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This paper presents the findings of an investigation designed to reveal the destination of the refereed journal research output of accounting and finance faculty members across their entire academic careers. A geographic approach was adopted with the intention of providing a historical data‐set to inform the development of a region‐centric model of academic research productivity. The study focuses on publication careers of accounting and finance academics from one particular geographic region, New Zealand. The data were collected through a detailed examination of electronic databases of journal holdings and research reports of tertiary institutions. The results of this study provide evidence that, across their careers, New Zealand's academics have published a significant number of papers in journals located in two regions, Australia‐New Zealand and the United Kingdom, and that this academic community has attained publication success in international journals generally regarded as high quality.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the contextual factors affecting infrastructure reporting by New Zealand local authorities.

The paper includes a survey and interview of Annual Report Recipients (ARRs) and Infrastructure Information Preparers (IIPs), together with an assessment of the extent of infrastructure information disclosure in the annual reports of New Zealand local authorities.

This study finds that contrary to the expectations of Lüder’s contingency model (1992), there is an information dissemination gap between the perceptions of ARRs and IIPs regarding infrastructure information reporting in the annual reports of New Zealand local authorities. This finding is consistent with decades of concern about the application of private sector Generally Accepted Accounting Principles to the public sector and the Controller and Auditor General’s (CAG, 2009) concern about the inadequacy of private sector General Purpose Financial Reports in meeting public sector accountability. On the other hand, the study reports that the perceptions of the two groups, ARRs and IIPs, are similar with regard to the importance of infrastructure information items, which is consistent with the expectations of Lüder’s model.

The paper contributes towards theoretical development by adopting Lüder’s (1992) contingency model in the context of infrastructure reporting by New Zealand local authorities and proposing a model of contextual factors by extending Lüder’s model. The practical contribution of the study is in the area of accounting practice and public policy.

Corporate sustainability focuses on three key organisational aspects including social, environmental and financial performance. It deals with how to organise and manage human actions in such a way that they meet physical and psychological demands without compromising the ecological, social and economic base which enables these needs to be met (Unerman, Bebbington, & O'Dwyer, 2007). The fundamental view of sustainability is that organisations should not pursue economic gains at the expense of society (e.g. human rights violations), ecology (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions) and the future generations. The main aim in this chapter is to focus on corporate social and environmental sustainability. In particular, this chapter focuses on the online social and environmental sustainability performance reporting practices of three global supply organisations operating in Bangladesh which is regarded as a developing nation. Social and environmental sustainability activities and associated reporting is a central part of the analysis as it appears that global garments supply organisations in developing nations respond to meet the needs of those stakeholders who are affected by their operations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between corporate governance mechanisms and quality of forward-looking information in the Chinese stock market which presents a mandatory disclosure environment for forward-looking information.

Using sales forecasts to proxy forward-looking information and using precision and accuracy to measure the quality of information disclosure, the authors investigate the impact of corporate governance attributes on the precision and accuracy of sales forecasts made by listed Chinese firms in their 2010 annual reports, using logistics and ordinary least squares regressions.

The authors find good corporate governance has a positive and significant impact on the precision choice of sales forecasts disclosure. Firms with good corporate governance are more likely to disclose more precise sales forecasts than providing qualitative discussions on firms’ sales trend. In addition, good corporate governed firms are found more likely to provide precise non-financial information. The authors also find that good corporate governance is positively associated with making more conservative sales forecasts disclosure. However, the authors find no significant relationship between good corporate governance and smaller forecast error.

The study makes significant contributions to corporate disclosure literature. The authors investigate the determinants of the quality of forward-looking information in a mandatory disclosure regime while most forward-looking information disclosure literature have been conducted in a voluntary-based disclosure environment. The authors examine whether in a mandatory disclosure regime, corporate governance mechanisms can play a positive role in precision choices and accuracy of forward-looking information. Further, the study is the first to examine corporate governance and the quality of non-financial forward-looking information (sales target and production goal). The research findings therefore extend forward-looking information disclosure research from financial information to non-financial information.

The empirical findings will provide regulators with evidence on the quality of forward-looking information in a mandatory disclosure regime and the influence of corporate governance on forward-looking disclosure. The properties of forward-looking information disclosure in China should be of interest to policy makers, investors and financial analysts in other international jurisdictions.

The study investigates forward-looking information in a mandatory disclosure regime while most extant forward-looking information studies have been conducted in a voluntary disclosure environment. The study is the first to examine the quality of non-financial forward-looking information such as operational goals and plans, and to investigate the association between the quality of non-financial forward-looking information and corporate governance mechanisms. The research findings extend forward-looking information disclosure research from quantitative financial information to quantitative non-financial information.

Fulya Akyildiz is Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration, Usak University, Turkey.

This study aims at examining the level of risk of disclosure practices and the effect of four board of directors' characteristics (board size, board meetings, CEO duality and board expertise) on these practices in the Jordanian context. This study also adds to the body of literature by examining the moderating effect of family ownership on the relationship between the board of directors' characteristics and the corporate risk disclosure.

The sample of this study contains the non-financial Jordanian firms listed on Amman Stock Exchange (ASE). 376 annual reports of the sampled firms over four years from 2014 to 2017 were used. The content analysis approach was used to collect data and to determine the level of risk disclosure by computing the number of risk-related sentences in the annual reporting. To test the study's hypothesis, the random effect model was employed.

The empirical results show that the total of the risk disclosure sentences for each firm ranges from a minimum value of 2 sentences to a maximum value of 61 sentences, and the mean of CRD is 28 sentences. The results also indicate that the board expertise is positively related with the level of risk disclosure. Conversely, CEO duality has a negative impact on the risk disclosure practices. However, the results failed to support that the board size and the board meetings have a significant effect on the level of risk disclosure. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that the family ownership moderates the relationship between the board of directors and the corporate risk disclosure.

The finding of this study is more likely be useful for many concerned parties, researchers, authorities, investors and financial analysts alike in understanding the current practices of the risk disclosure in Jordan, thus helping them in reconsidering and reviewing the accounting standards and improving the credibility and transparency of the financial reports in the Jordanian capital market.

The current study contributes to the literature of risk disclosure because the previous research has paid little attention to this topic in Jordan. To the best knowledge of the researcher, this study is the first Jordanian study that focuses on examining the relationship between the board of directors' characteristics and the corporate risk disclosure in the non-financial sector. Furthermore, it is the first study that examines the moderating role of family ownership on such relationships. Consequently, the results of the current study draw attention to the CRD practices and the monitoring role of board of directors in Jordan.

This paper investigates the energy performance of aquatic centres in Victoria.

Physical and occupancy characteristics and energy consumption from various centres were analysed to understand the interrelationship between numerous factors that contribute to the energy consumption of these facilities.

The energy usage intensity of the facilities ranged from 632 to 2,247 kWh/m2 or 8 to 17 kWh/visit. Primary and secondary indicators were examined to find the key performance indicators.

This study sheds some light into the overall energy performance of aquatic centres in the temperate climate of Australia. More samples need to be collected to perform rigorous statistical analysis leading to a reliable benchmark model. System-wise investigation of energy consumption is required to determine where the energy is being used and the saving potentials of each system.

This study has arisen from the need of managers of large aquatic and recreation facilities to benchmark the energy consumption of their own facilities. This study will fill the gap that currently exists in the area of energy rating systems for aquatic centres.

The results of this study showed that aquatic centres consume around seven times more energy than a commercial office building. Thus, if the energy consumption of aquatic centres could be reduced by as little as only 10 per cent, at least 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emission can be reduced.

Environmental design standards for aquatic centres have generally been overlooked due to the complex nature of these buildings. As a result, this sector suffers from a general lack of both qualitative and quantitative information and benchmarking.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the carbon intensive building elements or “carbon hotspots” of office buildings in order to maximise the carbon reduction potential during design stages.

Embodied carbon (EC) estimates of 28 office buildings in the UK were obtained and carbon hotspots of the sample (in accordance with the new rules of measurement (NRM) element classification) were identified using the 80:20 Pareto principle.

Frame, substructure, external walls, services and upper floors were identified as carbon hotspots of the selected sample. However, findings do not support the 80:20 ratio in this case but propose a ratio of 80:36. Stairs, internal walls and partitions, internal doors, wall finishes, ceiling finishes and fittings and furnishings were identified as carbon insignificant elements that have a lower EC reduction potential compared to the rest.

The findings are applicable to office buildings in the UK but the methodology is adaptable to different types of buildings in other countries.

Findings unveil carbon intensive and carbon insignificant building elements of typical office buildings in the UK. This informs designers of the elements that could yield the highest potential EC savings via effective design choices. In addition, a logical design timeline is proposed for building elements based on their element hotspot category and design sequence to assist design decision making.

I've tried, in thinking about this talk, to live up to that provocative title. ‘To proceed pulpitically’, as Lord Chesterfield would say, I would like to start with a text from Lord Melbourne, that wise old counsellor of Queen Victoria, and it runs like this, ‘I wish I was as cocksure of anything as Tom Macauley is of everything.’ To put that in a slightly different way, ‘In an uncertain world it is more important to understand than to know’. You may just be intrigued that the new science curriculum has come to a view which I hope will soon be published, that in teaching science to children from the age of five to sixteen, perhaps no more than 40 per cent of the weighting should be on what they actually learn in terms of knowledge and skills. Equally important — perhaps more so — is that they should acquire scientific method, the ability to observe, to infer, to induce and to deduce, to test their conclusions in real life and to communicate these conclusions. So I believe that in an uncertain world this phrase, that it is better to understand than to know, deserves to have a wider currency.