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This paper reviews a number of studies that has examined the use of workplace innovations in the Republic of Ireland. It is argued that despite having quite different sampling and technical properties, the surveys reach similar findings on many matters – the high degree of experimentation with innovative work practices, and the piecemeal nature of workplace reform in most companies for example. Yet disagreement has occurred about how these findings should be interpreted. One view is sceptical about whether the surveys point to meaningful innovations in enterprise level employment systems in Ireland. A less pessimistic perspective suggests that the high level of experimentation occurring on new employment practices should be seen as significant as most organisations adopt an evolutionary approach to workplace reform.

Shall luxury firms promote their sustainable development goals (SDGs)? What are the risks and the competitive advantages? Some answers from sustainability-oriented luxury buyers are provided.

Quantitative and qualitative analysis from an online survey of 315 luxury buyers in 28 countries.

Sustainability-oriented luxury buyers want branding strategies aligned with the SDGs and rank SDGs in order of importance for the luxury industry. However, they are unable to rank consistently most brands based on their sustainability efforts. The Stella McCartney brand is a clear exception to the general findings: sustainability-oriented luxury buyers rank Stella the most sustainable luxury brand by a vast margin, show willingness to purchase more from this brand, recommend it and are ready to pay a premium.

The paper uses partial ranking of 20 luxury brands because in pretests, luxury buyers found it difficult to provide a complete ranking of the sustainability efforts of all the brands. Further research in more cultural or geographical contexts is needed.

The research empirically provides an example of a successful marketing strategy leveraging the SDGs to meet sustainability-oriented luxury buyers with targeted actions and messaging to gain competitive advantage.

Sustainability investors are in need of updated standards, indexes and in general better tools and instruments to facilitate company information on its impacts on people, planet and profit. Such instruments to reveal reliable, independent metrics and indicators to evaluate companies’ performances on sustainability exist, however, in research fields that previously have not been used extensively, for instance, life cycle assessments (LCAs). ISO 14001:2015 has implemented life cycle perspective, however, without being explicitly clear on which methodology is preferred. This paper aims to investigate LCA as to improve companies’ transparency towards sustainability investors through a literature review on sustainable investment evaluation.

The literature review is conducted through the search engine Google Scholar, which to date hosts the most comprehensive academic database across other databases such as Scopus, ISI Web of Knowledge, Science Direct, etc. Search words such as “Sustainable finance”, “Sustainable Investments”, “Performance metrics”, “Life cycle assessment”, “LCA”, “Environmental Management Systems”, “EMS” and “Environmental Profit and Loss Account” were used. Special journals that publish research on LCA such as International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, Journal of Cleaner Production and Journal of Industrial Ecology were also investigated in-depth.

The combination of using LCA in, for instance, environmental profit and loss accounts studied in this paper shows a comprehensive and reliable tool for sustainability investors, as well as for social responsibility standards such as ISO 14001, ISO 26000, UN Global Compact, GIIN, IRIS and GRI to incorporate. With a LCA-based hybrid input-output account, both upstream and downstream’s impact on the environment and society can be assessed by companies to attract more funding from sustainability investors such as shareholders, governments and intergovernmental bodies.

The literature review is based on publicly disclosed academic papers as well as five displayed company Environmental Profit and Loss accounts from the Kering Group, PUMA, Stella McCartney company, Novo Nordisk and Arla Group. Other company experiences with integration of LCA as a reporting tool have not been found, yet it is not to conclude that these five companies are the only ones to work extensively with LCA.

The paper may contribute to the clarification of LCA-thinking and perspective implementation in both ISO 14001 and ISO 26000, as well as in other social responsibility standards such as the UN Global Compact, the Global Impact Investing Networks, IRIS performance metrics, the Global Reporting Initiative and others.

The paper is one of the first that evaluates LCA and environmental profit and loss accounts for sustainability investors, as well as for consideration of implementation in social responsibility standards such as the ISO 14001 and ISO 26000, as well as in other social responsibility standards such as the UN Global Compact, the Global Impact Investing Networks, IRIS performance metrics and the Global Reporting Initiative.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the claim that Western accounting reforms, in particular the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) would enhance transparency and accountability and reduce corruption in patronage-based developing countries such as Nigeria.

The paper utilises the patron/clientelism framework to examine the dynamics of Western accounting reforms in the Nigerian patronage-based society, in which the institutions of governance and regulatory structures are arguably weak. The paper utilises archival data and interviews conducted with representatives of state bodies (elected politicians and officials) and professional accounting associations.

Results from two major reforms (the sale of government-owned residential properties in Lagos and the monetisation of fringe benefits for public officials) are presented. Despite the claim of the adoption of Western accounting standards, and in particular IPSAS 17, which requires full accrual accounting and the utilisation of fair value in property valuation, historical cost accounting appeared to have been mobilised to massively corrupt the process for the benefit of politicians, other serving and retired public officials and family members.

This study contributes to the current literature by providing evidence of the relationship between patronage, corruption and accounting in wealth redistribution in the patronage-based Nigerian socio-political and economic context.

Changes in financial reporting information were an important part of the British transition from feudalism to capitalism, with statements showing cash surpluses or deficits being gradually superseded by income statements and balance sheets. The existing literature does not satisfactorily explain the (considerable) variations in the pattern of change in the early part of the transition, when information provision was largely determined by Parliamentary processes, and this paper aims to look to new evidence to strengthen and modify the existing theorisations.

The research design is to discuss and relate existing theories regarding the emergence of financial reporting information to newly discovered evidence on a substantial set of corporate formations between 1766 and 1840, during the early stages of financial (or managerial) capitalism.

Requirements to present accounts to shareholders were almost unknown before 1800 and became common only from the 1820s, usually in the form of (cash‐based) receipts and payments accounts, which enabled investors to determine the legitimacy of the dividend payments and would have enabled them to calculate a cash‐based version of the rate of return.

The paper provides new evidence on the patterns of company development and of corporate financial reporting across the formative years of financial capitalism.

The wild boom and slump of 1845‐1847 was the most important of the nineteenth century railway manias, in terms both of its scale and effects on the economy as a whole. It has almost invariably been seen as a market irrationality, a view fundamentally challenged by Bryer’s theorisation of it as a deliberate and collusive device of the “London wealthy”, aided by central government, to swindle provincial middle class investors. This analysis also greatly extended previous perspectives on the rôle of accounting by asserting that accounting practices were crucial to the success of the process and were thus “deeply implicated” in a great, class‐based swindle. The acceptance of such a perspective would have important implications for the way we understand the functioning of accounting and capitalism in the mid‐nineteenth century, but this paper instead argues that such notions are misconceived, looking to both the evidence that was available when Bryer’s paper was written and to recently collected data on the depreciation accounting practices of the time.

The purpose of this paper is primarily to examine the impact of cultural background on image formation by looking at Macao's regional tourism destination image perceptions by its main tourist markets of China (PRC), Hong Kong and Taiwan. Other image formation components are explored within this context, such as the impact of travel behaviors, travel motives and sources of information on Macao's image.

A face‐to‐face survey (random sampling) was conducted in the departure areas of the international airports in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Taiwan (Kaohsiung). This uncovered perceptions of actual visitors and potential visitors to Macao, and allowed for only those with the ability to travel to be interviewed.

Multivariate analysis conducted on the data revealed significant differences between the Chinese travelers from the various cities on leading image perception attributes, travel behaviors, travel motives and influences of sources of information.

Cultural background, while recognized in the image research as an important component in destination image formation, has been rarely examined in tourism destination image studies with research conducted on one nationality or group of people based on specific demographic indicators (such as student, leisure or business traveler). The research reveals important implications for the successful positioning and branding of a destination targeting at various markets even within one nation or culture, and questioning overall effectiveness of future image research that proposes national marketing and promotional strategy based on one source group.

As competition continues to intensify within cities and regions for domestic and international travel, the paper shows that there is a need to design tailored marketing, promotion and public relations programs in order to optimize influence on specific travel segments.

Using a decolonial framework for thinking about knowledge, education and internationalisation, this chapter critically unpacks the historical and contemporary complexities in South African higher education, including the colonial roots of higher education and internationalisation, the Eurocentric hegemony and white domination during colonialism and apartheid, and the lack of epistemic decolonisation in post-apartheid South Africa. The chapter shows how the way internationalisation has been practiced by universities since the end of apartheid has contributed to the maintenance of Eurocentric hegemony and coloniality of knowledge. The chapter highlights the need to rethink, reconceptualise and redefine internationalisation, and unpacks a new definition of internationalisation which takes into consideration historical complexities, contemporary realities and challenges, and the need for epistemic transformation and decolonisation in South African higher education. This is in line with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s decolonial ‘quest for relevance’ of education and knowledge to the people, places and regions in which universities operate, while looking outwards at the world and critically engaging with the plurality of worldviews, ideas, knowledges and ways of knowing. Such a quest could allow students to critically interrogate and understand their being and place in the world, as well as their relationships and linkages to others around the globe.

There are two main alternative explanations in the literature for the patterns of financial reporting during the period of the British Industrial Revolution (BIR). Rob Bryer sees the new social relations of production in which manufacturing entrepreneurs strove to increase the productivity of wage‐labour as leading to a distinct capitalist “calculative mentality”, focused on the return on capital employed; Dick Edwards argues from agency precepts that financial reporting emerged with the transition from “industrial” to “financial capitalism”. This paper aims to reappraise these theorisations using new archival evidence.

Canals, the crucial transport network during the BIR, were owned by limited liability companies financed by outside investors, with clear separation of ownership and control, yet were not capitalist in Bryer's sense because their profits came from a form of rent (tolls on freight) not from the exploitation of wage‐labour. The paper reviews the financial statements of seven major English canals from the 1770s to the 1850s, and uses these findings as a basis for appraising the above‐mentioned theories.

The financial statements of English canal companies do not distinguish profit or enable users to calculate rates of return on capital employed and so assess the performance of management. This sharply conflicts with agency theory but is consistent with Bryer's thesis.

The paper contributes to the authors' understanding of how and why corporate financial reporting emerged, and the relationship between this process and the transition to the capitalist mode of production.

Individuals and corporations give generously to nonprofit organizations. However, supporters are naturally concerned about the financial strength and operational efficiency of an organization. Using publicly available nonprofit databases and websites, this case exposes students to a real-world scenario in which students analyze a 501(c)(3) organization of their choosing using GuideStar data and select Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance criteria in five areas: governance and oversight, effectiveness, finances, fundraising and information materials, other financial and non-financial performance measures. The overall learning objective of this case is to enhance students’ understanding of a nonprofit’s financial and non-financial performance through research and analytical procedures. This case helps to fill a void by familiarizing students not only with standard nonprofit financial performance metrics, but also important non-financial areas related to governance, mission-driven goals, and organizational transparency. It also affords students the opportunity to develop a more thorough understanding of key accounting and non-accounting issues associated with nonprofits, which are not always explicitly or implicitly covered in textbooks.