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The purpose of this paper is to adopt an agency theory approach to investigate the integration of environmental issues into management control systems (MCS). Prior environmental accounting research has focussed on increasing organisations’ environmental accountability by “monitoring” through external reporting to stakeholders. However, this overlooks the alignment of agents’ interests within the firm.

A qualitative case study is undertaken in a large Australian listed property trust to investigate how agents’ interests may be integrated with environmental objectives through the use of MCS.

From the case an analytical framework is developed to illustrate how environmental issues are incorporated into organisational behaviour through MCS. The findings include, single objective environmental MCS; multiple objective MCS, which include priorities that specify environmental and economic trade-offs; and balancing MCS, which provide overarching decision-making principles without priorities.

The findings provide examples of how an organisation may integrate environmental issues across a range of MCS and the things to consider in doing so.

This paper draws on an agency perspective as an approach to incorporate environmental issues into MCS and to align behaviour. It explains a new way in which tensions can be managed. This study is one of the first to adopt the control package approach in investigating the incorporation of environmental issues in MCS.

The purpose of this research is to understand how accounting information mobilises stakeholder salience at an industry level.

A case study method using an explanation building approach was applied to gather information surrounding dairy industry stakeholder uses of accounting information to communicate their salience, in the historical context, leading to, and the events surrounding the milk price “war” in Australia. The Mitchell et al. (1997) stakeholder salience framework was used to advance our understanding of the different ways accounting can be mobilized by stakeholders with different types of salience attributes, at an industry level.

This empirical analysis produces two insights into the relation between accounting and stakeholder salience. First, there is evidence as to how accounting information impacted on stakeholder salience at an industry level by demonstrating how accounting information (in)directly communicated and justified the increase of a stakeholder’s level of salience. Second, the Mitchell et al. (1997) model is extended by attributing levels of importance to each stakeholder attribute. It was found that, in this setting, power was the most salient attribute of the three, usurping legitimacy and urgency, leading to the outcomes observed.

This paper acknowledged the usual method limitations related to this style of qualitative research, including investigator bias and lack of statistical generalization. In addition, a second set of limitations critiques the paper’s operating framework. While the Mitchell et al. (1997) stakeholder salience model proved to be a suitable choice for this research, it is limited in the way in which stakeholder attributes are presented and used to identify stakeholders. In addition, further light may be provided on the distinctions between the different magnitudes of power, legitimacy and urgency between stakeholders after suggesting that they are not equally weighted.

The milk price “war” remains a high-profile discussion amongst the general public. This research contributes to a better understanding of how different players (stakeholders) have their salience claims mobilized through accounting information. Practitioners in the dairy industry might reflect on the findings to enhance their legitimacy pursuits in future negotiations with their counter-parties, and better deploy accounting to achieve the same.

The findings speak more broadly to notions of social equity in stakeholder relations, for the production and distribution of a product that is ubiquitously used in society (dairy – milk). The findings from this study therefore have potential to assist policymakers better understand the strategies adopted by stakeholders to impose their influence and defend their claims in a public forum, using accounting information.

The authors contend that the article provides evidence at an industry level, that is lacking in extant management accounting research (Collier, 2000). To this extent, an original contribution is claimed. The paper is also valuable to management accounting and management researchers studying stakeholder salience, and is one of the first to investigate this issue at an industry level, as well as express how accounting mobilises this salience.

This paper investigates the experiences of school teachers of supporting pupils and their apprehensions of how pupils search and assess information when search engines have become a technology of literacy in schools. By situating technologies of literacy as sociomaterial the purpose of this paper is to analyse and discuss these experiences and understandings in order to challenge dominant views of search in information literacy research.

Six focus group interviews with in total 39 teachers working at four different elementary and secondary schools were conducted in the autumn of 2014. Analysis was done using a sociomaterial perspective, which provides tools for understanding how pupils and teachers interact with and are demanded to translate their interest to technologies of literacy, in this case search engines, such as Google.

The teachers expressed difficulties of conceptualizing search as something they could teach. When they did, search was most often identified as a practical skill. A critical perspective on search, recognizing the role of Google as a dominant part of the information infrastructure and a co-constructor of what there is to know was largely lacking. As a consequence of this neglected responsibility of teaching search, critical assessment of online information was conflated with Google’s relevance ranking.

The study develops a critical understanding of the role of searching and search engines as technologies of literacy in relation to critical assessment in schools. This is of value for information literacy training.

The purpose of this paper is to examine differences of health information seeking among Finnish and South African university students. The focus is on weight management and on how students utilise various internet sources.

Data were collected with a web-based, structured survey by using convenience sampling. Descriptive statistics and Pearson’s χ² test were utilised in the analysis.

Overall, health information was more often encountered than sought on purpose. Passive information seeking was more common for South African students as almost a third of them report encountering it several times a week. As an information source, South African students opted for social networking sites more frequently than search engines, the latter being the first choice for Finnish students. Discussion boards were more popular among South African students, and, on the other hand, web-based health calculators among Finns.

This is a small-scale comparative study. The results are not to be generalised, but may provide clues about the information seeking differences between Finland and South Africa.

Media literacy, digital literacy and health information literacy of young adults should be emphasised so that they would be able to evaluate information for reliability and accuracy in order to help them make appropriate decisions when confronted by health information online.

The implications of the study are that health providers and professionals should be more prominent on social media sites, which are popular ways for young people to discover information.

Comparative studies are rare. This comparison is between Finland, where internet penetration is 94 per cent, and South Africa, where internet penetration is 54 per cent.