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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.

While the monetary returns to education are well documented in the economics literature, the studies on non-monetary returns to education are scarce. The purpose of this study is to provide new insights into the non-market outcomes by exploring how education influences the food consumption choices of households and how these effects vary across different socio-economic groups using household-level calorie consumption data from Sri Lanka.

This study uses two waves of Household Income and Expenditure Surveys – 2006/2007 and 2016. The methods adopted in analysing the data were descriptive statistics and the OLS regression model.

The empirical results show that educated poor households pay less per calorie compared to non-educated poor households, highlighting the role of education in improving the ability to make better food choices and manage household budgets more economically.

This study informs policy-makers of the importance of education for formulating food and nutritional policies, which aim to raise the standard of living of resource-poor and vulnerable households in Sri Lanka as well as other developing countries with similar socio-economic conditions.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to explore the impact of education on the calorie consumption behaviour of people in the Sri Lankan context using nationwide household surveys.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2022-0007

Senior Indigenous leadership positions across the Australian higher education sector has increased over the past decade. Despite this advancement, there is limited understanding in terms of how to best integrate Indigenous leadership into existing governance structures of Australian universities. In 2018 the Walan Mayiny: Indigenous Leadership in Higher Education project commenced, aimed at establishing a model of best practice for the inclusivity of Indigenous leadership in higher education governance structures. This article presents key findings from the project, namely, a model of senior Indigenous leadership within the Australian universities based on the perceptions of a group of Indigenous academics.

Through qualitative semi-structured interviews with Indigenous academic staff, the perceived value, characteristics and challenges of senior Indigenous leadership were examined. The varying opinions held by Indigenous academics in relation to the qualifications and experience required to fulfil a senior Indigenous leadership position were also highlighted. In doing so, a model of senior Indigenous leadership within the Australian higher education system is presented. The model of best practice presented in this article is underpinned by Indigenous Institutional Theory (Coates et al., 2022), a theoretical framework developed from the Walan Mayiny study.

The research findings highlight the diverse opinions of Indigenous academics in relation to the qualifications and experience required to fulfil a senior Indigenous leadership position. The six essential components are built upon the core characteristics, values and behaviours that senior Indigenous leaders need to have according to Indigenous academics, in order to advance Indigenous success within the academy.

Given Australian universities are being called upon to ensure that senior Indigenous leaders are in the best position possible to forge institutional change, senior Indigenous leaders within the academy may find the contextual Indigenous leadership model beneficial. The model allows one to uphold cultural integrity and fulfil the responsibilities and obligations of their higher education institution, while being able to serve their Indigenous colleagues and communities, leading to the advancement of Indigenous higher education outcomes. Importantly, the model can be adapted to suit all First Nations Peoples globally, who also find themselves working within the shackles of Western institutions.

This paper aims to study the intellectual landscape of green purchase (GP) literature, visualize and analyse the temporal evolution, thematic mapping of emerging and future research themes using a systematic and quantitative literature review approach.

The study employs a bibliometric analysis and examines the bibliometric metadata consisting of 440 studies extracted from the Scopus database for the years 1990–2022 within the GP field.

The findings based on performance analysis and visualization networks reveal the productivity trend of GP by years, authors, academic relationships, international collaborations, top cited publications, most occurring keywords, existing and emerging themes and temporal theme evolution.

It provides a broader/macro view of the topic and lacks specificity and deeper analysis, which can be addressed in future bibliometric studies.

The integration of topics contributes to the development of the intellectual landscape of the GP research field and suggests thrust areas for future research. The study offers important implications for the academic community to gain a comprehensive and global understanding of green purchasing.

This research is unique as previous studies have not quantitatively compiled and extensively analysed work of these characteristics on the area under study using bibliometrics.

Despite ongoing reports of insider-driven leakage of confidential data, both academic scholars and practitioners tend to focus on external threats and favour information technology (IT)-centric solutions to secure and strengthen their information security ecosystem. Unfortunately, they pay little attention to human resource management (HRM) solutions. This paper aims to address this gap and proposes an actionable human resource (HR)-centric and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven framework.

The paper highlights the dangers posed by insider threats and presents key findings from a Leximancer-based analysis of a rapid literature review on the role, nature and contribution of HRM for information security, especially in addressing insider threats. The study also discusses the limitations of these solutions and proposes an HR-in-the-loop model, driven by AI and machine learning to mitigate these limitations.

The paper argues that AI promises to offer many HRM-centric opportunities to fortify the information security architecture if used strategically and intelligently. The HR-in-the-loop model can ensure that the human factors are considered when designing information security solutions. By combining AI and machine learning with human expertise, this model can provide an effective and comprehensive approach to addressing insider threats.

The paper fills the research gap on the critical role of HR in securing and strengthening information security. It makes further contribution in identifying the limitations of HRM solutions in info security and how AI and machine learning can be leveraged to address these limitations to some extent.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of leaders’ use of motivational language on psychological relatedness and its effect on employee well-being in flexible and remote working conditions.

A survey among 375 full-time working professionals in the US was conducted with varying frequencies of remote work arrangements. For the analysis, we used a series of PROCESS analyses to examine the moderating effect of leaders’ motivational language use on the relationship between participants’ remote work status and relatedness, with employee well-being as the dependent variable.

The findings revealed a significant moderating effect of leaders’ perlocutionary (direction-giving) language use on the relationship between employees’ remote work status and relatedness. Specifically, the relationship between remote work status and relatedness was stronger when the use of perlocutionary (direction-giving) language gradually increased. Such enhanced relatedness, in turn, generated higher satisfaction and psychological well-being. The study shows the strategic advantage of direction-giving language in enhancing relatedness, thereby contributing to higher levels of employee satisfaction and psychological well-being in remote work environments.

The originality of this article lies in its integration of motivational language theory and self-determination theory to explore the well-being of employees within flexible and remote work status. Furthermore, we conceptualize remote work as a continuous variable with different degrees of flexibility, ranging from occasional telecommuting to fully remote work, allowing for a nuanced understanding of how leaders’ use of motivational language interacts with varying levels of remote work arrangements to influence employee well-being.

This article aims to answer two research questions that remain controversial in the accounting and corporate governance literature: (1) how corporate disclosure is related to board monitoring and (2) how this link is affected by the institutional environment and firm-level governance.

The study is based on S&P data on corporate disclosure by Russian companies collected over 2002–2010 and supplemented by information from the SKRIN database. The dataset covers 125 non-financial companies, with 559 observations in total. We use three indicators of board monitoring: the percentage of non-executive directors, a dummy for two-tier boards, and a dummy for an audit committee. The firm’s governance is proxied by a dummy for single class stock, while the institutional environment is proxied by a dummy for ADRs/GDRs. We apply conventional methods of panel data analysis with several robustness checks, including the random- and fixed-effects models, 2SLS that addresses the potential endogeneity of board composition, alternative definitions of the dependent variable, and an extended list of controls.

We find a positive (complementary) relationship between the amount of disclosure and the proxies for board monitoring employed. This complementary relationship turns out to be the strongest among companies that have better internal governance but face a weaker institutional environment. There is little evidence of such complementarity under strong institutions.

The findings may be of interest to investors and policymakers. As to the former, the results warn of firms that provide limited disclosure in the presence of strong corporate governance arrangements, such as independent boards, as these factors are not substitutes for each other. As to the latter, the results support comprehensive policies aimed at simultaneous improvements in both board governance and corporate disclosure in weak institutional settings.

This paper uses a unique setting and rich, partly proprietary data to extend the existing literature on the relationship between corporate disclosure and board monitoring, with an emphasis on the moderating role of the institutional environment and firm-level governance. It is also one of the very few studies of corporate disclosure in Russia, an important emerging economy of the early 2000s.

In today’s interconnected world, social capital has emerged as a crucial business competence, drawing significant attention in recent literature. Using social network analysis, this study aims to investigate the impact of network centrality, established by a firm through its board members (i.e. boardroom networks), on corporate cash holdings.

This study uses extensive panel data comprising 36,963 firm-year observations of firms listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, spanning a 22-year period (2001–2022). The study uses firm fixed-effect regression along with several alternative specifications and an instrumental variable approach to ensure the robustness of the results. Boardroom network centrality is quantified by five measures that capture different perspectives on networks as viable conduits for resource exchange and information flow: degree, two-step reach, closeness, eigenvector and betweenness.

The authors find evidence for the benefits of board networks. Firms with well-connected boards (central firms) are more likely to have smaller cash holdings. The findings also reveal distinct effects stemming from local and global properties of centrality, with local network measures playing a more pronounced role in shaping cash-holding decisions. Overall, the evidence reflects the ability of connected directors to enhance governance by limiting managerial discretion over cash reserves, thus reducing agency conflicts associated with cash holdings.

This study offers important insights for regulators, investors and practitioners, highlighting the potential for connected directors to effectively curtail managerial autonomy in deploying corporate cash holdings.

This study contributes to the ongoing discussion about the advantages and drawbacks of board networks, which constitute a vibrant and burgeoning area of research in the finance literature. It also complements scanty network-based studies on firm cash holdings. Importantly, this study extends prior work by providing robust evidence and a comprehensive analysis of the nuanced roles that board networks play in affecting the level of cash reserves.

Culture is considered a critical aspect of social media usage. The purpose of this paper is to explore how cultures and languages influence multilingual users' cross-cultural information sharing patterns.

This study used a crowdsourcing survey with Amazon Mechanical Turk to collect qualitative and quantitative data from 355 multilingual users who utilize two or more languages daily. A mixed-method approach combined statistical, and cluster analysis with thematic analysis was employed to analyze information sharing patterns among multilingual users in the Chinese cultural context.

It was found that most multilingual users surveyed preferred to share in their first and second language mainly because that is what others around them speak or use. Multilingual users have more diverse sharing characteristics and are more actively engaged in social media. The results also provide insights into what incentives make multilingual users engage in social media to share information related to Chinese culture with the MOA model. Finally, the ten motivation factors include learning, entertainment, empathy, personal gain, social engagement, altruism, self-expression, information, trust and sharing culture. One opportunity factor is identified, which is convenience. Three ability factors are recognized consist of self-efficacy, habit and personality.

The findings are conducive to promoting the active participation of multilingual users in online communities, increasing global resource sharing and information flow and promoting the consumption of digital cultural content.

Drawing on a constructionist-poststructuralist feminist perspective, this paper aims to extend thinking on the evolution of entrepreneurial ecosystems by exploring how gendered entrepreneurial ecosystems can become more inclusive.

The paper contends path dependency of entrepreneurial ecosystems, maintains embedded gender bias (and biases against disadvantaged or unconventional entrepreneur groups) and builds an argument for path creation to de-bias entrepreneurial ecosystems. A metaphorical descriptor of entrepreneurial ecosystems is probed as contributing to the gendered entrepreneurial ecosystem discourse. Three propositions, namely on path creation, transformative agency and appropriate metaphors, are derived from the extant literature and an illustrative example employed to interrogate these propositions.

We advance path creation via transformative agency as a means for moving towards inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems. We provide an alternative metaphor to springboard change to the gendered scholarly discourse on entrepreneurial ecosystems. Our illustrative example lends support to our propositions.

This paper helps lay a foundation for new thinking on change towards inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems. It provides a powerful argument for broadening the mainstream path dependence view of entrepreneurial ecosystems. It is unique in suggesting a constructionist-poststructuralist feminist standpoint to challenge the dominant discourse on entrepreneurial ecosystems.