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This study aims to investigate four internal (organisational structure, quality of information technology, business strategy and market orientation) and two external (competition intensity and perceived environmental uncertainty) contextual factors affecting the use of production planning and control accounting techniques (PPC), as well as the impact of PPC usage on organisational competitiveness.

Seven major PPC techniques were investigated, namely: attribute costing, lifecycle costing, quality costing, target costing, value-chain costing, activity-based costing and activity-based management. By deploying a multi-informant strategy, a structured questionnaire was used to gather survey data from 129 senior accounting, finance and production personnel of publicly quoted manufacturing companies in Nigeria.

The results, using structural equation modelling, show that market orientation is the strongest determinant of PPC usage. The inability of competition intensity and perceived environmental uncertainty to notably affect PPC usage suggests that external environmental pressure to use PPC is weak. Although PPC can engender organisational competitiveness, their interactive usage yields optimal results.

The study contributes to knowledge by: (i) presenting evidence that although PPC techniques can engender organisational competitiveness, it is their interactive usage that yields optimal results; (ii) empirically demonstrating that contextual factors influence PPC usage in line with the contingency theory; and (iii) validating the diffusion of innovation theory that organisations will typically deploy PPC techniques because of their relative advantage of improving organisational competitiveness.

Focusing on the Agri-Food and Beverage sector, the paper investigates the direct effect of worldwide mandatory non-financial disclosure on several financial dimensions as well as its moderating effects on the relationship between sustainability and financial performance.

The authors performed fixed-effect regressions on a sample of 180 global listed companies, considering a period of eight years. The authors also tested the moderating effects of non-financial disclosure regulation on the relationship between sustainability and financial performance.

The authors found a positive direct impact of mandatory non-financial disclosure on Operating Return on Asset, Return on Equity and Return on Sales. The analysis also highlighted the negative moderating effects of non-financial reporting regulation on the relationship between sustainability issues and financial performance. As for the Cost of Debt, the authors found mixed results.

This study considers a short-term perspective focusing on a limited sample composed of companies playing a key role in the global agri-food system.

The paper identifies which financial performance dimensions are positively or negatively affected by mandatory non-financial disclosure. Accordingly, managers can rearrange corporate activities to deal with further reporting normative requirements concurrently preserving financial performances and fostering corporate sustainability.

This study recommends fostering mandatory non-financial disclosure to increase corporate transparency fostering the sustainability transition of the Agri-Food and Beverage industry.

The paper highlights global mandatory non-financial disclosure effects on financial performance considering a sector that is cross-cutting impactful on plural sustainability issues.

This study aims to investigate the impact of dividend policy on a firm’s participation in corporate social responsibility (CSR)-related activities in the context of Pakistani firms. Furthermore, the role of the board governance mechanism in dividend policy-CSR is investigated.

The study’s sample consists of 115 nonfinancial Pakistan Stock Exchange-listed firms from 2010 to 2021. A multidimensional financial method is used to assess the firm’s CSR engagement, and dividend policy is assessed using the dividend payout ratio and dividend yield. The authors used the fixed effect model and the random effect model to fulfill the study’s objectives. Furthermore, the system-generalized method of moment estimation technique is used to test the robustness of the result. In addition, the authors perform reverse causality analysis and investigate the effect of financial constraints on the dividend policy–CSR relationship.

The authors find that dividend policy has a significant positive impact on CSR. The authors also find that dividend policy is significantly positively associated with components of CSR, i.e. donation, employee welfare and research and development. Furthermore, the authors find that the board governance mechanism strengthens this positive relationship between dividend policy and CSR.

The government and authorities must mandate or at least encourage enterprises to pay dividends as doing so not only keeps shareholders happy but also encourages firms to make CSR initiatives to balance stakeholders. Furthermore, the regulator should take steps to strengthen the board governance structure as it strengthens the positive dividend policy–CSR relationship.

Although little previous research has focused on the CSR-dividend policy link, the authors believe that this is the first study to look at the influence of dividend policy on CSR and the moderating impact of board governance mechanisms in an emerging country, namely, Pakistan.

This study investigates the influence of social trust on the attainment of corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) objectives.

This study conducts panel regression analysis on a distinctive dataset for 2009–2017 on Chinese firms.

The analysis reveals a significant positive association between social trust and firm-level ESG practices. Moreover, the impact of social trust on shaping ESG outcomes is further amplified by factors such as economic growth, corporate governance standards and institutional quality. This relationship remains statistically positive when the authors employ alternative measures and methodologies, such as the instrumental variables, propensity score matching and difference-in-differences approaches. Notably, the results of heterogeneity tests indicate that the Trust–ESG nexus is more prominent for state-owned enterprises and firms with substantial market capitalization, superior profitability and higher leverage.

This study expands the comprehension of the determinants of ESG and underscores the influential role of social trust as an informal institution in enhancing a firm's ESG performance.

Although publicly listed firms in Sri Lanka have been increasingly adapting sustainability reporting into their annual reporting practices, a limited number of firms prepare sustainability reports by integrating sustainable development goals (SDGs) into reporting mechanisms. This study attempts to develop an index to monitor firms' sustainability reporting practices based on Global Reporting Institute (GRI) guidelines integrating SDGs.

This paper develops a sustainability score index using the 17 SDGs utilising the results of content analysis of corporate annual reports of a selected sample of 100 firms listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE). Principal component analysis was employed to examine the reliability of data in the developed index.

Findings show that the developed scoring index is efficient for evaluating the contents of the sustainability reports of Sri Lankan firms. Sustainability reporting practises with regard to the SDGs were observed to have a turbulent period from 2015 to 2019 and the SDGs 12 and 15 were identified to be mostly reported in Sri Lankan corporate sustainability reports.

The results of the study add to knowledge on the monitoring of sustainability reporting practises with reference to SDGs. The study outcomes are useful for the investors, stakeholders, and statutory bodies to measure the sustainable performance of business firms and assess the firm’s commitment towards the global sustainability agenda.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that constructs a sustainability reporting score index integrating SDGs.

The relationships between transformational leadership (TL), organizational climate (OC) and project performance have been investigated by previous studies, but no review of existing studies has systematically analyzed the effects of TL and OC on project performance in the industrial revolution (IR) 5.0 era. Therefore, this study aims to conduct a systematic literature review on the effects of TL and OC on project performance in IR 5.0, and to identify mainstream research topics, research gaps and future research directions.

To do this, a total of 53 included journal articles were obtained after initially retrieving 648 documents from the Scopus database by following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. It consists of four main steps, namely, identification of documents, screening, eligibility and included articles. In addition, science mapping analyses were conducted for keyword co-occurrence and document analyses, which aided in identifying the mainstream research topics, research gaps and future research directions.

The results report the annual publication trends, keywords and document analyses. Furthermore, a detailed qualitative discussion highlighted four mainstream research topics including TL in project management; the relationship between TL, OC and innovation; safety climate; and OC in project management. Moreover, this review study identified four research gaps and future research directions aligned with the mainstream research topics. They include: longitudinal investigations and multinational corporation surveys in TL; scope and longitudinal data in innovation; mono-method bias and universality of safety climate; and more comprehensive analyses of OC.

This review study would contribute to not only advancing the effects of TL and OC on project performance in IR 5.0, but also enabling project managers to understand TL or OC issues to improve project performance.

This study aims to examine how women on board influence quality and quantity disclosure of emissions discharge by the listed non-financial firms for the period of six years (2016–2021), with institutional ownership as a moderator.

The study obtained data from a sample of 83 listed non-financial firms. A content analysis technique was employed to compute emissions disclosure indexes using Global Reporting Initiatives standards from the sampled firms. Random and fixed effect regression analyses were run for both direct and moderation models. Based on the results of the Hausman tests, random results were adopted and used in examining the relationship.

The result reveals that women on board are significantly related to emission disclosure. The study also documented that institutional owners have not influenced the relationship between women directors and emissions disclosure.

The study's findings have practical implications for emerging economies, corporations and other business organizations seeking to actively involve the emissions control and reduction issues toward sustainable development goals 5, 7 and 13 in their business models and successfully communicate these efforts to stakeholders.

Listed firms in emerging economies would gain sincerity through the women directors’ knowledge, skills, demographics and ethnicity in the society. Therefore, corporate bodies in emerging economies can successfully contribute toward improving the social welfare of various segments of society by controlling current and future climate issues. Additionally, society will surely benefit when firms control the pollution discharges within the community.

This is the first study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, that provides empirical evidence on the effect of the presence of women on board on emissions disclosure using institutional ownership as a moderator in Nigeria.

Despite the evident link between digitalisation and sustainability, many organisations have these two strategies operating on a parallel basis and not in a coordinated manner. Hence the objective of this work, which consists of proposing a model to analyse the connection existing between both strategies within the business environment, additionally relating them to innovation and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

With that aim, the results of a survey answered by 98 managers of Spanish enterprises are examined using the PLS software, especially suited for the study of structural equations like the one put forward in this paper.

The conclusions drawn suggest that the most innovative firms are indeed the ones that invest to a greater extent in digitalisation and sustainability. It was also possible for us to verify that digitalisation exerts a positive influence on sustainability and that both the latter and digitalisation directly relate to CSR strategies. However, innovation as such does not constitute a requirement for CSR; instead, these Social Responsibility actions will take place when innovations rely on digitalisation and sustainability strategies.

Until now, most studies have addressed digitalisation and sustainability independently, with contradictory theoretical approaches in the literature about these two topics and a paucity of empirical results about the link between digitalisation and sustainability. The present study clarifies the relationships between sustainability and digitalisation, also relating them to innovation and CSR in the business environment.

This study aims to examine how audit committee (AC) attributes influence quality and quantity disclosure of energy consumed by the listed nonfinancial firms for the period of five years (2016–2020). The study aims at providing empirical evidence on how board of director’s independence influences the relationship between AC attributes and firms’ energy in achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) on world climate policy.

The study obtained data from a sample of 83 listed nonfinancial firms, content analysis technique was used to compute energy disclosure indexes using global reporting initiative standards, while regression analysis was conducted to test the relationship among research variables.

The study revealed that AC independence, diversity and meetings were significantly related with energy disclosure. Also, the study found that other variables were insignificantly related with energy disclosure.

The study is constrained for not considering all listed firms in the country. Furthermore, the study considered selected attributes, other important audit-committee size attributes such as audit-committee size, audit-committee size tenure could be study in by the future study.

The study’s findings would have practical implications for corporations and other business organizations seeking to actively involve the energy-related SDGs 7 and 13 in their business models and successfully communicate these efforts to stakeholders.

To the best of author’s knowledge, this is the first study that provides empirical evidence on the effect of AC attributes on the energy disclosure using effect of board independence as moderator in Nigeria.