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The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of rural superintendent’s talk on the perceived outcomes of principal communication competence and organizational communication satisfaction. More specifically, this study explored whether the source credibility dimensions of goodwill, competency and trustworthiness had a greater impact on the perceived outcomes when mediated by motivating language (ML) than not.

Direct and indirect paths between superintendent and principal communication were modeled, analyzed and evaluated using descriptive and inferential methods, including R version 3.6.1 with the lavaan package and the Sobel mediation test.

Research findings indicated the importance of superintendent talk and motivating language theory (MLT) that, when combined, constitute the medium of superintendent practice and enable a superintendent to execute their roles and duties. Additionally, the authors found the dimensions of goodwill and competency had the most significant impact on the two outcomes mediated by ML. This finding indicates that principals are calling for a more empathetic and interactive form of credibility than the long-established form of credibility based on expertise and stewardship. Finally, as the authors call for an expanded role from the community in research, scholarship and implementation of MLT, they suggest due to the lack of significance in trustworthiness mediated by ML, future research into trustworthiness and trust.

This study’s value is to increase understanding of educational administration scholars of MLT and its power to influence employee and organizational outcomes and highlight a reframing of superintendent credibility away from say and do agreement and expertise and stewardship.

Within the accounting discipline and its literature, attention to the role of social and non-profit organizations has been growing, particularly with respect to issues of accountability and social accounting. In response, the aim of this introductory article is to present the background for the book by highlighting (i) the relevance and rise of the non-profit sector worldwide, (ii) the limitations of the conventional accounting framework when applied/transposed to NPOs and (iii) the ‘social accounting project’ for NPOs. The article presents analysis and critique based on a literature review of the accountability framework for NPOs. After presenting key worldwide statistics regarding the growing non-profit sector, the article points out the skepticism regarding the adoption of traditional accounting principles and frameworks for NPOs. The article offers both an examination of how to improve the accounting system for NPOs and a discussion of the benefits emerging from the social and environmental accounting and reporting models. ‘The social accounting project’ for NPOs is presented as a pathway towards these innovative practices increasing organizational transparency. This article and the book overall provide new contributions to the research literature, fostering synergies among financial accounting and social accounting scholars engaging with the NPO subject area. Moreover it brings together studies from a range of disciplines, such as financial accounting, social accounting, economics, management, and third-sector studies. This cross-disciplinary approach offers a major contribution to our developing knowledge in this field.

This article focuses on the lesser-used notion of stewardship and stewardship-ism. Stewardship is a concept that has inspired the activities of several organizations whose mission is to preserve, protect and maintain natural, social and economic assets for the benefit of stakeholders and communities. As observed by Contrafatto and Bebbington (2013), stewardship has some resonance with current policy agendas that attend to the issues related to sustainable development, corporate social responsibility and accountability. Most of the existing works on stewardship provide several perspectives with the focus being either on normative foundations of stewardship or on its organizational and managerial implications. In particular, the stewardship-related literature offers a range of conceptions and approaches ranking from a relatively narrow view of the resources, sources and time frame of stewardship to very broad specification. In this article, the management, organization and accounting literature is analysed to propose a map of current theorizing on stewardship. In particular, drawing on the methodological approach adopted by Lowndes (1996), four theoretical vignettes have been proposed to illustrate different variants and approaches in stewardship framework. Each vignette provides a set of conceptual constructs, ideas and views to understand stewardship and stewardship-inspired behaviour. The variety of approaches/perspectives on stewardship, as illustrated from the analysis undertaken in this article, provides an opportunity for deeper theory-based understanding of social and organizational dynamics. In particular, it is argued that the richness of perspectives, focus and levels of analysis could offer insights to conceptualize, see and make sense of some of the challenges that are posed by a desire for promoting transition towards more sustainable ways of organizing our society.

Drawing on the phenomenological concepts of “empathy” and “communal emotions” developed by Edith Stein (1917, 1922), the purpose of this paper is to discuss the co-existence both of the legitimacy and accountability perspectives in voluntarily delivered social and environmental reporting (SER), based on different “levels of empathy” towards different stakeholders.

The paper adopts an interpretive research design, drawn from Stein’s concept of empathy by using a mixed-method approach. A manual content analysis was performed on 393 cooperative banks’ (CB) social and environmental reports from 2005 to 2013 in Italy, and 14 semi-structured interviews.

The results show that CBs voluntarily disclose information in different ways to different stakeholders. According to Stein, the phenomenological concept of empathy, and its understanding within institutions, allows us to interpret these multiple perspectives within a single social and environmental report. Therefore, when the process of acquiring knowledge in the CB–stakeholder relationship is complete and mentalised (level 3, re-enactive empathy), the SER holds high informative power, consistent with the accountability perspective; on the contrary, when this process is peripheral and perceptional (level 1, basic empathy), the SER tends to provide more self-assessment information, attempting to portray the bank in a positive light, which is consistent with the legitimacy perspective.

The concept of empathy introduced in this paper can assist in interpreting the interactions between an organisation and different stakeholders within the same social and environmental report. Moreover, the approach adopted in this paper considers different stakeholders simultaneously, thus responding to previous concerns regarding the lack of focus on multiple stakeholders.

This paper investigates the quality and quantity of climate-related information disclosed by public interest entities (PIEs) in the non-financial disclosure scenario. Thus, this paper aims at drafting the state of the art on what is climate-related information disclosed by PIEs in the changing EU non-financial regulation assuming the Italian scenario and the industrial industry as significant in achieving the research aims.

The authors used the content analysis composing the sample of 34 large listed companies (i.e. PIEs) belonging to the industrial sector in Italy. The authors choose the Italian PIEs’ sustainability reports published in 2019 after the adoption of the EU directive and its guidelines. The authors adopted a coding and classification system, investigating the climate-related information through a systematic, objective and reliable method. The authors defined 99 indicators along the structure of the European Commission's guidelines and the indicator of disclosure, climate-related information indicator (CII). The framework mainly derives from the corporate disclosure theory and legitimacy and stakeholders' theories.

The results show the lack of several required climate-related information or a not in-depth presentation of information. Thus, findings are interesting in emphasizing that the current climate-related disclosure is at an early stage in complying with the European Commission's guidelines. Additionally, the findings enlarge previous theories on corporate disclosure, proposing new insights in the light of the recent interest in climate-related information.

Evidence contributes to extending the existing literature, drafting the state of the art of what is the quality and the quantity of the climate-related information in the corporate disclosure in the European scenario.

This paper is directed to propose the state of the climate-related disclosure following the EU directive guidelines, proposing some evidence to support the path toward the integrations of information by several parts (e.g. companies, regulators and so on).

The paper is a useful baseline for academics, practitioners, policy-makers and regulators in understanding actions to adopt in the climate-related disclosure and what could be the impact of forthcoming regulations in the field, also having some metrics (e.g. score value of disclosure, the indicator of climate-related information disclosure – CII).

This paper aims to examine the European Union (EU) 95/2014 Directive’s impact on large public companies. It chose Italy as a pivotal country that made non-financial information assurance mandatory, going beyond the EU Directive’s original requirements. Specifically, it investigates how the UE Directive fosters institutionalisation of the non-financial reporting (NFR) process in organisations.

Two large public companies in Italy are used as case studies. Data are gathered from annual and integrated reports, institutional websites and semi-structured interviews with the managers and employees involved in different organisational positions. The authors adopted the neo-institutional theory as a theoretical lens to identify the organisations’ response to the (external) institutional pressures influencing corporate reporting practices.

The findings demonstrate how the EU Directive fostered changes to large public companies’ reporting practices and external pressures contributed to influencing changes to internal organisational practices in terms of new internal processes, procedures and structures. These changes are motivated by the companies’ need to guarantee reliable information to be produced in their non-financial reports.

This paper helps academics and policymakers to advance NFR practices by understanding regulatory factors that can foster changes in the internal reporting process and responsibility within organisations.

The findings provide some empirical insights to foster reflections on the EU Directive’s effectiveness in changing reporting practices. This paper contributes to enriching the literature on institutional theory in shaping mandatory non-financial disclosure by identifying the institutional pressures influencing the effectiveness of regulations to change NFR practices.

The purpose of this paper is to explore surface acting as a mediator in the relationships between perceptions of organizational politics and personality, with stress, turnover intentions, and job satisfaction.

Data were obtained via survey from 276 working adults, and responses were subjected to structural equation modeling to confirm the measurement model and test hypotheses.

Surface acting was found to mediate the relationships between perceptions of organizational politics and intent to turnover and satisfaction, and between proactive personality and intent to turnover and satisfaction. No mediating effect for surface acting was found between agreeableness and the outcomes.

Individual differences and situational contingencies do affect surface acting in the workplace, and individual work-related outcomes. Managers need to be aware of personality characteristics and situational contexts that impact surface acting in organizations to help understand the effects of potential divergent attitudes and behaviors on employee outcomes.

Previous research examining surface acting assessed behavior in light of employee-customer interactions. This research extends the study of surface acting by examining the mediating role of surface acting among new predictors including organizational politics, proactive personality, and agreeableness with stress, turnover intentions, and job satisfaction.

Debates over the definition, processes and outcomes of minimum and “living” wages are heated and often politically contentious in garment-producing countries. Internationally, there have been various initiatives to promote and support the implementation of a living wage for workers in labour-intensive manufacturing, ranging from corporate-driven social responsibility and multi-stakeholder initiatives to the long-standing living wage campaign of the global unions. One prominent regional initiative is the Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA). The purpose of this paper is to assess its reach and effect in Southeast Asia.

A living wage campaign is assessed with reference to Indonesia and Cambodia, two important garment manufacturing countries in Southeast Asia. The paper draws on data collected in interviews with garment manufacturers, brand representatives, trade unionists and labour NGO activists, including members of the AFWA Steering Committee in Indonesia and Cambodia, complemented by a systematic review of documents and reports produced by the AFWA.

As the paper shows, despite a series of initiatives, the Asia Floor Wage has failed to gain traction in Cambodia or Indonesia. This is so, the paper argues, because national economic, political and institutional contexts are the primary drivers of the strategies and priorities of constituent organisations, governments and industry stakeholders. In the absence of robust local and regional coalitions of trade unions, efforts towards a common and coordinated regional approach to living wages are thus unlikely to gain traction.

To a large extent, the literature on the concepts and practices associated with the living wage has focussed on developed rather than developing countries. This paper extends the literature by providing a systematic examination of a transnational wage campaign in developing Asian countries.