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Purpose: This paper investigates how Europe’s fast fashion industry’s sustainability efforts correlate with socio-economic well-being, focusing on the Human Development Index (HDI), Sustainable Development Goals, and textile waste.

Design/Methodology/Approach: Applying Principal Component, Regression, and Spatial Analysis, the study examines cross-European data to identify relationships between development indices and textile waste.

Findings: There is a strong link between adherence to Sustainable Development Goals and higher living standards, but the impact of textile waste on well-being is minimal.

Research Limitations/Implications: Limitations refer to excluding other socio-economic factors and a narrow metric focus, which may obscure the broader effects of textile waste.

Practical Implications: Results advocate for sustainable waste management policies, which were crucial during the European energy crisis, to foster eco-friendly practices in the fashion industry.

Social Implications: The study emphasises the need for a circular economy shift in fast fashion, which is vital for environmental sustainability and societal health.

Originality/Value: This research enriches the sustainability narrative by correlating it with socio-economic health in European contexts, providing a unique industry perspective.

Plain Language Summary: Exploring the connection between sustainability in Europe’s fashion industry and quality of life, our study finds that eco-friendly policies match higher living standards. However, fashion waste’s direct effect could be much better. Amidst an energy crisis (Kent, 2022), our insights press for greener practices in fashion, underscoring the necessity for a circular economy to support environmental and social well-being.

This paper aims to examine how introducing irrelevant information into a risk decision scenario leads to less skeptical internal auditor assessments.

This paper conducted an internet-based experiment with 157 internal auditors manipulating information relevance. The experiment controlled for individual differences in trait skepticism, perceived information relevance and Chief Information Officer (CIO) warmth.

Internal auditors exhibit decreased skepticism when irrelevant information contradicts preconceived stereotypes of management, consistent with the dilution effect. When the CIO is described as gregarious, counter to common stereotypes, internal auditors assess risk as less severe compared to when the CIO is described as introverted or when no personality information is provided.

This paper provides insight as to when internal auditor judgment may be compromised.

Consumption norms describe an individual’s perception of what or how much most other people typically eat. While gendered consumption norms are well known, consumption norms linked to other demographic variables are yet to be reported. This study aimed to investigate which food consumption norms in relation to gender, age and income are currently held by the UK population. A secondary research objective was to investigate whether these consumption norms were held equally across people in different age groups and genders within the sample population.

A sample of 498 adults participated in an online survey composed of statements on consumption patterns based on gender, age and income for nine foods (e.g. red meat) and five meal patterns (e.g. take-away meals). E.g. “Men tend to eat more red meat than women.” Participants reported their agreement/disagreement with these statements.

The results indicate that participants have perceived consumption norms that are associated with gender, age and income. Lower energy-dense foods and smaller meal patterns were generally associated with females, older persons and individuals with a higher income. In contrast, more energy-dense foods and meal patterns were generally associated with males, younger adults and individuals with a lower income. These consumption norms were held consistently across the population sample.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first explicit demonstration of food consumption norms based on age and income.

This study aims to investigate whether board gender diversity has improved and influence environment, social and governance (ESG) performance. It also explores whether firm earning volatility moderates the relationship between board gender diversity and ESG performance.

This study uses 907 final firm-year observations of public firms listed on the Australian Securities Exchange from 2010 to 2023.

The findings show that women’s representation on board has improved following the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) amendment and is significantly associated with higher ESG performance; however, firm earning volatility weakens the positive influence of women directors on ESG performance. The results remained the same even after addressing potential endogeneity concerns and are robust across (1) alternative proxies, (2) dynamic, (3) two-step system generalized methods of moments and (4) difference-in-differences model.

In addition, the findings of this study offer important practical implications for investors to focus on companies with higher female representation on their boards and demonstrating strong financial stability. It also has important practical implications for policymakers in understanding the importance of considering the time required to achieve meaningful board diversity and sufficient financial resources to meet the expectations of ASX recommendations and principles.

This study contributes to the academic literature by providing empirical evidence of how firm earning volatility affects the relationship between board gender diversity and ESG performance. Notably, the author identifies the previously unexplored moderating role of firm earnings volatility in this relationship. The result underscores the importance of stable financial conditions for maintaining the positive influence of board gender diversity on corporate sustainable practices.

Our study aims to fill in the gap in corporate strategic silence in the fashion industry. Given the insights into the industry practices, we asked whether important sustainability issues, namely deadstock and overstock, are discussed or disclosed in corporate sustainability reports. We assumed that only the most fashion-forward corporations would address this pressing issue. However, based on our content analysis of sustainability reports of companies listed as the signatories of the UN Global Compact’s Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action (N = 95), we found out that only one-fifth of them touch the issues to a varied extent. Our study’s results point to a significant discrepancy between the sustainability claims of fashion companies and their communication about overproduction and demonstrate the existence of the shared industry practice of corporate silence strategy concerning uncomfortable issues, such as deadstock and overstock.

We conducted a content analysis of selected corporate reports (N = 95) available publicly on the company’s websites, such as sustainability, environmental or corporate social responsibility reports. Initially, we analyzed the documents to see if they addressed the issue of deadstock. Subsequently, we performed a detailed content analysis using NVivo on these reports, which mentioned the issue of deadstock (N = 23).

Our study reveals strategic silence in the fashion industry regarding deadstock and overstock. Analyzing reports of 95 signatories of the UN Global Compact’s Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action, only one-fifth address these issues. Our research, employing content analysis with NVivo, indicates a significant discrepancy between sustainability claims and actual communication practices. Most companies focus on recycling or materials management rather than addressing deadstock and overstock directly. The findings highlight an industry-wide practice of strategic silence and the practice of shared corporate silence, avoiding transparent discussion on overproduction and its environmental impact.

This study is limited by its focus on publicly available corporate reports from signatories of the UN Global Compact’s Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action, which do not fully capture all corporate communication practices (those companies shall be the “pioneers” of sustainability and transparency). Additionally, the reliance on content analysis via NVivo is subject to interpretative biases, and the findings may not be generalizable across all fashion industry sectors. Future research could explore broader datasets, including internal corporate communications and consumer-facing narratives, to provide a more comprehensive understanding of strategic silence in sustainability communication.

Despite ongoing environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts and sustainability initiatives, this study suggests that fashion corporations may strategically employ collective silence as a communication tactic to avoid addressing complex issues like overproduction and deadstock. This practice can undermine stakeholder trust and transparency. Therefore, fashion companies genuinely committed to sustainability and corporate responsibility should proactively incorporate discussions of unsold goods and overproduction into their ESG, impact and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive reports. By addressing these challenges openly, companies can enhance their credibility, foster greater consumer trust and lead the industry toward more responsible and transparent practices.

Our research presents alarming evidence of corporate silence being strategically used to avoid addressing pressing issues in the industry. Several cases have drawn public attention to this problem, such as using the Västerås power plant in Sweden by a fashion conglomerate to incinerate clothes and disposing a vast amount of textile waste in Africa and the Atacama Desert in Chile. Our findings demonstrate that fashion corporations are reluctant to openly address these issues.

Our study analyzes the quiet practice of corporate silence in the fashion industry, especially around deadstock and overstock to emphasize the overproduction problem. Its unique contribution comes from using content analysis and subsequently, cluster analysis with NVivo, offering a new approach to content analysis. This approach helps reveal the gap between what companies communicate about sustainability and what they actually do. The findings add to the discussion on corporate environmental practices, suggesting a need for more transparent and responsible communication in sustainability discourse – focus more on the unsaid than published data.

This study, a theoretical article, aims to introduce new institutionalism as a framework through which business and management researchers can explore the significance of artificial intelligence (AI) in organizations. Although the new institutional theory is a fully established research program, the neo-institutional literature on AI is almost non-existent. There is, therefore, a need to develop a deeper understanding of AI as both the product of institutional forces and as an institutional force in its own right.

The authors follow the top-down approach. Accordingly, the authors first briefly describe the new institutionalism, trace its historical development and introduce its fundamental concepts: institutional legitimacy, environment and isomorphism. Then, the authors use those as the basis for the queries to perform a scoping review on the institutional role of AI in organizations.

The findings reveal that a comprehensive theory on AI is largely absent from business and management literature. The new institutionalism is only one of many possible theoretical perspectives (both contextually novel and insightful) from which researchers can study AI in organizational settings.

The authors use the insights from new institutionalism to illustrate how a particular social theory can fit into the larger theoretical framework for AI in organizations. The authors also formulate four broad research questions to guide researchers interested in studying the institutional significance of AI. Finally, the authors include a section providing concrete examples of how to study AI-related institutional dynamics in business and management.

The purpose of this study is to examine the audit efficiency and timeliness of Big 4 auditors relative to non-Big 4 auditors, where audit efficiency is defined as the auditor’s ability to conduct an audit more quickly or with fewer resources while still achieving effective outcomes.

The authors use audit report lags (also referred to as audit delay) as a proxy for audit timeliness and efficiency, controlling for audit quality and audit fees (audit input). The authors use a propensity-score matching (PSM) approach to construct a pseudorandom sample in which each non-Big 4 client is matched with a similar Big 4 client based on their characteristics and audit quality, to control for potential endogeneity related to self-selection bias in this setting.

The authors find that non-Big 4 auditors are associated with shorter audit delays than Big 4 auditors. Additional analysis of the matched sample reveals that non-Big 4 auditors charge lower fees than Big 4 auditors do after controlling for the Big 4 premium. These findings do not support the notion that Big 4 auditors conduct audits more efficiently than non-Big 4 auditors do.

These results could be of interest to the management of public firms, audit committees, investors and regulators; provide valuable insights into the performance of audit firms in varying client environments; and contribute to a better understanding of audit timeliness and efficiency.

Ambient-assisted living (AAL) is one solution to the challenges of healthcare systems in an aging population. Using the “ecosystem adoption of practices over time” (EAPT) as a theoretical lens, this study explores and describes three elements of AAL adoption: (1) the AAL practices in which the technology is embedded (i.e. object of adoption), (2) the older adult's adoption ecosystem (i.e. subject of adoption) and (3) the change of adoption practices over time (i.e. temporality of adoption).

Qualitative interviews with three actor groups in the ecosystem: clients, relatives and home nurses.

The study identifies six categories of AAL practices. Clients, relatives and nurses interact and integrate their resources in carrying out these practices. Some of the practices have developed, or are expected to develop, over time.

The study applies a novel theoretical perspective on how AAL technology is embedded in practices performed by different actors in the adoption ecosystem. This broadens the conceptualization of what is being adopted compared to traditional adoption research.