Hyung‐Cheal Ryu and Samuel D. Brody
The purpose of this study is to use ecological footprint analysis (EFA) in an interdisciplinary graduate level course on sustainable development to better how education can…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to use ecological footprint analysis (EFA) in an interdisciplinary graduate level course on sustainable development to better how education can facilitate learning and transform the perceptions and behavior of class participants.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses an untreated control group research design with a pre‐test and post‐test to measure and explain the change in the EF of students enrolled in a graduate course on sustainable development taught at Texas A&M University in the spring of 2004. We uses the study test of means and multivariate regression analysis to make statistical conclusions about the degree to which education on sustainability affects the way students act and also to identify the major factors driving this behavioral change.
Findings
Results indicate that that graduate‐level education can significantly increase students' sustainable behavior as measured by their ecological footprints (EF) and that specific socioeconomic and proximity‐based variables contribute to this observed phenomenon.
Practical implications
This study provides insights into the effectiveness of teaching sustainable development courses at institutions of higher education by examining the change in specific EF components and identifying variables which help predict the change in EFs over the course of the semester.
Originality/value
This study uses an empirically‐driven, quantitative approach to understand the degree to which graduate‐level coursework on the topic of sustainable development transforms the perceptions and behavior of class participants.
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Fred Kwasi Anokye, Samuel Nana Yaw Simpson, Godfred Mathew Yaw Owusu and Teddy Ossei Kwakye
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the whistleblowing intentions of external auditors and the factors that influence their intentions.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the whistleblowing intentions of external auditors and the factors that influence their intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
Using the survey methodology, data was collected from 339 external auditors from licensed private audit firms. The partial least squares structural equation modelling technique was used to analyse the data.
Findings
The results indicate that external auditors have a greater propensity to blow the whistle on wrongdoings and they prefer to report wrongdoings using internal channels than external channels. The study further found uncertainty avoidance, masculinity and long-term orientation to be good predictors of whistleblowing intentions.
Practical implications
The findings have practical implications for human resource practitioners who seek to foster job synergy and encourage the reporting of wrongdoings. Also, it has useful implications for policymakers who seek to enhance whistleblowing activities.
Originality/value
Theoretically, this study is among the first to provide empirical support for the applicability of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory at the individual level within the whistleblowing discourse from an African perspective.
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David Brody serves as Academic Dean and Chair of the Early Childhood Department at the Efrata College of Education in Jerusalem where he teaches and conducts his research. His…
Abstract
David Brody serves as Academic Dean and Chair of the Early Childhood Department at the Efrata College of Education in Jerusalem where he teaches and conducts his research. His research interests include men in early childhood, professional development among teacher educators, thinking education, and how early childhood educators cope with emotionally charged issues. He taught preschool for 15 years in the United States before immigrating to Israel where he has engaged in teacher education for 20 years.
Karl Marx could only pen the memorable line, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” because he was heir to the sanitary and public health…
Abstract
Karl Marx could only pen the memorable line, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” because he was heir to the sanitary and public health reforms of the nineteenth century (Marx [1848] 1972, p. 335). The Black Death, which had wiped out much of fourteenth-century Florence and which had regularly decimated sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London, was now but a faint memory. Yet had a historian of some earlier period of European history thought to pen a line as presumptuous as Marx's, it might have read: “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of struggle with plague or pestilence.” Epidemics and pandemics have haunted human societies from their beginnings. The congregation of large masses of humans in urban settings, in fact, made the evolution of human infectious disease microorganisms biologically possible (McNeill, 1976; Porter, 1997, pp. 22–25). Epidemics have been as determinative of the course of economic, social, military and political history as any other single factor – emptying cities, decimating armies, wiping out generations and destroying civilizations.
Cristina Bailey, Richard G. Brody, Gaurav Gupta and Jonathan Nash
This study aims to examine the objectivity of accounting professionals based in India.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the objectivity of accounting professionals based in India.
Design/methodology/approach
To examine the objectivity of accountants based in India, this study performs an experiment using a well-established instrument from prior literature. The authors asked accounting professionals based in India to act as either the seller or buyer in a hypothetical acquisition scenario. Participants were asked to evaluate the obsolescence of an apparel company’s inventory, assessing both the probability of inventory obsolescence and the likelihood they would propose an inventory write-down.
Findings
The results indicate external auditors and tax professionals were able to remain objective, reflected in the consistency of their assessments across the buyer and seller conditions. Internal auditors were less objective, evaluating inventory obsolescence as more likely when their client was considering buying a subsidiary than when their client was considering selling a subsidiary. Internal auditors were also more likely to recommend an inventory write-down adjustment when hired by the buyer than when hired by the seller.
Originality/value
This study informs regulators and accounting professionals. Offshoring has “prompt(ed) questions regarding the factors that affect the quality of work in India” (Dickey et al., 2022, p. 680). While the authors do not prescribe specific actions, this study provides evidence on the decision-making process of accounting professionals based in India that regulators might use to craft policy. Furthermore, this study responds to calls for additional evidence on the decision-making process of accounting professionals based in India (Spilker et al., 2016; Mohapatra et al., 2015), and for evidence on the objectivity of internal auditors (Burt and Libby, 2021; Stewart and Subramaniam, 2010).
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To examine the trend of “witness tours” that travel to the North American Arctic to experience, document, and then advocate on behalf of environmental issues in the North. These…
Abstract
To examine the trend of “witness tours” that travel to the North American Arctic to experience, document, and then advocate on behalf of environmental issues in the North. These tours are presented as part of a colonial legacy that has long witnessed the North as a space of potential investment from the South. Especially in their reliance upon suffering as a narrative practice to justify their experience, these tours repeat patterns that reduce the agency of Northern communities and peoples to address changes they are facing. The chapter also provides best practices for such excursions and compares their approach to Northern-based expeditions that also advocate for environmental conservation and protection.
In the first part of the chapter, the history of colonialism and exploration sets the foundation for understanding the recent trend in witness tours. These tours are then examined through a discourse analysis of their narratives to highlight their connection with colonial approaches to the North. The final section of the chapter presents three necessary steps to reduce the reliance upon colonial legacies for these tours.
The witness tours examined are heavily dependent upon using their resilience of the travels to travel through harsh landscapes to make their case for caring about these landscapes. Far from being an innocent narrative strategy, this reliance upon suffering provides a level of elitism to these narratives at the same time as it reproduces colonial patterns. The chapter suggests three steps to avoid these problems: (1) Recognize the stories of people who live in the North; (2) Do not present the Arctic as a timeless wilderness landscape; and (3) Understand our limited perspective on the North as outsiders.
The chapter suggests that witness tours need to be understood within the context of a history of colonial exploration in the Arctic as well as the agency of Northern peoples to address both environmental change and colonialism.
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David C. Bell, John S. Atkinson and Victoria Mosier
Describes how HIV and AIDS are carried and spread, particularly for high‐risk groups, but adds that it is not only behavioural but also those behaviours in conjunction with…
Abstract
Describes how HIV and AIDS are carried and spread, particularly for high‐risk groups, but adds that it is not only behavioural but also those behaviours in conjunction with others. Employs figures and tables for added explanation and emphasis. Chronicles some individual case studies showing different “risk” behaviours and types of “unsafe” practices. Makes clear that the use of varied types of education are of major importance in the fight against ignorance and nonchalance in the battle against AIDS.
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Allison S. Gabriel, David F. Arena, Charles Calderwood, Joanna Tochman Campbell, Nitya Chawla, Emily S. Corwin, Maira E. Ezerins, Kristen P. Jones, Anthony C. Klotz, Jeffrey D. Larson, Angelica Leigh, Rebecca L. MacGowan, Christina M. Moran, Devalina Nag, Kristie M. Rogers, Christopher C. Rosen, Katina B. Sawyer, Kristen M. Shockley, Lauren S. Simon and Kate P. Zipay
Organizational researchers studying well-being – as well as organizations themselves – often place much of the burden on employees to manage and preserve their own well-being…
Abstract
Organizational researchers studying well-being – as well as organizations themselves – often place much of the burden on employees to manage and preserve their own well-being. Missing from this discussion is how – from a human resources management (HRM) perspective – organizations and managers can directly and positively shape the well-being of their employees. The authors use this review to paint a picture of what organizations could be like if they valued people holistically and embraced the full experience of employees’ lives to promote well-being at work. In so doing, the authors tackle five challenges that managers may have to help their employees navigate, but to date have received more limited empirical and theoretical attention from an HRM perspective: (1) recovery at work; (2) women’s health; (3) concealable stigmas; (4) caregiving; and (5) coping with socio-environmental jolts. In each section, the authors highlight how past research has treated managerial or organizational support on these topics, and pave the way for where research needs to advance from an HRM perspective. The authors conclude with ideas for tackling these issues methodologically and analytically, highlighting ways to recruit and support more vulnerable samples that are encapsulated within these topics, as well as analytic approaches to study employee experiences more holistically. In sum, this review represents a call for organizations to now – more than ever – build thriving organizations.