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This study aims to conduct a comprehensive literature review to examine the relationship between corporate governance characteristics and firms’ engagement in environmental, social and governance (ESG) activities. The review focuses specifically on academic papers published in ranked accounting and finance journals.

The analysis combines a structured literature review with citation analysis, topic modeling using a machine learning (ML) approach and a manual review of selected articles published between 2000 and 2021.

This paper contributes to corporate governance and ESG literature by conducting an in-depth review, offering a comprehensive analysis of the existing findings and identifying future research directions. From the reviewed literature, this paper proposes the following thematic areas: board characteristics, ownership structure and their impact on a company’s engagement in ESG activities; CEO characteristics and their influence on a company’s involvement in ESG activities; corporate governance and ESG as sources for transparency and legitimacy; internal and external assurance of a company’s involvement in ESG activities; and gender diversity and a company’s involvement in ESG activities.

The study provides a comprehensive understanding of corporate governance and ESG literature. The innovative combination of methods, including ML and manual techniques, enhances the ability to identify key research topics and uncover research directions in the field. Moving forward, this paper suggests several promising directions for future research, including examining the influence of emerging technologies on ESG reporting and assessing the impact of regulatory changes and context on the link between corporate governance and firms’ involvement in ESG practices.

This study aims to examine the association between board gender diversity (BGD) and workplace diversity and the relative importance of various board and firm characteristics in predicting diversity.

With a novel machine learning (ML) approach, this study models the association between three workplace diversity variables and BGD using a social media data set of approximately 250,000 employee reviews. Using the tools of explainable artificial intelligence, the authors interpret the results of the ML model.

The results show that BGD has a strong positive association with the gender equality and inclusiveness dimensions of corporate diversity culture. However, BGD is found to have a weak negative association with age diversity in a company. Furthermore, the authors find that workplace diversity is an important predictor of firm value, indicating a possible channel on how BGD affects firm performance.

The effects of BGD on workplace diversity below management levels are mainly omitted in the current corporate governance literature. Furthermore, existing research has not considered different dimensions of this diversity and has mainly focused on its gender aspects. In this study, the authors address this research problem and examine how BGD affects different dimensions of diversity at the overall company level. This study reveals important associations and identifies key variables that should be included as a part of theoretical causal models in future research.

This paper provides a structured literature review of blockchain in accounting. The authors identify current trends, analyse and critique the key topics of research and discuss the future of this nascent field of inquiry.

This study’s analysis combined a structured literature review with citation analysis, topic modelling using a machine learning approach and a manual review of selected articles. The corpus comprised 153 academic papers from two ranked journal lists, the Association of Business Schools (ABS) and the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC), and from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). From this, the authors analysed and critiqued the current and future research trends in the four most predominant topics of research in blockchain for accounting.

Blockchain is not yet a mainstream accounting topic, and most of the current literature is normative. The four most commonly discussed areas of blockchain include the changing role of accountants; new challenges for auditors; opportunities and challenges of blockchain technology application; and the regulation of cryptoassets. While blockchain will likely be disruptive to accounting and auditing, there will still be a need for these roles. With the sheer volume of information that blockchain records, both professions may shift out of the back-office toward higher-profile advisory roles where accountants try to align competitive intelligence with business strategy, and auditors are called on ex ante to verify transactions and even whole ecosystems.

The authors identify several challenges that will need to be examined in future research. Challenges include skilling up for a new paradigm, the logistical issues associated with managing and monitoring multiple parties all contributing to various public and private blockchains, and the pressing need for legal frameworks to regulate cryptoassets.

The possibilities that blockchain brings to information disclosure, fraud detection and overcoming the threat of shadow dealings in developing countries all contribute to the importance of further investigation into blockchain in accounting.

The authors’ structured literature review uniquely identifies critical research topics for developing future research directions related to blockchain in accounting.

The purpose of this paper is to examine contagion among the major world markets during the last 25 years and propose a new way to analyze contagion with wavelet methods.

The analysis uses a novel way to study contagion using wavelet methods. The comparison is made between co‐movements at different time scales. Co‐movement methods of the discrete wavelet transform and the continuous wavelet transform are applied.

Clear signs of contagion among the major markets are found. Short time scale co‐movements increase during the major crisis while long time scale co‐movements remain approximately at the same level. In addition, gradually increasing interdependence between markets is found.

Because of the chosen method, the approach is limited to large data sets.

The research has practical implications to portfolio managers etc. who wish to have better view of the dynamics of the international equity markets.

The research uses novel wavelet methods to analyze world equity markets. These methods allow the markets to be analyzed in the whole state space.

This paper analyzes how public servants who work with young people discursively cope with competing demands on their agency, defined as their orientation toward and capabilities to influence their clients. Previous studies revealed how public servants treat their clients when facing competing demands but paid less attention to how public servants define their agency.

Micro-level discourse analysis is applied to analyze how public servants represent their agency in client relationships, drawing on interviews with nine individuals in a Finnish city who work with young people lacking jobs or school placements.

Instead of describing their agency coherently, the interviewees applied several discourses to represent their agency differently in relation to different demands. This ability to navigate contradictory discourses is discussed as reflexive discursive coping strategy, which enables public servants to maintain a positive image of their agency despite tensions at work.

Although the method does not allow direct generalizations, it reveals discursive strategies likely to be found in many contemporary public organizations.

The study indicates a need to better acknowledge and nurture the multifaceted nature of agency to improve service quality.

The findings deepen the view on tensions in public servants' work and show that diverse discourses not only create anxiety but also help individuals dealing with contradictory work.