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Following the imperative for human-centric digital innovation brought by the paradigm of Industry 5.0, the article aims to integrate the dispersed and multi-disciplinary literature on individual risks for workers to define, explain and predict individual risks related to Industry 4.0 technologies.

The paper follows the question, “What is the current knowledge and evidence base concerning risks related to Industry 4.0 technologies, and how can this inform digital innovation management in the manufacturing sector through the lens of the Industry 5.0 paradigm?” and uses the method of systematic literature review to identify and discuss potential risks for individuals associated with digital innovation. N = 51 contributions met the inclusion criteria.

The literature review indicates dominant trends and significant gaps in understanding risks from a human-centric perspective. The paper identifies individual risks, their interplay with different technologies and their antecedents at the social, organizational and individual levels. Despite this, the paper shows how the literature concentrates in studying risks on only a limited number of categories and/or concepts. Moreover, there is a lack of consensus in the theoretical and conceptual frameworks. The paper concludes by illustrating an initial understanding of digital innovation via a human-centered perspective on psychological risks.

Findings yield practical implications. In investing in the adoption, generation or recombination of new digital technologies in organizations, the paper recommends managers ensure to prevent risks at the individual level. Accordingly, the study’s findings can be used as a common starting point for extending the repertoire of managerial practices and interventions and realizing human-centric innovation.

Following the paradigm of Industry 5.0, the paper offers a holistic view of risks that incorporates the central role of the worker as crucial to the success of digital innovation. This human-centric perspective serves to inform the managerial field about important factors in risk management that can result in more effective targeted interventions in risk mitigation approaches. Lastly, it can serve to reinterpret digital innovation management and propose future avenues of research on risk.

The mapping of university research onto the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is important, as it demonstrates the crucial contributions that research makes to the SDGs while also showing researchers how the SDGs can inform research and enhance research impact. This paper aims to detail a novel and comprehensive research mapping approach implemented by University College Cork (UCC) and helps to guide other higher education institutions (HEIs) who are beginning their own mapping exercises.

This paper adopts a mixed-method approach, involving the quantitative mapping of publications, qualitative impact case studies, and the collation of researchers’ self-assessment data at innovative SDGs workshops.

The workshops generated a high level of engagement from the research community, resulting in 119 impact case studies and 497 researchers mapping their own research to the goals/targets. The results provide a clear picture of the main goals/targets that are the focus of UCC research, at the institutional level, in schools/research centres, and at the researcher level.

This study was resource intensive. Its reach may be challenging for other universities to replicate, as success was supported by UCC’s longstanding institutional commitment to sustainability, the mature structures in place and the practical investment in this project.

The authors are unaware of other universities using this comprehensive approach. While other studies focus on the 17 overarching goals only, UCC research, as far as possible, was mapped at a deeper level to each of the associated SDGs targets.

The purpose of this study is to add to the currently limited research on individual level people analytics (PA) adoption by focusing on a vital resource in the implementation of PA, namely the technology used for PA. We draw on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to examine antecedents of the use of technology for PA.

This study uses latent profile analysis to examine how different antecedents of PA (technology) adoption jointly act among 279 users of a specific PA technology.

This study identifies four user profiles, that we labeled the skeptic diplomats, the optimistic strugglers, the optimists, and the enthusiasts. These profiles relate to differences in user satisfaction and the frequency and versatility of PA technology use. This study demonstrates that performance benefits, social influence, required effort, and facilitating conditions jointly affect the use of PA technology, but that the latter two might be the most influential factors.

This study offers recommendations to practitioners and organizations on which actions by managers and the organization can be taken to support the use of PA technology.

Compared to previous research, we take a different approach by applying latent profile analysis to examine the combined effect of antecedents on user behavior and user satisfaction. In addition to a different analytical approach, we also extend existing research on individual PA adoption by focusing on actual behaviors and behavioral intention.

The purpose of the review is to synthesize the research on materiality measures of sustainability reporting and highlight how preparers, users, auditors, regulators and other stakeholders assess or determine the materiality in sustainability reporting. The review further summarizes the findings on consequences and determinants of material disclosures in sustainability reporting. Several directions for future research are also discussed.

This study provides a systematic review of materiality measures developed in the context of sustainability reporting. This synthesis of the literature summarizes the existing methodologies of measuring materiality. It also evaluates the strength and limitations of existing methods and approaches of measuring materiality in sustainability disclosures.

We find that the ex post materiality measures are simplistic and unidirectional in nature and ex ante materiality measures lack external validity and are generally narrow in focus – for example, focused on single firms or industries. Another major limitation in the current literature is the absence of robust empirical investigation of double materiality in sustainability reporting and a vast majority of the measures are developed without stakeholder engagement. Lastly, we document that the findings on determinants of material disclosure are fragmented and inconclusive and that the literature on consequences of material disclosure is rather un-explored.

The study explains the connections and differences between the various materiality measures. We document that materiality is measured in two distinct ways, ex ante and ex post and often times without stakeholder engagement. Moreover, given that a vast majority of the measures rely on manual content analysis, we find that they suffer from reproducibility and scalability.

As the warehouse is increasingly viewed as a strategic component, retailers’ willingness to invest in automated warehouse systems (AWS) has increased. These investment decisions are influenced by well-known operational factors, but strategic factors, which have received limited attention in warehousing literature, also play a pivotal role. Addressing this gap, this study investigates how strategic factors influence AWS investment decisions in retail.

Based on a theoretical foundation of technology adoption, strategic intent, and automation strategy, an abductive multiple case study is conducted with eight purposefully selected retailers that had implemented or were in the process of implementing a large AWS.

The study ranks 10 competitive priorities and 21 AWS evaluation aspects and shows how the firm’s strategic intent and the AWS investment decisions can be connected via the formulation of a warehouse automation strategy. The findings reveal the content for such a strategy – including 7 categories and 17 considerations – related to, for example, technology innovativeness, efficiency versus adaptiveness, technology-supplier relationships, control and ownership, and risk exposure. The study empirically shows how manager characteristics and owner strategies influence retailers’ AWS investment decisions. Four strategic intent profiles are abductively developed: reliability and delivery service; profitable deliveries; scalable logistics for volume growth; and platform building for logistics services. The study also provides evidence of a reciprocal relationship between strategic intent and AWS investment decisions.

The study is conducted with a limited number of Swedish retailers, indicating a need for additional studies to test the findings across different contexts.

The study offers a framework for formulating a warehouse automation strategy. As a foundation for developing the framework, the study shares empirical insights from retailers in the forefront of AWS implementation.

The study contributes as a conversation changer by showing the importance of shifting from a tactical-operational focus to a strategic perspective on warehouse configuration in general and on AWS investment decisions in retail in particular.

This study aims to examine Africa’s environment, social and governance (ESG) research through a systematic literature review (SLR). The authors aim to identify and discuss influential aspects of ESG accounting in Africa, focusing on prominent themes, authors and journals in published articles using Africa’s setting. It also constructs agendas for future research to advance the literature and contribute to the ESG accounting practices in Africa.

This study uses an SLR approach, where accounting research journal articles are collated and compiled according to pre-determined criteria and analysed using bibliometric techniques. After carefully reviewing 1,387 articles, the authors selected and examined 246 academic articles published from 2006 to 2024 in 32 accounting journals indexed in the Web of Science.

The authors identify four main streams of ESG accounting research in Africa, namely, ESG disclosure in primary-based economies; corporate governance dynamics in Africa; internal mechanisms in ESG reporting; and external mechanisms in ESG disclosure. According to the analysis, the authors propose future research agendas to discuss institutional perspective of ESG reporting standards implementation and enforcement; value creation impact on sustainability performance; ESG reporting effect on conflict resolution; and ESG reporting quality and environmental sustainability.

This study assists policymakers, academics, managers, accounting professionals and investors in comprehensively understanding the current state and projecting future actions to develop ESG accounting in Africa.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is perhaps the first to examine Africa’s ESG research through an SLR. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by providing a comprehensive analysis of the existing ESG accounting landscape and tailoring future research agendas based on the distinctive characteristics of Africa.

The question of “what works?” for organizational diversity and inclusion (D&I) has captivated practitioners and researchers for some time, but there is a lack of unifying knowledge on what interventions are effective. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact, outcomes and quality of evidence relating to interventions used by organizations for workplace D&I to inform what works in practice and where there are still evidence gaps.

This multidisciplinary meta-review – a systematic review of reviews – summarized the effects of various practices, policies, programs and initiatives across dimensions of diversity and disciplines.

From 37 reviews over 13 years, we identified 12 categories of interventions (e.g. diversity training, de-biasing selection procedures and workplace accommodations) mapped to 22 outcomes. Workplace accommodations and job training were linked with positive outcomes in the age and disability dimensions of diversity. Diversity training was associated with comparatively higher-quality evidence, albeit its effects were largely limited to awareness and learning outcomes. The literature on recruitment, leave and compensation policies reported some mixed effects on D&I.

This meta-review provides a synthesis of the current state of evidence across multiple disciplines and diversity dimensions to guide future research and practical D&I actions. It has implications for research (e.g. greater attention needed for interventions to improve inclusion) and practice (e.g. setting realistic expectations about what change organizations can expect to achieve).

In 2000, Cañibano et al. published a literature review entitled “Accounting for Intangibles: A Literature Review”. This paper revisits the conclusions drawn in that paper. We also discuss the intervening developments in scholarly research, standard setting and practice over the past 20+ years to outline the future challenges for research into accounting for intangibles.

We conducted a literature review to identify past developments and link the findings to current accounting standard-setting developments to inform our view of the future.

Current intangibles accounting practices are conservative and unlikely to change. Accounting standard setters are more interested in how companies report and disclose the value of intangibles rather than changing how they are determined. Standard setters are also interested in accounting for new forms of digital assets and reporting economic, social, governance and sustainability issues and how these link to financial outcomes. The IFRS has released complementary sustainability accounting standards for disclosing value creation in response to the latter. Therefore, the topic of intangibles stretches beyond merely how intangibles create value but how they are also part of a firm’s overall risk and value creation profile.

There is much room academically, practically, and from a social perspective to influence the future of accounting for intangibles. Accounting standard setters and alternative standards, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and European Union non-financial and sustainability reporting directives, are competing complementary initiatives.

Our results reveal a window of opportunity for accounting scholars to research and influence how intangibles and other non-financial and sustainability accounting will progress based on current developments.

This research investigates the feasibility, benefits and challenges of environmental sustainability reporting by Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs).

The authors develop an abridged SME environmental sustainability reporting framework based on the environmental aspects of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards for Sustainability Reporting. The authors collect the views of 203 SME accounting practitioners on our proposed reporting framework using a survey questionnaire.

The authors find that the greatest perceived benefit for firms adopting environmental sustainability reporting is that it leads to an improvement in company image. Lack of knowledge, resources and data capturing tools impede implementation of environmental sustainability reporting for both SMEs and accounting practitioners. While SMEs are not yet required to implement environmental sustainability reporting, the research discusses implications for policy makers and practitioners for adopting environmental sustainability reporting in the SME context.

The main limitation of this study is that environmental sustainability reporting for SMEs is in its infancy. A longitudinal survey, or re-examining this survey over time, could be beneficial to assess the long-term benefits and costs of implementing sustainability reporting.

The findings of this study have practical implications for the future development of SME environmental sustainability reporting in the EU and for regulators considering sustainability reporting regulations with a specific focus on SMEs.

The study reconstructs the GRI environmental guidelines into a framework for SMEs and provides empirical evidence on the accountant’s sustainability reporting role.

Environmental emissions are increasing in the urban areas. Much of the emissions arise from public procurement activities given that public sector firms are major customers to many supplying firms. Given the tremendous contribution, this study aims to examine the adoption of environmentally friendly urban freight logistics practices among public sector firms through assessing the impact of urban environmental governance, government environmental communication and organizational environmental governance.

Data for the study were collected in a single time period from central procuring and disposing entities (public sector firms) in the urban areas. A sample of 105 public sector firms in were used. One procurement officer and one member of the contracts committee were the key informants in the study. AMOS SPSS version 26 was used to obtain the results for the structural model and measurement model, respectively.

The findings indicate that the adoption of environmentally friendly urban freight logistics practices among public sector firms is significantly influenced by government environmental communication, organizational environmental governance and urban environmental governance. Urban environmental governance significantly influences organizational environmental governance. Urban environmental governance fully mediates the relationship between government environmental communication and public sector firms’ adoption of environmentally friendly urban freight logistics practices. Also, urban environmental governance and organizational environmental governance mediate the relationship between government environmental communication and adoption of environmentally friendly urban freight logistics practices.

This study examined the adoption of environmentally friendly urban freight logistics practices among public sector firms. However, the study was conducted in a public procurement setting rather than a private sector procurement setting. Also, the study examined the impact of government environmental communication on public sector firms’ adoption of environmentally friendly urban freight logistics practices ignoring the impact of internal communications made within the public sector firms on environmental issues.

This study examined the adoption of environmentally friendly urban freight logistics practices among public sector firms. Freight logistics in public sector procurement has not been given significant attention in earlier research. Emphasis is placed on sustainable public sector procurement ignoring other aspects that would help curb environmental emissions that may arise during and after the delivery of public procurement requirements.