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The purpose of this paper is to study the relation between compensation clawbacks and lawsuits and analyze how these two corporate disciplinary forces interact. This paper hypothesizes that by allowing firms to recoup compensation from managers who breach their fiduciary duty, clawbacks provide a form of discipline that potentially reduces the likelihood of managerial wrongdoing, which, in turn, lowers the risk of corporate lawsuits.

This paper identifies whether or not a company in the S&P 1500 had a clawback policy between 2007 and 2014 by searching the company filings and press releases. The authors also construct different proxies for litigation risk and lawsuit outcomes using the Audit Analytics Database. They then perform a variety of empirical tests to examine the association between clawbacks and litigation risk and the association between clawbacks and litigation outcomes.

This paper finds that firms with higher litigation risk are more likely to adopt a clawback policy. In addition, after the adoption of clawback provisions, litigation risk significantly declines, suggesting that clawback policies are effective in reducing the likelihood of corporate lawsuits. Furthermore, firms with clawback policies are approximately 50 per cent more likely to have lawsuits against them dismissed or settled for lower amounts (approximately 12 per cent lower).

The findings of this paper provide insights to the efficacy of a current change in compensation regulation, the mandatory clawback adoption requirement by the Dodd–Frank Act of 2010.

This paper contributes to the literature on both clawbacks and litigation, as it is the first to analyze the relation between the two.

This paper aims to reflect on the future of sustainability reporting standards by examining the current practical initiatives and the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) position in the arena of non-financial and sustainability reporting and identifies avenues for future research.

A critical reflection and analysis of research on the GRI’s achievements and the influence of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation’s initiative to develop global sustainability reporting standards.

The GRI has a dominant position in sustainability reporting standard-setting related to the provision of information about the influence of reporting organisations on society and the natural environment. The IFRS Foundation’s initiative to enter the sustainability reporting standard-setting arena, although from the perspective of providing information to investors regarding the influence of society and the environment on the reporting organisation, is an attempt to solidify its own position as the reporting standard setter of choice, not only for financial reporting but for all reporting standards. However, despite its aim to differentiate its role from the GRI by leveraging the financial-oriented ideological side of double materiality, we argue that the IFRS is unlikely to harm the GRI’s global position in producing multi-stakeholder standards for sustainability reporting and accountability. This differentiated position is facilitated by the different sources of legitimacy the GRI and IFRS rely on.

The paper identifies future research opportunities.

Due to the recent initiatives for creating new sustainability reporting standard-setters, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper offers one of the first critical reflections on the past and the likely future of the GRI and its sustainability reporting standards. The paper also identifies several new avenues for future research.

This paper aims to critically reflect on the formation of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), its current agenda and likely future direction. The authors consider the relationships between the ISSB and other standard setters, regulators, practitioners and stakeholders, and develop a comprehensive research agenda.

The authors review and critically analyse academic and practitioner publications alongside the ISSB’s workplans to identify the themes impacting the future of the ISSB and to develop a research agenda.

Three key themes emerge from the authors’ analysis that are likely to influence the future of the ISSB: the jurisdiction and scope of the ISSB – how far its influence is likely to extend, both geographically and conceptually; the ongoing legitimacy challenge the ISSB is facing in terms of setting an agenda for sustainability reporting; and the “capture” of sustainability reporting by influential stakeholders including capital providers.

The formation of the ISSB is critical to the future of sustainability reporting. The authors provide a comprehensive and topical overview of the past, present and potential future of the ISSB, highlighting the need for further research and providing a research agenda that addresses outstanding questions in the field.

The purpose of this paper is to review research on litigation in corporate finance.

This paper surveys studies on the estimation of litigation risk, litigation costs, stock reaction to lawsuit announcement, and the effect of litigation on corporate financial policies and outcomes.

The first section presents a survey of studies that estimate litigation risk. The authors then discuss a set of studies that focus on the various costs associated with litigation. The third area of review is about studies which estimate the market reaction to a lawsuit announcement. The next section surveys studies that examine the relation between litigation and a variety of corporate policies, behaviors, and outcomes. The authors then discuss the emerging literature on how corporate political connections can influence the outcome of litigation. The survey concludes with a brief summary and a discussion of suggestions for future research involving corporate litigation.

By providing an extensive review of the literature on litigation in corporate finance, this survey can help researchers to identify recent trends in litigation research and select promising new avenues of investigation in the field.

Motivated by the new European Union Directive 2014/95 on non-financial and diversity information, this paper aims to develop a future research agenda to conduct pragmatic, theory-oriented research into the Directive and corporate sustainability reporting.

Drawing upon the relational dynamics between states, firms and society in regulating non-financial reporting (NFR), this essay frames and analyses the Directive and its grand theories, as unproven theories, by discussing its practical concerns and reviewing the academic literature.

The Directive is an act of policy to legitimise NFR that encompasses two grand theories: improve the comparability of information and enhance corporate accountability. From a pluralist perspective, companies can rest assure that their compliance with the Directive will be perceived as socially desirable, proper and appropriate. However, some of the forces involved in translating the Directive into actionable policies operate contra to the Directive’s goals and, instead, act as barriers to its grand theories. In addressing these barriers, a research agenda is proposed that both traces backward to re-examine the foundational theories of the past and looks forward to explore alternative possibilities for achieving these goals.

This paper provides researchers with a practical-driven and theory-oriented agenda for future research in light of the rising academic interest in the Directive.

The barriers to the Directive’s grand theories help policymakers and practitioners to understand the practical concerns about the implementation of the Directive and other mandatory NFR policies.

This paper enriches the emerging debate on the Directive and highlights future possibilities for fruitful empirical research by developing a research agenda.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest best practices for managing a successful student-managed investment program (SMIP) based on the experience of the Marquette University’s Applied Investment Management (AIM) program.

The authors provide a detailed description of the program curriculum, instructional design, fund structure, program history, fund performance and student outcomes.

Through its experiential learning innovations, focus on ethics and close relationships with a dedicated alumni group, the AIM program prepares students for a successful career in investment analysis. Students who graduate from the AIM program experience a significantly higher successful placement rate and higher compensation at their first post-graduation job than finance major students who graduate outside the program.

This paper provides a detailed description of the distinguishing characteristics of the AIM program and, in doing so, it offers ideas that could be implemented by other SMIPs to improve student satisfaction, proficiency in investment analysis and employment prospects.

Why and how do cognitive distortions in managerial decision making occur? All organizations are imperfect systems (Katz and Kahn, 1966), with wrong decisions often just round the corner. As a consequence, addressing these important questions continues to be particularly lively in the management development area, especially in terms of its intended contribution to the de-biasing activity. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to provide the current scientific dialogue on the topic with updated lenses, which can also be innovative from some aspects.

The review framework is based on the recent, impactful article on biases in managerial decision making by Kahneman et al. (2011), and on Bazerman and Moore’s (2013) perspective on emanating heuristics, considered as the causes of biases. Accordingly, the authors derive four intertwined thematic clusters of heuristics, through which the authors systematically group and critically analyze the management literature mostly published on the topic since 2011.

From the analyzed clusters the authors propose an integrative framework of emanating heuristics, which focuses on the co-evolving relationships and potentially self-reinforcing processes in and between them.

The value of the contribution is threefold: from a methodological perspective, to the authors’ knowledge, the studies adopted as the basis of the analysis have not yet been simultaneously used as a comprehensive ground for updated reviews on this topic; from a conceptual perspective, the emerging integrative co-evolutionary framework can help explain the dangerous connections among cognitive traps and emanating heuristics; and from a practical perspective, the resulting framework can also be helpful for future de-biasing attempts in the business arena.

This paper investigates the evolving landscape of architectural criticism in the digital era, leveraging the enduring interplay between architecture and media. It specifically examines the role of social media and public awards in improving user engagement with architectural discourse.

A mixed-method approach, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative analyses, is used to discuss three architecture awards. These are chosen for their different evaluation processes and their capacity to offer diverse opportunities for public interaction and engagement.

The study emphasises the potential of social media to democratise architectural criticism, while also addressing challenges such as the prominence of non-critical visual material and the presence of algorithmic biases. The findings underline the importance of providing adequate materials for public evaluation and integrating expert juries to support the assessment process. These elements are essential to fostering informed public participation, bridging the gap between professional expertise and popular engagement, and enabling meaningful architectural discourse on social media.

This paper fills a gap in the academic literature by connecting public architectural awards – a relatively unexplored aspect of architectural culture – with the potential of social media as a platform for architectural criticism.

This paper explores the stereotype of the accountant in Florentine medieval popular culture based on literary works and from a historical perspective. It aims to highlight how stereotypes change with time and represent the cultural and historical evolution of a society. This research challenges Miley and Read (2012), who stated that the foundation of the stereotype was in Commedia dell'arte, an Italian form of improvisational theatre commenced in the 15th century.

The authors applied a qualitative research method to examine the accountant from a medieval popular culture perspective. The analysis consists of two phases: (1) categorisation of the accountant stereotype based on accounting history literature and (2) thematic analysis of The Divine Comedy (1307–1313) and The Decameron (1348–1351). The authors explored a synchronic perspective of historical investigation through a “cross-author” comparison, identifying Dante Alighieri as the first key author of medieval popular culture. During his imaginary journey through The Divine Comedy, Dante describes the social, political and economic context of the Florentine people of the 14th century. Then, with its various folkloristic elements, The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio becomes the “manifesto” of the popular culture in the Florentine medieval times.

This study shows the change of the accountant stereotype from the medieval age to the Renaissance. The Divine Comedy mainly connotes a negative accountant stereotype. The 14th century's Florentine gentlemen (“i galantuomini”) are apparently positive characters, with an ordered and clean aspect, but they are accused of being usurers. Dante Alighieri pictures the accountant as a “servant of capitalism”, “dishonest person, excessively fixated with money”, “villain and evil” and “excessively rational”. Giovanni Boccaccio mainly portrays a positive accountant stereotype. The accountant is increasingly more reliable, and this “commercial man” takes a more prestigious role in the society. In The Decameron, the accountant is depicted as a “hero”, “gentleman”, “family-oriented person with a high level of work commitment” and “colourful persona, warm, and emotional”. Overall, the authors provided new evidence on the existence of the accountant stereotype in the Florentine medieval popular.

This study engages with accounting history literature accountants' stereotypes in an unexplored context and time period, providing a base for comparative international research on accounting stereotypes and popular culture. Additionally, it addresses the need for further research on the accountant stereotype based on literary works and from a historical perspective. Therefore, this research also expands the New Accounting History (NAH) literature, focussing on the investigation of the accountant stereotype connotations in the 14th century.