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This research investigates the feasibility, benefits and challenges of environmental sustainability reporting by Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs).

The authors develop an abridged SME environmental sustainability reporting framework based on the environmental aspects of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards for Sustainability Reporting. The authors collect the views of 203 SME accounting practitioners on our proposed reporting framework using a survey questionnaire.

The authors find that the greatest perceived benefit for firms adopting environmental sustainability reporting is that it leads to an improvement in company image. Lack of knowledge, resources and data capturing tools impede implementation of environmental sustainability reporting for both SMEs and accounting practitioners. While SMEs are not yet required to implement environmental sustainability reporting, the research discusses implications for policy makers and practitioners for adopting environmental sustainability reporting in the SME context.

The main limitation of this study is that environmental sustainability reporting for SMEs is in its infancy. A longitudinal survey, or re-examining this survey over time, could be beneficial to assess the long-term benefits and costs of implementing sustainability reporting.

The findings of this study have practical implications for the future development of SME environmental sustainability reporting in the EU and for regulators considering sustainability reporting regulations with a specific focus on SMEs.

The study reconstructs the GRI environmental guidelines into a framework for SMEs and provides empirical evidence on the accountant’s sustainability reporting role.

Radio broadcasting is characterized by diffused taste for programming and highly fragmented supply of content. Satellite radio is a major technological breakthrough that promises to reshape this industry by, among other things, satisfying a greater diversity in tastes and promoting greater variety in content provision. A major issue is that the economies of scale are such that it is unlikely more than a few (currently, just two) providers can operate in this market due to the considerable infrastructure and content costs.

To study the industry structure (demand and cost analysis), analyze customer acquisition strategies and the resulting lock-in of customers, and the aggressive bidding for content that takes place in this industry.

This paper takes a long-term view of how the US public and private sectors have been viewed in relation to each other. It notes that since the time of approximately the Nixon Administration, each sector has not been viewed favourably by the public. Over the past 40 years, the private sector has been perceived as being run by the unscrupulous and the public sector by incompetents. The essay argues that Donald Trump was able to exploit these circumstances to win the 2016 election.

This paper presents a polemic. It relies on archival research and data to create a new view of historical eras in US business history. The object of analysis is the idea of relative legitimacy, the public image of the State vis-a-vis business and business managers.

Although the paper addresses business history, a novel argument is presented about the 2016 US Presidential election. It is proposed that Trump took advantage of unique historical circumstances; therefore, his win had more to do with the moment than with him personally.

The paper interprets the 2016 Presidential race as the end-point of a 250-year journey. It sets a new agenda, in that previous analyses have mostly viewed the ascendancy of Trump as pertaining to distinctively post-industrial twenty-first-century phenomena.

In analysing the 2016 Presidential race, the emphasis is largely removed from issues of personality or partisan politics.

The paper takes a view of the 2016 election which has not hitherto been adopted. It proposes a new concept – relative legitimacy – as having a substantial explanatory value.

MY SELF‐RESTRAINT in refraining until thus far through the year from mention of the game of cricket is not, I'm afraid, due to a waning of interest with the onset of old age (it's my birthday next week), but to a ripe contentment with the Ashes victory in Australia during the winter, plus the realisation that cricket is hardly a suitable subject for discussion in the arctic weather conditions we have been experiencing during the first three months of 1979.

AS THIS ISSUE OF NLW appears, the Library Association begins its Centenary Conference in London. I am delighted to have been invited to attend the inaugural session on October 4, and I shall do so full of goodwill towards the association and the profession, both for the short term of this conference and for the outset of the new century in British library affairs. Mind you, and present gravity apart, I expect we shall still get plenty of fun out of the la before its bicentenary turns up.

This is an exploratory study leveraging a domain-specific innovativeness (DSI) perspective to understand adoption of QR code delivered mobile marketing. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of “innovativeness” and “risk aversion” on QR code adoption and usage in the low-involvement context to address tensions between risk and innovation literatures.

Participants were assigned to “laggard” (n=19) and “innovator/early adopter” (n=19) segments using the DSI scale. A combination of qualitative reductionism (means-end chain analysis) and qualitative holism (semi-structured interviewing) was employed.

Confusion regarding the functionality and purpose of QR codes adversely affected willingness to use and utility perceptions. Source trust and information credibility emerged as key concerns for those considering QR codes, with consumer risk aversion and innovativeness orientations influencing the nature of trust concerns. A perceived lack of complementarity between QR codes and retail environments reduced perceived relevance. For low-involvement products, marketers should consider moving beyond brand-level communication to align offerings to the broader foodscape.

Findings are limited to the low-involvement product context. Although DSI was considered, the impact of technological innovativeness was not explored. Future research may consider the impact of information provision at the broader foodscape rather than product-specific level when exploring QR code applications in the food domain.

This is the first study to explore the role of product category innovativeness, as distinct from technological innovativeness on the acceptance and usage of mobile marketing applications in the low-involvement context. This research builds on existing risk and innovation literatures and addresses tensions between these literatures presented by QR codes within the low-involvement context.

This paper will focus on the work which was carried out under the Brite‐EuRAM funded project, COMPRISE (BE 96‐3371), the objective of which was to develop new materials and manufacturing processes to embed passive components (resistors, inductors, capacitors) within printed wiring structures fabricated from laminate materials. For the realisation of integrated resistors, a commercially available planar resistor material is incorporated in different test structures. The technology consists of a copper foil of standard thickness on which a resistive layer is deposited by means of electroless plating. For the realisation of capacitors in multi‐layered PCB structures, significant progress was made in the development and fabrication of very thin laminates. Higher dielectric constants of these laminate materials enable the increase of the capacitance per unit area. For inductors, both aircore (no magnetic material) and magnetic core components have been investigated.

This paper seeks to build understanding of the evaluation of sponsorships involving high human mortality risk. Examples of risky sponsees are presented, with two assessed as in-depth case studies. Based on this research, a sponsorship evaluation framework for sponsors is presented that includes: sponsee selection, risk management, strategic tactics, contingency planning, contract elements and post-contract tactics.

Multilayer aircore inductors fabricated in a range of interconnection technologies which are MCM compatible are presented and compared. These consist of thick‐film, low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC), printed circuit board (PCB) and fine‐line plated copper on ceramic (copper plating). From a comparison of simulated and measured results, it can be concluded that a predictive design capability has been achieved for inductance and self‐resonant frequency (SRF). Modelling of AC resistance and Q requires further investigation.