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This paper was motivated by the current debate over the voluntary approach to environmental disclosures in corporate annual reports and assesses the effectiveness of the current policy of voluntarism in the UK. A brief review of the relevant theories, which explain why managers might choose to voluntarily provide environmental responsibility information to parties outside the organisation, is presented. With this background, the paper then questions whether the UK government’s faith in voluntarism and the pursuit of best practice will be enough to generate any real change in current environmental reporting practices. We argue that voluntarism is not effective and that there is an urgent need to introduce strict governmental regulations on the information that must be disclosed and the form in which it should be presented in corporate annual reports as have been established in several other countries. In addition, further consideration is needed to achieve reforms in academic accounting education in order to improve corporate accountability and transparency in corporate annual reports. Organisations need to respond to the growing demands for corporate social and environmental responsibility and this will be possible with the support of an accounting profession that takes a more proactive approach to engaging with stakeholders. For this to happen, we need to rethink the focus of accounting and business education. We must move away from the dominant model, which treats accountancy as a set of techniques, towards a more holistic approach which recognises the social and environmental impacts of organisational activity.

In this research, the aim is to argue that “trust” is very important in all stages of technology management for human resource management efficiency and effectiveness to improve organizational performance. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to propose the concept and model of “HRIS‐trust” for human resource information system (HRIS) suppliers, who will approach HRIS potential customers.

This is an exploratory study; hence, based on the relevant literature review and the authors' own analysis, six propositions were proposed for HRIS‐Trust model.

HRIS‐Trust is one of the pivotal determinants to help managers make decisions to apply HRIS in the organization in order to achieve sustainable human resource management (HRM) performance. Accordingly, to achieve an effective level of HRIS deployment, HRIS‐suppliers and their customers need to have a clear understanding and definition of appropriate terminology of HRIS‐trust for operational management systems.

As yet this model is untested. Clearly, further research is necessary to test the propositions of the authors' model.

In this paper, it is argued that HRIS‐trust is very important in relation to HRIS deployment. Therefore, HRIS suppliers need to have an understanding about the factors influencing trust in HRIS, especially how to increase customer trust in their HRIS products.

Although many previous studies have demonstrated how an organization can initiate and implement human resource information system (HRIS) efficiently and effectively, very few have investigated factors influencing the trust in HRIS. Hence, this research is one of the first exploratory studies to explore such an issue. In addition, a definition and a model of HRIS‐Trust was proposed.

Co-authored by three South African academics working in higher education development, this chapter uses the transition from professional practice to academic contexts as an entry point into a discussion of transitions broadly. We reflect on the role of mentoring in supporting the multiple transitions which dual professionals navigate and what this means for the provision of inclusive, quality education (SDG 4) with a focus on higher education. In reflecting on this Sustainable Development Goal, we approach the topic of mentoring from a critical perspective which allows us to attend to the themes of power, access and equity that it invokes. The body of scholarship on the transition experiences of practitioners into academia has challenged the assumption that professional expertise translates into teaching expertise in the classroom. The opening vignette contextualizes this challenge. The vignette protagonist offers to support an academic colleague and approaches a mentoring expert to explore her guiding principles for mentoring within and beyond the classroom. The dialogue surfaces the need for mentoring that considers the various transitions that dual professionals navigate. We engage critically with international literature on the role and positionality of dual professionals in academia and reflect on selected concepts from this literature to highlight the importance of an adaptive mentoring approach for meeting academics in transition at their point of need. We offer a synthesis of literature on holistic approaches to mentoring, critically reflecting on how they enable inclusive quality education for the benefit of society.

A learning-focused culture promotes creativity, innovativeness and the acquisition of novel insights and competencies. The study aims to explore the relationship between human resource development (HRD) practice and employee competencies using organizational learning culture as a mediating variable.

Data were collected from 828 employees of 37 health care institutions comprising 24 (internationally-owned) and 13 (indigenously-owned). Construct reliability and validity was established through a confirmatory factor analysis. The proposed model and hypotheses were evaluated using structural equation modeling.

Data supported the hypothesized relationships. The results show that training and development and employee competencies were significantly related. Career development and employee competencies were significantly related. Organizational learning culture mediates the relationship between training and development and employee competencies. However, organizational learning culture did not mediate the relationship between career development and employee competencies.

The generalizability of the findings will be constrained due to the research’s health care focus and cross-sectional data.

The study’s findings will serve as valuable pointers to policy makers and stakeholders of health care institutions in developing system-level capacities that promote continuous learning and adaptive learning cultures to ensure sustainability and competitive advantage.

By evidencing empirically that organizational learning culture mediates the relationship between HRD practices and employee competencies the study extends the literature.

From a perspective of ‘critical performativity’, John Lewis is of special interest since it is celebrated as a successful organization and heralded as an alternative to more typical forms of capitalist enterprise.

Our analysis uses secondary empirical material (e.g. JLP documents in the public domain, histories of John Lewis and recent empirical research). Our assumption is that engagement and interrogation of existing empirical work can be at least as illuminating and challenging as undertaking new studies. In addition to generating fresh insights, stimulating reflection and fostering debate, our analysis is intended to contribute to an appreciation of how structures of ownership and governance are significant in enabling and constraining practices of organizing and managing.

The structures of ownership and governance at John Lewis, a major UK employee-owned retailer, have been commended by those who wish to recuperate capitalism and by those who seek to transform it.

JLP can be read as a ‘subversive intervention’ insofar as it denies absentee investors access to, and control of, its assets. Currently, however, even the critical performative potential of the Partnership model is impeded by its paternalist structures. Exclusion of Partners’ participation in the market for corporate control is reflected in, and compounded by, a weak form of ‘democratic’ governance, where managers are accountable to Partners but not controlled by them.

Our contention is that JLP’s ownership and governance structures offer a practical demonstration, albeit flawed, of how an alternative form of organization is sufficiently ‘efficient’ and durable to be able to ‘compete’ against joint-stock companies.

By examining the cooperative elements of the John Lewis structures of ownership and governance, we illuminate a number of issues faced in realizing the principles ascribed to employee-owned cooperatives – notably, with regard to ‘democratic member control’, ‘member economic participation’ and ‘autonomy and independence’.

The purpose of this study is to explore undergraduate accounting students' perceptions and understanding of the concept of sustainable development. Moreover, this study aims to explore students' perceptions of the integration of sustainable development issues in accounting education in Saudi Arabia as an emerging country.

A questionnaire survey was administered to a sample of accounting students from four Saudi universities. The questionnaire contained five groups of questions aimed at exploring the extent of students' awareness and understanding of the concept of sustainable development, their perceptions of the importance of sustainable development for society, their perceptions of the important role of accounting in sustainable development, their satisfaction with the level of integrating sustainable development issues in accounting education at the present time and their opinions about the appropriate approach to integrate sustainable development issues in accounting education.

The findings of the study revealed that although most of the students have heard about the concept of sustainable development from the media and perceive the importance of sustainable development for society, they have a low level of understanding of this concept due to the apparent weakness in integrating sustainable development issues in accounting education in Saudi universities. Students were unsatisfied with the sustainable development learning offered by Saudi universities. They also showed a positive attitude toward integrating sustainable development issues in their accounting education. They suggested that the appropriate approach to integrate sustainable development issues in accounting education is to treat these issues in the relevant courses included in their current accounting curricula.

The results of this study provide indications to the administrators of Saudi universities to start developing accounting curriculum to integrate sustainable development issues into accounting education. This will result in an increase in the effectiveness of the role of these universities in achieving the goals of the Saudi Vision 2030.

This study contributes to the existing literature concerning how students perceive sustainable development education by focusing on the accounting students in Saudi Arabia as context that has not previously examined.

This study seeks to analyse if the adjustment towards the target short-term debt ratio of small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) is related to financial distress risk.

Data obtained for a sample of Portuguese manufacturing SMEs from 2010 to 2017 were analysed using the system-generalised method of moments (GMM-sys). Using the modified Z-Altman score, the authors classify SMEs according to their exposure to financial distress risk.

Manufacturing SMEs exposed to a high risk of financial distress rebalance their short-term debt ratio quicker. However, regardless of the financial distress risk level, SMEs distant from the target short-term debt ratio adjust more slowly, suggesting that transaction costs are greater than financial distress costs.

Policymakers should promote the access to external sources of finance with low transaction costs for SMEs, exposed to low levels of financial distress risk, to rebalance their short-term debt ratios quicker. Distressed SMEs far from their target short-term debt ratios, but with capacity to rebalance, need government programmes to access finance with low transaction costs to rebalance their short-term debt ratios.

This paper contributes to deepening our understanding of how SMEs, facing financial risk, rebalance their short-term debt ratios. SMEs, facing high financial distress risk, adjust towards their target short-term debt ratios more rapidly. However, SMEs, distant from the target short-term debt ratio face higher transaction costs than financial distress costs. These firms adjust towards their target short-term debt ratios more slowly, which may aggravate the refinancing risk and, ultimately, announce bankruptcy.

Although cognitive apprenticeship has been widely used in various educational fields, few empirical studies have examined its effectiveness in a workplace context. This study aims to investigate the effects of cognitive apprenticeship on junior doctors’ perceived professional growth in hospitals.

A retrospective questionnaire survey was performed that asked surgeons (n = 87) and physicians (n = 92) to recall how they were instructed by their supervisors during the first five years after graduation from medical school.

The results of multiple regression analyzes showed that all dimensions of cognitive apprenticeship (modeling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, reflection and exploration) had positive effects on each doctor’s perceived growth, regardless of the type of clinical practice (surgeon vs physician) or the period of supervision. It was also found that physicians experienced significantly more coaching and scaffolding, and opportunities for, articulation and reflection, than surgeons.

Some of the data were collected through snowball sampling, and this study used a retrospective survey in which respondents were asked to recall past experiences.

Clinical supervisors in hospitals should adopt a cognitive apprenticeship model when supervising junior doctors. Surgical supervisors need to be more conscious of the benefits of cognitive apprenticeship.

This study confirmed that the six dimensions of cognitive apprenticeship had positive influences on the perceived growth of junior doctors, regardless of their clinical domains or period of supervision and that clinical domains influence the implementation of cognitive apprenticeship.

A core premise of the paper is that participative, democratic organizational forms have a direct effect on openness. A key proposition is that organizational forms that promote inclusion, transparency and shared decision-making more broadly as part of their structure and culture would enhance greater openness. However, democratic forms are not a panacea when it comes to openness, there are inherent paradoxes, leading to inevitable tradeoffs that democratic organizations must manage.

The theoretical framework in the study explores the interaction between open strategy making and organizational democracy. This paper reviews the literature on open strategy and organizational democracy and presents propositions linking openness and elements of democratic organizations.

Open strategy requires a level of inclusion and transparency not typically associated with hierarchical organizations. This paper proposed that an organizational context where there are institutionalized processes that promote both transparency and inclusiveness, shared decision-making and a supportive organizational culture would promote openness. At the same time, these organizations need to manage key paradoxes associated with organizational democracy to benefit from its positive effect on openness. The idea is not that hierarchies cannot be open; they may simply need to be more creative and work harder at providing the scaffolding for participation.

This is a conceptual paper and we cannot make any claims of causality. It is also possible to refine the framework by adding or eliminating some of the conceptual variables.

Opening up the strategy process to non-traditional stakeholders can improve the strategy formation process. Non-traditional stakeholders can bring new insight, and be motivated and prepared for strategy implementation when they are part of the strategy formation process. Organizations need to focus on creating a climate that supports openness by emphasizing structural forms that promote openness. Sharing decision-making, profits and creating a democratic culture are important for successful openness. In addition, organizations need to manage the tradeoffs that arise as they link organizational democracy to openness.

This paper discusses the link between open strategy and organizational democracy. The research sheds light on how organizational forms, specifically structure affects openness, as well as the limits to structure and openness.

This chapter introduces how the built environment and walking are connected. It looks at the interrelationships within the built environment, and how those are changing given planning and policy efforts to facilitate increased walking for both leisure activity and commuting. Using a broad review and case-based approach, the chapter examines this epistemological development of walking and the built environment over time, reviews the connections, policies and design strategies and emerging issues. The chapter shows many cases of cities which are creating a more walkable environment. It also reveals that emerging issues related to technology and autonomous vehicles, vision zero and car-free cities, and increased regional policy may play a continued role in shaping the built environment for walking. This dialogue provides both a core underpinning and a future vision for how the built environment can continue to influence and respond to pedestrians in shaping a more walkable world.