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Albeit gradual and uneven, the emergence of social and environmental reporting by publicly held corporations has been a major development in the last few decades. This paper aims to explore patterns of the emergence of these disclosures. Using an institutional theory lens, this paper considers mimetic, normative and coercive possibilities.

US publicly traded company data from 2013 to 2019 is used to test the hypotheses. Mimetic forces are proxied with corporate board interlock frequency. Normative ones use the extent of gender diversity on corporate boards. Measures of business climate and industry regulatory sensitivity proxy coercive potentiality.

Studied in isolation, each of the three forces through which organizations pursue the heightened legitimacy of enhanced environmental and social disclosures has credibility. The strongest support exists for mimetic and normative mechanisms, perhaps because the US government has been reluctant to make these expanded disclosures mandatory.

In the world of voluntary action, more attention to diffusion is needed. For these purposes, better proxies will be needed to study change. Social and environmental information should be separated for individual analysis.

At least in the USA, companies are attentive to what other companies are doing. There is something to be said for the ethical dimension of corporate transparency.

Governmental action in this area has not been effective, at current levels. Corporate leadership is essential. Critical information is shared about disclosure by board members.

Although institutional theory makes several appearances in this area, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first empirical archival study to examine the three forces simultaneously, providing evidence as to the relative magnitude of each institutional force on environmental and social disclosures. Should these disclosures not be mandated by government, this study shows pathways for enhanced disclosures to continue to spread.

This study aims to examine the changes in the correlations between stressors and performance in French chartered and accounting firms.

The linkages between role stressors and performance were analyzed through a quasi-longitudinal study of 476 chartered public accountants and trainee-chartered accountants surveyed before and after the busy season, using the partial least squares approach.

Only challenge appraisals are positively related to motivation before and after the 2018 busy season. Stress arousal is positively associated with burnout and physical symptoms. However, the associations between role ambiguity and conflict, and hindrance appraisals became insignificant after the busy season. The challenge appraisals–role ambiguity linkage persisted but reduced significantly. The burnout–performance association was insignificant in the two time periods.

A busy season with its increased challenge stressors has positive effects on performance through motivation but also negative effects through strains, which explains the observed insignificant net impact.

This quasi-longitudinal study first suggests the role of appraisals, motivation and physical symptoms as mediators of the effects of role stressors on performance. Then, it aids in the broad generalization of certain findings from previous studies. Finally, it demonstrates the applicability of the partial least squares approach, which has been hitherto under-used in behavioral accounting.

This study examines the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. Meaningful work is an important driver of individual performance of managers, and employees and can be enabled by sufficient use of management controls. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

Based on bibliometric analyses and a structured literature review of academic research studies from the organizational, management and accounting literature, the authors develop a conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work.

First, the authors propose that the use of formal management controls in a system (i.e. the levers of the control framework) is more powerful than using unrelated formal controls only. Second, they suggest that the interaction of a formal control system together with informal controls working as a control package can even stretch the perception of meaningful work. Third, they argue that the intensity of the control use matters to enhance the perception of meaningful work (inverted u-shaped relationship).

This study presents the first conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. It provides valuable implications for practice and future research in the field of performance management.

This study examines shareholder and board motivations regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) to understand boards' stewardship approaches to environmental issues.

Using content analysis, the authors classify CSR motivations in all environmental shareholder proposals and board responses of Fortune 250 companies from 2013 to 2017 from do little (a shareholder primacy perspective) to do much (a stakeholder pluralism perspective). The authors calculate the motivational dissonance for each proposal-response pair (the Talk Gap) and use cluster analysis to observe evidence of board stewardship and subsequent environmental disclosure and performance (ED&P) changes.

Board interpretations of stewardship are not uniform, and they regularly extend to stakeholders beyond shareholders, most frequently including profit-oriented stakeholders (e.g. employees and customers). ED&P changes are highest when shareholders narrowly lead boards in CSR motivation and either request both action and information or information only. The authors observe weaker ED&P changes when shareholders request action and the dissonance between shareholders and boards is larger. When shareholders are motivated to do little for CSR, ED&P changes are weak, even when boards express more pluralistic motivations.

The results show the important role that boards play in CSR and may aid activist shareholders in determining how best to generate change in corporate CSR actions.

This study provides the first evidence of board stewardship at the proposal-response level. It measures shareholder and board CSR motivations, introduces the Talk Gap, and examines relationships among proposal characteristics, the Talk Gap, and subsequent ED&P change to better understand board stewardship of environmental issues.

This research aims to examine the performativity of corporate reports as an example of an accounting inscription that can frame the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entities and their stakeholders. The framing and overflow effects of these reports have been explored to consider whether they strengthen or undermine the reputation and capability of these community-controlled entities.

Aligned with actor–network theory and a decolonising research protocol, qualitative interviews were conducted with senior managers and directors of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entities and their key stakeholders to explore their experiences of corporate reporting. Additional analysis of these organisations' annual reports was conducted to corroborate key reporting themes.

This research has identified a dual role for corporate reporting, simultaneously framing performance against an expectation of failure, but with the potential for accounting inscriptions to highlight positive contributions to cultural and community priorities. It also indicates the need for sector specifics within the reporting frameworks and adequate resourcing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entities to meet reporting obligations.

This research makes policy-based recommendations in terms of user-driven and culturally informed performance measures. It also highlights the importance of adequate funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entities to carry out meaningful performance evaluations beyond the preparation of financial statements.

One of the few empirical studies to capture the performativity of accounting inscriptions from the perspective of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entities. This sector has received minimal attention within the accounting discipline, despite significantly contributing to community well-being and cultural protection. There is emancipatory potential via policy frameworks that resonate with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural beliefs and practices.

This paper aims to examine the effect of the auditors’ burnout determinates on audit quality and performance. It also analyses whether the demographic characteristics of gender, age group, education and job positions affect auditors’ decisions for burnout, audit quality and performance.

A questionnaire was distributed on a sample of auditors in the top ten auditing firms in an emerging market including the Big 4. Factor analysis, correlation matrix and structural equation modeling were used for the analysis of the collected data and testing the developed hypotheses.

The results show that burnout has negative consequences for both the auditor and the auditing firm. While good organizational climate has a negative significant association with audit quality, nonethical decisions and audit performance, role clarity has positive significant association with the audit quality and performance and has an insignificant association with nonethical decisions. Also, turnover intention has significant positive association with nonethical decision, audit quality and performance.

This research is among the first to focus on auditor’s burnout determinates on audit quality and performance in an emerging market characterized by different socioeconomic, political and cultural factors compared with those of developed markets. Auditors, regulators and professional policymakers can benefit from the results of this research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between suicide rates broken down by gender and socio-economic factors in the Slovak Republic.

This paper uses panel data of 79 counties of the Slovak Republic for the period 1997–2019. Methodology used includes fixed effects regression and sensitivity analysis. Also, regressions with lagged variables are used.

The results show that per capita income and unemployment rate are associated with increased risk of suicide rates for both genders. Economic growth is negatively correlated and significant only for women. Women’s participation in the labor market does not have a significant impact. Social factors, such as divorce and fertility rate, have a significant effect on men but insignificant on women. Strong faith is associated with increasing men’s suicide rates. Sensitivity analysis confirmed the results. This paper also examined the possibility of cumulation of the effects by using lagged variables. Unemployment rate has a significant effect only in the simultaneous year and for men only. Per capita income and economic growth have insignificant impact for both the genders. Divorce rate has a significant positive relationship for men, if measured in the previous year. The fertility rate is negatively correlated with the suicide rate of women up to two years after the birth. Higher participation of women in the labor market has a positive relationship with men’s suicides in the simultaneous year.

Few limitations of this paper need to be stated. First, the data are not balanced, as data for some districts and years are missing. Also, it is possible to collect data only for a maximum period of 29 years (as the Slovak Republic exists only from year 1993). Moreover, important variables in suicide research, like alcohol consumption or drug use, are not collected on the district level. Therefore, poor data availability is putting barriers to research of this area in the Slovak Republic. Second, there is a lack of previous studies in the Slovak Republic. According to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to deal with issue of suicides and socio-economic factors in the Slovak Republic; therefore, some important factors of the Slovak Republic influencing the results of this paper may be missed. Third, limitations in the methodological approach might influence the paper. The lagged-variables approach might require further methodological improvements and research like implementing a structural regression model.

According to knowledge of the authors, this relationship has not yet been examined in Slovakia. This provided space for this paper. According to the information presented in this paper, it is important to take individual economic and social circumstances into account when developing suicide prevention programs. The results of this paper may lead to useful guidelines for health policymakers, but addressing this issue certainly requires further research.