Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of accountability in times of exception. The Italian government's account-giving practices are critically analysed with respect to the distinct modes in which duties of accountability are discharged for the exceptional measures taken during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in early 2020.

This paper draws on an exploratory case study. The case analysis draws primarily on data obtained through publicly available documents and covers the period between January 1 and August 7, 2020.

The paper reveals that the Italian government employed various accountability styles (rebuttal, dismissal, reactive, proactive and coactive). Each style influenced both how the government justified its conduct and how it sought to form distinctive relationships with social actors.

The paper uses the notion of “styles of accountability” to empirically illustrate how an unprecedented public governance challenge can reveal broader accountability trends. The paper contributes to accountability research by elucidating how governments tackle ambiguity and uncertainty in their systems of public accountability in extraordinary times.

The authors investigate the contributions of social capital (SC) dimensions (bridging, bonding and linking) in crowdfunding campaigns by comparing the dynamics of agri-food businesses with those of two other sectors – cultural and technological.

The authors develop linear regressions on a proprietary data set of 5,290 projects launched on the Italian platform “Produzionidalbasso.com”, from 2014 to 2020.

The authors’ findings suggest that combining the three social capital dimensions (bridging, bonding and linking) has a more substantial overall effect on the number of backers involved in agri-food projects than in cultural and technological projects. Agri-food entrepreneurs effectively mobilize all resources embedded in the SC dimensions and therefore create the conditions to develop new ties that financially support the project.

Agri-food entrepreneurs may benefit from those results improving their funding strategies. Therefore, agri-food entrepreneurs can explore and exploit the instruments available on the CFD platform – video and rewards associated with the campaign – gaining more benefit from the backers involved compared with other project categories.

The study proposes a broader perspective regarding SC that encompasses the proponent, the company and the campaign with three different types of ties: bonding, bridging and linking. These SC dimensions can differently shape diverse sectors and this eclectic configuration can differentiate the effects of SC in crowdfunding campaigns. This study pinpoints how crowdfunding determinants change, based on project categories.

This study analyses how different forms of online accountability – hierarchical/individualising, hierarchical/calculative and socialising accountability – influence online financing success of non-profit organisations (NPOs).

The study is based on 797 NPOs’ projects listed on three international crowdfunding platforms providing space for NPOs to present, account for and fund social projects.

Results show that accountability forms developed online play significantly different roles in NPOs’ financing. While online hierarchical/individualising and socialising accountability enhance NPO funding, hierarchical/calculative accountability reduces financing success.

The empirical analysis is limited to the specific research context. However, the research provides theoretical and practical insights for the accounting literature.

The paper recommends that NPOs invest more in explaining their past and future activities rather than reporting on pure financial performances, as this may lead to stakeholders’ perception of mission drift and reduce financing success.

This research enhances the understanding of online accountability and its significance in securing financial resources for NPOs by highlighting the necessity of examining various accountability forms individually, as they may serve distinct functions in the financial sustenance of NPOs.

The purpose of this paper is to present the Greek value at risk (VaR) legislation framework and to highlight some of its major deficiencies, using not only theoretical scenarios but also empirical evidence. Moreover, this paper does not only highlight the VaR legislation’s framework deficiencies but also suggests legal interventions for its revision and a new-alternative, flexible and simple-to-be-applied filtered estimation method which improves the VaR evaluations.

The Greek legislation framework suggests that for the daily VaR to be estimated, a minimum data set of the previous year (250 observations) at the 99 per cent confidence level should be considered. This approach may lead to inaccurate VaR estimations, for example, when after a long-term growth period, there is a sudden recession period, because the data input is not representative to the current financial environment. Taking into serious consideration that high volatility periods are linked to a financial crisis, it is assumed that volatility could be an indicator for the financial environment representation. The conventional historical VaR back-tested results suggest that the specific methodology should be revised, especially during the high volatility period. For the newly suggested filtered VaR, the data sample is divided into several regimes depending on the volatility range. The filtered VaR estimation process applies the conventional historical methodology but uses different historical data input depending on the current volatility. This new approach improves the VaR estimation by reducing the VaR daily violations.

The findings regarding the current legislation framework suggest that the financial analysts in Greece have a motivation to adopt a relative VaR approach for risk asset class portfolios (e.g. Greek domestic equity mutual funds), which enables them to bear increased risk without presenting it to the investors. For lower risk portfolios, the absolute VaR may be useful for increased risk bearing strategies. The stricter VaR approaches are preferred to be adopted because stricter VaR estimations are linked to a reduced number of violations. The filtered volatility approach improves the VaR estimations (fewer violations are relative to the conventional approach).

This methodology is designed to be applied for the VaR estimation, but it could be partly applied in other fields of the financial analysis study.

The suggested methodology could present efficient VaR estimation without using sophisticated procedures or expensive VaR systems. Therefore, it could be easily applied by the risk analysts. Moreover, the overview of the Greek legislation’s framework could be useful not only for the Greek regulators but also for the authorities in countries with a similar regulation.

The newly proposed methodology is so accurate and simple to apply that it could have far-reaching impact on practitioners. Finally, this is the first paper that examines the Greek VaR legislation framework in detail.

The purpose of this study is to review the definition, perspective, measurement and context of workplace learning and explored workplace learning to identify its role in quantitative research.

Through an integrative review of the literature, the following four roles that workplace learning has played in these studies were identified: workplace learning as an antecedent, a mediator, a moderator and an outcome.

This paper synthesized results for workplace learning in 45 studies. A total of 88 variables related to workplace learning were identified after four overlapped variables (autonomy, social support, work engagement and workload) in multiples areas were excluded from a total of 92 variables (56 antecedents, 8 mediators, 7 moderators and 21 outcomes).

Because this study identified four roles of workplace learning (as antecedent, mediator, moderator and outcome), this study did not focus on the process of learning in the workplace. Additional study is needed to investigate how workplace learning can lead to outcomes and how this process can link workplace learning and its consequences.

This paper synthesized the antecedents, mediators, moderators and outcomes for workplace learning by integrating the findings in this study. This provided a comprehensive framework that could be used by researchers to continue the empirical research on this topic to develop the dynamics between individual, group, job and organizational variables on the one hand and workplace learning on the other.