Search results

This paper aims to accelerate the development of natural capital accounting via an early report of farm accountants responses to prototype natural capital accounts. The authors test an approach to co-development with this important group who are both preparers and users of natural capital accounts but are not presently included in the research or development of natural capital accounting.

Seven practicing farm accountants and three accountants with an interest in this area were interviewed to gather responses to prototype farm natural capital accounts and make changes to improve the clarity, relevance and usefulness of the accounts. The paper calls for more work in participatory co-development to speed up the development and implementation of natural capital accounting.

The authors found that all participants were supportive of the concept of natural capital accounting and the consideration of agricultural ecosystems as assets of a farm business. Most participants could interpret the accounts and saw them as useful and important to improve sustainability outcomes. Participants highlighted the need for 1) the development of reliable, consistent valuation methods that resist manipulation; 2) natural capital accounting to be affordable and provide value to users; and 3) farmers to be supported to apply and report the methods for different objectives and contexts.

Since agriculture is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions and changes to natural capital in the economy, information included in natural capital accounts of farm businesses is important to inform policy as well as farm management decisions. This research reveals strategies for policy makers to accelerate the supply of this information to enable market and other incentives to address urgent issues related to sustainability. Results of this study are from a limited sample of well-informed individuals and are thus preliminary. However, they highlight the need (and opportunity) to further co-design natural capital accounts in agriculture with farm accountants.

Farm accountants are important stakeholders in the development and implementation of natural capital accounting processes and systems, yet they are currently excluded from the science and standard-setting processes underpinning natural capital accounting. Co-development represents a fundamental shift in how the science around natural capital accounting is done and is an important step towards creating a more transdisciplinary approach to working with users. The authors show how users can be involved in developing natural capital accounting methods, standards and reports.

Natural capital accounting is a promising method to help reverse sustainability problems, if it is co-developed with stakeholders to be useful and useable.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to report on farm accountants’ perceptions of natural capital accounts in agriculture and to present a case study of co-developing natural capital accounts with farm accountants.

This study aims to investigate the experiences of service providers supporting male victims and female perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV). The study explored the drivers, methods and treatments of female-perpetrated IPV, the nature and impact of abuse towards male victims, the barriers and facilitators to service provision and the impact on the practitioners themselves.

The study used a qualitative approach, using reflexive thematic analysis to analyse semi-structured interviews with 13 experienced service providers.

Two overarching themes were identified: systemic issues in service provision, including challenges with multi-agency approaches, funding and availability of services and the impact on practitioners; and gender stereotypes, which created barriers to male victims' help-seeking and influenced the treatment of female perpetrators.

The findings suggest the need for a multi-level approach, addressing gendered inequalities in IPV policy and funding, implementing gender-inclusive, evidence-based and trauma-informed practices, and raising public and professional awareness to challenge the dominant “domestic violence stereotype”.

This study provides a detailed, in-depth exploration of the experiences of service providers supporting “non-typical” populations in IPV, revealing the complex, multi-faceted challenges they face within a system that is inherently designed to support female victims of male perpetrators.

The high-pressure nature of the construction industry, along with the COVID-19 pandemic, triggered abusive supervision (i.e. workplace bullying and incivility behaviour) that has diminished workers' well-being. However, despite the growing prevalence in practice and increasing concern in academia, abusive supervision remains largely unexplored by construction management scholars. This study aims to fill the gap in the current literature by analysing the effects of abusive supervision on construction workers' well-being, the mediating role of guanxi closeness and the moderating role of trust in the manager.

A questionnaire survey was completed by 258 Chinese construction workers. The data underwent mediation and moderation analyses using PROCESS macro 3.5 for SPSS.

The results revealed that managers' abusive supervision reduced construction workers' well-being at work and in life. Guanxi closeness between manager and workers mediated the relationship between managers' abusive supervision and construction workers' well-being. Additionally, trust in managers moderated the mediating effect of guanxi closeness. This study further revealed that the emotional connection between construction managers and workers, such as expressive guanxi closeness and affective-based trust, is important in handling the impact of abusive supervision on the workers.

The findings of this study provide support for recent calls to address negative manager behaviours such as abusive supervision in construction management. They aid the development of a more comprehensive internal mechanism that considers the influence of guanxi closeness on the outcomes of abusive supervision by managers at construction sites. Additionally, interventions that develop trust in managers may be particularly effective in alleviating the tension of abusive supervision. More attention should be paid to managers' emotional connections in daily construction project management.

Rather than concentrate on positive leadership, this study shifts the focus to negative leadership in construction project management by identifying abusive supervision as a negative primary antecedent of workers' well-being. While prior research has highlighted how negative manager behaviours affect workers' well-being from the conservation of resources theory (COR) perspective, this study is the first, to the authors’ knowledge, to adopt a social exchange theory perspective by introducing guanxi closeness as a mediator. It contributes to a greater understanding of how trust in the manager alleviates the negative effect of the person's abusive supervision on construction workers.

Business schools play a significant role in providing individuals with the ability to adapt to constantly changing environments. Such agile organizations require deans who, as leaders, possess the knowledge and attributes of astute and responsible executives. In this regard, the measurement of the attributes of leadership paves the way for evaluating a leader’s options process. In this study, we measure the attributes of leadership to pave the way for evaluating a leader’s decision-making process.

The rich data included the opinions of 93 university professors from seven countries: Iran, India, China, France, the UK, Canada and the USA. In appraising the responses, the authors considered the nationality and the development level of each participant’s country and continent. In this study, the authors developed an online questionnaire based on the best-worst method (BWM). By performing a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), the authors also determined the significant statistical differences of the scientific communities through the lenses of authentic leadership, leader-member exchange and social identity and leadership.

The results provide evidence of transparency, measured as the most important criterion for leading a business school, i.e. knowledgeable deanship. Furthermore, the findings reveal a meaningful difference between developed and developing countries in the context of an authentic leadership pillar.

This paper contributed to the literature in five major ways as follows: The authors investigated the attitudes of scientific communities from different countries, business schools, BWM, dean selection and leadership evaluation.By means of the BWM, the authors measured the criteria culminating in the selection of a knowledgeable leader for a business school.The authors compared and contrasted the attitudes of scientific communities in developing countries vis-à-vis those in developed ones.The authors addressed the differences and similarities among countries in relation to the selection of a knowledgeable business school leader.The authors provided beneficial insights by addressing the different perspectives of researchers on the weights of the criteria involved in the selection procedure for a business school dean.

To maximize the benefits of intercultural mentoring relationships, which are increasing in today’s diverse higher education environment, the current article conceptualizes the connection between intercultural mentoring and cultural competence among mentors and mentees as a learning process.

The conceptual paper discusses the nuanced aspects of intercultural mentoring. Ultimately, the current article presents a framework for a bidirectional relationship between intercultural mentoring and cultural competence through experiential learning theory and intergroup contact theory, resulting in implications for practitioners and actionable research directions.

The article highlights the interplay and interdependence of cultural competence and intercultural mentoring through experiential learning and intergroup contact theory. Cultural competence influences the quality of intercultural mentoring relationships. Conversely, intercultural mentoring relationships can develop cultural competence in mentors and mentees through experiential learning, producing positive intergroup contact behaviors. Findings suggest the need for active learning and unlearning among mentors and mentees in intercultural mentoring relationships to maximize developmental outcomes (e.g. cultural competence).

The proposed framework emphasizes that (1) the possession of cultural competence is a critical success factor for intercultural mentoring relationships, (2) the development of cultural competence is an outcome of successful intercultural mentoring relationships, and (3) intercultural mentoring relationships should be regarded as experiential learning platforms that can produce positive intercultural traits such as cultural competence.

Unlike well-documented market or behavioral uncertainty, patent uncertainty has been significantly under-explored in the field of international entrepreneurship. Drawing on an institution-based view of strategy, this study investigated Netac, a Chinese knowledge-based international new venture (KINV), which was facing uncertainty over patents in China and the US. The aim was to address two questions: (1) how does patent uncertainty emerge in the context of KINVs? And (2) how can KINVs navigate patent hazards by interacting with national patent institutions?

A longitudinal single-case study approach was adopted as the most appropriate method for exploring novel business phenomena and dynamic processes.

Results suggested that a KINV can adopt strategies to build a unique identity and so better conform to the expectations of institutions that ultimately decide on patent validity. Strategies may involve building institutional awareness, amplifying mass media effects, and strategically managing the intellectual property and socio-emotional tensions between China and the US.

This study introduced the notion of patent uncertainty into research around international new ventures, highlighting how this type of uncertainty in the advanced technology sector can affect the end-product and patent licensing opportunities of KINVs. It also explored the institution-based view of company strategy in the internationalization process by emphasizing interactive institutional mechanisms, and the role of an organization’s identity when interacting with institutions. The study enriches the literature on institutional theory and organizational identity, and also suggests solutions for firms dealing with efforts by competitors to invalidate patents.

The purpose of this paper is to explore multiple perspectives on managerial coaching: why and how managers engage, employees and human resource development (HRD) professionals’ perspectives on the use and how HRD and managers can better support each other with it.

This study used secondary analysis of empirical data already collected through a transnational study from 20 different medium-size to large organisations in the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. For this study, 58 interviews referring to coaching were analysed from 18 of these organisations, from these 3 different countries and from 3 stakeholder groups: managers, employees and HRD professionals.

Findings show that managers perform a variety of “on the job” informal coaching roles and that HRD professionals lead the more formal aspects. Managers felt that HRD support was limited and hoped for more. A limited number of employees mentioned coaching, but those that did highlighted the different types of coaching they received in the workplace, referring to managers but with little recognition of HRD’s role. HRD professionals shared how they support managers through both informal and formal coaching approaches, but this was not fully acknowledged by neither managers nor employees.

The findings of this study contribute to the literature on devolved HRD practices, highlighting that managers are engaging more in managerial coaching with their teams, that potentially employees are not that aware of this and that managers and employees are not fully aware of HRD’s contribution to supporting coaching and feel they could do more. As a result, this study suggests that HRD professionals have a clear role to play in creating and leading the supportive organisational culture for coaching to thrive, not only in setting the “coaching scene” for managers to work within but also through offering support for long-term capacity building for all employees.

Through the diffusion of key HRD activities into managerial roles, and while internal coaching is gaining more momentum, managers now step up when coaching their teams. This study extends the limited prior research on managers’ and others’ (employees and HRD) beliefs about the coaching role in the workplace. This study highlights the changing role of the manager, the need for HRD to offer more support for the joint role that managers are taking (manager and coach) and the partnership potential for HRD professionals to include all stakeholders including employees.

This paper aims to explore the role of ownership structure on integrated reporting quality (IRQ) in an emerging market.

This study includes a sample consisting of 64 firms from Bursa Malaysia, with 173 firm-year observations from 2017 to 2020. Feasible Generalised Least Square model has been used to test the hypotheses.

The findings show that government ownership has a positive effect on IRQ and that the integrated reports and <IR> framework are well aligned. Foreign ownership influences IRQ positively. However, the results did not support the effect of family ownership on IRQ as hypothesised.

The findings of this research hold practical implications for companies and regulators in Malaysia. The results demonstrate to investors that both government and foreign ownership have a positive impact on IRQ. Therefore, investors can make well-informed investment decisions regarding companies with a high level of government or foreign ownership.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to explore the effect of ownership structure on IRQ in the Malaysian context.