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This paper aims to contribute to research on public sector sustainability reporting, by focussing on the sustainability reporting of EU institutions and agencies. It seeks to examine to what extent the EU is leading by example in this area and to highlight the challenges for developing sustainability reporting at EU level.

The paper is based on the European Court of Auditors’ (ECA) review on reporting on sustainability and presents the results of qualitative research, including a survey conducted among EU institutions and agencies. Additional secondary literature analysis puts the review's findings into the current research context on sustainability reporting.

The paper provides an overview of how the EU and its institutions and agencies report on sustainable development. It finds that the EU, as well as its institutions and agencies, are not yet leading by example on sustainability reporting. Of the 53 EU institutions and agencies surveyed, only 2 published sustainability reports. Additionally, the paper identifies key challenges for sustainability reporting in the public sector and highlights future research areas.

This is the first academic article on sustainability reporting of EU institutions and agencies. It contributes to our understanding of the status and challenges of public sector, supranational sustainability reporting and the auditing of such activities.

This chapter analyses the presence of Russian feminists and female LGBTIQ+ activists within US-American mainstream media. In the course of a multimedia discourse analysis, it briefly raises questions of who becomes featured and how, to argue that current debates marginalise Russian queer female, trans*gender and intersex voices, compared to those of male queers. One exception to this trend is the case of the journalist and activist Masha Gessen. Together with Nadya Tolokonnikova of the protest group Pussy Riot, Gessen seems to represent Russian queers and feminists within US media. Although marginal, compared to the presence of US feminisms, especially popular culture figures such as Beyoncé Knowles-Carter or Lady Gaga, the two women become frequently featured within US news media and beyond. Frequently, those articles, interviews and discussions of their work open up a debate, or rather comparisons, between US values and Russian values, questions of modernity, progress and civilisation. Equally often, the female Russian dissidents are pictured as ‘Putin’s victims’ – the female versions of David fighting against Goliath – by focussing especially on their physical vulnerability and their female bodies. In this vein, feminism is constructed as inherently ‘Western’, while the bodies that carry out such feminisms and most of all their country of origin is entirely ‘othered’. Comparing the (self-)representations to other voices of female Russian dissent within US media, the author critically discuss the Western gaze of US mainstream media, its victimising strategies and homonationalistic construction of US identity and US nation in rejection of a ‘backward’ homophobic Russia.

In order to create sustainable health systems, many countries are introducing ways to prioritise health services underpinned by a process of health technology assessment. While this approach requires technical judgements of clinical effectiveness and cost effectiveness, these are embedded in a wider set of social (societal) value judgements, including fairness, responsiveness to need, non-discrimination and obligations of accountability and transparency. Implementing controversial decisions faces legal, political and public challenge. To help generate acceptance for the need for health prioritisation and the resulting decisions, the purpose of this paper is to develop a novel way of encouraging key stakeholders, especially patients and the public, to become involved in the prioritisation process.

Through a multidisciplinary collaboration involving a series of international workshops, ethical and political theory (including accountability for reasonableness) have been applied to develop a practical way forward through the creation of a values framework. The authors have tested this framework in England and in New Zealand using a mixed-methods approach.

A social values framework that consists of content and process values has been developed and converted into an online decision-making audit tool.

The authors have developed an easy to use method to help stakeholders (including the public) to understand the need for prioritisation of health services and to encourage their involvement. It provides a pragmatic way of harmonising different perspectives aimed at maximising health experience.

All health care systems are facing increasing demands within finite resources. Although many countries are introducing ways to prioritise health services, the decisions often face legal, political, commercial and ethical challenge. The research will help health systems to respond to these challenges.

This study helps in increasing public involvement in complex health challenges.

No other groups have used this combination of approaches to address this issue.

The five articles in this section focus on topics such as pay-for-performance (P4P), high-commitment/high-involvement work practices, and safety culture. Interestingly, the link among all of these articles is in understanding and translating best practices in HRM from manufacturing organizations to health care organizations.

In this paper, the authors aim to introduce the notion of region of origin effect and articulate why home region boundaries should be factored in when understanding firm strategy and outcomes.

The paper validates the region of origin effect on internationalization using a sample of 11,677 firms from 99 developing countries in a multilevel model, with both frequentist and Bayesian approaches.

The findings of this paper indicate consistent support for the notion of region of origin effect. The relative importance of direct region effects in explaining variation in firm internationalization was found to be 17.8 per cent. When indirect effects (i.e. varying slopes) were factored in, the relative importance was 16.6 per cent. Additionally, the findings show that the region of origin effect impacts the degree of strength of the well-established firm drivers of internationalization.

Although the importance of the home region location is well known to researchers and practitioners of international business, it has not received the attention it deserves. The findings of this paper clearly demonstrate the need for researchers and practitioners to recognize the role of the region of origin effect in formulating and implementing global strategies.