliver’s (1991) strategic responses framework, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the different strategies adopted by Spanish public universities to respond to institutional pressures for sustainability reporting.

Data were collected from a variety of sources, such as a series of email-structured interviews with key personnel from universities, a qualitative analysis of sustainability reports and a consultation of the website of each Spanish public university.

The findings reveal that Spanish public universities have responded to institutional pressures for sustainability reporting by adopting acquiescence, compromise, avoidance and defiance strategies. The variety of strategic responses adopted by Spanish public universities suggests that these organizations have not fully adhered to institutional pressures.

The results of this paper would be useful for practitioners since it tries to demonstrate whether universities, which are facing increasing institutional pressures and demands from stakeholders, have been developing sustainability reporting practices.

Universities have a remarkable social impact that could be used to promote sustainability practices. This paper investigates how these organizations can contribute to sustainability reporting as they should reproduce social norms.

The sustainability reporting context is in a phase of change. This paper tries to contribute to the accounting research by analyzing the extent to which universities are engaged in sustainability reporting. Relying on these premises, Oliver’s (1991) framework might be an insightful theoretical perspective to examine the responses provided by universities to institutional pressures.

This paper aims to achieve a better understanding about the competitive and institutional pressures that can determine socially responsible corporate behaviours of organisations that operate in an organisational field.

The paper draws on New Institutional Sociology to analyse pressures on Spanish electricity companies to behave in socially responsible ways. Data collection covers the period 1997‐2008 and the data sources were the following: semi‐structured interviews, industrial regulation, documents, websites of organisations and associations, and informal discussions.

Socially responsible corporate behaviours of Spanish electricity companies were due not only to internal decisions based on economic rationality, but also to various institutional (coercive, normative and mimetic) pressures.

The study covers a specific organisational field, the Spanish electricity sector. Further research would be necessary in order to analyse other organisational fields and to compare the results.

Conditions under which organisations behave in socially responsible ways are contrasted in the case of Spanish electricity companies, for instance, the healthy economic environment, the monitoring of their behaviour and their participation in associations that promote Corporate Social Responsibility.

Generally, pressures of the environment on organisations to behave in socially responsible ways have received little attention and the specialised literature has focused on the individual organisation level of analysis. So, a contribution of the paper is to analyse the pressures of the competitive and institutional environment on a specific organisational field so that organisations adopt socially responsible corporate behaviours.

Cases of corruption, embezzlement, theft and fraud, abuse of discretion, favoritism, nepotism, clientelism, and abuse of power in governments have led to a growing demand from society to access public information. In response to this demand, governments have been forced to be more transparent in the conduct of their activities. The information transparency index (TI) may be conditioned by economic and political characteristics of local governments affecting the information provided. What factors influenced the index of municipal transparency? Literature about transparency is largely based on the explanations of the agency theory and the legitimacy theory. Based on the postulates of both theories, the purpose of this paper is twofold. First, study the index transparency in Spanish municipalities, and, second, determine the main features that are affecting the index of transparency.

Data were collected from Transparency International Spain ranking and from official sources. Univariate and multivariate analysis are performed for the treatment of data.

The results shows that political factors like electoral turnout, political ideology, and political competition have a significant effect on the index of transparency. Gender has no significant effect on the index of transparency.

This study is a contribution to the growing body literature of transparency in order to understand what explains the variations of the TI among municipalities.

This paper aims to examine how an innovative concept was introduced to a new market segment through varied marketing techniques.

Newspapers from 1958 were reviewed to assess the impact of a chocolate company advertising campaign targeting children. The paper examines the interpretation of the campaign message and the information contained in an album of collectable cards.

Parents leave the teaching role in the hands of companies when they do not clearly understand new technologies such as nuclear energy. Companies can take advantage of what governments introduce into the market to increase their sales.

The originality of the paper lies in the examination of collectable cards as a means of researching marketing history and contributes to the study of market segmentation, particularly in the case of children, focussing on nuclear energy.

The application of new public governance by many countries has led to the creation of new management systems in public administration and the development of an effective accounting structure with efficient internal control to guarantee a proper provision of services that meet citizens’ requirements. The purpose of this paper is to focus on Spanish local government with the intention of determining the impact of the internal control structure on the disclosure of financial information on the internet.

The empirical analysis used combines a descriptive aspect with an explanatory one and seeks to answer the question of whether the internal control system (ICS) influences the disclosure of financial information on the websites of Spanish LGs. The authors use a multivariate model that allows us to verify the predictive capability of the previously defined explanatory variable, internal control, in 1,806 local governments. To test the hypotheses, the authors use two different models.

The authors consider the existence and quality of the financial information disclosure in relation to ICSs, and a series of financial and non-financial variables. The authors conclude that the structure of the ICS influences financial information disclosure and its quality. Also, the socio-political variable gives a better explanation of financial information disclosure than the financial variable.

This research is novel to determine whether the development of ICSs in Spanish municipalities has favored and increased the disclosure of financial information financial through the municipalities’ website transparency portal. These findings will contribute to increase the importance of internal control in the management of public entities.

This paper analyzes the impact of economic, social and political factors on municipal debt behavior. With this aim, we have obtained a stratified random sample of 130 cities during a five-year period. These data have been used to configure a micro panel to obtain accurate estimates and to control for problems such as unobserved heterogeneity. The main conclusion obtained from this process is that non-financial surplus/deficit, financial independence, capital expenditures, and capital revenues are the variables that best explain the indebtedness of this type of entities.