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The purpose of this paper is to add to the growing literature on integrated thinking and reporting by exploring the challenges of measuring integrated thinking in academic research. It provides a review of previous studies, presents a proxy measure to quantify the level of integrated thinking and investigates companies’ approach towards integrated thinking in practice.

Firstly, this study proposes a measure to quantify the level of integrating thinking. Secondly, this study implements factor analysis to identify a parsimonious representation and explore the relevance of each variable in explaining the proposed measure of integrated thinking. Thirdly, this study implements cluster analysis to determine the natural grouping of firms with a certain level of integrated thinking and to identify the existence of distinctive companies’ approaches.

The findings suggest that the proposed measure of integrated thinking could be reduced into two main principal components that explain the current practices and the future direction. Firms’ integrated thinking practices can be clustered into groups denoting various practices among firms, and exhibit routine over time. Across clusters, firms reveal significantly different characteristics highlighting the existence of systematic demographic differences.

This research does not endeavour to overcome all the measurement issues related to integrated thinking. It attempts to measure the level and companies’ approaches towards integrated thinking that can inspire further empirical studies in this field.

This study answers the call for an empirical investigation of the internal aspects of integration. This paper provides academics, companies, and policymakers with a proxy measure of integrated thinking that can inspire empirical studies and advance the understanding of integrated thinking practices.

This paper aims to examine whether risk disclosure practices affect stock return volatility and company value in the European insurance industry.

Using a self-constructed “risk disclosure index for insurers” (RDII) to measure the extent of information disclosed on risks and using panel data regression on a sample of European insurers for 2005-2010, it tests the relationship between RDII and stock return volatility; whether this relationship is affected by financial crisis; and whether RDII affects insurance companies’ embedded value.

The main results indicate that higher RDII contributes to higher volatility, suggesting that “less is more” rather than “more is good”. However, higher RDII leads to lower volatility when the insurer has a positive net income, thus “more is good when all is good” and “less is good when all is bad”. Furthermore, the relationship between RDII and stock return volatility is not affected by financial crisis, raising concerns regarding the effectiveness of insurers’ risk disclosure to reassure the market. Moreover, higher RDII is found to impact positively on embedded value, thus contributing toward higher firm value.

The findings could drive insurers’ choices on communication and transparency, alongside regulators’ decisions about market discipline. They also suggest that risk disclosure could be used to strengthen market discipline and should be added to the other variables traditionally used in stock return volatility and firm value estimation models in the insurance industry.

This paper offers new insights in the debate on the bright and dark sides of risk disclosure in the insurance industry and provides interesting implications for insurers and their stakeholders.

Companies face a wide number of risks and need to have in place appropriate measures and techniques to be able to identify, manage, and monitor risks. Risk management is a fundamental responsibility of the corporate governance structure of an organization; it means managing all risks on a holistic basis, all together rather than just one, through an appropriate and systematic process. This chapter provides an overview of enterprise risk management in the United Kingdom. It presents key information on the economic system of the United Kingdom, emphasizing the role of small and medium enterprises, and presents country macroeconomic highlights. It provides a summary of regulation, practices, and authorities; it presents the key milestones of the regulation on corporate governance and reporting in the United Kingdom, and stresses the importance of corporate governance mechanism in companies' enterprise risk management practices. Further, it discusses the importance of transparency and disclosure in the context of enterprise risk management, specifically the relevance of risk management and internal control related disclosure in the annual reports and accounts. Finally, it reviews the growing academic research on enterprise risk management and previous studies on risk disclosure practices in companies' reports.

Effectuation has received increased attention in the field of entrepreneurship. However, previous studies have focused on performance rather than on networking and word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the mediating effect of networking on the relationship between effectuation and WOM marketing.

This study used partial least squares structural equation modeling to investigate the relationship between effectuation and WOM marketing mediated through networking. The research model was assessed using data from a sample of 256 entrepreneurs.

The results reveal that effectuation positively influences WOM marketing, mediated by networking. This study provides new insights into the precursors of WOM marketing and highlights the importance of networking in this process.

The implications of these findings suggest that entrepreneurs should create networking plans that focus on the maintenance and creation of new customers. This plan could be tracked via email, cell phone or online social data to maintain awareness of the failures and successes of the process and for continual improvement.

A vast number of studies have been conducted on effectuation and networking. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous study has investigated the influence of these two variables on WOM marketing. Entrepreneurs face long-term sales challenges, and this study proposes that networking could be a solution, thereby increasing WOM marketing sales.

This chapter presents the outcome of a study that examined the phenomena ‘Is Tourism Regulation Catalyst for Abuja Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Nigeria, Hotels Business Performance Innovation?’ Previous studies on this subject area have been largely done around tourism and its impact on hotel business performance and the relationship between tourism regulation and hotel business performance from mostly western perspectives. Hence, this study aims to investigate the direct effect of tourism regulations on hotel business performance in Nigeria. Quantitative survey questionnaires were used to collect data from 176 participants comprising general managers and departmental heads in 22 key Abuja FCT Nigerian hotels. Balanced Scorecard (BSC) developed by Norton and Kaplan was adopted as the study’s theoretical framework. Data collected were analysed using the simple linear regression technique and Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) statistical analysis software tool.

The result of the analysis shows that tourism regulation has a significant and positive correlation with Abuja hotel business performances based on the BSC four dimensions of financial, customer, processes and learning and growth. The unique city characteristics of Abuja FCT were also identified as an issue for consideration in future tourism regulation innovation by the regulatory authorities. This study contributes to business performance measurement literature from the Abuja FCT hotels, Nigerian perspective, and sets an agenda for the Nigerian tourism regulators, the Nigeria Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC) charged with diversifying the Nigerian economy revenue through tourism performance innovation. Also, a policy study into city characteristics classification as a way of innovating tourism regulations and hotels business performance is suggested.

This research analyses the impact of customers and government regulations on the implementation of socio-environmental practices in certifying organic agricultural products. It explores the dyad’s relationship between the focal company and its suppliers in the application of socio-environmental practices.

This study uses a quantitative methodology through a survey approach, with a sample of 206 agro-extractivists from the acai berry supply chain. The data are evaluated using regression analysis.

The main results reveal that customer pressure positively influences the implementation of social and environmental practices, but suggest a non-significant relationship between government regulations and the impact on environmental practices implementation. Social and environmental practices are positively related to operational performance. A moderating effect of organic certification is found in the relationship between customer pressure and the application of environmental practices.

The main contributions are exploring the use of socio-environmental practices in an emerging economy and organic certification as a moderating variable, revealing an “institutional void” that may hamper the enforcement of government regulations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the evolution of political and economic institutions, their persistence and interdependence and their effects on economic progress in Mozambique.

Using a unique data set, which has developed detailed long-run indices of institutional change in Mozambique from 1900 onwards, the research utilizes time-series econometrics to estimate cointegration relations and Vector Autoregressive and Vector Error Correction models, and also Granger causality, correlation and residual analysis when interpreting the estimation results.

It shows support for path dependence in political and economic institutions as well as the critical juncture theory and modernization hypothesis, and for webs of association between these institutions and economic development. It provides evidence of an equilibrium-dependent process, where history does matter (as do early conditions), and whose impact may differ depending on the nature of institutional arrangements. Various institutions created during colonial times have a bearing on the present state of institutions in Mozambique, as reflected in important continuities regarding the forms of political economy, among others.

The work contributes to existing research not only through the employment of a new set of institutional measures, which allows for a particularly long time-series investigation in a developing country setting, but also through its contribution to studies on modernization and critical junctures but in a longitudinal manner which allows for the exploration of complex dynamics embedded within a country’s particular political economy. The implications are far-reaching and carry importance beyond the academy given the pressure on policymakers to get things right because of the persistence of institutions and their consequences and the associated path dependency.