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The study examines the changes in audit market concentration, auditor choice and audit quality in Russia following International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption. Scholars have called for further examination of the effects of IFRS adoption on auditors, with an emphasis on the importance of analyzing emerging markets that are characterized by enforcement challenges and lack of proper infrastructure. It focuses on a unique feature of Russian companies – dual audits under Russian Accounting Standards (RAS) and IFRS – and investigates changes in audit concentration and audit quality for the two audit markets.

The authors rely on the audited financial statements of Russian public companies and perform pre-/post-IFRS adoption estimation using a logit regression to ascertain whether public firms change auditors from local firms with limited IFRS expertise to those with global reputation, namely Big 4 audit firms. Further, they examine whether the change in audit market concentration post-2012 affects audit quality as proxied by companies' propensity to receive a modified audit opinion and discretionary accruals. Auditor attributes were hand-collected from audited financial statements and matched with financial variables from Datastream.

The IFRS audit market was dominated by the Big 4 audit firms prior to 2012, and there is strong evidence that audit market share (concentration) increases for IFRS reports but not for RAS reports. In addition, companies are more likely to choose a Big 4 audit firm for an RAS audit, conditional upon a Big 4 firm conducting the IFRS audit. The authors do not find evidence of decrease in the probability of audit firms issuing a modified audit opinion under either RAS or IFRS, indicating that, in the Russian setting, increased auditor concentration post-IFRS adoption does not lead to enhanced risk or decline in audit quality. Moreover, they find that discretionary accruals decline post-2012. Overall, the findings indicate that the concern of global regulators regarding audit market concentration is not justified.

The Russian reporting environment is unique and generally characterized by significant agency problems, and the study’s estimation sample is not large, compared to prior studies conducted predominantly in Western jurisdictions. Nevertheless, the authors shed light on the audit concentration phenomenon within emerging markets, for which empirical evidence is scarce. Future research could explore the impact of other capital market events and exogenous shocks, not limited to IFRS adoption, on the characteristics of Russia's audit market.

The IFRS reporting regime is commonly associated with enhanced reporting quality and improved information transparency among public companies. Yet, impairment of audit quality as a result of IFRS-driven increase in audit market share of Big 4 can potentially negate these capital market effects. This study shows that the concerns of global regulators are not valid and that audit quality does not change with increased share of Big 4 post-IFRS adoption.

Dual audits, whereby companies must prepare two sets of financial statements per the IFRS mandate, are not unique to Russia, and the evidence of IFRS reporting on the structural changes in the audit market and implications for audit quality under a dual regime is scarce. Accordingly, the study's findings are important and timely and are expected to aid regulators of countries that have announced or are contemplating the adoption of IFRS for public reporting purposes.

Organisations using advanced technology, like ChatGPT, for executing their marketing practices are proliferating, but such fast growth also comes with different adverse impacts of ChatGPT. This interaction of ChatGPT with the humanly implemented marketing 5.0 approach complements the marketing effectiveness. However, while considering the brighter aspects of this techno-marketing integration, marketers should also keep its dark side in mind. Therefore, this chapter investigates the integration of AI-enabled ChatGPT into marketing 5.0 practices. However, both the concepts under study are growing in terms of literature, and the research gap is even more extended when considering their associated views. Furthermore, significantly less literature is available emphasising the negative aspects of this advanced technology. This chapter bridges these gaps by reviewing the literature and presenting the gold-plating effect of ChatGPT usage while implementing marketing 5.0 practices. It also proposes a framework for showing the relationship between ChatGPT utilisation and practicing marketing 5.0, depicting the dark side of this techno-marketing integration. It also emphasised the need for conscious and learned associations between the concepts under study.

This study aims to develop an understanding of strategies used by two major banks in Australia to manage reputation risk after court proceedings were initiated by the government for serious breaches of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006.

The study is grounded in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) and image restoration literature. Thematic analysis of court proceedings, banks’ annual report suites (which include sustainability reports) and media reports was undertaken using the conceptual framework of reputation risk management (RRM).

A major new strategy of image restoration – defiance – emerged. It is contended that the existing RRM framework needs to be refined. Similarly, in the reducing effectiveness strategy, two new sub-strategies need to be included: refusal to acknowledge an incident as reputational damage and acceptance of the statutory penalty without legally challenging it. The banks also used traditional strategies of the RRM framework, such as reducing effectiveness by minimisation, bolstering, corrective action and mortification.

Trustworthiness and confidence are at the core of modern banking. Banks use CSR disclosures as the principal means for image restoration. The present paper explores the link between extant CSR literature and RRM.

This case study was developed using data from secondary sources. The data was collected from the organization’s website, annual reports, press releases, published reports and documents available on the internet.

According to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook (WEO), 775 million people worldwide would not have access to electricity even by 2022, with the majority of them living in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) (Cozzi et al., 2022). In SSA, energy poverty had been a serious issue over the years. According to the IEA, 600 million people lacked access to electricity in 2019, while 900 million people cooked with traditional fuels (Cozzi et al., 2022). A World Bank report from 2018 said many SSA countries had energy access levels of less than 25% (Cozzi et al., 2022). Energy poverty in SSA hampered sustainable development and economic growth.

Despite significant efforts to address this poverty, Africa remained the continent with the lowest energy density in the world. Although solar and other energy-saving products were appealing, their adoption rates were modest, and their distribution strategies were not particularly effective. The lack of electricity exacerbated a number of socioeconomic problems, as it increased the demand for and use of wood fuel, which caused serious health problems and environmental harm.

While working in Uganda, Katherine Lucey (Lucey) saw that having no electricity had negatively affected women’s health in particular because it was women who were responsible for taking care of the home. These effects were both direct and indirect. The women’s reliance on potentially harmful fuels for cooking, such as firewood and charcoal, resulted in their suffering from respiratory and eye problems, in addition to other health issues. Furthermore, the distribution of energy-saving and renewable energy items was seen as the domain of men, and there was an inherent gender bias in energy decisions. Women were not encouraged to participate in energy decisions, despite the fact that they were the ones managing the home and would gain from doing so. In addition, because there was no light after dusk, people worked less efficiently. Lucey saw the economic and social difficulties that electricity poverty caused for women in rural Africa. She also witnessed how the lives of a few families and organizations changed after they started using solar products. This motivated her to start Solar Sister with the mission of achieving a sustainable, scalable impact model for expanding access to clean energy and creating economic opportunities for women.

Solar Sister collaborated with local women and women-centric organizations to leverage the existing network. Women were trained, provided all the necessary support and encouraged to become Solar Sister Entrepreneurs and sell solar products in their communities and earn a commission on each sale. To provide clean energy at their customers’ doorstep, the Solar Sister Entrepreneurs received a “business in a bag” – a start-up kit containing inventory, training and marketing assistance.

Solar Sister’s business model empowered the women in SSA by providing them with an entrepreneurship opportunity and financial independence. Also, the use of solar products helped them shift from using hazardous conventional cooking fuels and lead a healthy life. The children in their households were able to study after sunset, and people in the community became more productive with access to clean energy.

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, however, had a serious impact on Solar Sister. It found it challenging to mentor and encourage new business owners due to restrictions on travel and on group gatherings. The Solar Sisters were unable to do business outside the house either. Their source of income, which they relied on to support their families, was therefore impacted. The COVID-19 outbreak also slowed down the progress achieved by the community over the years and made household energy purchasing power worse. Furthermore, the organization was also grappling with other issues like limited access to capital, lack of awareness and infrastructural challenges. Another challenge lay in monitoring and evaluating the organization’s impact on the last mile.

In the absence of standardized measurement tools and issues in determining the social impact of Solar Sister, it would be interesting to see what approach Lucey will take to measure the impact of Solar Sister on the society. What measurement tool/s will Lucey implement to gauge the social impact of Solar Sister?

This case is intended for use in PG/Executive-level programs as part of a course on Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainability.

Authorities have set up numerous security checkpoints during times of armed conflict to control the flow of commercial and humanitarian trucks into and out of areas of conflict. These security checkpoints have become highly utilized because of the complex security procedures and increased truck traffic, which significantly slow the delivery of relief aid. This paper aims to improve the process at security checkpoints by redesigning the current process to reduce processing time and relieve congestion at checkpoint entrance gates.

A decision-support tool (clearing function distribution model [CFDM]) is used to minimize the effects of security checkpoint congestion on the entire humanitarian supply network using a hybrid simulation-optimization approach. By using a business process simulation, the current and reengineered processes are both simulated, and the simulation output was used to estimate the clearing function (capacity as a function of the workload). For both the AS-IS and TO-BE models, key performance indicators such as distribution costs, backordering and process cycle time were used to compare the results of the CFDM tool. For this, the Kerem Abu Salem security checkpoint south of Gaza was used as a case study.

The comparison results demonstrate that the CFDM tool performs better when the output of the TO-BE clearing function is used.

The efforts will contribute to improving the planning of any humanitarian network experiencing congestion at security checkpoints by minimizing the impact of congestion on the delivery lead time of relief aid to the final destination.

The present research study aims to explore the impact of the most recent Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which unfolded in October 2023, on global equity markets, including a wide range of both emerging and developed markets (as per the Morgan Stanley Capital Investment country classification).

The market model of event study methodology, with an estimation window of 200 days and 28-day event window (including event day, i.e. October 7, 2023), has been employed to investigate the event’s impact on the stock markets of different countries, with 24 emerging countries and 23 developed countries. The daily closing prices of the prominent indices of all 47 countries have been analyzed to examine the impact of the conflict on emerging markets, developed markets and overall global equity markets. Additionally, cross-sectional regression analysis has been performed to investigate the possible explanations for abnormal returns.

The findings of the study suggest the heterogeneous impact of the selected event on different markets. Notably, emerging markets and the overall global equity landscape exhibited substantial negative responses on the event day, as reflected in average abnormal returns of −0.47% and −0.397%, respectively. In contrast, developed markets displayed resilience, with no significant negative impact observed on the day of the event. A closer examination of individual countries revealed diverse reactions, with Poland, Egypt, Greece, Denmark and Portugal standing out for their positive or resilient market responses. Poland, in particular, demonstrated significantly positive cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) of 7.16% in the short-term and 8.59% in the long-term event windows (−7, +7 and −7, +20, respectively), emphasizing its robust performance amid the geopolitical turmoil. The study also found that, during various event windows, specific variables had a significant impact on the CARs.

The study suggests diversification and monitoring of geopolitical risks are key strategies for investors to enhance portfolio resilience during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This study identifies countries such as Poland, Egypt, Greece, Denmark and Portugal with positive or resilient market reactions, providing practical insights for strategic investment decisions. Key takeaways include identifying resilient markets, leveraging opportunistic strategies and navigating market dynamics during geopolitical uncertainties.

As per the authors’ thorough investigation and review of the literature, the present study is the earliest attempt to explore the short-term and long-term impact of the 2023 Israeli–Palestinian conflict on equity markets worldwide using the event study approach and cross-sectional regression analysis.

This study aims to examine the contribution of informal encounters outside the school walls between local Israeli families from “Waldorf Education” and immigrant families from Africa from formal state education and explore the consequences of these encounters on the development of lifelong learning competences. Research questions are as follows: In what way do non-formal encounters lead to the development of lifelong learning ability? What are the challenges and consequences of non-formal activity for research participants, families and educators from the pedagogical, social and personal perspectives?

The research uses a qualitative-interpretive case study approach that allows for in-depth observation of the phenomenon within the context of reality to understand the case, a non-formal encounter between two groups of parents from different cultures, languages and educational attitudes. In this case study, it is possible to generalize from the local to the global and examine processes, actions and behaviors in the studied case (Creswell et al., 2018; Yin, 2009). This empirical study allows description, analysis, understanding and explanation of the challenges and actions in organizing and holding non-formal encounters from personal experiences as a first source.

The analysis of the data brought up two main categories that represent the actions and insights from the non-formal encounters for developing lifelong learning competences: create a personal dialogue to strengthen trust and confidence; foster parental involvement. Non-formal encounters between families from different cultural-social backgrounds may promote lifelong learning competences such as tolerance, inclusion and openness. However, external intervention by a social association is required to organize, support and operate them.

The research’s limitation was that it was conducted in the country’s center. Therefore, the findings must be considered in the context in which they are presented and not generalized to other regions or communities from other cultures in Israel and the world. A few limited encounters may affect the author’s interpretation of the study data. In addition, expressions of “social desire” that may be expressed in interviews must be considered.

This study emphasizes social activism. Despite all the differences and tensions, creating an equal space in the families’ encounters is essential for lifelong learning. The immigrant parents participated in decision-making, the stages of organization and the activities themselves during the encounters. This partnership strengthened their commitment and responsibility. Because they are a powerless minority group, it should not be assumed that two encounters will improve their self-confidence. The proof is that fewer participants came to the last encounter. Education experts must maintain consistency and continuity in forming partnerships with immigrant families over time and as part of lifelong learning.

The non-formal encounters between the two groups of families create an atmosphere of equality: all are parents of children seeking to inculcate humane and social values. The collaborative atmosphere contributed to the understanding that closeness overpowers distance. Everyone is troubled by similar issues of parenting, enjoyment of children, nutritious food and a shared desire to be good citizens while maintaining tolerance, reciprocity and respect.

Non-formal encounters are actively performed to create belonging when the “others and we” join together for the community and the children. This is an extensive, open and accessible platform for strengthening social consciousness and understanding the connection between teaching, culture and society to promote equality in education. This study will allow schools to expand the boundaries of communication with parents and initiate additional activities with other social groups to foster children’s integration. It will enrich the academic knowledge about connections and communication of educators, families from Israel and immigrant families in developing a partnership in the school to promote lifelong learning.

To explore a potential relationship between politicians’ media background and social media success through an analysis of content and engagement strategies adopted by three consecutive Israeli prime ministers on their official Facebook pages.

A detailed comparative content analysis of a total of 1,242 posts published by three Israeli prime ministers – Benjamin Netanyahu, Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett – on the same official Facebook account, “the Prime Minister of Israel,” during their respective terms. Metrics like engagement rates, content distribution and media type utilization were considered.

All analyzed prime ministers exhibited consistent messaging strategies, suggesting a standardized approach to digital political communication. However, we found no correlation between a politician’s media background and their success on social media. Instead, decisive determinants of engagement outcomes were factors like longstanding political exposure and familiarity.

The observed uniformity in leaders’ messaging strategies indicates a prevalent standardized approach in digital political communication, revealing potential avenues for innovation and diversification.

This research challenges the prevailing notion that background in media inherently benefits digital political engagement, emphasizing the significance of political experience. The results provide new insights into the evolving landscape of political communication. Using signaling theory to evaluate how digital content reveals leaders’ intentions and credibility, our findings provide new insights into political communication in the digital era.

Educators are recognized as key agents of social change, responsible for shaping future citizens. Beyond imparting knowledge, teachers are crucial in addressing societal challenges such as sustainability, democracy and social equality. This study aims to investigate the attitudes of Jewish and Arab students toward democratic values and how they perceive their role as educators in a multicultural society.

This study explores the attitudes of majority and minority group students in an Israeli teacher training college towards realizing democratic values and promoting shared citizenship. The sample included 382 Jewish and Arab students, who answered a questionnaire about attitudes regarding education for democracy and shared society, and their perception of their role in promoting this education.

The investigation delves into students’ civic perceptions, shedding light on the moderate and pluralistic stances held by both Jewish and Arab students. They advocate for cross-cultural exposure and interaction, with Jewish students demonstrating slightly more moderate views than the prevailing norms in Israeli society. Interestingly, Jewish students exhibited a willingness to engage in discussions on conflictual topics, whereas Arab students tended to avoid them.

This study underscores the potential of teacher training colleges in shaping the upcoming generation of educators as advocates of tolerance, and democracy, and promoters of a shared society.

This research gains heightened relevance in a contemporary landscape where numerous nations, especially those comprising diverse cultures, grapple with surges of nationalism that threaten democratic values. Teacher training colleges hold the key to forging a more harmonious future by becoming beacons of transformative pedagogy. These institutions can shape a new generation of educators who are poised to catalyze authentic social change.