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Social procurement (SP) is a complicated and risky innovation, the adoption of which needs to be accompanied by complementary process and organizational change. To date, however, there has been little empirical evidence explaining whether and how different sorts of external pressures affect the level of SP adoption in the construction sector. Drawing on institutional theory, this study aims to analyze how three types of isomorphic pressures (i.e. coercive, mimetic and normative pressures) influence the adoption of SP in the construction sector.

The impacts of these pressures are empirically tested with survey data collected from 134 construction firms in the Chinese construction industry.

The findings show that both coercive and mimetic pressures have a considerable impact on the adoption of SP. However, there is little evidence in this study that normative demands had a major impact on SP.

This research is a useful instrument for promoting a favorable social attitude regarding construction procurement. Through socioeconomic regeneration and development, procurement can be considered as a significant route for social transformation, economic development and poverty reduction.

This study addresses the paucity of research into SP in the construction industry by establishing the institutional drivers to procuring services and products from a social enterprise perspective. Findings from this study extend the frontiers of existing knowledge on SP in the construction industry.

This paper aims to examine the development of Islamic accounting education and discuss the main challenges facing this specific type of accounting education in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The paper uses institutional theory to analyze the development of Islamic accounting education in the UAE. The collection of information in this study is based on secondary data available from published sources and websites.

This study identifies three types of institutional pressures. First, coercive pressures that were directed by the government, the UAE's Central Bank and other professional bodies [e.g. Accounting and Auditing Organization of Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI)] involved in the Islamic banking industry have contributed to the development of Islamic accounting education in the UAE. Second, mimetic pressures exerted by other countries that have already established Islamic accounting training and programs (e.g. Indonesia, Iran, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) have incentivized the UAE business schools to implement Islamic accounting training and programs to meet Emirati Islamic banking industry expectations. Third, normative pressures are exerted by Big 4 auditors who have an active position as faculty members, influencing status in AAOIFI and a dominant position in the Islamic banking industry’s audit market. The paper also discusses the main challenges facing Islamic accounting education in this country.

This paper contributes to accounting literature in general and accounting education literature in particular in the following two ways. First, this study applies an institutional analysis to Islamic accounting education in the UAE to gain more understanding about the current status of the development of Islamic accounting education in the UAE. Second, by identifying the factors that may constrain the development of Islamic accounting education in the UAE, this study provides recommendations to financial and higher education authorities to undertake proactive actions to position the UAE as a leading center in Islamic accounting education and training.

The shift toward a circular economy (CE) represents a collaborative endeavor necessitating the presence of efficient frameworks, conducive contexts and a common comprehension. This research serves as a pivotal stride towards this goal, presenting an exclusive prospect for the investigation and fusion of these frameworks, with particular emphasis on the Quintuple Helix Model (5HM), into a unified theoretical framework that underscores the core principles of the CE. This study is centered on three pivotal questions aimed at decoding the CE transition in specific regional settings.

Adopting an abductive approach firmly anchored in a two-stage qualitative process, this study specifically merges the foundational principles from institutional theory, entrepreneurship literature and CE frameworks to provide insights into the dynamics of circular ecosystems, with a specific focus on the Huelva region in Spain.

The findings demonstrate significant potential in the CE, ranging from the integration of product and service systems to innovations in eco-industrial practices. Yet, a notable deficiency exists: the absence of institutional entrepreneurs, highlighting the essential role that universities can play. As recognized centers of innovation, universities are suggested to be key contributors to the transformation toward a CE, aligning with their societal and economic responsibilities.

This study highlights the importance of managing relationships with entities like SMEs and policymakers or academia for effective CE adoption. Policymakers can refine strategies based on the research’s insights, while the impact of university-driven circular ecosystems on sustainable societies is another crucial area for research.

The sustainability models cited in CE literature may not be comprehensive enough to prevent problem shifting, and it can be argued that they lack a sound theoretical and conceptual basis. Furthermore, the connections between sustainability objectives and the three levels of the CE operating system remain vague. Additionally, there is insufficient information on how regions foster the involvement of the environment in fivefold helix cooperation and how this impacts the CE.

Although environmental pressures have been covered in great detail in prior literature as the drivers of eco-innovation, there remains inconsistency in the empirical results concerning the effects of these pressures on eco-innovation behaviour. Hence, this paper aims to investigate the impact of environmental pressures, namely, regulatory pressure, green demand and competitive pressure, on eco-innovation among manufacturing SMEs. Moreover, it examined the mediating role of environmental capabilities on the environmental pressure–eco-innovation relationship.

Quantitative data were collected using an online self-reported questionnaire survey to test the hypothesised model. A total of 183 valid questionnaires were collected from managers and owners of manufacturing SMEs in Egypt.

The results of the data analysis using the Smart-PLS software package revealed that among environmental pressures, only green demand had a direct effect on eco-innovation. In addition, environmental capabilities only mediated the effect of competitive pressure on eco-innovation.

This study has been one of the few addressing the issue of how the drivers of eco-innovation interact. It has also provided the managers and owners of SMEs and policymakers with practical implications.

Prior institutional duality research asserts that ceremonial implementation of organisational practice protects multinational corporations’ subsidiaries. However, the temporal dynamics of the safeguarding function has been under researched. Public sector organisations have also been ignored. This research aims to explore how the safeguarding function is created, maintained and disrupted using the overseas offices (OOs) of a bilateral development agency (BDA) as a case.

A multi-case study, underpinned by neo-institutionalism, was conducted. Data obtained from in-depth remote interviews with 39 informants from the BDA OOs were analysed using the “asking small and large questions” technique, four analytical techniques, cross-case synthesis and theoretical propositions.

A three-phase process was identified. The first phase is the appearance of discrepancies due to institutional duality. The second is the emergence of ceremonial implementation as a solution. In the third phase, “the creation, maintenance and disruption of a safeguarding function” begins. When ceremonial implementation successfully protects the OOs, the safeguarding function is created. The OOs are likely to repeat ceremonial implementation, thus sustaining the function. Meanwhile, when conditions such as management staff change, ceremonial implementation may not take place, and the safeguarding function disappears.

The BDA OOs may not face strong host country regulative pressures because they are donors to aid-recipient countries. Hence, the findings may not directly apply to other public sector organisations.

Development cooperation practitioners should understand that ceremonial implementation is not exclusively harmful.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first institutional duality research that explores the temporal dynamics of safeguarding functions targeting public sector organisations.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the most relevant literature related to the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) in the public sector in developed and developing countries, identifying the constraints and stimuli they represent in the implementation of the public accounting reform. It also presents future research proposals on the factors identified.

The methodology is based on a systematic review of the literature described by Moher et al. (2009). The final sample includes 90 academic papers published from 2000 to 2022.

The main findings indicate that there are differences between constraints and stimuli in the implementation of accounting standards between developed and developing countries. In terms of constraints, the main factor in developed countries is the lack of training, whereas in developing countries it is the limitation on financial resources. In addition, the results demonstrate that in developed countries the factors that most encourage the implementation of accounting standards are modernization and improvement of accounting, while in developing countries, encouragement comes mainly from external and internal pressure.

This study helps countries and institutions to learn from experience and better prepare for the accounting reforms of public administration that they will undertake. Managers of public organizations may be willing to make decisions in the adoption of IPSAS if they take into account the factors established herein.

This study helps countries and institutions to learn from the experience, better prepare for the public administration accounting reforms that they will undertake and add greater transparency in the accountability of public accounts to citizens.

In addition to previous studies, this study addresses a number of factors perceived by those involved in the implementation of IPSAS in developed and developing countries and provides a robust research agenda to pursue during the coming years, as there are several important unexplored questions that invite further research.

This paper aims to present a review of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) literature on the adoption of technology for marketing with the objective the knowledge trajectory from SMEs to tourism SMEs (TSMEs) and presents a research agenda for the adoption of digital marketing among TSMEs.

The quantitative literature review method is adopted to analyze 50 articles published in high-ranking journals from 2011–2021. The selected papers were reviewed to quantitatively present the popular theoretical frameworks, constructs and research methods used for the adoption of digital marketing among SMEs and to present a future research agenda in the context of TSMEs.

The findings present a review of theoretical approaches, research design, methods, and models used by researchers, and identify new directions for future research in the context of the adoption of digital marketing among TSMEs. The paper presents a theoretical critique of the technology adoption theories and builds on diffusion of innovation theory, technology–organization–environment (TOE), and institutional theory to propose an expanded model to study digital marketing adoption among TSMEs.

The article presents a significant advancement in the theoretical understanding of the adoption of digital marketing by offering the application of the TOE framework with moderating role of mimetic and normative pressures. Thus, the study contributes to the scarce research on institutional theory in the context of services (tourism) and offers an alternative and holistic perception to study digital marketing. The research model serves as an organizing tool for future researchers and practitioners to probe and further augment knowledge development in tourism and TSMEs.

Negligible published work on TSMEs makes this study valuable and the proposed model gives strategic information in the given context.

This paper aims to identify the effect of environmental management systems (EMSs), commitment to stakeholders and gender diversity on corporate environmental performance (CEP) and the extent to which an economic crisis moderates these relationships.

A regression analysis was conducted on a sample of 14,217 observations from 1,933 firms from 26 countries from 2002 to 2010. The estimator used is ordinary least squares with heteroscedastic panel-corrected standard errors (PCSEs), which allows us to obtain consistent results in the presence of heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation.

The results show that EMSs and stakeholder engagement are mechanisms that drive CEP but lose their effectiveness in times of crisis. However, the presence of women on boards has a positive effect on CEP that is not affected by an economic crisis.

The study has some limitations that could be addressed in the future. We present board gender diversity as a governance mechanism because its role is strongly related to non-financial performance. Future studies could focus on other corporate governance mechanisms, such as the presence of institutional or long-term investors. In addition, other mechanisms could be found that can counteract poor environmental performance in times of crisis. Finally, it might be useful to contrast these results with the crisis generated by the coronavirus pandemic.

The results obtained have important practical implications at the corporate and institutional levels. At the corporate level, they highlight, as essential contributions, that environmental management systems and stakeholder orientation are not effective in times of economic crisis, except for with the presence of women on the board.

Following the crisis, the European Commission has promoted gender diversity on boards as a mechanism to improve the governance of entities – improving, among other aspects, sustainability. In this sense, another one of the practical implications of the study is support for the policies that the European Union has implemented over the last two decades.

The paper analyses how a crisis affects the moral and cultural institutional mechanisms that promote CEP. Gender diversity on the board of directors not only promotes environmental performance but also appears to be a governance mechanism that ensures this performance in times of crisis when the other mechanisms lose their effectiveness. The study proposes specific policies that help maintain environmental performance in an economic crisis.

In the accounting field, sustainability accounting (SA) has evolved as a valuable tool that links improvements in environmental, social and governance issues to financial performance. This study aims to examine the structure and evolution of SA research, map the state of knowledge and analyse the literature trends and gaps.

The study adopts a bibliometric review technique with data sourced from the Scopus database. A total of 7,049 extant literature spanning from 1982 to 2022 was analysed using the VOSviewer software.

The authors find a significant growth in the number of publications on SA research, primarily driven by collaboration among researchers from Europe and America. The analysis highlights emerging themes, structure and discusses in detail the changing phases of SA research over the past four decades while highlighting key events that have impacted the development of SA research. Furthermore, the dominant theories used by extant studies are discussed and potential avenues for future research are provided. The authors draw the attention of the research community to the dominant authors, the most cited articles, prominent publication outlets and countries advancing research in this field.

This study advances knowledge on SA research by providing a retrospective assessment of the state of knowledge in the field while highlighting avenues for future research.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to examine the relationship between institutional pressures and risk governance in financial institutions (FIs) in Uganda and to establish mediational role of collectivist orientation in the relationship between institutional pressures and risk governance in financial institutions in Uganda.

The study adopts a cross-sectional and quantitative research design. The authors employed Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (SmartPLS 3.3.0 for professionals) to test hypotheses.

The results indicate that institutional pressures is significantly associated with risk governance in FIs. The study also finds collectivist orientation partially mediates the relationship between institutional pressures and risk governance in FIs in Uganda.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study provides initial empirical evidence on the relationship between institutional pressures, collectivist orientation and risk governance using evidence from a developing African country – Uganda. Additionally, this study provides an initial evidence of the mediating role of collectivist orientation in the relationship between institutional pressures and risk governance in FIs.