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The kinds of decisions people make or how they react to certain situations could differ according to the society, atmosphere or environment those people come from. Studies about the influence of human behaviors on economics, business and actions were initiated by analyzing human behaviors and those studies carry on into behavioral finance and behavioral accounting.

In previous years, the models used were based on the assumption that people behave rationally while making decisions. These models lost validity recently and behavioral accounting started to search for the influences affecting human behaviors. They started considering not only the people who prepare accounting data but also the people who take advantage of this data. People’s environment, cultural differences, psychological and sociological factors have entered into the accounting’s field of interest as factors that have an influence on behavior.

The aim of this study is to try to analyze the theoretical bases and extent of behavioral accounting, which focuses on the human behavior factors being observed while creating or using financial reports. The authors also aim to contribute to the literature by including the neuroaccounting dimension into the analysis.

Purpose – This chapter critically examines efforts to destigmatize addiction through the creation of a diagnostic category and medicalization. It further critiques “realist” accounts of neuro-scientific knowledge, proposing instead a “biocultural” framework that enables a more multifaceted understanding of drug problems that leads back to questions of biopolitics.

Methodology/approach – After showing that medicalization is not always associated with destigmatization, this chapter reviews evidence suggesting that the social class of drug users is central to questions of stigma. A literature review concerning social constructionist approaches to bodies is then offered, culminating in an exploration of “biocultural” frames and their implications for psychiatric knowledge.

Findings – The material world can only be grasped through a cultural frame, an understanding that challenges “realist” accounts of knowledge. While making reference to brain functioning, psychiatric “disorders” in fact identify violations of interpersonal or psychic norms. These violations cannot be linked in a linear way to patterns of brain activity, even at a theoretical level.

Social implications – This chapter points toward a way of analyzing psychiatric disorders that allows for and highlights their political effects. Without ruling out medical interventions, it suggests that clinical and social understandings are an essential component of psychiatric understanding.

Originality/value of chapter – While “biocultural” approaches have been proposed by other social theorists, this chapter applies the frame in new ways to the psychiatric endeavor. In the face of increasing medicalization within the field of psychiatry, this chapter makes a strong theoretical case concerning the value of clinical and social knowledge concerning psychiatric disorders.

An understanding of the role of decision-making has been emphasised since the seminal works on human information processing and professional judgements by accountants. The interest in these topics has been reignited by the increasing digitisation of the financial reporting and auditing processes. Whilst the behavioural research on accounting is well-established, the application of seminal works in cognitive psychology and behavioural finance is lacking, especially from recent research endeavours. The purpose of this paper is to provide a synthesis of theories relating to accounting behavioural research by evaluating them against the theories of cognitive psychology.

Using theory synthesis, this research draws seemingly isolated strands of research into a coherent framework, underpinned by cognitive psychology.

Evidence from accounting and auditing behavioural research is largely consistent with the psychology and finance research on cognitive limitations and errors. There remains a lacuna in accounting behavioural research on debiasing techniques. Such research, if underpinned by a single, cohesive theoretical framework, is likely to have practical relevance.

The current research has theoretical implications for the accounting decision-making and uncertainty research. Areas for future research, based on identified gaps in the current accounting behavioural research, are also proposed.

This study aims to explore the strategies corporations use in engaging stakeholders to sustain healthy corporate partnerships and create value for the corporate entity and the society in which they operate and their influence on the corporate manager’s cognitive abilities and decision-making.

The authors used an interpretive research approach leveraging the strengths of qualitative method of content analysis and comparative and critical analyses to report the results. Interpretive methods incorporate social theories and standpoints that view reality as the social construction of understandable events in the context of organizational communication.

The findings of this study suggest that corporations are assumed to follow and execute the principles of engaging stakeholders to achieve corporate social responsibility (CSR) claiming to manage a sustainable and responsible business practices that recognize local cultures, human rights and protect the environment. However, little attention has been paid to the cognitive reasoning of the individuals responsible for CSR and corporate sustainability (CS) as opposed to the growing concerns about strategies corporations use in engaging stakeholders to sustain healthy corporate partnerships and create value – especially the processes that take place during engagement and decision-making including cognitive offloading.

Stakeholder engagement requires practical approaches that enable corporations and individuals charged with decision-making responsibilities to understand, respond and fulfill their CSRs. To achieve CSRs, corporations and managers responsible for relevant decision-making would need to involve stakeholders in social performance planning, as social reporting/auditing has long been advocating for preventing managerial biasness, groupthink and increased information dissemination via detailed reporting practices toward more collaborative stakeholder relationships. Thus, it is crucial for corporations to implement enhanced stakeholder and managerial decision-making strategies such as integrative approaches to achieve balance in the trio elements of sustainability as well as the growing use of paradox perspective to understand the nature of the tensions being sought to balance and, in the process, provide opportunity for a better evaluation of complex sustainability issues for innovative approach to resolving them. While cognitive decision-making is at play, in practice, managers tasked with making decisions must ensure the most effective stakeholder engagement strategies that are transparent and inclusive are used.

The main contribution of this study is its argument regarding the tools corporations use in engaging key stakeholders and the cognitive reasoning of the individuals responsible for CSR and CS. The study further contributes to interpreting the integrative approach to achieving balance in the trio elements of sustainability as well as the growing use of paradox perspective to understand the nature of the tensions being sought to balance and, in the process, provide an opportunity for a better evaluation of complex sustainability issues for an innovative approach to resolving them.

In commenting on the issues raised by Drake et al. the purpose of this paper is to discuss three areas of practice: assessing capacity in the presence of intransigence and/or rigid patterns of thinking and behaviour; understanding addiction in this context; and identifying “reasonable adjustments” in the way addiction and substance misuse services are provided to this client group.

As well as discussing the issues raised by Drake et al. the commentary refers to a serious case review exploring similar issues.

Both the case discussed by Drake et al. and the serious case review draw attention to the importance of identifying “reasonable adjustments” to current practice.

While the implications of the cases discussed are very significant, further work quantifying the scope of the problems identified would be very useful.

The 1995 Disability Discrimination Act (UK) requires public services to make “reasonable adjustments” in order for people with a range of disabilities to access their services on an equitable basis. This paper identifies what some of those areas of difficulty might be.

This is a relatively new area of work and expertise in both mainstream addiction and specialist intellectual disability and mental health services needs to be developed in order for them to provide more coherent and accessible programmes to individuals.

Neuroscientists act as proxies for implied anthropomorphic signal-processing beings within the brain, Homunculi. The latter examine the arriving neuronal spike-trains to infer internal and external states. But a Homunculus needs a brain of its own, to coordinate its capabilities – a brain that necessarily contains a Homunculus and so on indefinitely. Such infinity is impossible – and in well-cited papers, Attneave and later Dennett claim to eliminate it. How do their approaches differ and do they (in fact) obviate the Homunculi?

The Attneave and Dennett approaches are carefully scrutinized. To Attneave, Homunculi are effectively “decision-making” neurons that control behaviors. Attneave presumes that Homunculi, when successively nested, become successively “stupider”, limiting their numbers by diminishing their responsibilities. Dennett likewise postulates neuronal Homunculi that become “stupider” – but brain-wards, where greater sophistication might have been expected.

Attneave’s argument is Reductionist and it simply assumes-away the Homuncular infinity. Dennett’s scheme, which evidently derives from Attneave’s, ultimately involves the same mistakes. Attneave and Dennett fail, because they attempt to reduce intentionality to non-intentionality.

Homunculus has been successively recognized over the centuries by philosophers, psychologists and (some) neuroscientists as a crucial conundrum of cognitive science. It still is.

Cognitive-science researchers need to recognize that Reductionist explanations of cognition may actually devolve to Homunculi, rather than eliminating them.

Two notable Reductionist arguments against the infinity of Homunculi are proven wrong. In their place, a non-Reductionist treatment of the mind, “Emergence”, is discussed as a means of rendering Homunculi irrelevant.

The Chinese government hopes to achieve the goal of benefiting citizens by building a National Integrated Online Government Service Platform (NIOGSP). However, citizens' low adoption of the platform makes it difficult for the government to achieve its goal. Research on the influencing factors of citizen adoption of NIOGSP can help the government fully understand the concerns and needs of its citizens and take targeted measures to increase citizen adoption.

First, this research builds a model of the citizen adoption process, including attention, retention and motivation, based on an observational learning model. Next, research variables are determined based on social cognitive theory, literature review and real-world needs. Finally, based on the questionnaire survey and structural equation model, the influencing factors of each stage of the citizen adoption process model are studied and the relationship between the three stages of the model is verified.

Results show that perceived usefulness (PU) and self-efficacy (SE) positively affect attention. SE positively affects retention, while perceived privacy (PP) negatively affects retention. PU, social influence, PP and anxiety positively affect motivation.

The conclusion of this study can provide reference for governments in various countries to establish and improve online one-stop government. In addition, this study verifies the citizen adoption process model and finds that there is no obvious causal relationship between attention and retention, but both have positive effects on motivation.

Lean implementation is a strategic decision. The capacity of organisation to be “Lean” can be identified before lean implementation by assessing leanness of an organisation. This study aims to attempt developing a holistic leanness assessment tool for assessing organisational leanness.

A neuro-fuzzy leanness assessment model for assessing the leanness of a manufacturing system is presented. The model is validated academically and industrially by conducting a case study.

Neuro-fuzzy hybridisation helped assess the leanness accurately. Fuzzy logic helped to perform the leanness assessment more realistically by accounting ambiguity and vagueness in organisational functioning and decision-making processes. Neural network increased the learning capacity of assessment model and increased the accuracy of leanness index.

The industrial case study in the paper shows the results in telecom equipment manufacturing industry. This may not represent entire manufacturing sector. The generic nature of the model developed in this research ensures its wide applicability.

The neuro-fuzzy hybrid model for assessing leanness helps to identify the potential of an organisation to become “Lean”. The organisational leanness index developed by the study helps to monitor the effectiveness and impact of lean implementation programmes.

The leanness assessment models available in literature lack depth and coverage of leanness parameters. The model developed in this research assesses leanness of an organisation by accounting for leanness aspects of inventory management, industrial scheduling, organisational flexibility, ergonomics, product, process, management, workforce, supplier relationship and customer relationship with the help of neuro-fuzzy hybrid modelling.

Ethical leadership is of great interest in the accounting profession. After numerous ethical and moral leadership failures over the last two decades, where accounting professionals played a significant role in the fraudulent behaviors that impacted individuals, businesses, and the economy as a whole, the profession has renewed its focus on promoting ethical behavior. To date, research contributing to improving ethical behavior in the accounting profession has been minimal. A plethora of research has identified the deficiency of ethical reasoning and conduct in accounting students and professionals but has provided minimal recommendations on how to improve the status quo. Earlier studies have also found that values based, ethical and transformational leadership behaviors contribute to leader effectiveness in the accounting and business professions. What has not been studied or identified are the specific ethical and transformational leadership behaviors that should be sought or developed in professionals that would improve the ethical conduct and effectiveness of accounting leaders. This study seeks to address the gap in the literature by using neuro network analysis to understand the individual components of ethical and transformational leadership that result in leaders that are more effective in the profession. It concludes that in this study of 212 accounting professionals, ethical leaders that: (a) communicate openly, (b) are trustworthy, (c) consider and support their subordinates’ interest and (d) are altruistic, with a selfless concern for the well-being of others and transformational leaders that encourage their followers to think creatively are innovative are more effective leaders.

Due to the increasing size and complexity of construction projects, construction engineering and management involves the coordination of many complex and dynamic processes and relies on the analysis of uncertain, imprecise and incomplete information, including subjective and linguistically expressed information. Various modelling and computing techniques have been used by construction researchers and applied to practical construction problems in order to overcome these challenges, including fuzzy hybrid techniques. Fuzzy hybrid techniques combine the human-like reasoning capabilities of fuzzy logic with the capabilities of other techniques, such as optimization, machine learning, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) and simulation, to capitalise on their strengths and overcome their limitations. Based on a review of construction literature, this chapter identifies the most common types of fuzzy hybrid techniques applied to construction problems and reviews selected papers in each category of fuzzy hybrid technique to illustrate their capabilities for addressing construction challenges. Finally, this chapter discusses areas for future development of fuzzy hybrid techniques that will increase their capabilities for solving construction-related problems. The contributions of this chapter are threefold: (1) the limitations of some standard techniques for solving construction problems are discussed, as are the ways that fuzzy methods have been hybridized with these techniques in order to address their limitations; (2) a review of existing applications of fuzzy hybrid techniques in construction is provided in order to illustrate the capabilities of these techniques for solving a variety of construction problems and (3) potential improvements in each category of fuzzy hybrid technique in construction are provided, as areas for future research.