This paper calls for including liberal arts study in undergraduate accounting degrees. Although the idea is not new, unlike previous calls - which use normative-based arguments to link liberal arts study with the development of students' critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills - the present study views the inclusion of liberal arts study as indispensable to students assuming their role as accounting professionals. Liberal arts education, through its focus on the diversity of ideas and experiences that characterise society, helps students appreciate the pluralism of worldviews and value spheres, while simultaneously helping them to understand the core values and institutions that comprise the societies they are meant to serve. Without this appreciation and understanding, accountants will struggle to support and might even end up undermining societies' interests. The paper examines four approaches to incorporating liberal arts into accounting degrees. Two emerge as being better suited. One approach prescribes a core set of courses/papers, while the second approach features a core in combination with distributional requirements.

This study examines the associations between academics' perceptions of their institutions' performance management systems, and in particular their performance evaluation, and academics' attitudes and behaviours. Responses from over 1000 New Zealand academics reveal that those who perceive their performance evaluation as outcomes-focused and process-focused are more likely to exhibit compliance-based behaviour. In contrast, when performance evaluation is perceived as being values-driven and supportive of collegiality, the academics exhibit internalised behaviours. This study further shows that academics with internalised attitudes score higher in research assessment exercises than academics with compliance-based attitudes.

This study examines the extent to which India's leading 30 companies disclose information about the solid and liquid wastes they produce. Guided by a 35-item waste disclosure index, companies' 2012-2018 annual reports, sustainability reports and business responsibility reports were content analysed. Although a significant increase in reporting occurred, especially following the Indian government's national waste management campaign in 2014, this increase proceeds from a very low starting point. Over 85 percent of the companies provide limited disclosures. The study's waste disclosure index should prove valuable to researchers and policymakers wishing to measure firms' waste disclosures at and across points in time.

ABSTRACT This study modifies a popular business simulation game, Monopoly, to assess its effectiveness as a learning and teaching tool for helping high school accounting students acquire and apply foundational accounting concepts. The study compares an accounting-focused, Modified Monopoly simulation game with two other instructional methods. Using a quasi-experimental approach that involves three learning groups with random assignment of treatments based on school/class, a sample of 144 accounting students was obtained. This study found students using Modified Monopoly showed significantly greater improvement between their pre- and post-test scores than students in Computer-assisted instruction (CAI), but significantly less improvement than a paper-based extended accounting problem (EAP). However, students using Modified Monopoly, similar to CAI students, did not suffer the same significant decay in knowledge as students in EAP. These results offer evidence for the significant and more enduring learning benefits that Modified Monopoly can produce in students' higher-order thinking skills. Data Availability: Data are available upon request.

This paper examines factors that influence the learning satisfaction of business school students in general and accounting students in particular. Guided by both the literature and the findings from a series of eight focus group sessions involving 43 university undergraduates, a research instrument capable of examining factors associated with student learning satisfaction was designed. Survey responses from 548 students generated seven factors of student satisfaction, with students attributing high importance to all seven factors. It was further found that gender and student major moderated the relationship between the seven factors and students’ reported learning satisfaction.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to extensively discuss the performance management system characteristics of amoeba management and organizational ambidexterity to provide conceptual comparisons between the two and assist scholars and practitioners in their respective research design and adoption decisions. Design/methodology/approach Management databases that included Science Direct, ABI/INFORM Global, Business Source Premier and Scopus (and their Japanese counterparts), as well as a number of journals known for publishing work on amoeba management and organizational ambidexterity, were used to identify relevant published work. An initial identification of almost 2,500 books and articles was reduced to the paper’s approximately 100 references. Feedback from presenting the paper at management conferences and university seminars supports the comprehensiveness of the assembled literature. Findings This paper shows that prior research’s conflating of amoeba management and organizational ambidexterity is misguided. While the two performance management systems share a common overarching philosophy on how to successfully operate in highly competitive environments and adopt a similar urgency about the need for business units to feature relatively small numbers of employees, significant differences involving the enactment of strategy, organizational structure, organizational culture, planning horizon, performance measures, employee involvement, employee selection and leadership prevail. Originality/value By providing scholars and practitioners with better, more holistic understandings of amoeba management and organizational ambidexterity, the paper seeks to advance theoretical and practical understandings of the two performance management systems. The model provided helps scholars incorporate into their research more complete theoretical constructions and operational representations of these two performance management systems and helps practitioners make better informed adoption choices.

Purpose: This paper provides a thematic analysis of an IUCN Red-Listed bird, the houbara bustard, which Pakistan uses as a fungible resource to appease its wealthy Arab benefactors. Design/methodology/approach: Thematic analysis of relevant media reports and government ministry and NGO websites comprise the study’s data. Media reports were located using Dow Jones’ Factiva database. Findings: Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issues wealthy Arabs special permits for hunting the houbara bustard as a "soft" foreign diplomacy strategy aimed at propping up the country’s fragile economy. Although illegal under international and Pakistan’s own wildlife laws, resource dependence theory helps explain how various country-specific issues (e.g. dysfunctional political and judicial systems) enable Pakistan’s unlawful exchange of hunting permits for Arab oil and short-term financing. Surrogate accountability and agencement are examined as two means for arresting the bird’s trajectory toward extinction. Research limitations/implications: Media reports comprise the primary data. Pakistani government officials were approached for interviews, but failed to reply. Although unfortunate, the pervasive corruption and mistrust that characterise Pakistan’s culture would have likely tainted the responses. For this reason, media reports were always the primary data sought. Originality/value: The present study extends prior literature by exploring how country context can subvert the transferability of social and political approaches used in developed countries to address environmental accounting issues and challenges. As this study shows, a developing country’s economic vulnerability, combined with its dysfunctional political systems, impotent judiciary and feckless regulatory mechanisms, can undermine legislation meant to protect the country’s natural environment, in general, and a threatened bird’s existence, in particular.

This paper develops an instrument that measures accounting professionalism. The instrument's development was informed by literature on professionalism, similar to the genesis of instruments developed in other fields (i.e., sociology, medicine and pharmacy), and interviews with practising accountants and accounting academics. An exploratory factor analysis of 516 survey responses received from members of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CAANZ) produced four sub-dimensions of accounting professionalism: ethics and independence, altruism, respect for others, and excellence. This four-factor model and a unidimensional model were tested using confirmatory factor analysis. The four-factor model proved superior to the unidimensional one and produced a final instrument with strong psychometric properties.

One of the most important challenges that people in senior management positions face is the responsibility of ensuring their organizations' effective practice of performance management. As this book reveals, performance management comprises an interdisciplinary field of study and practice that draws upon a wide set of business disciplines, including strategic management, organizational behaviour, organizational theory, and management accounting. This book provides a contemporary examination of theories, issues, and practices related to performance management. An original performance management framework helps structure the book, and in particular the ordering and layout of the book's chapters. Unlike other performance management frameworks, the one used here is grounded in concrete organizational phenomena, therefore making it more accessible and meaningful to practitioners, scholars, and students.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the biodiversity and threatened species reporting of the top 150 Fortune Global companies. The paper has two main objectives: to explore the extent to which the top 150 Fortune Global companies disclose information about their biodiversity and species conservation practices, and to explore the effects of biodiversity partners and industry on companies' biodiversity and threatened species reporting. Design/methodology/approach The study's sample is the top 150 Fortune Global companies. Each company's fiscal year ending 2014 annual report, its 2014 sustainability report, and its company website were content analyzed for evidence of biodiversity and threatened species reporting. This content analysis is supplemented by a detailed analysis that focusses on the sample's top five reporters, including a phone interview with a senior sustainability manager working at one of these companies. Finally, a regression analysis was conducted to examine the associations between companies' biodiversity and threatened species reporting and the presence/absence of biodiversity partners and a company's industry F&C Asset Management industry category. Findings The reporting on biodiversity and threatened species by the top 150 Fortune Global companies is quite limited. Few companies (less than 15) are providing any substantial reporting. It was further observed that even among the high scoring companies there is a lack of consistent reporting across all index items. A subsequent empirical examination of these companies' disclosures on biodiversity and threatened species showed a statistically positive association between the amount of reporting and companies' holding of biodiversity partnerships. It was also observed that firms categorized as red- and green-zone companies made more disclosures on biodiversity and threatened species than amber-zone companies. Originality/value This is the first study to systematically analyze corporate disclosures related to threatened species and habitats. While some prior studies have included the concept of biodiversity when analyzing organizations' environmental disclosures, they have done so by examining it as one general category out of many further categories for investigating organizations' environmental reporting. In the present study, the focus is on the specific contents of biodiversity disclosures. As such, this study has the twin research objectives of seeking to illuminate the current state of biodiversity and threatened species reporting by the world's largest multinationals and provide an appreciation for how certain organizational and industry variables serve to influence these reporting practices. These multiple insights offer companies, and potentially regulators, understanding about how to include (or extend) disclosures on biodiversity loss and species under threat of extinction.

One of the most important challenges that people in senior management positions face is the responsibility of ensuring their organizations’ effective practice of performance management. As this book reveals, performance management comprises an interdisciplinary field of study and practice that draws upon a wide set of business disciplines, including strategic management, organizational behaviour, organizational theory, and management accounting. This book provides a contemporary examination of theories, issues, and practices related to performance management. An original performance management framework helps structure the book, and in particular the ordering and layout of the book’s chapters. Unlike other performance management frameworks, the one used here is grounded in concrete organizational phenomena, therefore making it more accessible and meaningful to practitioners, scholars, and students.