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Historically, South Africa’s apartheid policies had a negative effect on the financial performance of the South African beverage industry. This effect was characterised by the non‐participation of South African companies in the global market and the presence of foreign enterprises in the domestic market. From 1994, South African industries have been increasingly exposed to new opportunities and forces. Globalisation, deregulation, changing manufacturing systems and the entry of foreign competitors in the 1990s exposed the local industry to competitive challenges in the domestic and the global market. This study examined the impact of changing levels of competition on the performance of strategic business units and the mediating role of management accounting in the South African beverage industry. The methodology employed to investigate this relationship comprised both a survey and a case study. The results indicate a positive correlation between the level of competition and the performance of business units. The results furthermore indicate that enterprises can utilise a management accounting system (MAS) as a strategic response to competition. The increased use of MAS will, in turn, improve the performance of an enterprise. Enterprises that do not respond positively to competition will not survive.

It is well recognized that Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) are important and popular ways of achieving corporate growth. Motivations include a search for monopolistic power and growth, desire to respond to a low level of profitability in the existing business portfolio, improvement of market position, filling out product line, protection of supply or distribution, gain of control, acquire what is available, to internationalize, or to reduce risk. However, M&A strategies are not risk-free, and arguably one of the CEOs greatest challenges. The last several decades have witnessed a surge of interest in top executives. The strategic choice ranks as one of the dominant roles and responsibilities of senior management. Executives’ experiences, values, and personalities greatly influence their interpretations of the situations they face and, in turn, affect their choices (Hambrick, 2007).

Over the past few years, sad stories of M&A failures have been reported and that can be attributed to poor synergy, bad timing, cultural issues, hubris, complexity, and ineffective strategic control mechanisms including poor due diligence process. M&A strategies require a series of choices made over time by actors at various organizational levels; therefore, it cannot be seen as an independent activity but as an integral part of the formal rational procedure as well as the cognitive process. Strategic cognition plays a very important role in the diagnosis of strategic issues and the formulation of problems (Schwenk, 1988). Pre-decision control mechanisms permeate all levels of strategic investments process to ensure that the investment decision aligns with organizational strategy (Alkaraan & Northcott, 2007). Due diligence processes are comprehensive appraisal of strategic investment opportunities undertaken by a prospective buyer, especially to establish its assets and liabilities and evaluate its commercial potential. Due diligence processes refer to verification, investigation, or audit of a potential deal or investment opportunity to confirm all facts, financial information, and to verify anything else that was brought up during an M&A deal or investment process.

This chapter explores the influence of due diligence processes on strategic investment decision-making (SIDM) processes. Further, it provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations. Furthermore, the chapter adopts a strategic perspective on M&A, particular attention has been paid to the influence of due diligence and other related strategic control mechanisms on SIDM processes.

The chapter investigates the relationship between environmental management practices (EMPs) and financial performance (FP).

The study is based on a sample of 187 SMEs and uses data on six EMPs (energy, water, waste, material, emissions, and biodiversity) collected through a self-administered questionnaire from owner-managers of SMEs. Ordinary least squares regression is employed to model the hypothesized paths.

The results suggest a positive and significant relationship between EMPs (energy, water, and material) and FP. There is also a significant positive relationship between an aggregate EMP measure and FP. However, other EMPs (waste, emissions, and biodiversity) are not significantly associated with FP. Overall, these results provide empirical support to the mostly normative suggestion that the conflicting results on the environmental management and financial performance relationship are partly due to the EMP measure used.

The study is based on cross-sectional data, and therefore, it is impossible to determine any changes over time. Longitudinal studies could help confirm the relationship between EMP and FP over a longer period. From a policy perspective, this results mean that the Ghanaian EPA must monitor more closely for violations of laws and regulations relating to waste, emissions, and biodiversity since SMEs do not have incentives to manage these impacts without commensurate return.

The study contributes by documenting evidence of the relationship between multiple measures of EMP and FP. This unlike most existing studies has enabled us to report evidence of how each EMP measure affects FP differently and where win–win opportunities are for SMEs. Thus, the win–win opportunities are associated with some EMP measures but not all.

This study aims to examine the relationship between environmental cost (EC) on organisational performance (OPM) through an environmental management system (EMS) as the mediating variable.

A total of 2,600 manufacturers were identified and consequently selected as the entire study population. Additionally, this study used the structural equation modelling technique to identify the mediator effects of EMS between EC and OPM.

The EC and EMS relationship on OPM produced direct and indirect consequences. Hence, it is concluded that manufacturing industry in Malaysia are focused on the OPM when implementing EC and EMS.

The model would incorporate EC and EMS implementation on OPM in the Malaysian manufacturing industry. This study could also be advantageous to the industry in improving EC, EMS and OPM.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the characteristics and roles of management accounting systems (MAS) on today’s business organizations and their management, systems, procedures, people, performance and competitive environments.

A survey-based methodology was utilized in this research to gather organizational information relevant to the different facets of the MAS and their operational and strategic practices impact on organizations operating under increasingly uncertain and competitive environments. A structural equation modeling approach was utilized to uncover relevant relationships and associations among relevant variables.

The findings of this exploratory research revealed a direct influence of MAS on the managerial and organizational performance through the managers’ performance. The results also suggest that MAS is directly influenced by users’ training, and satisfaction, task uncertainty and decentralization of decisions. It was also indirectly influenced by top management support. In addition, the findings also revealed a direct influence of the decentralization of decisions on the managers’ and on organizational performance.

While this study addressed important issues that have practical management value, it is limited to a sample from one country. Future studies in different businesses and cultural settings are needed to enhance the theoretical and practical contributions of the findings and conclusions of this study.

The issues explored in this study are very much relevant to the utilization and design of MAS and their increasing tactical and strategic roles in the management of today’s business organizations. The findings of this study have relevant practical value for managers as they attempt to cope with increasingly competitive environments through the deployment of their existing capabilities and best practices. In this context, the accounting management system has practical utilities that facilitate the control and management of the operations and strategies of the organization.

This research offers practicing management an integrated approach, as they aspire to utilize their organizational MAS to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their organizations. Integrating the different aspects of management accounting information systems, given their impact on the different aspects of the organization, is needed for the establishment of theoretical research models aiming at the enhancement of the competitive performance of today’s organizations. This study also offers to executives of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) a new multidimensional instrument for assessing the effectiveness of their management information systems, which can help to improve their benchmarking processes.

This study brings together cognitive and organizational aspects of the strategic investment decision-making process. It focuses on the early stages of strategic investment decision-making. This paper aims to augment the limitations of previous survey-based research through an archival case study that describes pre-decision screening in detail.

This paper draws on archival data covering an investment decision undertaken by a large brewing company. The data cover a period of about six years, focusing on the decision to invest in West Africa. A rational/intuitive orientation model of the process is used as a framework to help analyze the archival evidence.

Strategic investment decisions are non-programmed, complex and uncertain. For some companies (e.g. those with a strategic focus on new expansions), certain non-programmed decisions may become semi-programmed in the course of time by applying knowledge learned from having successfully handled non-programmed decision situations in the past. However, other companies without such a focus may not be able to programme part of their strategic decisions. Pre-decision control mechanisms constitute a form of strategic control by detecting potential problem areas in the investment option before formal approval.

Given the narrow scope of this paper – a single case study – the findings are used for theorization rather than offering generalizable results. There is a need for unified models to enrich our understanding of the influence that contextual factors have on strategic investment decision-making. Effective strategic pre-decision control mechanisms that maintain a good balance between rational and intuitive approaches are matters that remain open for debate in future research.

Research on organizational and cognitive aspects of the strategic investment decision-making process is inherently practical. To achieve successful strategic investment decisions, it is essential to devote more attention to the choice and design of strategic control mechanisms.

The framework of this study can help practitioners to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of their decision-making practices. It focuses on three aspects that are relatively absent in the literature: the strategic problem, the strategic choice and the chronological relations between the five stages of the strategic investment decision-making process. The use of historical data is suited to providing illustrations of intuitive/heuristic-based practices that would otherwise be hard to capture.

The increasing environmental challenges require efforts to expand the scope of accounting to better evaluate organizations’ behaviour/practices. This paper aims to report the results of studying the link between environmental management accounting (EMA), board role performance (BRP), company characteristics and environmental performance disclosure (EPD) of Ugandan manufacturing firms.

The study was correlational and cross-sectional. The results are obtained through content analysis of company reports, websites and a questionnaire survey of 102 large and medium manufacturing firms in four districts of Uganda.

Results indicate that EMA causes significant variances in EPD in manufacturing firms. Also, BRP and firm size explain variances in EPD through EMA.

The research does not control for industry type. Still, the results offer hope on how the reliability of environmental performance information that companies voluntarily provide outside financial statements, can be improved.

Results potentially extend available literature by providing a mechanism through which the environmental performance information is obtained for onward disclosure.

This study investigated the impact of leader-member exchange (LMX) on emotional exhaustion among Chinese registered construction engineers by examining the mediating role of active management by exception (AMbE) and the moderating role of self-esteem.

Using a sample of 304 registered construction engineers, the study applies the job demands-resources (JD-R) model to explore how LMX, AMbE and self-esteem interact to influence emotional exhaustion.

The findings indicate a significant negative relationship between LMX and emotional exhaustion, suggesting that higher-quality exchanges between leaders and members reduce emotional exhaustion. Additionally, AMbE was found to mediate this relationship, where high-quality LMX relationships decrease the extent of AMbE, subsequently lowering emotional exhaustion. Self-esteem was also found to moderate the relationship between AMbE and emotional exhaustion, with high self-esteem exacerbating the negative impact of AMbE and low self-esteem buffering this impact.

These results extend the JD-R model by incorporating leadership quality and management style as critical factors influencing emotional well-being. The study underscores the need for balanced management approaches that consider both supportive and corrective behaviors and highlights the importance of tailoring interventions based on individual differences in self-esteem. The findings provide valuable insights for both theory and practice in managing stress and enhancing the well-being of professionals in high-stress industries. Future research should aim to replicate these findings with larger samples to further validate and extend the results.

The idea of implementing supply chain management (SCM) principles for the construction industry was embraced by construction stakeholders to enhance the sector's performance. The analysis from the literature revealed that the implementation of SCM in the construction industry enhances the industry's value in terms of cost-saving, time savings, material management, risk management and others. The construction supply chain (CSC) can be managed using the pull or push system. This chapter also discusses the origin and proliferation of SCM into the construction industry. The chapter revealed that the concept of SCM has passed through five different eras: the creation era, the use of ERP, globalisation stage, specialisation stage and electronic stage. The findings from the literature revealed that we are presently in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) era. At this stage, the SCM witnesses the adoption of technologies and principles driven by the 4IR. This chapter also revealed that the practice of SCM in the construction industry is centred around integration, collaboration, communication and the structure of the supply chain (SC). The forms and challenges hindering the adoption of these practices were also discussed extensively in this chapter.

Assessing image quality is a difficult task. Different demands need distinct criteria, so it is not realistic to decide which contrast enhancement method is better only through one criterion. The main purpose is to propose an efficient scheme to effectively evaluate image quality. Furthermore, the idea can be applied in other fields.

To objectively and quantitatively assess image quality, the authors integrate four criteria into one composite criterion and use it to evaluate seven existing contrast enhancement methods. The mechanism of integration is through a newly proposed way of computing a grey relational grade (GRGd), called the consistent grey relational grade (CGRGd).

In this paper, the authors propose the CGRGd, which is more efficient and consistent than other existing GRGds. When applied to image quality evaluation, the proposed CGRGd can effectively choose the best method than others. The results also indicate that the proposed CGRGd combined with appropriate criteria can be widely used in the field of multiple criteria.

The proposed CGRGd is a new approach to the problem of multi-criteria evaluation, and its application to the evaluation of image quality is a novel idea. For readers interested in the field of multi-criteria decision-making, the CGRGd provides an efficient and effective alternative.