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This paper aims to present a literature review of remote monitoring systems for water infrastructure in the Global South.

Following initial scoping searches, further examination was made of key remote monitoring technologies for water infrastructure in the Global South. A standard literature search methodology was adopted to examine these monitoring technologies and their respective deployments. This hierarchical approach prioritised “peer-reviewed” articles, followed by “scholarly” publications, then “credible” information sources and, finally, “other” relevant materials. The first two search phases were conducted using academic search services (e.g. Scopus and Google Scholar). In the third and fourth phases, Web searches were carried out on various stakeholders, including manufacturers, governmental agencies and non-governmental organisations/charities associated with Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in the Global South.

This exercise expands the number of monitoring technologies considered in comparison to earlier review publications. Similarly, preceding reviews have largely focused upon monitoring applications in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This paper explores opportunities in other geographical regions and highlights India as a significant potential market for these tools.

This review predominantly focuses upon information/data currently available in the public domain.

Remote monitoring technologies enable the rapid detection of broken water pumps. Broken water infrastructure significantly impacts many vulnerable communities, often leading to the use of less protected water sources and increased exposure to water-related diseases. Further to these public health impacts, there are additional economic disadvantages for these user communities.

This literature review has sought to address some key technological omissions and to widen the geographical scope associated with previous investigations.

Ongoing environmental threats have intensified the need for firms to take big leaps forward to operate in a manner that is both ecologically sustainable and socially responsible. This paper aims to assess the degree to which firms are adopting citizen science as a tool to achieve sustainability and social responsibility targets.

This study applies a qualitative content analysis approach to assess the current presence of citizen science in sustainability and social responsibility reports issued by Globescan sustainability leaders and by firms ranked by the Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500.

While the term itself is mostly absent from reports, firms are reporting on a range of activities that could be classified as a form of “citizen science.”

Citizen science can help firms achieve their corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility goals and targets. Linking sustainability and social responsibility efforts to this existing framework can help triangulate corporate efforts to engage with stakeholders, collect data about the state of the environment and promote better stewardship of natural resources.

Supporting citizen science can help firms work toward meeting UN Sustainable Development Goals, which have highlighted the importance of collaborative efforts that can engage a broad range of stakeholders in the transition to more sustainable business models.

This paper is the first to examine citizen science in a corporate sustainability and social responsibility context. The findings present information to support improvements to the development of locally relevant science-based indicators; real-time monitoring of natural resources and supply chain sustainability; and participatory forums for stakeholders including suppliers, end users and the broader community.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how public relations practitioners view their role in guiding their organizations’ frontline (nonnominated) employees’ social media use and the tensions that organizations must navigate when they interact with their employees online.

This study utilizes in-depth interviews with 24 PR practitioners in the USA. Data were analyzed via grounded theory’s approach to open, axial, and select coding.

PR practitioners engage in three activities to guide employees’ social media use: serving as a reactive-technical resource; supporting employee communities; and responding to incidental monitoring of social media posts.

The study extends stakeholder theory by describing the normative expectations that are placed on employees when it comes to discussing the organization online.

Recommendations are offered for PR practitioners regarding the boundary-respecting management of nonnominated employees’ social media use.

Findings point to a greater understanding about frontline workers’ roles in supporting their organizations and the need for organizations to carefully explain social media policies.

Scholars have not fully explored the challenges that firms face when they seek to influence employees’ personal social networking activities. There is new insight about the ways in which organization can ethically engage with employees in digitally mediated spaces.

This study distinctively explores the firm-level and national-level determinants of audit committee effectiveness (ACE) in the Libyan banking sector (LBS).

A mixed-methods approach has been employed to enhance the quality of the collected data and reduce the risk of bias. Five groups of actors in the Libyan banking sector were surveyed, including board members, AC members, executive managers, internal auditors and external auditors, further to interviewing a representative sample of these groups. In total, 218 survey responses were gathered, and 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted.

The study results show that AC authority, financial expertise and diligence are positively and significantly attributed to ACE, although AC independence and resources are not significantly related to ACE. The authors find that the legal and regulatory environment, government intervention, and the accounting and auditing environment are perceived as important and associated with ACE regarding national-level factors. These findings are strongly supported by semi-structured interviews and suggest that both firm-level and national-level factors are essential in understanding ACE in Libya's banking sector.

The study’s evidence reiterates the vital need for more concentrated work to integrate governance, legislative and regulatory reforms to ensure the effectiveness of ACs as a key corporate governance (CG) mechanism in developing economies.

This study extends the literature relating measures of AC inputs and outputs by examining the perception of stakeholders to understand both the firm-level and national-level factors that affect ACE in a single institutional setting. Additionally, this work adds to the limited number of recent studies examining the role of ACs in the banking sector in developing economies.

Business firms operate in society not only for market gains but also for generating positive social externalities. Civil society organisations (CSO) have helped society to develop across various spheres of influence. The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) ushered in an era wherein both business economic objectives as well as socio-environmental responsibilities of firms were prioritized simultaneously. The path of firms and CSOs intersected through CSR. In this work, the authors develop a typology on firm–CSO collaboration regarding CSR initiatives.

The authors through a twin approach of systematic literature review (SLR) with qualitative study developed a categorization of collaborations between a firm and a CSO in the context of CSR engagements. Apart from the SLR, the authors undertook two focus group discussions (FGD) with CSR experts (engaged in firm–CSO collaboration). This was done with a semi-structured discussion agenda frame. The data were content analysed for thematic aspects. Thus, both SLR as well as FGD outputs were considered for the study results.

The authors found six elements in firm–CSO collaboration and seven archetypes of collaboration. The six elements were CSR action elements (CSRAE) consisting of CSR agenda (CSRA), CSR resources (CSRR), CSR capabilities (CSRC), CSR Pprocess (CSRP), CSR monitoring (CSRM) and CSR stakeholder engagement (CSRSE). The seven typologies were CSO as auditor , outsourcing of CSR , CSO-driven CSR, joint CSR, support to CSO for CSR ,guided support to CSO and coordinated CSR.

Doty and Glick, (1994) had undertaken a seminal work on theory building based upon the unique method of application of typologies. Doty and Glick, (1994) elucidated how application of typologies could through a typology study enhance the scope and level for understanding and modelling in a contextual domain involving theory. This study was a step in this direction in the context of firm–CSO collaboration in the context of CSR initiatives.

This study would help managers from both CSOs and business firms to comprehend in which sphere they were required to collaborate like in resource /capabilities deployment or in designing CSR agendas or CSR process or CSR monitoring or in stakeholder engagement during CSR management. This typology would enable managers to comprehend what would be the most suitable form of collaboration between a firm and a CSO for a specific CSR engagement.

This is one of the first studies that theorizes regarding firm–CSO collaboration in the context of CSR initiatives both in terms of the collaboration building block elements as well as typology presented.

Scanning both the academic and popular business literature of the last 40 years puzzles the alert reader. The variety of prescriptions of how to be successful (effective, performing, etc.) 1 Organizational performance, organizational success and organizational effectiveness will be used interchangeably throughout this paper.1 in business is hardly comprehensible: “Being close to the customer,” Total Quality Management, corporate social responsibility, shareholder value maximization, efficient consumer response, management reward systems or employee involvement programs are but a few of the slogans introduced as means to increase organizational effectiveness. Management scholars have made little effort to integrate the various performance-enhancing strategies or to assess them in an orderly manner.

This study classifies organizational strategies by the importance each strategy attaches to different constituencies in the firm’s environment. A number of researchers divide an organization’s environment into various constituency groups and argue that these groups constitute – as providers and recipients of resources – the basis for organizational survival and well-being. Some theoretical schools argue for the foremost importance of responsiveness to certain constituencies while stakeholder theory calls for a – situation-contingent – balance in these responsiveness levels. Given that maximum responsiveness levels to different groups may be limited by an organization’s resource endowment or even counterbalanced, the need exists for a concurrent assessment of these competing claims by jointly evaluating the effect of the respective behaviors towards constituencies on performance. Thus, this study investigates the competing merits of implementing alternative business philosophies (e.g. balanced versus focused responsiveness to constituencies). Such a concurrent assessment provides a “critical test” of multiple, opposing theories rather than testing the merits of one theory (Carlsmith, Ellsworth & Aronson, 1976).

In the high tolerance level applied for this study (be among the top 80% of the industry) only a handful of organizations managed to sustain such a balanced strategy over the whole observation period. Continuously monitoring stakeholder demands and crafting suitable responsiveness strategies must therefore be a focus of successful business strategies. While such behavior may not be a sufficient explanation for organizational success, it certainly is a necessary one.

This paper aims to explore the factors that affected the voluntary risk‐related disclosures (RRD) in the individual annual reports for 2006 of Portuguese banks. It also explores the extent to which those reports conformed to Basel II requirements in terms of the voluntary disclosure of operational risk and capital structure and adequacy matters.

The authors conduct a content analysis of the annual reports of a sample of 111 banks. Voluntary operational risk and capital structure and adequacy disclosures were assessed using a list of disclosure categories that were developed from the Third Pillar disclosure requirements of the Basel II Accord.

Stakeholder monitoring and corporation reputation are crucial factors that explain the risk reporting practices observed. Voluntary risk reporting appears to enhance legitimacy for two major reasons: first, by fulfilling institutional pressures to assure the effectiveness of market discipline; and second, by managing stakeholder perception of a corporation's reputation.

The voluntary RRD observed are shown to be explained by legitimacy theory and resources‐based perspectives. This theoretical framework has not been tested hitherto in explaining the motives for banks to make voluntary RRD.

Private certification systems (PCS) have emerged as governance tools for sustainable development, regulating social and environmental standards through global supply chains. PCS are seen as essentially private and market-driven, but governments have engaged with them in various ways. There are also substantial differences in the institutional design of PCS with regard to the standard-setting process, ex-ante conformity assessment and ex-post verification procedures. Consequently, what determines the institutional design of PCS has attracted growing attention. This article argues that governments, through public regulation, influence the design of PCS, which in turn affects their effectiveness. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

First, a review of academic literature, policy and legal documents presents how PCS have become institutionalized in government policy, focusing on sustainable public procurement (SPP) regulation. Second, the authors explore the link between effectiveness and the institutional design of PCS by empirically assessing the variations between institutional parameters conducive to effectiveness. Data from the Ecolabel Index database were used to assess the presence or absence of four institutional design parameters related to the rule-making and monitoring mechanisms of PCS.

Public procurement regulations are important drivers influencing the institutional design of PCS. The buying power and market share of government spending is a potential tool for policy-makers not only to stimulate the adoption of PCS, but also for shaping their design and effectiveness. However, the impact of such policies is highly dependent upon the market-share of public procurement within a given sector. In addition to public procurement frameworks, other factors drive the institutional evolution of PCS.

The article connects two themes within the study of non-state market regulation; the growing interaction of governments with PCS, and the institutional variety and development of these systems.

The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has significantly disrupted the traditional ways for organizations to function, mandating their prompt adaptation and reaction to issues related to employees, operations, and communication. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to report on a total quality management (TQM) implementation as a sample motivational case to support the need for a new work from anywhere (WFA) stakeholder framework that can be used by other companies as they build, maintain, and continuously improve a WFA culture and environment for successful Quality 4.0 and COVID-19 initiatives.

Quality 4.0 that specifies an adaptive quality environment can help organizations quickly identify and respond to problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. Analyzing a Lean Six Sigma implementation through the lens of Quality 4.0 in a case study, the authors propose a new stakeholder engagement framework for companies to build, maintain, and continuously improve the culture and environment for facilitating social interactions.

The authors’ proposed framework consists of three major phases: (1) identify and plan stakeholder management, (2) manage stakeholder engagement, and (3) sustain stakeholder engagement. The first phase entails organizations supporting a culture of trust, engaging, and empowering stakeholders, identifying stakeholders, planning for stakeholder management, and inquiring about problems in the process. The second phase requires engaging stakeholders via participatory buy-in. The third phase focuses on monitoring stakeholder relationships, including modifying strategies and plans.

This study bears some valuable implications for practitioners. First, the stakeholder management process should be established upon a culture that promotes trust, engagement, and empowerment. Second, the authors identify tools that can assist in the execution of WFA activities. Third, the organizational team needs to actively manage the WFA stakeholders and then sustain the stakeholder relationships. Finally, the implementation of the framework herein can be supported and strengthened by tools and techniques that promote participation and buy-in from stakeholders to ensure the project team hears, trusts, and values their contributions.

This study contributes to the existing literature and provides practical guidance for managers to effectively manage the workforce and engage stakeholders.

The aim of this study was to understand how public relations leaders view and use social media analytics (SMA) and the impact of SMA on the public relations function.

The research involved in-depth interviews with chief communication officers (CCOs) from leading multinational corporate brands.

The findings revealed that although CCOs perceive social media analytics as strategically important to the advancement of public relations, the use of social media data is slowed by challenges associated with building SMA capacity.

The research extends public relations theory on public relations as a strategic management function and provides practical insights for building SMA capabilities.

The study is among the first to provide empirical evidence of how companies are using social media analytics to enhance public relations efforts.