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In light of the complex risk and transparency regulations, this paper investigates the factors influencing the level of risk management disclosure by insurance firms in Jordan and Palestine. The characteristics examined were ownership structure, which covers public, institutional and management ownership on risk management disclosure (RMD) utilizing ISO 31000, as well as profitability, leverage, liquidity and firm size.

To achieve the aim of this study, a quantitative research methodology was used. Based on the total number of observations, 232 purposeful annual observations for the study sample were collected between 2016 and 2023 for 10 insurance companies listed on the Palestine stock exchange (Palestinian companies) with 80 observations and 19 companies listed on the Amman stock exchange (Jordanian companies) with 152 observations. This study uses panel data regression with fixed effects models. By employing the 2SLS approach, we comprehensively address the main endogeneity concerns and problems in risk management disclosure RMD of insurance firms in Jordan and Palestine.

The results show that risk management disclosure is significantly influenced by the liquidity and size of an organization. Furthermore, RMD is not significantly affected by profitability, debt, public ownership, institutional ownership or liquidity, whereas business size has a favorable influence.

The findings of this study may not be generalizable to firms in other countries because of the limitations of insurance firms in Palestine and Jordan. Study replication in future studies should consider the potential for bias and differences in data interpretation when utilizing qualitative methodologies to evaluate RMD.

The practical implications emphasize how crucial it is for investors, practitioners and stakeholders to choose firms that are large and have little liquidity because this is linked to high levels of risk management transparency. This knowledge can offer investors an important direction for assessing possible risks and transparency in risk management within the insurance sector framework. The study recommends that the governments of Palestine and Jordan enact laws requiring risk management disclosure according to the ISO 31000:2018 standard, especially in the insurance industry.

This study contributes to the literature by illuminating the relationship between firm size, liquidity and risk management disclosure in insurance companies operating in Jordan and Palestine. Therefore, investors should choose large, relatively liquid companies with strong risk management disclosure. This study offers theoretical insights that may be used as a guide for other research, improving the understanding of the variables influencing risk management disclosure in insurance companies and advancing scientific understanding.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the state of extinction accounting, and the motivations for its use in the UK public sector. Prior studies are mostly concerned with corporate attempts to account for species, despite studies in related areas calling for examinations of the public sector context.

The paper analyses the use of extinction accounting in three separate case organisations, conducting a total of 21 interviews across the three cases. Interviews were conducted with a range of organisational participants each having experience with extinction accounting.

Interviews reveal a number of common uses and applications of extinction accounting across the three councils. Practices are used to generate reports on species loss and recovery within each region, and to facilitate planning for species protection and recovery. However, in attempting to use this information, key trade-offs emerge between satisfying economic and ecological criteria, and even trade-offs are created regarding development of protection schemes. This leads to a subversion of extinction accounting.

Commensurate with prior studies in the corporate context, the study finds the presence of an economic logic impinging upon ecological decision making, suggesting that practices of extinction accounting may be affected by the same acknowledged economic motivations that reside in corporate attempts to account for nature.

The paper makes an important contribution by evaluating the public sector context of extinction accounting, which is lacking in existing research. The findings relating to the public sector use of species and extinction information also provide a useful context to understand how relatively new social and environmental accounting practices are deployed in organisations, as well as some indication of their effectiveness and limitations.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Recent changes in the UK political landscape have brought about cuts in public sector spending. Local authorities, in common with other public sector agencies, are required to make significant cost savings over the coming years. Procurement is an area of public sector administration characterised by considerable costs and inefficiency where the adoption of innovative technologies, such as e‐markets, can be deployed to effect significant costs savings. However, there are many barriers to the adoption of such technologies. The purpose of this paper is to explore and expound the factors that impede local authorities from adopting e‐markets and to present a learning opportunity for procurement managers and other stakeholders involved in technology adoption in local government and the wider public sector.

A case study based on in depth interviews with 17 senior level executives in e‐markets and local authorities on barriers to e‐market adoption in the local government sector is presented. The interviews were transcribed and subsequently coded and analysed using the qualitative data analysis software QSR N6.

A number of factors (risk perception, knowledge deficits, trust, firm size, and organisational readiness) pertaining to Johnson's framework of e‐market adoption barriers were found to affect e‐market adoption and use in the local government sector. Importantly, the study also found factors that are idiosyncratic to the sector that impinged on e‐market adoption.

The scope of the study is limited to examining such barriers from a buy‐side local authority perspective, the findings of which may have implications for the adoption of e‐markets and other e‐procurement technologies in the wider public sector and beyond. The paper also makes a contribution to the literature on e‐market adoption by adding to the body of knowledge relating to institutional theory.

The case study can help local authority and other public sector procurement managers, academic researchers, practitioners, consultants and other professionals involved in technology adoption better understand, and find practical ways to offset, the barriers that impinge on the adoption of e‐markets and other innovative technologies that can reduce costs within public sector organisations.

E‐market adoption has the potential to realise a number of significant cost saving benefits within and between organisations. However, such benefits cannot be realised if there are barriers to their adoption and full utilisation. To date, research on the dynamics of e‐market adoption has largely focused on private sector enterprises with few studies examining this phenomenon in public sector environments. Therefore, e‐market adoption in the public sector has received limited attention in the literature over the past decade. This study examines, and provides empirical evidence of, barriers to e‐market uptake and usage in the local government sector in order to act as a starting point to creating better understanding of such barriers among academic and practitioner audiences.

This article seeks to explore the difference that adult support and protection legislation may have made to work with adults at risk of harm in Scotland.

The article is based upon findings of a joint academic and practitioner qualitative research project that interviewed 29 social service practitioners across three local authorities.

The legislation was seen as positive, giving greater attention to adults at risk. Views about the actual difference it made to the practitioners' practice varied, and were more likely in new rather than ongoing work. Three differences were noted: duties of investigation, protection orders and improved shared responsibility within the local authority and across other agencies, but to a lesser extent NHS staff. Overall it gave effective responses, more quickly for the adults at risk. Whilst the law brought greater clarity of role, there were tensions for practitioners in balancing an adult's right to autonomy with practitioners' safeguarding responsibilities.

The paper demonstrates that a dedicated law can improve safeguarding practice by clarifying the role of social work practitioners and the responsibilities of other agencies. The right to request access to records and banning orders were seen as valuable new measures in safeguarding adults at risk. As such the study from the first UK country to use dedicated adult safeguarding law offers a valuable insight for policy makers, professionals and campaign groups from other countries, which might be considering similar action.

Although issues on disaster prevention have extensively been studied in the literature and have been embedded in everyday library practices all over the world, the vast majority of Greek libraries have not developed any specific measures. This paper seeks to review several disaster management approaches for academic libraries and to make suggestions for Greek academic libraries by analyzing the results of a nationwide survey.

The literature regarding disaster management approaches for academic libraries is reviewed and accompanied by a survey conducted in July 2010 in order to study the level of risk and disaster preparedness in Greek academic libraries.

In Greece, disaster management within academic libraries seems to be dealt with inefficiently, if not completely neglected. The fearsome economic crisis is further degrading the level of disaster preparedness due to a number of side effects, including the lack of personnel and equipment maintenance activities, inadequate buildings and insufficient funding.

While the literature is flooded with risk and disaster preparedness approaches based on the work undertaken in most Western countries, this is the only study presenting evidence on the level of preparedness for Greek academic libraries.

During the 1990s the value to an intending professional accountant of undertaking a period of liberal (general) studies was promoted internationally by a number of individuals and organisations, including the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) and the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants (the “Institute”). The Institute significantly changed its admissions policy for Chartered Accountants in 1996 and one change was to require four years of degree level study with a compulsory liberal studies component. This study surveys the perceptions of New Zealand accounting practitioners on the impact of this compulsory liberal component. The results of this study demonstrate that there is little support from accounting practitioners for IFAC’s claim that liberal education “can contribute significantly to the acquisition of professional skills”, including intellectual, personal and communication skills. In addition, the majority of respondents did not perceive any improvements in the professional skills of the staff that had qualified under the Institute’s current admissions policy. However, any perceived improvements were mainly attributed to the Institute’s admissions policy change. Notwithstanding the lack of support for the assertion that liberal education develops professional skills, there is a strong belief by respondents in the value of liberal education for intending professional accountants.

A striking feature of Jaques' work is his “no nonsense” attitude to the “manager‐subordinate” relationship. His blunt account of the origins of this relationship seems at first sight to place him in the legalistic “principles of management” camp rather than in the ranks of the subtler “people centred” schools. We shall see before long how misleading such first impressions can be, for Jaques is not making simplistic assumptions about the human psyche. But he certainly sees no point in agonising over the mechanism of association which brings organisations and work‐groups into being when the facts of life are perfectly straightforward and there is no need to be squeamish about them.