The relationship between a company's sustainability practices and its financial performance has been investigated with different methods and from different theoretical perspectives. This study aims to answer the following questions: (a) Do investors react to the publication of sustainability reports on company websites? (b) Has the market reaction to the publication of the sustainability report increased in the last few years? In this study, 170 report disclosures were considered from 55 listed companies from all over the world in the period from 2009 to 2016. To analyze the impact of the report publications on the security returns, 33 different event windows were analyzed. Results show two significant event windows and an increasing level of significance in the reports released after 2013.
Purpose
This paper aims to identify the possible sources of organizational decoupling and their effects in public universities, as they transition from cash to accrual accounting, by assessing the phases of the innovation assimilation process.
Design/methodology/approach
To assess the transition, the authors develop a framework that integrates the possible sources of decoupling with the phases of the innovation process. This framework is then applied to the analysis of six Italian public universities moving from cash to accrual accounting.
Findings
The results point to regulation gaps and adverse organizational conditions as the main culprits of decoupling behaviours in the production and use of information. Delays in the characterization of the legal framework and ambiguities in the definition of accounting standards by the regulator are the first barriers to an effective transition. The organizational barriers, instead, depend on lack of adequate skills, over-bureaucratization, limitations of the IT systems and organizational complexity. Such limitations generate hybrid accounting systems that jeopardize the informative function of financial reporting.
Originality/value
From a theoretical viewpoint, this paper contributes to a conceptualization of accounting innovations and reforms as processes whose impact depends on dynamics that arise and interact differently across phases. From a practitioner’s point of view, it highlights the factors that may produce adverse effects during the implementation process: these may be taken into account during planning, so as to develop the appropriate remedial actions.
Pay-for-performance has been widely adopted in the public sector to improve effectiveness and efficiency in service provision, which in turn positively affects employees’ satisfaction and commitment. Despite the presence of these initiatives in nearly every reform effort, limited concrete evidence of success has been highlighted. Through a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis on 17 social care organizations in Italy, the aim of this work is to contribute to the debate on human resources management practices in the public sector. Results suggest that pay-for-performance is effective when supported by other empowering practices. Furthermore, alternative combinations can produce the same positive effect on satisfaction and commitment.
In recent years, within the panorama of Italian public organization, information and management tools are making their mark. Public health organization …nd themselves as part of those organization mentioned above, and the number of subjects who have decided or who have been "forced" to adopt the social report -or tools similar to it -is, by now, noteworthy. The current work aims to analyse the "mission statement" project carried out by the Emilia-Romagna Region for the purpose of verifying how it shapes out not just as an accountability tool, but also (or perhaps especially) as a tool whose aim is to support the mechanisms of governance within the regional health system.
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