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This paper provides a conceptual discussion of the bidirectional relationship between knowledge management (KM) and intellectual capital (IC) in a specific subset of knowledge-based organisations, i.e. professional sport organisations. Through the review and conceptual discussion of two relevant research themes, i.e. KM strategies for IC value creation and IC codification, this paper aims to highlight research gaps useful to future research.

The authors apply a systematic literature review method to analyse 66 management and accounting studies on KM and IC in sport organisations. Internal and external validity tests support the methodology adopted.

The authors provide a conceptual model to explain how KM strategies about IC investments can be optimal, i.e. they create value for all the stakeholders but also suboptimal, i.e. they create value only for a group of stakeholders. Next, they provide evidence of the opportunistic use of the codification associated with IC investments that impair financial reporting information transparency and mislead managers and investors.

The results are informative for managers, regulators and policymakers to mitigate the inefficiencies regarding KM and IC codification and decisions.

This study contributes to the understanding of the bidirectional relationship between KM and IC in knowledge-based organisations by focussing on professional sport organisations in which KM and IC have played an important role for a long time. It also includes future avenues for advances in managing, measuring and reporting IC.

Based on the institutionalized agency theory, this paper aims to analyses the role of earnings management (EM) in mediating the relationship between ownership structure (OS) and the cost of equity capital (COE).

The authors test the above relationship by investigating a sample of 249 European non-financial listed companies during 2005-2012. The authors adopt different measures for both EM and COE and identify three main types of ownership by the majority share of the ultimate owners. Path analysis is used to explore the role of direct, mediated (i.e. EM) and total effects of OS on COE.

While OS directly affects COE, the results support the idea that an EM-mediating effect contributes to further explain this relationship in some ownership structures. Particularly European listed family-owned firms experience lower COE owing to the prevailing direct and negative effect of OS, despite the fact that both accrual and real EM mediate and have a positive effect on COE. In financial institutions-owned firms, only a direct and positive effect can be observed on COE while state-owned firms do not have a direct influence on the COE, although they do reduce real EM, which, in turn, decreases the COE in a mediated effect. Further analysis comparing the Anglo-Saxon context with Continental Europe shows more detailed results.

The study marks its entry into the international debate on the evolution in the value relevance of accounting information by arguing that the COE implications of EM depend on institutional factors such as OS and the context investigated.

The paper contributes to extant finance, accounting and corporate governance literature by providing new, robust evidence on the mediating role of EM in defining COE for different ownership types and their diverse risk-taking propensities in Continental Europe, which differs from the Anglo-Saxon context both institutionally and legally.

The study investigates the use of early forms of environmental accounting in the implementation of environmental strategies in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany between the 16th and 17th centuries.

The study adopts the Foucauldian concept of raison d’État to shed light on the ways in which environmental accounting practices were used by Tuscan Grand Dukes to form a detailed knowledge of the territory to be governed and act accordingly.

Financial and non-financial information relating to environmental issues enabled the Grand Dukes to “visualise” the territory to be managed as an enclosed disciplinary space whereby the conduct of people living therein could be decisively influenced. Accounting practices as a tool for the implementation of environmental strategies did not merely aim to protect the environment but were a means to reinforce the power of the State.

The paper can inform future works that investigate the ways in which environmental policies and accounting are used to pursue far-reaching governmental goals. It encourages scholars to examine further the origins of environmental accounting and its early forms.

The study documents how environmental strategies and the related use of accounting can have a significant influence on how individuals are allowed to conduct themselves. It also shows that environmental accounting practices can be an important tool in a State’s machinery of power.

The study offers a novel perspective on the use of environmental accounting information as a tool in the exercise of State power. It explores explicitly the interrelations between accounting, sustainability and power. It also adds new evidence to historical research that has engaged with early forms of environmental accounting.

This study seeks to examine the influence of the gamut of changes that have taken place in the past 15 years in the world of international football that have permanently transformed football from a game into a real business, while also considering some specific events that have affected Italian football in terms of the valuation of players' registration rights in the financial statements of the leading Italian football clubs throughout the period 1996‐2009.

The research was conducted taking into account the leading Italian clubs. The clubs considered were those that, in the period examined, qualified at least five times for a place in the Italian Serie A championship which is instrumental to their direct participation, or through the qualifying round, in the Champions League.

The research shows that questionable window dressing policies, consisting of artificially overestimated values of players' registration rights, aggravated the Italian football crisis that exploded during the 2001/2002 season. However, the origins of this crisis must be ascribed to the inability of Italian teams to control players' wages.

The study concerns only the leading clubs and examines the value of players' registration rights as an aggregate, as it is not always possible to extrapolate from financial statements the values attributed to individual players.

The Italian legal system, unlike others, establishes for corporations, the obligation to recapitalize if losses exceed a certain level. Based on this particular regulation, this research, suggesting a different interpretation of events, identifies the window dressing policies implemented by Italian football clubs during the period in question as behavior designed to evade the obligation to cover losses, and highlights the real purpose of the exceptional measures undertaken by the Italian legislator to save the entire industry.

This paper aims to analyse the relationship between the senior management and the information technology (IT) auditing undertaken in Italian banks, focusing specifically on the internal IT auditing. The purpose of this paper is to investigate senior executives’ expectations regarding IT auditing, the techniques IT auditors apply to meet these expectations, the degree to which senior managers are satisfied with the auditing and the expectation gap.

We conducted 22 interviews with senior managers and IT auditors of seven Italian banks, comprising large and small financial institutions, to gain data for our analysis.

We found that overall, the IT auditors’ contributions satisfy senior managers, even though they still see room for improvement. They expect more support for the IT governance processes, specifically for the alignment between IT investments and business needs and between IT risk management and the value that IT resources provide. In addition, they want IT auditors to focus more strongly on IT security. To meet these expectations, IT auditors would have to improve their technical and non-technical skills. These skills will allow them to expand their activities, to be more proactive and to take on effective roles in IT governance processes.

This study contributes to the existing literature by providing insights into the internal audit function’s evolving role and into banks’ IT audit activities. It also provides a valuable insight into senior management’s expectations regarding the role IT audit activities should play to support the profession and the banking policymakers, thus providing a better understanding of IT audit activities and improving these activities’ role.

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.

A former leading professional turned TV pundit once famously remarked that football was “a funny old game”. His comments were inspired by the surprise and unpredictability so characteristic of the sport at that time. Since we can still confidently expect the unexpected to occur with some frequency, the phrase continues to enjoy cult status almost three decades down the line. Some things have changed considerably though. Football has now become serious business and is no laughing matter. Many clubs relentlessly pursue on and off‐field success as they strive to satisfy the very different demands of fans and financiers alike. Ambition should never be discouraged. But chasing any dream must be tempered by a sizeable dose of reality. The sporting world is no different in that respect. Alas, numerous football clubs have learned this the hard way.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

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.

The authors investigate the role of people-related Total Quality Management (TQM) practices, specifically metaperceptions, in hearing care students' vocational decision-making. In Italy, audiologists are health professionals and must hold a degree in hearing care. They operate according to clinical principles but must also develop marketing and commercial skills. While employers take these aspects for granted, the expectations of hearing care students often differ from reality. Thus, the authors aim to investigate the vocational expectations of hearing care students.

A survey was distributed to 600 hearing care students. Multiple regression analysis with bootstrapped confidence intervals was employed to test the hypotheses.

Students who perceived audiology as their calling were more interested in the clinical aspects than the marketing and commercial aspects of audiology. Moreover, those desiring a meaningful career path in audiology were more interested in becoming a store owner or franchisee.

Universities and recruiters should consider the influence of relevant others' metaperceptions on students' self-perceptions of their aptitudes for different careers. Universities should assist students to identify aptitudes that are relevant to career-related decision-making. In this context, people-related TQM can help students avoid incorrect aspirations and expectations.

This study is the first to investigate the role of metaperceptions from a people-related TQM perspective. Metaperceptions play a crucial role in determining the correct course of study as well as job satisfaction and expectations.

This study aims to develop an assessment strategy for fire damaged infrastructures based on the implementation of quick diagnostic techniques and consistent interpretation procedures, so to determine the residual safety margin and any need for repair works.

In this perspective, several tailored non-destructive test (NDT) methods have been developed in the past two decades, providing immediate results, with no need for time-consuming laboratory analyses. Moreover, matching their indications with the calculated effects of a tentative fire scenario allows harmonizing distinct pieces of evidence in the coherent physical framework of fire dynamics and heat transfer.

This approach was followed in the investigations on a concrete overpass in Verona (Italy) after a coach violently impacted one supporting pillar and caught fire in 2017. Technical specifications of the vehicle made it possible to bound the acceptable ranges for fire load and maximum rate of heat release, while surveillance video footage indicated the duration of the burning stage. Some established NDT methods (evaluation of discolouration, de-hydroxylation and rebar hardness) were implemented, together with advanced ultrasonic tests based on pulse refraction and pulse-echo tomography.

The results clearly showed the extension of the most damaged area at the intrados of the box girders and validated the maximum heating depth, as predicted by numerical analysis of the heat transient ensuing from the localized fire model.

In a world where innovation became a “buzzword” and everyone within companies is required to foster innovation, the engagement of people toward innovation is fundamental to prompt individual motivation and actions to make innovation happen. However, despite the relevance of the relationship between engagement and innovation, the literature on the topic appears still fragmented. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the topic through a systematic literature review.

A final sample of 108 papers has been selected and analyzed through co-citation and text mining analyses. The former enabled the analysis of the structure of the theoretical foundation of the filed, while the latter facilitated a systematic and unbiased content-driven review of the literature.

The results of the analysis indicated two main areas of interest describing the relationship between engagement and innovation. On the one hand, there is the focus on “engagement as an attitude,” intended as the capacity of individuals to generate and realize innovation. On the other hand, there is a stream of literature focused on “engagement as involvement,” which refers to co-innovation paradigms, involving both internal and external stakeholders.

From an academic perspective, this paper highlights the relevance of the “human-side” of innovation, proposing avenues for future research that dig into the relationship between people's engagement and innovation dynamics. Moreover, it shows how the recent developments in the innovation management literature are coherent with this emerging relevance of the human perspective in innovation.

From a practitioner’s perspective, this paper helps managers by highlighting the two different approaches that they can have in terms of engagement. The study aims to help them in identifying the kind of engagement they are looking for in their employees and other innovation stakeholder having the support to find relevant studies in that direction.

The study unveils how the evolution of both areas over the years is strictly related to the megatrends of innovation fields, which are the main areas of knowledge not covered yet. Therefore, a research agenda is proposed.