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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.

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.

Mindfulness, a kind of mental perception, has a long history in Buddhist spiritual traditions, but has also a well-developed use in clinical psychology as a mental health intervention. Meditative mindfulness provides therapeutic benefits in the treatment of mental trauma. Recently, an interest in the outcomes derived from meditative mindful experience has emerged in tourism studies. Tourists experiencing a mindful-like event may get a sense of peacefulness and a harmonic relationship between the self and the environment. This chapter discusses how meditative mindfulness can be integrated into tourism experiences and create subtle therapeutic-like effects. Theoretically, this study bridges the relationship between a meditative mindful tourist experience and its perceived consequences. Practically, it explains how to generate mental health outcomes from tourism experiences.

This study aims to measure the degree of volatility comovement between stock market liquidity and informational efficiency across Asia, Europe, North-South America, Africa, and the Pacific Ocean over three decades. In particular, the authors analyze the extent of the time-varying nexus between different aspects of stock market liquidity and multifractal scaling properties of the stock return series across various regions and diversified market conditions. This study further investigates several factors altering the degree of dynamic conditional correlations (DCCs) between the efficiency and liquidity of the domestic stock markets.

The study measures five aspects of stock market liquidity – tightness, depth, breadth, immediacy, and adjusted immediacy. The authors evaluate the multifractal scaling properties of the stock return series to measure the level of stock market efficiency across the regions and diversified market conditions. The study uses the dynamic conditional correlation-multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity framework to quantify the degree of volatility comovement between liquidity and efficiency over the period.

The study finds the presence of stronger volatility comovement between inefficiency and illiquidity due to the price impact characteristics of the stock markets irrespective of different regions and diversified market conditions. The extent of time-variation increased following the shock periods, indicating the significant role of the financial crisis in increasing the volatility comovement between inefficiency and illiquidity. The highest degree of time-varying correlation is observed in the developed stock markets of Northwestern and Northern Europe compared to the regional and emerging counterparts. On the other hand, weak DCCs are observed in the emerging stock markets of Europe.

The output of the present study assists investors in identifying diversification opportunities across the regions. Additionally, the study has significant implications for market regulators, aiding in predicting future troughs and peaks. The prediction, in turn, helps formulate capital market development plans during dynamic economic situations.

Nuclear energy is a contested topic, requiring trade-offs in energy independence, ethicality and uncertainty. Anthropogenic climate change complicates these decisions further, with nuclear energy competing with other low-carbon and sustainable energy sources. Decisions about nuclear energy’s role, as part of a sustainable energy system, must be made in cooperation with all stakeholders. However, it is unclear how the public is involved in these decisions in the UK. This study aims to address this gap, exploring the degree to which public participation has occurred in the UK.

This paper conducted a scoping review of public participation in UK nuclear energy decision-making in the context of sustainable energy transitions, where the government retains and promotes nuclear energy as part of a sustainable energy system. Following a systematic literary search, this paper reviewed 28 academic and grey literature documents.

Public participation has primarily been conducted as consultations rather than active participation. There is limited evidence that consultations have meaningfully contributed to politically and socially responsible (i.e. individuals and groups working together for community benefit) decision-making, with public opinion on nuclear energy’s role being divided and is influenced by how it is framed.

Social aspects of nuclear energy development have historically received less attention than environmental and economic elements; the role of engagement and participation is relatively rare. Modern literature reviews in this context are largely absent, a gap this paper originally contribute to. This paper suggest ways in which how effective, inclusive engagement process could contribute to a fairer, responsible decision-making process and energy system in the UK.

The global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007–2008 had far-reaching consequences for the global economy, triggering widespread economic turmoil. We use the event-study method to investigate whether investors priced the effect of significant events before the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy in European and Asia-Pacific banks. Abnormal returns on the event days range from −4.32% to 5.03% in Europe and −5.13% to 6.57% in Asia-Pacific countries. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt on September 15, 2008, abnormal returns averaged the lowest at −4.32% in Europe and −5.13% in Asia-Pacific countries. The significant abnormal returns show that Lehman Brothers' collapse was a turning point, and investors paid attention to the precrisis events as warning signs of the oncoming crisis.

This study is the first to investigate the causal relationship between Bitcoin and equity price returns by sectors. Previous studies have focused on aggregated indices such as S&P500, Nasdaq and Dow Jones, but this study uses mixed frequency and disaggregated data at the sectoral level. This allows the authors to examine the nature, direction and strength of causality between Bitcoin and equity prices in different sectors in more detail.

This paper utilizes an Unrestricted Asymmetric Mixed Data Sampling (U-AMIDAS) model to investigate the effect of high-frequency Bitcoin returns on a low-frequency series equity returns. This study also examines causality running from equity to Bitcoin returns by sector. The sample period covers United States (US) data from 3 Jan 2011 to 14 April 2023 across nine sectors: materials, energy, financial, industrial, technology, consumer staples, utilities, health and consumer discretionary.

The study found that there is no causality running from Bitcoin to equity returns in any sector except for the technology sector. In the tech sector, lagged Bitcoin returns Granger cause changes in future equity prices asymmetrically. This means that falling Bitcoin prices significantly influence the tech sector during market pullbacks, but the opposite cannot be said during market rallies. The findings are consistent with those of other studies that have established that during market pullbacks, individual asset prices have a tendency to decline together, whereas during market rallies, they have a tendency to rise independently. In contrast, this study finds evidence of causality running from all sectors of the equity market to Bitcoin.

The findings have significant implications for investors and fund managers, emphasizing the need to consider the asymmetric causality between Bitcoin and the tech sector. Investors should avoid excessive exposure to both Bitcoin and tech stocks in their portfolio, as this may lead to significant drawdowns during market corrections. Diversification across different asset classes and sectors may be a more prudent strategy to mitigate such risks.

The study's findings underscore the need for investors to pay close attention to the frequency and disaggregation of data by sector in order to fully understand the true extent of the relationship between Bitcoin and the equity market.

The concept of the “global production network” (GPN) has emerged as a framework for analyzing the intricate connections between a dominant or pivotal firm and its suppliers across various countries. ¹ The expansion of GPNs signifies that trade encompasses not only the final products but also the parts and components (P&C) involved in their production. The reduction of tariff barriers and advancements in transportation and communication technology have facilitated the fragmentation of production processes across different countries. This has led to a significant transformation in the nature and structure of global trade. This chapter aims to synthesize and present this literature. By identifying the key drivers, determinants, and consequences of fragmentation trade through a literature-based approach, this study aids in assessing the opportunities and challenges those lagging countries, like India, encounter in terms of increased participation in GPNs.

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.

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.