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This paper aims to demonstrate methods that sustainability-conscious brands can use to include their primary producers in the measurement and reporting of the environment and sustainability performance of their supply chains. It explores three questions: How can farm businesses provide information required in sustainability reporting? What are the challenges and opportunities experienced in preparing and presenting the information? What future research and policy instruments might be needed to resolve these issues.

This study identifies and describes methods to provide the farm-level information needed for environmental performance and sustainability reporting frameworks. It demonstrates them by compiling natural capital accounts and environmental performance information for two wool producers in the grassy woodland biome of Eastern Australia; the contrasting history and management of these producers would be expected to result in different environmental performances.

The authors demonstrated an approach to NC accounting that is suitable for including primary producers in environmental performance reporting of supply chains and that can communicate whether individual producers are sustaining, improving or degrading their NC. Measurements suitable for informing farm management and for the estimation of supply chain performance can simultaneously produce information useful for aggregation to regional and national assessments.

The methods used should assist sustainability-conscious supply chains to more accurately assess the environmental performance of their primary producers and to use these assessments in selective sourcing strategies to improve supply chain performance. Empirical measures of environmental performance and natural capital have the potential to enable evaluation of the effectiveness of sustainability accounting frameworks in inducing businesses to reduce their environmental impacts and improve the condition of the natural capital they depend on.

Two significant social implications exist for the inclusion of primary producers in the sustainability and environmental performance reporting of supply chains. Firstly, it presently takes considerable time and expense for producers to prepare this information. Governments and members of the supply chain should acknowledge the value of this information to their organisations and consider sharing some of the cost of its preparation with primary producers. Secondly, the “additionality” requirement commonly present in existing frameworks may perversely exclude already high-performing producers from being recognised. The methods proposed in this paper provide a way to resolve this.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to describe detailed methods of collecting data for natural capital accounting and environmental performance reporting for individual farms and the first to compile the information and present it in a manner coherent with the Kering EP&L and the UN SEEA EA. The authors believe that this will make a significant contribution to the development of fair and standardised ways of measuring individual farm performance and the performance of food, beverage and apparel supply chains.

This study aims to explore the intention to quit and its associations among ambulance personnel and to compare the intention to quit and its associations between paramedic and non-paramedic staff.

A cross-sectional study was conducted on 492 Australian ambulance personnel. Participants were selected by stratified random sampling. Data were collected using phone interview-administered questionnaires. Descriptive analyses, bivariate associations and structural equation modelling were performed for data analysis.

The study found that 70% of ambulance personnel intended to quit their jobs. Intention to quit was similar between paramedics and non-paramedic staff. In both staff groups, supervisors' and colleagues' support was associated with mental health symptoms; job satisfaction was associated with the intention to quit. Supervisors' and colleagues' support was indirectly associated with the intention to quit via increasing job satisfaction and reducing the experience of mental health symptoms among paramedics only. Mental health symptoms were directly associated with the intention to quit and indirectly associated with the intention to quit via reducing job satisfaction among paramedics only.

The study findings provide evidence for resource allocation in human resource management. The findings suggest that interventions to increase job satisfaction may reduce the intention to quit for all ambulance personnel. Interventions to improve supervisors' and colleagues' support and to manage depression, anxiety and stress symptoms may help to reduce the intention to quit for paramedics only.

This is the first study to model and compare the direct and indirect associations of intention to quit between paramedics and non-paramedic staff in ambulance personnel.

This research project evaluated outcomes for a leadership development program utilizing adult volunteers who worked with youth to incorporate experiential learning and civic engagement opportunities. As a result, this experience exposed youth to practical skills as well as a chance to develop a sense of community connectedness. This was revealed through the youth developing more positive perceptions toward their role as decision makers in their communities, after participation in the program. Youth also developed more positive perceptions of their relationships with adults. Moreover, when comparing those youth who volunteer at least one hour per week to those who do not, those who had volunteered in the past had significantly more positive perceptions than those who had never volunteered in their community.

This paper aims to develop an alternative perspective on marketing informed by service scholarship to resolve marketing’s challenges as a discipline and practice.

This paper is conceptual and builds on the ongoing debate regarding marketing’s challenges and on service research to develop a new alternative marketing perspective and model, which could contribute to reforming marketing.

An analysis of the current understanding of marketing showed that the discipline’s myopic focus on activities, which disregards what marketing is as a phenomenon, is the primary reason for the prevailing problems and failure to reform marketing. Based on research into service logic (SL), the paper demonstrates that a higher level view of service can be characterized as the provision of help to the users of goods and services to ensure that these goods and services deliver meaningful assistance in their lives and work. This suggests that the ultimate objective for marketing is to make firms meaningful to the users of their goods and services.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, since this paper is the first to conceptually develop a perspective on marketing and a corresponding model informed by service scholarship, more conceptual and empirical research is necessary. Developing the new meaningfulness-based perspective and model for marketing brings a new approach to the process of resolving marketing’s current troubled situation.

The meaningfulness approach to marketing enables customer-centered marketing strategies to be implemented. Such strategies include both demand-stimulating and demand-satisfying programs.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first to examine marketing’s troubled situation from a service research and SL perspective.

The purpose of this quantitative study was to assess the relationship between volunteer leadership competencies and stewardship action-taking experiences among Master Gardener (MG) and Master Watershed (MW) volunteers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We collected data from 1196 Penn State Extension MG and MW respondents. The mean summative score for the volunteer stewardship action-taking experience was 2.32 (SD = .79), and volunteer leadership competencies was 3.45 (SD = .60). The results of this study showed a significant moderate association between volunteer stewardship action-taking experiences and volunteer leader competencies (r = .34, p ≤ .001). Volunteer leadership competencies can explain approximately 11 % of the variation in volunteer stewardship action-taking experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The new knowledge that our research brings can significantly contribute to the practice in leadership teaching and learning of Extension organizations’ volunteers. Future leadership trainings on the enhancement of the MG and MW volunteer leaders’ stewardship action-taking capacity can help contribute to the greater good in their communities in a more confident and efficient manner. Further research should focus on identifying other factors that can affect MG and MW stewardship action-taking experiences, including the impact of the demographics and motivation.

This article explores the value of engaging a hybrid learning strategy in a micro-enterprise setting when responding to a global pandemic. The research question asks: “Does a hybrid learning strategy enhance a micro-enterprise's response to extreme events?”.

A micro-enterprise owner–manager (OM) reflects on their experience running a business during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which resulted in the complete decimation of the organization’s revenue stream in early 2020. Captured in conversation with an academic peer, these practitioner insights provide valuable case evidence relating to micro-enterprise response to extreme commercial events, such as a global pandemic.

The journey from initial survival-mode to emergent market opportunity recognition and subsequent growth is recorded. The paper contributes to the limited research on the impact of learning strategy plans on micro-enterprise crisis response strategies and provides insights into the value of engaging a hybrid learning strategy when responding to a significant external business shock.

Drawing from these insights, the authors offer a literature-informed framework from which to consider the dynamics of an adaptive strategic response in a micro-enterprise setting, offering a means through which micro-enterprises can plan for and respond to extreme events in the future.

Entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) has a dark side largely ignored in the field of entrepreneurship education. Research in educational psychology indicates that self-efficacy is prone to misjudgment, with novice learners often displaying overconfidence. Furthermore, this misjudgment is gendered; studies suggest that men are more likely to display overconfidence and less likely to correct erroneous self-assessments. However, realistic self-assessments are essential for effective learning strategies, pivotal for performance in the ambiguous entrepreneurial context. Therefore, this study explores whether entrepreneurship education helps mitigate overconfidence, and if this impact varies by gender.

Common in educational psychology, but new in the field of entrepreneurship education, a calibration design captures discrepancies between perceived and actual performance. Data from before and after an introductory undergraduate entrepreneurship course (N = 103) inform descriptive analyses, statistical comparison tests and calibration plots.

As expected, nearly all novice students showed significant overconfidence. Curiously, gender difference was only significant at the end of the course, as overconfidence had decreased among female students and increased among male students.

The paper advocates a more nuanced stance toward ESE, and introduces ESE accuracy as a more fitting measure of entrepreneurial overconfidence. The findings flag the common use of self-perception as a proxy for actual competence, and evoke new research avenues on (gender differences in) learning motivations of aspiring entrepreneurs. Finally, the study shares guidance for entrepreneurship educators on fostering a “healthier” level of self-efficacy for better entrepreneurial learning.

The study aims to shed light on the historical and contemporary trends of biodiversity accounting literature, while simultaneously offering insights into the future of research in this sector. The paper also aims to raise awareness among accounting researchers about their role in preserving biodiversity and informing improvements in policy and practice in this area.

The Bibliometrix R-package is used to carry out an algorithmic historiography. The reference publication year spectroscopy (RPYS) methodology is implemented. It is a unique approach to bibliometric analysis that allows researchers to identify and examine historical patterns in scientific literature.

The work provides a distinct and comprehensive discussion of the four distinct periods demarcating the progression of scientific discourse regarding biodiversity accounting. These periods are identified as Origins (1767–1864), Awareness (1865–1961), Consolidation (1962–1995) and Acceleration (1996–2021). The study offers an insightful analysis of the main thematic advancements, interpretative paradigm shifts and theoretical developments that occurred during these periods.

The paper offers a significant contribution to the existing academic debate on the prospects for accounting scholars to concentrate their research efforts on biodiversity and thereby promote advancements in policy and practice in this sector.

The article represents the first example of using an algorithmic historiography approach to examine the corpus of literature dealing with biodiversity accounting. The value of this study comes from the fusion of historical methodology and perspective. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is also the first scientific investigation applying RPYS in the accounting sector.

The purpose of this study is to explore the feasibility of natural capital accounting for the purpose of strengthening sustainability claims by reporting entities. The study showed how riparian land improvement influenced ecosystem services which could be measured in the context of financial reporting. The authors tested options for incorporating natural capital concepts into financial accounting practices under existing accounting standards specifically: on the balance sheet.

A case study approach was used with an Australian water utility that has accountabilities to protect the environment, including maintaining and enhancing riparian land assets. The authors examined internal data sources, stakeholder engagement outcomes, physical assets, monetary valuation processes and financial recognition of natural capital income and assets. Natural capital income was estimated by process-based ecological modelling and ecosystem services were valued in relation to stormwater filtration and carbon storage using data from both internal and external sources.

The authors demonstrated how an environmental agency can disclose natural capital as a class of assets on the balance sheet. The authors also found that current accounting standards allow the recognition of some types of environmental assets where ecosystem services were associated with cost savings. The proof-of-concept used for asset measurement through ecosystem service modelling proved useful to strengthen sustainability claims or report financial returns on natural capital investment.

While many studies have examined environmental disclosures in voluntary reports, this study established that natural assets can be included on the balance sheet of financial statements, offering a robust approach to measuring and reporting on natural capital. It did so by applying financial accounting processes and principles to a real-world natural capital management scenario with direct participation and cooperation between the asset manager, academic researchers and a government environment agency, bridging the gap between theory and practice.