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The purpose of this study was to investigate a framework for the implementation of freedom of information (FOI) legislation in South Africa, against Article 19’s nine principles of FOI legislation.

This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews to collect data from six experts selected by means of the snowball sampling technique and content analysis. The study used a modified Delphi design consisting of two rounds of interviews.

The results showed that little effort is made by government officials to demonstrate commitment to the implementation of FOI legislation.

The passing of FOI is expected to reduce corruption, increase public participation, reduce the level of secrecy and increase transparency and openness. This is not the case as the implementation of this socioeconomic right in South Africa is faced by numerous challenges, such as a lack of political will, secrecy laws providing for the opposite of what the FOI legislation seeks to achieve, poor legislative interpretation and a lack of clear policies. The study proposes a framework aimed at addressing these challenges.

The study provides a framework for the implementation of FOI legislation. The framework was developed under the guidance of Article 19 principles of freedom of information legislation.

The current COVID-19 pandemic is influencing our life in every aspect, including working and living environments. Millions of people were forced to isolate themselves in their homes, which has posed significant pressure on buildings and shown us that our dwellings are not designed for such purposes. This is partly due to the fact that homes are designed and built for occasional use rather than isolated and long-term occupation. The legislative system of a country plays an important role in defining and shaping the conditions of people living there. Hence, the aim of the study is to evaluate the readiness of Kazakhstani and the EU construction-related legislation for pandemics.

Previously developed pandemic-resilient indicators were used for the evaluation of construction legislation. Both legislative systems were reviewed, and the quality of responses was evaluated by assigning response scores.

The results based on response scores indicate that the environmental resource consumption sub-category was better covered by EU legislation. At the same time, the buildings’ health, safety and comfort are better taken into account in Kazakhstani legislation. Seven pandemic-resilient indicators were not responded to by any legislative system indicating a gap between current legislation and requirements for new living conditions.

No study has analyzed how COVID-19 can transform construction legislation. The study reveals the limitation of current construction legislation in Kazakhstan (KZ) and the EU, indicating the need for transformation to meet the requirements of the pandemic era.

The purpose of this paper is to inspire a different way of thinking about digitalization and organizational change by theorizing simultaneity as an alternative to the otherwise dominant root metaphor of sequence in the literature on digitalization and organizational change.

The theoretical argument is based on a reading of central contributions to the literature on digital technology and organizational change, and particularly inspired by the work positing a constitutive entanglement of technology and organization. We argue for an extension of this line of thinking with a reading of Latour’s notion tonalities. The relevance of the theoretical argument is demonstrated through an illustrative empirical example of the phenomenon digital-ready legislation.

The paper identifies sequence as a root metaphor in the organization and digital change literature. It develops a simultaneity view and illustrates its relevance through the example of digital-ready legislation, pinpointing how technological, organizational and legal elements are attuned to one another at the same time rather than in sequence.

The sequentiality view has dominated the change management research, which has travelled from research into practice. The simultaneity view has the potential to offer a new approach to planning change, with a focus on the simultaneous alignment of, e.g. legal, organizational and technological elements.

The paper offers an alternative to dominant views on digitalization and organizational change, drawing on an overlooked notion in Latour’s scholarship, namely tonalities. This has potential to qualify the entanglement thesis and develop simultaneity as a new metaphor for understanding digital change.

The goal of this study is to propose and test a model of the effect of the socio-cultural context on the disability inclusion climate of organizations. The model has implications of hiring people with disabilities.

To test the model, we conducted a cross-sectional study across four countries with very different socio-cultural contexts. Data were gathered from 266 managers with hiring responsibilities in Canada, China, Norway and France. Participants responded to an online survey that measured the effect of societal based variables on the disability inclusion climate of organizations.

Results indicated support for the theoretical model, which proposed that the socio-cultural context influenced the disability inclusion climate of organizations through two distinct but related paths; manager’s value orientations and their perception of the legitimacy of legislation regarding people with disabilities.

The vast majority of research regarding employment of people with disabilities has focused on supply side factors that involve characteristics of the people with disabilities. In contrast, this research focuses on the less researched demand side issue of the socio-cultural context. In addition, it responds to the “limited systematic research examining and comparing how country-related factors shape the treatment of persons with disability” (Beatty et al., 2019, p. 122).

Numerous policies are established in Mauritius to attract foreign direct investment, but at the same time, severe concerns were raised concerning the erosion of Mauritian tax base, which is witnessed by the decrease in the percentage of tax revenue to gross domestic product in recent years. To avoid these issues, in 2019, the Mauritian legislator has domesticated the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) BEPS 2013 Action 3 on controlled foreign company (CFC) in its income tax legislation. As such, the purpose of this study is to critically assess the implications of CFC rules of Mauritius to reduce tax avoidance in the light of international tax competition.

To achieve the research objective, this study will adopt a black letter approach by analysing the rules and regulations of various jurisdiction as well as international standards on CFCs and other tax avoidance legal provisions. A comparative analysis will be conducted between Mauritian laws on CFCs and the corresponding legislation of the UK and the USA, which are selected to assess the developed world’s position on strict CFC rules.

A hasty implementation of CFC rules leads to various complexities like interpretation issues and diminishing the competitiveness of the country to multinationals. In this respect, there is the risk of a trade-off between tax collected and foreign direct investment in the country. Consequently, the research recommends that Mauritius reforms its CFC legislation by extending the scope of tax exemptions for intra-group financing income, for the first year of CFC’s operation with the possibility of offsetting foreign taxes and for the Mauritius Revenue Authority to establish detailed guidelines on the determination of CFC income and its attribution for tax purposes in Mauritius.

Existing literature has to a great extent focused on the role of CFC rules as a tax avoidance measure and on the divergence or convergence between domestic CFC legislation against the OECD recommendations (Dourado, 2015; Xu, 2018; Beebeejaun et al., 2023). However, limited literature is available on the evaluation of the purpose of CFC rules enacted by a developing country being Mauritius in the context of the global competitive market, to which this research aims at filling the gap.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union (EU) was passed to protect data privacy. Though the GDPR intended to address issues related to data privacy in the EU, it created an extra-territorial effect through Articles 3, 45 and 46. Extra-territorial effect refers to the application or the effect of local laws and regulations in another country. Lawmakers around the globe passed or intensified their efforts to pass laws to have personal data privacy covered so that they meet the adequacy requirement under Articles 45–46 of GDPR while providing comprehensive legislation locally. This study aims to analyze the Malaysian and Saudi Arabian legislation on health data privacy and their adequacy in meeting GDPR data privacy protection requirements.

The research used a systematic literature review, legal content analysis and comparative analysis to critically analyze the health data protection in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia in comparison with GDPR and to see the adequacy of health data protection that could meet the requirement of EU data transfer requirement.

The finding suggested that the private sector is better regulated in Malaysia than the public sector. Saudi Arabia has some general laws to cover health data privacy in both public and private sector organizations until the newly passed data protection law is implemented in 2024. The finding also suggested that the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 of Malaysia and the Personal Data Protection Law 2022 of Saudi Arabia could be considered “adequate” under GDPR.

The research would be able to identify the key principles that could identify the adequacy of the laws about health data in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia as there is a dearth of literature in this area. This will help to propose suggestions to improve the laws concerning health data protection so that various stakeholders can benefit from it.

Non-financial reporting (NFR) is viewed as a major step towards organisational transparency and accountability. While the number of non-financial reports published every year has been growing exponentially over the last two decades, their quality and effectiveness in managing environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance have been questioned. Addressing these concerns, several jurisdictions, including EU Member States, introduced mandatory NFR regimes. However, the evidence on whether such regulation truly translates into enhanced ESG performance remains scarce. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the impact of the EU’s Directive 2014/95/EU (Non-financial Reporting Directive, NFRD) on the ESG scores of Polish companies.

Drawing upon institutional and strategic perspectives on legitimacy theory, the authors test the relationship between the introduction of the NFRD and the ESG scores derived from the Refinitiv database, using a sample of all those companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange whose disclosure allows for measuring ESG performance (yielding 171 firm-year observations from 43 companies).

This study’s findings show an improvement of ESG performance following the introduction of the NFRD. The difference-in-differences approach indicates that the improvement is larger for companies that are subject to the legislation when it comes to overall ESG performance, particularly for environmental and social performance. Nonetheless, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no significant effect is found for performance in the governance dimension.

This study investigates the role of transnational mandatory reporting regulation in the first years of its enactment. The evidence offers insights into the effects of disclosure legislation in the context of an underdeveloped institutional environment.

This paper aims to focus on the use of unexplained wealth orders (UWOs) in South Africa as a civil method to act upon lifestyle audit results that have indicated wealth from unknown, possibly unlawful, sources.

This paper applied a comparative methodology. Legislation and the application of UWOs in Ireland, the UK and Australia were compared with the situation in South Africa.

It is proposed that South Africa includes UWO legislation within its Prevention of Organised Crime Act or be established as a separate piece of legislation. Also, South Africa should follow both the civil and criminal route to target the proceeds of crime.

Corruption in South Africa is rampant and, without the necessary legislation, impossible to fight. For these purposes, this paper proposes measures to be used from a civil forfeiture perspective.

This study aims to evaluate how corporate governance focused on meeting the legal requirements applied in poultry slaughterhouses contributes to the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within the environmental pillar and identify vulnerabilities in this governance framework.

This research was qualitative and was structured with the following steps: literature review, selection of companies and documentary research on licenses applied to these companies.

The assessment demonstrates that the governance strategy based on legal aspects contributes to progress in indicators related to SDGs such as clean water, climate action, life below water and life on land. However, it falls short when addressing SDG 7 on affordable and clean energy. Another vulnerability of this governance model is that legislation establishes metrics and indicators individually for each link in the poultry industry chain.

Assessment of the corporate governance of poultry slaughterhouses, focusing on legality and analyzing vulnerabilities in the legal aspects of the poultry industry concerning the SDGs that encompass the environmental pillar.

The results provide valuable information for policymakers, regulators and industry stakeholders in the segment, suggesting the need to align legislation with SDGs or adopt incentive policies to encourage the spontaneous advancement of SDGs in the poultry industry.

Considering the need for progress toward a more sustainable world and the trend of organizations focusing their efforts on complying with local legislation, this study aims to contribute to understanding how the legal requirements applied in practice are prepared to support the advancement of the SDGs.