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The great attractions of the Internet are its flexibility and its international reach and, some might say, its anarchic nature. However, a company planning advertising or trading on the Internet must not assume that it is not regulated. This is simply not true. This paper focuses primarily on the regulation affecting advertising and the financial services sector (which is already a heavily regulated area in its own right). Financial services companies should be aware, however, that there is a raft of other relevant legislation, such as data protection (including the trail‐blazing data protection bill published on 14th January 1998) which is required to implement a 1995 EU Data Protection Directive in the United Kingdom.

The purpose of this paper is to make sense of the tensions and contradictions between different conceptions of the meaning of carbon accounting.

The paper draws on theories of framing to help explain the divergent understandings and practices currently encompassed by the term “carbon accounting”. The empirical core of the paper is based on a review of the literature and illustrated through examples of some of the contemporary problems in carbon accounting.

Tensions and contradictions in carbon accounting can be understood as the result of “collisions” between at least five overlapping frames of reference, namely physical, political, market‐enabling, financial and social/environmental modes of carbon accounting.

Unresolved tensions in carbon accounting can undermine confidence in climate science, policies, markets and reporting, thereby ultimately discouraging action to mitigate climate change. Understanding this problem can contribute to finding practical solutions.

The paper makes three distinct contributions to the emerging theoretical literature on carbon accounting. First, it provides a unique “unpacked” definition of carbon accounting that attempts to represent the contemporary range of meanings encompassed by the term. Second, it demonstrates how social science ideas about framing can help explain why definitions and understandings of carbon accounting vary. Third, by making the interactions between different forms of carbon accounting explicit through the metaphor of colliding frames of reference, the origins of some of the contemporary intractable issues in carbon accounting can be better understood.

This paper aims to set out several of the key issues and areas of the inter‐disciplinary field of climate change research based in accounting and accountability, and to introduce the papers that compose this AAAJ special issue.

The paper provides an overview of issues in the science of climate, as well as an eclectic collection of independent and inter‐disciplinary contributions to accounting for climate change. Through additional accounting analysis, and a shadow carbon account, it also illustrates how organisations and nations account for and communicate their greenhouse gas (GHG) footprints and emissions behaviour.

The research shows that accounting for carbon and other GHG emissions is immensely challenging because of uncertainties in estimation methods. The research also shows the enormity of the challenge associated with reducing those emissions in the near future.

The paper surveys past work on a wide variety of perspectives associated with climate change science, politics and policy, as well as organisational and national emissions and accounting behaviour. It provides an overview of challenges in the area, and seeks to set an agenda for future research that remains interesting and different.

This paper aims to explore the nature of the emerging discourse of private climate change reporting, which takes place in one‐on‐one meetings between institutional investors and their investee companies.

Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with representatives from 20 UK investment institutions to derive data which was then coded and analysed, in order to derive a picture of the emerging discourse of private climate change reporting, using an interpretive methodological approach, in addition to explorative analysis using NVivo software.

The authors find that private climate change reporting is dominated by a discourse of risk and risk management. This emerging risk discourse derives from institutional investors' belief that climate change represents a material risk, that it is the most salient sustainability issue, and that their clients require them to manage climate change‐related risk within their portfolio investment. It is found that institutional investors are using the private reporting process to compensate for the acknowledged inadequacies of public climate change reporting. Contrary to evidence indicating corporate capture of public sustainability reporting, these findings suggest that the emerging private climate change reporting discourse is being captured by the institutional investment community. There is also evidence of an emerging discourse of opportunity in private climate change reporting as the institutional investors are increasingly aware of a range of ways in which climate change presents material opportunities for their investee companies to exploit. Lastly, the authors find an absence of any ethical discourse, such that private climate change reporting reinforces rather than challenges the “business case” status quo.

Although there is a wealth of sustainability reporting research, there is no academic research on private climate change reporting. This paper attempts to fill this gap by providing rich interview evidence regarding the nature of the emerging private climate change reporting discourse.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of blockchain technology in contested markets. The authors specifically consider the development and utilization of this accounting system as a device that might democratize contested markets for vulnerable populations, supporting contested entrepreneurs while “cooling” the moral contestation to the market.

This study analyzes the relationship between vulnerable populations and contested market activities, the inclusive development and potential trust created by a blockchain accounting information system and how this interaction potentially creates support for economic and social systems.

This paper demonstrates that, in an era of decreased trust especially as it relates to a digital, globalized marketplace, blockchain has the potential to create democracies of access, trust and agency. This system overcomes many of the deficiencies associated with transparency and accountability and connects market participants with society, strengthening its potential to bridge two opposing vulnerable population viewpoints necessary for possible contested market development.

The authors contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of emerging technologies in the interconnectedness between vulnerable populations in a contested market. Recognizing that blockchain is an imperfect version of its ideal intention, the authors also discuss the limitations of the system with respect to corruption, collusion and potential issues of adoption, and how this reduces the influence of blockchain as a “cooling” device within contested markets.

The authors provide an illustrative example whereby an entire industry might be persuaded from avoidance to promotion of new traceability devices and supported in the development of an accessible market.

Global government's economic support for social systems continues to experience significant declines. With ever-degrading healthcare, infrastructure, public education, childcare, etc., new sources of economic influx are often desired. One potential source of additional funds is from the tax revenues derived from contested market transactions, those stigmatized industries often operating illegally. With substantial public distrust, blockchain potentially provides such industries with democratization and the trust necessary to transition the industry into a legal environment, with tax revenues benefiting various social systems.

This study goes beyond the preliminary discussions of the benefits and consequences of blockchain. Instead, the authors focus on the use of blockchain within contested markets and its ability to influence vulnerable populations. The authors also consider the use of blockchain-based accounting information systems to provide a holistic and more democratic platform from a regulatory, market participant and societal standpoint.

While the steep increases in rates of incarceration seen in the United States in the late twentieth century have begun to level out, one form of incarceration has seen more drastic reductions in rates of use in the 2010s: long-term solitary confinement. Across the United States, prisons that once isolated prisoners for decades at a time stand hauntingly empty. The solitary confinement reform movement provides an important lens for examining what happens when an entrenched punitive practice faces widespread and sustained criticism and reveals the multiple paradigms through which reform operates – through politics, litigation, or charismatic leadership.

The study examines the experiences of physical restraint procedures reported by nursing staff in a secure mental health service. Interview data were subjected to thematic content analysis in accordance with grounded theory methodology.Nursing staff reported a range of emotional responses to the use of restraint procedures. They included anxiety, anger, boredom, distress and crying. In some cases these responses were confirmed by descriptions from patients.Staff coped with the emotional responses to restraint in a variety of ways. Some staff discussed the ‘stigma’ attached to showing feelings to other staff. They described how laughter was used to reduce stress following an incident and how distressing emotions had to be taken home. Some staff described how they had become ‘hardened’ to the experience of restraint. A substantial proportion of staff suggested that they had ‘no’ emotional reactions and many reported ‘automatic’ responding during a restraint event in which they did not feel any emotion.Possible implications of these responses and clinical practice are discussed.

This chapter reviews qualitative research on parenting children with disabilities published over the last 50 years to explore whether shifts in academic discourse and changes in professional training have affected research on parenting and/or the experiences of parents who are the subject of such research.

An extensive literature search was conducted, and 78 peer-reviewed, qualitative studies on the experience of parenting a child with a disability were included in the sample. Themes were extracted from the reviewed literature and compared across decades.

The findings of the present review suggest that some aspects of the parenting experience have changed very little. In particular, parents continue to experience negative reactions such as stress and anomie, especially early in their children’s lives, and socially imposed barriers such as unhelpful professionals, and a lack of needed services continue to create problems and inspire an entrepreneurial response. In addition, stigmatizing encounters with others continue to be a common occurrence. In contrast to earlier decades, studies conducted in more recent years have begun to use the social model of disability as an analytic frame and also increasingly report that parents are questioning and challenging the concept of “normal” itself.

Additional improvements are needed in professional education and services to reduce the negative reactions experienced by parents of children with disabilities.

The findings of this meta-analysis can serve as a guide to future research on parenting children with disabilities.

We can think of those with a cynical turn of mind who might consider not a little of the present output of the parliamentary machine as “harem scarem” law, but the indecent haste, the freak urgency of some politically inspired laws apart, it is only too obvious that law is being made under rush conditions, and the reasons are not far to seek. A hectic, over‐active party executive, feverishly pushing ahead with its policies produces impossible working conditions for the parliamentary draftsmen. Law, whether it is statute or regulation, has never been more complex than it is today; time allowed for parliamentary debate is completely inadequate; too many and varied interests have to be taken into account, to say nothing of the vast range of delegated legislation. The urgency of some legislation is doubtful; it is difficult to see the need for all the hurry; a little more time in proper debate would prevent some of the loopholes which subsequently appear and render the law more comprehensible; incomprehensibility and justice are rarely compatible. As Diplock L J., said in the Court of Appeal in Rex. v. Industrial Injuries Commissioner ex parte Cable (1968) 1 A.E.R., 9, a few months ago—“Judges have been at their wits' end to know what some of the provisions mean. It would be a good thing if time could be found to remedy the blemishes.”