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The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding on stakeholder influence in large projects, using nuclear power plant projects and a governmental stakeholder that influences them as the empirical example. The authors focus on examining the means used by the stakeholder to influence the projects.

This paper adopts the descriptive single case study approach, using data from 18 semi‐structured interviews. The authors interviewed experts at a governmental stakeholder organization, but in order to gain insight from outside the governmental stakeholder, they also interviewed two other organizations: an energy company, and the highest administrative ministry in the nuclear industry.

The governmental stakeholder bases its influence on regulations and laws. This paper points out the distinct means that are used by the governmental stakeholder to influence nuclear projects: means that restrain, and also means that enable and advance projects. Both types of means are used at the same time. Enabling means include, among others, allowing projects and firms to contribute to the very same regulations that control the projects.

Much of the earlier research emphasizes government influence as negative to projects, but this paper shows an example of a stakeholder whose influence also includes aspects that are beneficial for projects. The governmental stakeholder can also be understood as a stakeholder that combines two stakes: its own legal stake, and society's moral stake. In carrying society's stake in projects, the governmental stakeholder acts as an intermediary.

The purpose of this paper is to find out the extent to which governments of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries play a moderating role in the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth.

The study uses a 10-year time series (2006-2015) for six GCC countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. Secondary sources of data were collected from The World Bank database, general available statistics on the GCC, the Global Entrepreneurship Index from the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute (GEDI) and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) database.

Results indicate that governmental support has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth in the GCC. Furthermore, the strongest indicators of entrepreneurial investments in the Gulf have been found to be risk capital and high growth, which indicate a rapid growth in entrepreneurial investments. The lowest scoring indicators were found to be technology absorption and innovation process.

Despite the necessary measures taken to assure standard results such as testing data validity, care should be taken when generalizing the research results mainly because the time series of the study (2006-2015) could have been affected by the International and Financial Crisis, though the study has taken this into consideration.

This study has clarified the significant role of GCC governments in moderating the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth. Thus, the findings of this study are important because they help the GCC governments recognize their significant role and hence to utilize this role by supporting new and existing entrepreneurs particularly through regulatory quality, risk capital, technology absorption and process innovation. Furthermore, this study proves the extent to which entrepreneurship can help enhance the GCC economic growth, hence elaborating the importance of the sustainable resource, such as the human capital, in achieving diversification of sources to move from an oil-based to a more diversified economy.

Public health authorities have long regarded schools as important sites for improving children and young people’s health. In Australia, and elsewhere, lessons on health have been an integral component of public health’s strategy mix. Historical accounts of schools’ involvement in public health lack discussion of the role of health education curriculum. The purpose of this paper is to redress this silence and illustrate the ways health education functioned as a key governmental apparatus in Victoria in the 1980s.

The paper draws on governmentality studies to consider the explicit governmental role of official health education curriculum in the 1980s in Victoria, Australia. The authors conduct a discourse analysis of the three official curriculum texts that were released during this period to consider the main governmental rationalities and techniques that were assembled together by curriculum writers.

School health education functions as a key governmental apparatus of governmentality. One of its major functions is to provide opportunities to responsibilise young people with an aim to ensure that that they can perform their duty to be well. The authors demonstrate the central role of policy events in the 1970s and how they contributed to conditions of possibility that shaped versions of health education throughout the 1980s and beyond. Despite challenges posed by the critical turn in health education in the late 1980s, the governmental forces that shape health education are strong and have remained difficult to displace.

Many public health and schooling histories fail to take into account insights from the history of education and curriculum studies. The authors argue that in order to grasp the complexities of school health education, we need to consider insights afforded by curriculum histories. Historical insights can provide us with an understanding of the changing approaches to governing health in schools.

This paper aims to examine the effect of different modes of equity ownership structure in unconditional conservatism of financial reporting for non-financial listed companies in Egypt.

Using a large sample of Egyptian non-financial listed companies for the period from 2011–2018, this paper used the ordinary least square regression model to test the impact of equity ownership equity on accounting conservatism based on an accrual-based measure developed by Givoly and Hayn (2000) and Ahmed and Duellman (2007).

The paper finds that, on average, Egyptian listed companies tend to demonstrate lower levels of unconditional conservatism during the period from 2011–2018. Regarding the different patterns of equity shareholding, a negative association between unconditional conservatism and managerial ownership is found. Briefly, the mild equity shareholding of managers in Egyptian listed companies is accompanied by higher demand for conservative reporting. Besides, a negative association is also reported for the relationship between concentrated ownership and unconditional conservatism in which the concentration of shareholding by a few numbers of individual investors lessen the demand for conservatism. By contrast, a non-significance relationship is reported neither for institutional shareholders nor for governmental ownership in their relationship with unconditional conservatism.

The paper does not take into account the modifications conducted on the Egyptian accounting standards according to decree number 69 for the year of 2019 because they were not valid until the publishing of this paper. It considers only non-conditional conservatism.

First, the paper provides clear empirical evidence that Egyptian listed companies are adopting less-conservative accounting policies in their financial reporting during a high-tension period that witnessed several radical political and economic events. This evidence should stimulate regulators and policymakers to revisit the reporting standards to improve the quality of financial information and should also guide investors’ decisions because it helps in clarifying their interpretation of figures and trends reported in financial statements. Second, the paper would direct the attention of the Egyptian government to the importance of increasing their investment in the stock market to enhance its regulatory role. Third, it gives some implications to investors and policymakers toward the shape of the relationship between accounting conservatism and each pattern of equity shareholding in Egypt.

This paper visualizes an image toward the current state of equity ownership structure for listed companies in Egypt within a period that witnessed critical vulnerabilities and irregularities. In addition, it addresses how the accounting conservatism would be shaped according to the different types of equity shareholdings in Egypt.

The effectiveness of non-governmental organization (NGO) participation in the healthcare sector has been demonstrated globally. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the status of Iranian NGOs’ contribution to health policy-making, the barriers to and strategies for developing their contribution.

In this qualitative study, 25 participants were recruited from health-related NGOs in Tabriz, Iran. Semi-structured, in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted. Furthermore, a set of relevant documents were collected and their contents evaluated. The text of documents and interviews were analyzed using a thematic (deductive–inductive) approach using NVivo software.

Most NGO activity has been in the area of providing services, whereas the least amount of activity has been in the domain of policy-making. Factors that were influential for NGO participation in policy-making were divided into three categories: those related to government, to civil society and within NGOs themselves. The primary barriers to participation in policy-making were related to government and the way that NGOs operated. Recommendations include the production of supportive law, financial aid to NGO and infrastructure that facilitates NGO participation.

Financial support from the government and legislation of supportive laws could help to realize the potential of NGOs.

No such research has been undertaken before to evaluate what activities health-related NGOs undertake, their contribution in health policy-making and obstacles and facilitators of this contribution. NGOs can play a key role in ensuring accountability, transparency and empower citizens to demand basic health services from government.

This article analysed how data collection systems (DCS) developed by governmental audit organizations (Court of Accounts) affect budgetary planning within local governments.

Eighteen semi-structured interviews complemented by six time-lagged interviews via WhatsApp were carried out with the actors involved in the preparation and auditing of the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) in Brazilian local governments. Documents such as the structured layouts of Courts' DCS and the publicised MTEF prepared by local governments were also analysed.

The findings indicate that Courts' DCS structured layouts reduce local governments' budgetary planning autonomy in elaborating their MTEF. It happens as the Courts' main driver is to make MTEF information auditable and not to improve the usefulness of information by governments. As a result, the planning choices of the local governments end up limited, not by the general legislation but by the rules established by the computerized systems of the Courts.

The paper's originality relies on demonstrating that the digitalisation of audit processes ultimately affects local governments' practices through structured layouts for the data collection on MTEF information - that impose rigidity on the budget planning process of local governments. The authors highlight the role of public sector auditing organisations as potential catalysts of reforms; however, this should be considered cautiously since the drivers and motivations of the organisation that sponsors public financial management reforms matter for overall reform effectiveness.

The purpose of this research is to seek to understand and explain the non‐governmental organisation (NGO) and its location in civil society in order to provide a basis for future research work. The paper aims to explore and develop understandings of accountability specifically in the context of the NGO and then extend these insights to the accountability of all organisations.

The paper is framed within a theoretical conception of accountability and is primarily literature‐based. In addition secondary data relating to the issues of concern are collated and synthesised.

The research finds that the essence of accountability lies in the relationships between the organisation and the society and/or stakeholder groups of interest. The nature of this relationship allows us to infer much about the necessary formality and the channels of accountability. In turn, this casts a light upon taken‐for‐granted assumptions in the corporate accountability and reminds us that the essence and basis of success of the corporate world lies in its withdrawal from any form of human relationship and the consequential colonisation and oppression of civil society.

The principal implications relate to: our need to improve the analytical incisiveness of our applications of accountability theory; and the possibility of the accounting literature offering more developed insights to the NGO literature. The primary limitations lie in the paper in being: exploratory of a more developed understanding of accountability; and a novel excursion into the world of the NGO and civil society – neither of which feature greatly in the accounting literature.

These lie in the current political struggles between civil society and capital over appropriate forms of accountability. Corporations continue to avoid allowing themselves to be held accountable whilst civil society organisations are often accountable in many different and informal ways. Ill‐considered calls from capital for more oppressive NGO accountability are typically, therefore, hypocritical and inappropriate.

NGOs are introduced in a detailed and accessible way to the accounting literature. The concept of accountability is further developed by examination of relationships and channels in the context of the NGO and, through Rawls' notion of “closeness”, is further enriched.

Thinking and deciding about the future of the city as a combination of complex and uncertain systems is extremely difficult. This complexity, uncertainty and difficulty will be increased when our thoughts and decisions address the city’s long-term future. Considering these issues, the need for future thinking and alternate thinking in the process of urban management and planning becomes even more necessary. The purpose of this paper is to identify and explain the alternate futures of Tehran.

For this purpose, this study have tried to study alternate future images of Tehran in an archetypal form of “growth, collapse, disciplined society and transformed society” using “Dator’s Four Generic Alternate Futures” method.

These alternate futures, after identifying their key trends and drivers, have been narrated in the form of four scenarios called: “capital business center,” “crossing the fate of ray,” “Tehran family” and “Tehran investigators.” Increasing the authority and responsibility of the local governance, modification of Tehran urban management model and development of voluntary cooperation and democratic participation, are among the policy recommendations made on the basis of these images.

Achieving these images in parallel with identifying the most important challenges and opportunities in alternate futures will provide the basis for policy-making in Tehran’s future urban governance. It can be a creative model for developing future images for other cities.

Criticisms of corporate philanthropy (CP) are different across cultures. In essence, opponents of CP fear the lack of economic returns or the lack of social efficacy of corporate donations. The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical model that may overcome both set of criticisms, so that CP plans can be globally designed and implemented.

Two theories have been used to ground the model: corporate social responsibility theory and moral capital theory. The first one sets the constraints that will ensure the plan increases social welfare. Constraints stemming from moral capital theory set the conditions for CP to increase economic performance.

On the basis of these constraints, the model stresses the need for ongoing dialogue with internal and external stakeholders, and the continuous monitoring and reporting of the economic and social impact of implemented projects, as the means of overcoming opponents' criticisms of CP.

After analysing the main criticisms posed to CP in different cultural settings, a globally acceptable model is offered, which draws on and completes existing managerial and theoretical guidelines for strategic CP.