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The purpose of this paper is to focus on exploring the mutual impact of accounting conservatism and corporate social responsibility (CSR).

To empirically assess the theoretical arguments the authors estimate a simultaneous equations system for accounting conservatism and corporate social responsibility determination by two-stage least squares in a sample of 175 firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) for the period 2009–2019.

The results of the present study showed that accountability in companies listed on the TSE has led to an increase in the use of conservative practices. Therefore arguably, companies that seek CSR activities are more conservative in preparing and presenting financial reports. Also, companies that engage in conservative practices for the benefit of stakeholders are better able to implement CSR activities to meet stakeholder obligations. These results show a two-way relationship between CSR and accounting conservatism.

According to the results obtained from this study and the elimination of conservatism from the qualitative features of financial reporting in International Accounting Standards, it is recommended for the trustees and authorities of national accounting standards to decide whether this qualitative feature is effective or not.

Furthermore, the findings of this study suggest that the application of corporate social responsibility theories calls for more inquiry.

The current study aims to analyze the role of International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) in sustainability issues and its impact on the attitude of practitioners (auditors) in industrial companies. The current study relies on the analytical method, one of the tools of the inductive approach, by examining the literature of researchers, international and local organizations, publications, series, alerts, and topics dealt with by the IFAC, as well as reviewing studies, theoretical and applied research, periodicals, books, and statistics. And specialized publications for this subject, which is related to other sciences – such as – environmental science, economic, and political sciences. The study reached many results, the most important of which are: (1) The first half of the current decade has seen high interest from the IFAC, has led to the issuance of International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) international standard on assurance engagements 3410, (GHG) Statements. (2) Sustainability has become important to a growing number of enterprises, and may have a significant influence, in certain cases, the financial statements, also became the sustainability of the topics under increasing attention from users of financial statements. Thus, the financial statements will need a practitioner to take into consideration sustainability issues and a private greenhouse gas when auditing the financial statements. This study is distinguished by analyzing the role of the IFAC and the IAASB for the period from 1998 to 2023 regarding sustainability issues.

This paper applies a stakeholder salience theoretical framework to facilitate the understanding of the roles salient stakeholders can have in the integration of education for sustainable development, one of the important Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), into Jordan’s university accounting education.

We used stakeholder salience theory to inform our study. This study adopted a qualitative research method. The study used semi-structured interviews to collect qualitative, open-ended data that explored the salient stakeholders’ thoughts, beliefs and feelings about their roles in influencing the integration of education for sustainable development into the Jordanian accounting curriculum.

The results indicate that education for sustainable development in accounting is important; however, most Jordanian salient stakeholders indicate their inability to integrate sustainable education into the accounting curriculum due to their lack of power to do so. The findings show that there is currently an inappropriate distribution of power, legitimacy and urgency amongst the salient stakeholders, who indicate that a progressive education solution is required in the critical area of education for sustainable development in accounting. This research indicates that a significant number of salient stakeholders would like the Jordanian government to provide power, legitimacy and urgency to enable accounting educators to become definite stakeholders as this will enable them to integrate sustainable education into the accounting curriculum.

The study is limited to Jordan only. The paper draws attention to the need for an appropriate distribution of power, legitimacy and urgency amongst salient stakeholders in Jordan.

This paper provides evidence that the salient stakeholders in this emerging economy want to make changes in their education system to address climate change concerns, an important SDG, through a better education curriculum for sustainable development in Jordanian universities.

Accounting educators should be given the power to make changes in the accounting curriculum, such as integrating education for sustainable development.

There is an inappropriate distribution of power, legitimacy and urgency amongst the Jordanian salient stakeholders and this imbalance hinders the integration of education for sustainable development into the accounting curriculum.

This study aims to investigate the claim that there is no coherent and homogeneous body of concepts and practices that can be classified as “Islamic accounting”.

The study focuses specifically on Islamic accounting and uses a qualitative historical documentary analysis methodology to study an original manuscript from the 14th century.

The analysis of the manuscript argues that religious accounting can be seen as a value-based system for achieving social good and that in the context of Islamic accounting, it can be conceptualised as a coherent body of ideas and practices.

Firstly, the study conceptualises Islamic accounting as a homogeneous discipline with its own knowledge, concepts and practices. Secondly, it contributes to current accounting literature by examining an ancient manuscript from the 14th century, which serves as a foundation for understanding the Islamic accounting system within the context of accounting, religion and spirituality. The paper further contributes by arguing that this conceptualisation of religious accounting as a value-based approach enables its practitioners to evaluate their own accountabilities in delivering on socioeconomic objectives related to inter-human/environmental, social and financial transactions within the context of religious accounting practices.

This paper aims to systematically review the field of non-financial reporting (NFR) in hybrid organizations, focusing on state-owned enterprises, third-sector organizations and public–private partnerships. This is a timely attempt to identify the state of the art in the literature and outline the future research agenda. The paper answers two research questions: RQ1. What can be learned about NFR in hybrid organizations from the existing literature? RQ2. What are the future avenues for research on the topic?

A systematic literature review method was applied in this paper to summarize evidence from extant literature on NFR in hybrid organizations. The Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection databases were used to locate 92 articles for the review.

Recent years have witnessed a sharp increase in the number of articles on the topic. Regarding the implications of NFR for hybrid characteristics, NFR has some potential to strengthen the influence of non-market (i.e. state, community and social) logics in hybrid organizations. However, this potential may be limited due to the effect of market logics and the tensions that arise between the multiple logics in hybrid organizations. Regarding the implications of hybrid characteristics for NFR, these characteristics can not only affect the extent, the quality, the likelihood and the institutionalization of NFR but also result in the development of new NFR frameworks. The review calls for more research on the implications of NFR for multiple institutional logics and the implications of these logics for NFR in hybrid organizations.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first literature review that mobilizes insights from hybridity research to analyze NFR literature on diverse hybrid organizations.

To present an analytical framework for conducting critical dialogic accounting and accountability-based participatory action research to further democratisation, social change and empowering marginalised groups, and to reflect on its application in a Bangladeshi nongovernmental organisation's microfinance program.

The framework, synthesising prior CDAA theorising and agonistic-inspired action research, is described, followed by a discussion of the methodological challenges when applying this during a ten-year, ongoing intervention seeking greater voice for poor, female borrowers.

Six methodological issues emerged: investigating contested issues rather than organisation-centric research; identifying and engaging divergent discourses; engaging marginalised groups, activists and/or dominant powerholders; addressing power and power relations; building alliances for change; and evaluating and disseminating results. The authors discuss these issues and how the participatory action research methods and analytical tools used evolved in response to emergent challenges, and key lessons learned in a study of microfinance and women's empowerment.

The paper addresses calls within and beyond accounting to develop critical, engaged and change-oriented scholarship adopting an agonistic research methodology. It uses a novel critical dialogic accounting and accountability-based participatory action research approach. The reflexive examination of its application engaging NGOs, social activists, and poor women to challenge dominant discourses and practices, and build alliances for change, explores issues encountered. The paper concludes with reflective questions to aid researchers interested in undertaking similar studies in other contentious, power-laden areas concerning marginalised groups.

This study aims to explore to what extent stakeholder engagement affects the sustainability reporting (SR) process and if it succeeds in facilitating the encounter between demand and supply of accountability, as well as the main challenges of this practice, by focusing on a crucial and under-investigated public sector area, the judicial system.

The study adopts an action research (AR) approach. Specifically, it focuses on a specific phase (i.e. stakeholder engagement) of the broader project that was carried on from 2019 in an Italian Public Prosecutor’s Office. Data were collected from multiple sources, i.e. written notes and reports gathered during meetings, the survey administered to stakeholders and the published sustainability reports.

Stakeholder engagement may be a valuable and effective tool for improving the level of accountability, as it increases the responsiveness of SR to the informative needs of stakeholders. However, the study also highlights some critical points that must be addressed to exploit this fully. Among these is the need to act upstream of the process by working on an accounting system that goes beyond the economic dynamics and can effectively answer the accountability demand.

The study contributes to theoretical and empirical knowledge by exploring a topic and a public sphere still limited investigated, i.e. the stakeholder engagement in sustainability in the judicial sector. The AR approach also presents some originality points, as it is low widespread in management and accounting literature.

Face is the most intuitive and representative feature at the individual level. Many studies show that beautiful faces help individuals and enterprises obtain economic benefits and form a high economic premium, but the discussion of their potential social value is insufficient. This study aims to focus on the impact of the personal characteristics of executives. It mainly analyzes the impact mechanism of CEO facial attractiveness on corporate social responsibility (CSR) decision-making, clarifying the social value of beauty from the perspective of CSR.

The authors use the regression model to analyze the panel data set, which was conducted by a sample of Chinese publicly listed firms from 2016 to 2018.

The study found that CEOs with high facial attractiveness are more active in fulfilling CSR, which can usually bring higher social benefits. CEOs with beautiful faces are prone to overconfidence, are optimistic about their ability and the future development of the enterprise and are more willing to increase their investment in CSR. CEO duality can positively regulate the positive correlation between a CEO’s facial attractiveness and CSR.

Based on the perspective of upper echelons theory, this paper explores the mechanism of CEO facial attractiveness on CSR. This study enriches the perspective of the upper echelon’s theoretical research and has essential enlightenment for CEO selection and training practice.

This paper aims to introduce corporate social responsibility into the green supply chain and analyse the impact of different decision makers’ decision-making schemes on carbon emission reduction in the supply chain.

This study uses a two-stage low-carbon supply chain composed of a manufacturer and retailer as the research object. It uses the Stackelberg game model to analyse optimal carbon emission reduction and its influence under different decision-making modes.

Increased consumer green preferences and trust can improve the manufacturing enterprises’ carbon emission reduction rate. The carbon emission reduction rate decreases with increased green innovation costs. When green technology innovation costs remain constant, the greater the market capacity, the higher the carbon emission reduction rate. Market capacity has the most significant impact on the optimal carbon emission reduction rate without considering social responsibility decisions and has the least impact on the optimal carbon emission reduction rate while fully considering the social responsibility decision. To achieve decarbonisation production, the market capacity must be small, and when green innovation costs are high, it is the optimal choice without considering social responsibility. To achieve a higher level of carbon emission reduction, when the market capacity is low and the research and development cost is high or when the market capacity is large, it is the optimal choice.

The results provide scientific policy decisions and management significance for governments and enterprises in low-carbon subsidies and supply chain management. The findings also provide a basis for future theoretical research and enterprise practice.

Today, with the increasing involvement of the environment and human beings business units, paying attention to fulfilling social responsibility obligations while making a profit has become increasingly necessary for achieving sustainable development goals. Attention to profit by organizations should not be without regard to their social and environmental performance. Social responsibility accounting (SRA) is an approach that can pay more attention to the social and environmental performance of companies, but it has many barriers. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify barriers to SRA implementation and provide strategies to overcome these barriers.

In this study, the authors identify barriers to social responsibility accounting implementation and provide strategies to overcome these barriers. By literature review, 12 barriers and seven strategies were identified and approved using the opinions of six academic experts. Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) has been used to identify significant barriers and find textual relationships between them. The fuzzy technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method has been used to identify and rank strategies for overcoming these barriers. This study was undertaken in Iran (an emerging market). The data has been gathered from 18 experts selected using purposive sampling and included CEOs of the organization, senior accountants and active researchers well familiar with the field of social responsibility accounting.

Based on the results of this study, the cultural differences barrier was introduced as the primary and underlying barrier of the social responsibility accounting barriers model. At the next level, barriers such as “lack of public awareness of the importance of social responsibility accounting, lack of social responsibility accounting implementation regulations and organization size” are significant barriers to social responsibility accounting implementation. Removing these barriers will help remove other barriers in this direction. In addition, the results of the TOPSIS method showed that “mandatory regulations, the introduction of guidelines and social responsibility accounting standards,” “regulatory developments and government incentive schemes to implement social responsibility accounting,” as well as “increasing public awareness of the benefits of social responsibility accounting” are some of the essential social responsibility accounting implementation strategies.

The findings of the study have implications for both professional accounting bodies for developing the necessary standards and for policymakers for adopting policies that facilitate the implementation of social responsibility accounting to achieve sustainability.

This paper creates a new perspective on the practical implementation of social responsibility accounting, closely related to improving environmental performance and increasing social welfare through improving sustainability.

Experts believe that the strategies mentioned above will be very effective and helpful in removing the barriers of the lower level of the model. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, this study develops a model of social responsibility accounting barriers and ranks the most critical implementation strategies.