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Shell Research & Technology Centre, Thornton, located just outside Chester in the North of England, is home to over 700 research staff. Its brief is to service the research needs of any part of Shell that is willing to sponsor a research project and work is undertaken in a wide range of areas, including the technologies associated with fuels, lubricants, additives, engineering and the environment. The Centre also blends the fuels and lubricants used by Michael Schumacher and the Ferrari F1 Team.

To investigate, analyse and critique contemporary research in social and environmental accounting.

An analysis and critique of the social and environmental accountability (SEA) research field since the late 1980s. The study revisits two key prior seminal papers on the field, examines the remit for SEA researchers' focus on practice and policy and offers an empirical analysis of the profile of SEA publication.

Theories are identified in two groups: augmentation and heartland theories. These have been more deductively than inductively generated, evidencing limited attention to field‐based engagement. An alternative to the elusive all‐embracing unitary SEA theory is presented. Researchers' concerns with capture of the SEA field is critiqued and an alternative researcher engagement orientation is offered. Environmental research dominates more recent SEA published output, the dominant methodological approach is literature‐based theorising, and national practices/comparisons and regulations are leading topic areas occupying researchers.

Analysis of publishing patterns including the balance between social and environmental accountability research, research methodologies employed and SEA topics addressed is largely confined to four leading interdisciplinary accounting research journals.

The paper argues for greater SEA researcher engagement with SEA practice and involvement in SEA policy contributions.

The paper offers a contemporary assemblage and critique of the multiple theoretical perspectives applied to the SEA field and offers insights into the range and predominance of research methods and topics within the published SEA field.

In the context of the transfer of the responsibility for prison health from the Prison Service to the National Health Service, a survey of doctors working in prisons reveals doctors’ own high priorities for training in the distinct patient contexts found in prison as well as in certain clinical conditions. The analysis identifies exclusive competences required only for doctors working in prisons and special interest competences that although applicable to practice in the community are particular strengths of doctors working in prisons because of the prevalence of conditions they are required to address.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the progress in grey system research during 2000-2015, so as to present some important new concepts, models, methods and a new framework of grey system theory.

The new thinking, new models and new methods of grey system theory and their applications are presented in this paper. It includes algorithm rules of grey numbers based on the “kernel” and the degree of greyness of grey numbers, the concept of general grey numbers, the synthesis axiom of degree of greyness of grey numbers and their operations; the general form of buffer operators of grey sequence operators; the four basic models of grey model GM(1,1), such as even GM, original difference GM, even difference GM, discrete GM and the suitable sequence type of each basic model, and suitable range of most used grey forecasting models; the similarity degree of grey incidences, the closeness degree of grey incidences and the three-dimensional absolute degree of grey incidence of grey incidence analysis models; the grey cluster model based on center-point and end-point mixed triangular whitenization functions; the multi-attribute intelligent grey target decision model, the two stages decision model with grey synthetic measure of grey decision models; grey game models, grey input-output models of grey combined models; and the problems of robust stability for grey stochastic time-delay systems of neutral type, distributed-delay type and neutral distributed-delay type of grey control, etc. And the new framework of grey system theory is given as well.

The problems which remain for further studying are discussed at the end of each section. The reader could know the general picture of research and developing trend of grey system theory from this paper.

A lot of successful practical applications of the new models to solve various problems have been found in many different areas of natural science, social science and engineering, including spaceflight, civil aviation, information, metallurgy, machinery, petroleum, chemical industry, electrical power, electronics, light industries, energy resources, transportation, medicine, health, agriculture, forestry, geography, hydrology, seismology, meteorology, environment protection, architecture, behavioral science, management science, law, education, military science, etc. These practical applications have brought forward definite and noticeable social and economic benefits. It demonstrates a wide range of applicability of grey system theory, especially in the situation where the available information is incomplete and the collected data are inaccurate.

The reader is given a general picture of grey systems theory as a new model system and a new framework for studying problems where partial information is known; especially for uncertain systems with few data points and poor information. The problems remaining for further studying are identified at the end of each section.

The standard of health care in prisons should be equivalent to that provided in the community. Prison populations are multiply disadvantaged and primary health care practitioners in prisons routinely face organisational and ethical challenges which are rare in community‐based general practice. This raises the question of whether doctors working in prisons consider they would benefit from additional clinical skills or training, the range of prison‐specific competencies they consider important and what they would like to see included in induction programmes. Through a series of semi‐structured, faceto‐face interviews with doctors and health care managers working in prisons, this study sought to identify views on the training needs for doctors working in prisons. Practitioners demonstrated that induction processes were varied and fragmented and that delivering primary care in prisons raised additional clinical and organisational challenges. Relationships with prisoner patients were generally good. Few ethical issues were raised by this small sample, with the exception of confidentiality. However, aspirations towards equivalence were tempered by tensions between custodial needs and clinical requirements, and more research should be directed to the ways practitioners negotiate this interface. Induction programmes should ensure that all practitioners receive practical and ethical guidance to help them address these tensions.

Elaborates a model of accountability as a relationship of three parties: principal, steward and the codes on which stewardship is established, executed and adjudicated. Describes how the enhancement of accountable management in the public sector, through the Financial Management Initiative, the Next Steps Agencies and, most recently, market testing, has brought changes to these codes and thus to accountability itself.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit the special issue of Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal which was published in 1991 and which sought to stimulate the “green accounting” debate, to evaluate that issue and, in particular, to examine what we might learn about the development of the social and environmental accounting literature in the last 20 years.

The paper takes the form of a discursive, polemical essay.

The special issue exhibited a wide range of approaches and possibilities; it also exhibited some theoretical naivety and a charming optimism and fetching trust in the power of reasonable argument. Retrospectively, the field has expanded considerably and has made many advances in theoretical and empirical understanding but researchers appear to be less willing to examine the fundamental issues that originally motivated the development of the field.

The implications and limitations stem from the ambitions of this discursive attempt to encourage debate of a more direct and confrontational nature – both within and at the margins of social, environmental and sustainability accounting.

The originality and value of the paper is in its critical engagement with the literature and ideas of social accounting, which is the generic descriptor used in the paper to include “green accounting”. It provides not only an analysis of the achievement of the work to date but some critical pointers to the work that still needs to be done.

It is a point of continuing debate whether the study of public administration can in any circumstances be graced by a disciplinary label. Rhodes (1996), for example, has argued that the study of British public administration was traditionally insular, dominated for a long period by an institutionalist tradition characterized by an interest in administrative engineering, but a distaste for theory. As Rhodes also observes, this position emphasized, albeit in a traditional sense, the political and ethical context of administration public administration existed within a wider framework of accountability relationships and political and moral responsibilities. We might add to this the way government and public administration was seen as linked within a framework of administrative law, which, while not formalized in the sense of continental Europe, was important.

This paper aims to respond to recent calls by Jones (2014) and Jones and Solomon (Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 2013) for more studies on biodiversity accounting and reporting. In particular, this paper explores biodiversity reporting of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA), an Australian public sector enterprise.

The paper uses content analysis of MDBA’s published annual reports over the period of 15 years (1998-2012). Archival data (from different government departments) are also used to prepare natural inventory model.

The paper finds that although specific species, such as flora and fauna, and habitats-related disclosures have increased over the time, such information still allows only a partial construction of an inventory of natural assets, using Jones’ (1996, 2003) model. However, unlike prior studies that find lack of data availability to be the main impediment for operationalising biodiversity accounting, the abundance of biodiversity data in Australia makes it comparatively easier to produce such a statement.

Informed by the environmental stewardship framework, the results of this paper suggest that the disclosures made by MDBA are constrained potentially due to its use of traditional accounting mechanisms of reporting that only allow tradable items to be reported to stakeholders. An alternative reporting format would be more relevant to stakeholder groups who are more interested in information regarding quality and availability of water, and loss of biodiversity in the basin area rather than the financial performance of the MDBA.

Although there are a growing number of studies exploring biodiversity reporting in Australia, this paper is one of the earlier attempts to operationalise biodiversity (particularly habitats, flora and fauna) within the context of an Australian public sector enterprise.

The purpose of this paper is to look at a recent Financial Services Authority (FSA) challenge in the Court of Appeal to finding of Financial Services and Markets Tribunal on question of whether solicitors' firm had contravened financial promotion regime (FSA v. Fox Hayes: Court of Appeal (civil division): Lord Justice Longmore, Lord Justice Wilson, Lord Justice Lawrence Collins).

Examines the FSA's various grounds for appeal and what was an appropriate level of penalty.

Provides the court of appeal's decisions on point of law in relation to three issues.

This paper will be of interest to regulated firms who fear the consequences of regulatory liability for breaches of FSA rules.