Search results

The purpose of this study is to document the concrete practices put in place by United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) affiliated firms and their application of the UNGC Communication on Progress (COP).

The paper examines the practices implemented by firms on the Fortune 500 list that have affiliated with the UNGC and issued a COP separate from their annual report or a sustainable development report. According to the UNGC, the COP policy sets out a description of practical actions the company has taken or plans to take to implement the ten principles.

The findings tend to show that firms affiliated with the UNGC use a variety of practices to integrate these principles. Many adopt policies based on an international standard relating to a UNGC principle. However, the reporting process supported by the UNGC does not seem to fully promote the widespread application of these practices.

The documentation of these practices will serve as a reference for any business interested in adopting the UNGC principles or for government and non-government organisations, including accounting standard setters, aiming to promote and support the universal principles on human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption. In addition, the study reveals weaknesses in the UNGC COP policy that could limit more extensive application of these practices.

Despite the global nature of the UN Global Compact (UNGC), a platform for the development, implementation and disclosure of responsible and sustainable corporate policies and practices, the participation of organisations is unequally distributed across societies. This paper aims to explore the relationship between national cultures, as defined by Hofstede, and organisations voluntarily affiliating with the UNGC.

This study tests the relationship between national culture and firm affiliation with the UNGC using data derived from Hofstede’s works and information available on the UNGC website and other websites and accounting databases, covering 282 firms in 30 countries on 4 continents.

The results indicate that firms in countries with high individualism or high masculinity rankings are more likely to affiliate with the UNGC. In addition, organisations in countries with less uncertainty avoidance, short-term orientation and high restraint are also more likely to affiliate with the UNGC.

The results are interesting for initiatives like the UNGC. The development strategies and democratisation tools developed by this initiative will have to take into account the specific cultural features of different countries.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the substantiveness of stakeholder engagement by examining voluntary disclosures tied to the engagement process. The objective is to draw a portrait of stakeholder engagement practices and determine whether they genuinely contribute to informing stakeholders or whether they are simply intended to manage stakeholders’ impressions.

The authors performed an exploratory content analysis on 113 sustainability reports published in 2018 in the Global Reporting Initiative database. The authors investigated disclosures tied to consulted stakeholders, communication modes and material issues resulting from the engagement process. The authors then assessed the substantiveness of these disclosures to determine the extent of the impression management tactics deployed in the stakeholder engagement disclosures made by Canadian companies.

Data analysis showed that more than a third of Canadian firms tend to make generic disclosures on their stakeholders’ engagement. As well, almost half the engagement modes disclosed are unidirectional and fewer than 33% of Canadian companies disclose on relevant sustainability issues. Furthermore, only 26% of the sample seek assurance on the information disclosed. Overall, the authors note an important trend in impression management used in sustainability reporting and underscore a potentially significant sectoral effect in the tactics used.

These data provide new insight into stakeholder engagement processes and highlight the strategies used by Canadian companies to manage their stakeholders’ impressions rather than their expectations. The study also contributes to a better understanding of the underexplored stakeholder engagement process and provides regulatory organisations with deepened insights to better frame stakeholder engagement disclosures.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. 10;

Firms can indicate their genuine commitment to economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability through substantive engagement with all the different stakeholders involved. Making stakeholder engagement an inherent part of voluntary sustainability reports signals awareness and concern for relevant sustainability issues. On the contrary, reports limiting disclosure to more generic information invite assumption that preserving corporate image is the company's real objective.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

We document the relationship between size, the presence of a full-time accountant, strategy, and the adoption of management control systems (MCSs) in small- and medium-sized Canadian manufacturing enterprises (SMEs).

Using survey results from 247 Canadian SMEs, we use partial least squares to holistically test our model and also present data for each MCS.

We find that the presence of a professional accountant is strongly associated with the adoption of MCSs and is a significant explanatory variable more often than either size or strategy.

While the impact of organization and strategy has been extensively studied within large organizations, we investigate these relationships within SMEs. Additionally, we investigate the impact of having a full-time accountant, a constraint unique to SMEs due to their limited resources.

Limitations include the fact that we likely have a significant survivor bias as the average age of our sample firms was 30 years. Our analysis of nonresponse bias does not allow us to conclude that such a bias did not exist. Also, it is possible that some respondents believed they had a certain MCS when others might think they did not.

This study will be of interest to owners/managers of manufacturing SMEs, their advisors, and economic development agencies. Our study also has implications for accounting education as most students will work for SMEs.

Few studies have documented the MCSs adopted by North American SMEs, and none have considered the impact of the presence of a full-time accountant.

This paper seeks to understand how a new elite, known as the cork aristocracy, emerged in the Bordeaux wine field, France, between 1850 and 1929 as wine merchants replaced aristocrats. Classic class and status perspectives, and their distinctive social closure dynamics, are mobilized to illuminate the individual and organizational transformations that affected elite wineries grouped in an emerging classification of the Bordeaux best wines. We build on a wealth of archives and historical ethnography techniques to surface complex status and organizational dynamics that reveal how financiers and industrialists intermediated this transition and how organizations are deeply interwoven into social change.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of requirements for firms’ codes of conduct when addressing homophobia in the context of continued colonialism and coloniality.

This paper is a literature study.

First, occidental firms’ codes of conduct are shown to endanger indigenous homosexual individuals by endangering the protection offered by their indigenous ethics and society. Second, it is shown that tackling homophobia in firms’ codes of conduct on the foundation of occidental ethics forces homosexual individuals to conform to occidental homosexual identities in a world of a multitude of indigenous and hybrid homosexualities and identities render firms’ codes of conduct expressions of continued colonialism and coloniality. Third, a sole reliance on occidental conceptualizations of homophobia is shown to potentially camouflage unethical nationalistic and xenophobic intents.

Additional research is needed on the dynamics of coexisting multiple indigenous homosexual identities, and reliable ways to determine the substance of indigenous homosexual identities need to be developed in the context of continued colonialism and coloniality.

Firms need to be cognizant of conflicting identities, hybrid identities and changing identities over time while avoiding to use purported protection against homophobia as a camouflage for nationalistic and xenophobic purposes.

The paper ways to address the protection against homophobia in firms' codes of conduct in the context of continued colonialism and coloniality.

This paper closes a gap in the literature by considering firms’ codes of conduct as favouring homophobia as a result of continued colonialism and coloniality.