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COVID-19 accelerated the already growing prevalence of employees working remotely, and limited research exists on the effectiveness of proactive influence tactics in remote work settings. This study aims to identify which proactive influence tactics may best facilitate employee work engagement in a remote work setting.

Survey data stems from 231 employees who work remotely in the USA. Hierarchical regression was used to analyze the data and assess interaction effects.

Evidence was found for positive relationships between work engagement and multiple proactive influence tactics (collaboration, consultation, inspirational appeals, exchange, apprising, rational persuasion, personal appeals and ingratiation) and a negative relationship between work engagement and pressure. The percentage of time an employee spends working remotely moderated the proactive influence tactic-work engagement relationship. Significant interaction effects were found for exchange and personal appeals.

The results highlight several influence tactics that managers can consider using to increase employee work engagement. The findings also demonstrate the increasing effectiveness of certain influence tactics, such as exchange and personal appeals, as employees spend more time working remotely, shedding light on important considerations for managers seeking to optimize employee engagement in remote work environments.

The study contributes to the limited literature on proactive influence tactics and work engagement and examines these relationships in a remote work setting. In addition, it examines the moderating effect of the percentage of time an employee spends working remotely.

Countries with high levels of corruption can experience collusion between powerful elites and accountants to conceal, disguise and clean the proceeds of criminality. This study investigates the willingness of accountants to report evidence of money laundering in an emerging economy, Iran, notwithstanding potential personal and professional risks implicit in such due diligence. It evaluates the relevance of personal characteristics of accountants to the propensity to report, and the implications for policy makers in terms of audit team composition.

The methodology is quantitative. Data was gathered by means of a suspicious activity scenario-based questionnaire administered to 1,128 of Certified Public Accountants in Iran, of which 281 responses were received. Four hypotheses were tested relating to the implications, if any, of gender, age, education and working experience for the propensity to report red flags indicative of money laundering.

Data revealed that accountants were generally more willing to report activity indicative of money laundering than was anticipated in an environment perceived to be characterised by professional and personal risks. Older accountants are more risk averse and more likely to report suspicious activity than younger counterparts who tend to disregard borderline indicators of money laundering. A significant red flag indicator of money laundering is a client's reluctance to provide information regarding controlling shareholders, debtors and creditors or to explain contrived and opaque corporate structures. Audit teams may be more effective when gender-balanced: female accountants tend to be more willing to report suspicious activity than male counterparts, reducing the risk of interference by powerful elites.

The time frame over which the research was conducted was a single year; if it had been conducted over several years it may have revealed more nuanced and evolving reporting behaviour. The study was limited to Iran: a cross-comparison with another emerging economy or economies may have revealed useful contrasts.

The study contributes to behavioural accounting research in emerging economies. Limited empirical data is available regarding the influence of personal characteristics of accountants on their willingness to report suspicious activity in corrupt environments where personal safety and professional security may be at risk from powerful elites. It evaluates the implications of these for suspicious activity reporting policy, and for improving the effectiveness of the scrutineering role of audit teams. An innovative questionnaire was designed which may be suitable for future comparable research in emerging economies.

This study aims to investigate whether the changes in gender composition of bank board affects Vietnamese bank stability efficiency.

This research covers a panel of 27 commercial banks in Vietnam over a 14-year period from 2007 to 2020. The two-step system generalized method of moments is used to estimate the gender diversity–Vietnamese bank stability efficiency nexus.

The authors find that a greater degree of board gender diversification enhances bank stability efficiency and reduces bank risk-taking in Vietnam. The relationship between gender diversity and the stability efficiency of Vietnamese banks is still valid under the influence of regulatory capital sufficiency and during the financial crisis. These findings are robust to alternative proxies for risk indicators and consistent with the perspectives of stakeholder and behavior theory.

Although this research revisits the relationship between gender diversity and bank risk-taking, it is the first attempt to explore the role of women on board in enhancing the stability efficiency of banks, using the stochastic frontier approach. These findings shed light on the function of gender diversity as a governance instrument for mitigating risk in an emerging market context.

Despite extensive research on the underlying reasons for the energy performance gap in buildings, there is a critical need for stakeholders to standardize and facilitate the use of this knowledge and support its broader application by machines. Our research addresses this gap by developing both an ontology and a tool to utilize risk information regarding the performance gap in buildings.

Research into this topic began with the creation of an energy performance gap-risk ontology for new and existing buildings using the METHONTOLOGY method. This comprised a comprehensive literature review and semi-structured interviews with ten experts concerning six buildings, in order to develop taxonomies and define risk factor interactions. It was followed by a three-stage validation using a mixed-method research methodology. Steps included comparing the ontology with a similar empirical study, gathering expert opinions via interviews and ratings assessments, and finally, interviewing an experienced professional to ascertain whether there were any concepts not covered by the ontology. The taxonomies were modeled in Protégé 5.5, and using the ontology, a spreadsheet tool was developed using Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications in Excel.

The ontology identified 36 primary risk factors and a total of 95 when including additional risks linked to certain factors. Factors such as professional liability insurance, stakeholder motivation, effective communication, experience, training, integrated design, simplicity of detailing, building systems or design and project commissioning can help manage the performance gap in buildings. The tool developed serves as a decision-support system, offering features like project risk checklists to assist stakeholders in addressing the performance gap.

This study is the first to develop an energy performance gap-risk ontology and a tool to help project stakeholders collect, store and share building risk information.