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Education for sustainable development (ESD) is a developing educational concept that aims to achieve economic, social and environmental sustainability through education. Cultural sustainability education aims to cultivate awareness and protection of cultural assets, promote sustainable development and foster environmental responsibility. This study establishes a cyber-physical metaverse of cultural sustainability learning to cultivate students' motivation, multicultural identity, critical thinking and sustainability thinking.

In this study, virtual reality (VR) and 3D printing technologies were utilized to create a cyber-physical metaverse learning environment. This learning environment is designed to allow elementary school children to learn about indigenous cultures and the architecture of slate houses, as well as socio-architectural issues. Learners will be able to experience first-hand the plight of the indigenous tribal areas and the exploration of related cultural knowledge.

The study collected pre- and post-test data through questionnaires, using covariates to analyze learners' perceptions of learning. The results of this study showed that cyber-physical metaverse learning environment had a significant impact on learning motivation, multicultural identity and sustainability thinking for culturally sustainable education. However, this study’s impact on critical thinking skills in students remains to be confirmed.

This is a quasi-experimental study of a single country’s elementary school children in the indigenous area, so its findings cannot be extrapolated to other areas or to learners of different ages.

This study introduces a framework for incorporating both virtual and real cultures to promote sustainable learning. The cyber-physical metaverse learning is used to supplement teaching activities to enhance learners' motivation in learning multicultural knowledge. Students were able to recognize and protect cultural assets, as well as emphasize the importance of sustainable development.

This chapter compares the current biodiversity practices of higher education institutions (HEIs) and their learning effects of the Global North and South. It particularly explores the HEIs’ strategies targeting biodiversity and ecosystem services preservation. In order to answer the research question, a qualitative content analysis of published sustainability reports of the systematically selected HEIs was performed. The Times Higher Education (THE) was used to select HEIs. The results show that biodiversity reporting and management is still in its early stages in HEIs from both the Global North and South and could benefit from further research and suggestions for improvement. One implication for the HEIs is that they could increase public awareness and knowledge of biodiversity through the integration of this topic into their curricula, more research projects on biodiversity, and operations on and off campus.

Higher education institutions (HEI) are acknowledged as a key driver for the development of sustainable societies, so much so that some profess education for sustainable development to be the most fundamental of the United Nation’s (UN) 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). This chapter provides an overview of the chapters in the book: Higher Education for the SDGs, divided into two themes, namely (i) Research from the Global North and Global South and (ii) Rethinking curriculum.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms use different earnings management approaches when facing financial difficulties and the effects of industry-specialist auditors in constraining those choices. The empirical results suggest that (1) firms with lower risk of business failure but with stronger incentives to adjust earnings upward tend to use real earnings management (REM) income-increasing approaches while (2) at the same time, using discretionary accruals for income-decreasing earnings management, due to constraints imposed by specialist auditors on the use of accrual-based earnings management (AEM). This is consistent with the findings of Chi et al., and the authors do not find similar evidence for the firms with higher risk of failure. Also, (3) regardless of the level of failure risk, firms turn to REM while interestingly, such REM behavior is effectively curbed by industry-leading specialist auditors (specialist auditors with the highest client market share) on financially distressed firms. These results extend the findings of Chi et al. (2011), suggesting that industry-specialist auditors have different tolerance levels for earnings management approaches by firms with different levels of business failure risk. That is, when auditing clients with higher risk of failure, specialist auditors are more likely to maintain higher audit quality through more stringent audit testing and use of more audit staff time to prevent an occurrence of audit failure.

The authors examine earnings management behavior across firms in Taiwan with different levels of business failure risk and the effects of audit partner industry specialization in constraining that behavior. Chi et al. (2011) studied low-risk firms with incentives to adjust earnings upward and found firms use REM when the auditors constrain AEM. The authors extend the work of Chi et al. and observe firms with different levels of failure risk.

The authors find (1) lower risk firms may use discretionary accruals to adjust earnings downward while the authors find no similar evidence for financially distressed firms, (2) lower risk firms may use REM when their industry-specialist auditors curb AEM and (3) the industry leaders among specialist auditors do the same for the financially distressed firms. The results demonstrate the extent to which industry-specialist auditors apply different tolerance levels for earnings management behaviors across firms with different levels of failure risk.

The study contributes to the literature in the following three ways: first, the authors fill a gap in the existing literature by comparing firms with higher risk of business failure to firms with lower risk of business failure to explore the possible difference in the two different kinds of earnings management behavior; second, the authors extend the findings of Chi et al. (2011) and examine whether specialist auditors, when auditing firms with higher risk of business failure, will input more audit effort to constrain their clients' use of REM and third, since business failures have a significant impact on the capital markets and any associated audit failures can have an even greater negative impact on investor confidence, the study provides information useful to auditors and regulators in the formation of salient policy regarding the use of REM by firms experiencing high risk of business failure.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ethical investment willingness decision-making process to understand how investors evaluate corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions.

Data were collected through a survey of 298 individual investors and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Results reveal that perfectionist decision-making style is positively related to perceived moral intensity, substitutability of financial returns, and ethical investment willingness. In addition, perceived moral intensity and substitutability of financial returns are positively related to ethical investment willingness. Finally, perceived moral intensity is positively related to substitutability of financial returns, and a two-factor causal mediation model is supported.

The limitation of this study was that the pre-tests and sampling methods required all participants to have investing experience; however, procurement of trading information for each investor was impossible; thus, actual investment behaviors were undetermined. This study shed light on the mediating roles of perceived moral intensity and the substitutability of financial returns. Future studies can further investigate the factors influencing perceived moral intensity and the substitutability of financial returns.

Future ethical investment education can focus on cultivate the ability to distinguish ethical investments and change ethical investment willingness into actual investment behavior.

Understanding the relationship between these variables can help understand why ethical investment willingness varies among investors and how the traditional financial theory investment decision model should be revised as, internationally, more people have begun to observe CSR and sustainable development.

This paper aims to examine the association between gender composition of joint auditor pairs and the quality of reported financial information. More specifically, the authors attempt to assess whether and how these gender compositions affect the client firms’ earnings management behavior.

The authors utilized the unique institutional setting of Taiwan, where joint auditors are required by law. They studied the effect of gender in joint auditor pairs on accrual earnings management and real earnings management to achieve financial reporting objectives.

Empirical results indicate that engaging a woman as the lead auditor can constrain accrual earnings management, regardless of whether the joint auditor is male or female. The authors also found that all-male signing auditor pairs with industry expertise can significantly reduce accrual earnings management. The authors also documented that all-female signing auditor pairs and auditor industry expertise could drive clients to engage in real earnings management activities as an alternative to accrual earnings management.

The empirical results demonstrate that gender indeed plays a role in the quality of client’s reported financial information. Female auditors in a lead position and male auditors with industry expertise tend to be more successful in delivering better-quality audits.

Boundary-spanning exploration through establishing alliances is an effective strategy to explore technologies beyond local search in innovating firms. The purpose of this paper is to argue that it is useful to make a distinction in boundary-spanning exploration between what a firm learns from its alliance partners (explorative learning from partners (ELP)) and what it learns from other organisations (explorative learning from non-partners (ELN)).

The authors contend that alliances play a role in both types of exploration. More specifically, the authors discern three types of alliances (inside ties, clique-spanning ties and outside ties) based on their role vis-à-vis existing alliance cliques. Clique members are highly embedded, and breaking out of the cliques through clique-spanning and outside alliances is crucial to improving explorative learning. Thereafter, the authors claim that clique-spanning ties and outside ties have a different effect on ELN and ELP.

The empirical analysis of the “application specific integrated circuits” industry indicates that inside ties have negligible effects on both types of explorative learning. Clique-spanning ties have a positive effect on ELP, but not on ELN. The reverse is true for outside ties. The results show that research on explorative learning should devote greater attention to the various roles alliance partners and types of alliances play in advancing technological exploration.

The literature only emphasises the learning from partners, focussing mainly on accessing their technology. In sum, alliance partners play different roles in exploration, and their network position influences the role they are able to play.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the process of self-initiated expatriate (SIE) organizational socialization.

To assess the socialization process, data were collected at three points in time. SIE English teachers were surveyed at three points in time. At Time 3, data from the principals of those teachers who completed surveys at Time 2 were also collected.

Organizational socialization tactics facilitate social integration and learning speed, which, in turn, are positively related to SIE adjustment. Moreover, SIEs who climbed the learning curve more quickly were only able to capitalize on their learning ability to promote performance when their calculative commitment was low.

First, in contrast with the majority of expatriate socialization studies that tend to focus on the proactive behaviors of expatriates, the authors examine the organizational socialization tactics of a local host organization. Second, they consider the role of calculative commitment, which is especially germane to the SIE context, on SIE performance. Third, this study contributes to the organizational socialization literature by recognizing that socialization is an on-going process that continues to influence employees even after they are no longer “newcomers.” Fourth, the authors assess adjustment directly rather than through proxy measures.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the long‐term and short‐term asymmetric effects of the price transmission relationships between agricultural futures and the agriculture index in China.

The paper adopts a threshold autoregressive (TAR) model and momentum‐TAR (M‐TAR) model that test the prices of futures and spots in the special trading system.

The paper indicates that during different stages of the economic cycle, agricultural futures and the agriculture index exhibit different correlations. During the initial stages of economic upturns and downturns, the addition of futures of agricultural products helps to diversify risk. In contrast, during the late stages of economic upturns and downturns, such additions do not really help to diversify risk. Soybean meal futures and the agriculture index are more strongly correlated with each other. If investors use soybean meal futures to predict the trends in the agriculture index, they will obtain more accurate conclusions.

The soybean futures have leading effects in a single range and a lower correlation with the agriculture index. This paper provides a point of reference for investors devising investment strategies and for the Chinese Government in its execution of macro‐control policies. It provides a clear review about the estimation methods. It also provides information about China's soybean, soy meal industry.

The paper contains updated information about China's soybean and soybean meal trading. It uses new estimation methods (TAR, M‐TAR) to examine the co‐integration between soybean, soybean meal and the agricultural index.