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The 4th Industrial Revolution introduced a highly automated and connected business environment. Nevertheless, many organizations are reeling in the wake of the speed and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic's impact, catching many unawares, and placing their sustainability in question. Given the connectedness promulgated by the 4th Industrial Revolution, one might expect organizational resilience to be a given - only time will tell whether this was the case. This article considers the concept of cybernetics as contributing to systems-thinking, which may enable resilience strategies to come to fruition. Cybernetics is a goal-driven approach in which constant feedback is analyzed and applied in correcting the current course. We reflect on the roots and principles of the cybernetic concept, developing it into a management cybernetics concept. We take a non-technological approach in acknowledging organizations as systems. Management theories such as stakeholder and stewardship theories are systems components that can play a crucial role in effectively communicating management information within the cybernetic loop. We conclude that an integrative and cooperative relationship with legitimate stakeholders can play an essential role in an organization's preparedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic is a multi-faceted crisis with global impact. Its impact on many economies, including those dependant on oil producing and exporting, may compel such governments to make far-reaching policy decisions. In this context, we briefly consider the economic considerations on two major global oil producers, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, as they also struggle to come to grips with their own broader economic reforms - announced before and during the pandemic. Specifically, under consideration is the increase in both countries' VAT rates at (perhaps) inopportune times. We argue that the burden of the VAT increase on businesses fighting for survival amidst outfall of the COVID-19 crisis will be counter-productive in attaining economic reform objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SME accessibility to finance is widely regarded as a crucial contributing factor to sustainability. It is also generally accepted that access to finance is considerably more difficult for SMEs than for larger corporations. The statutory audit of financial statements for qualifying SMEs in South Africa has been abolished and replaced with the option to do an independent review of the financial statements. This paper considers this abolishment from two perspectives. Firstly, the problem being investigated in this study is whether the lack of audited financial statements has negatively affected SME access to bank financing. This is done by testing the perspectives of SME owners/managers in this regard. A further problem looks at mitigating action SMEs can take to improve their risk profile during a banks assessment of a loan application. Knowledge of basic accounting principles has been identified as a potential mitigating factor by various researchers. This study gains insight into the views and perceptions of SME owners/managers pertaining to their perceived accounting knowledge and or skillsets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate sustainability reporting, renowned as an instrument for businesses to communicate how they function more efficiently and responsibly within the social and physical environment, while simultaneously remaining profitable, has evolved in an up-and-coming trend by businesses. Recent corporate history saw much contrast in ethical behaviour in the global corporate environment. On the one hand, Dante's deadly sin of avarice was running amok, which resulted in spectacular corporate demises. On the other hand, there was the rise of the concept of sustainable development, which describes an organisational culture change aiming to ensure that routine business decisions are made within an economically, socially and environmentally responsible framework. However, given the realities of the modern business environment, intangible ethical philosophies and lipservice codes of ethical conduct may often not be sufficient to ensure responsible and sustainable corporate, environmental and social development. This article reflects on how corporate sin potentially contributes to the contemporary corporate governance conundrum as well as on whether ethics codes can change ethical behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctrinal Research as a Means to Recover Normative Thinking in Accounting. The article debates whether legal doctrinal research could be applied in contemporary accounting research to bring back the prescriptive nature of normative research and whether, by applying doctrinal research, a new focus could be created in accounting research. The article found that the main difference between doctrinal research and traditional scientific and social research is that the focus of doctrinal research is not on the development of theories, but on the underlying doctrines, concepts, rules and principles on which practice and the practical system are based. A shift in accounting research from traditional research that creates theory to research that focuses on the underlying doctrines of the accounting discipline would create an insider perspective in accounting research, which could bring accounting research closer to accounting practice. Doctrinal research could bring normative and prescriptive aspects back to accounting research, but such normative aspects will not necessarily be similar to traditional normative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary corporate history demonstrates that, though accounting is acknowledged as the language of business, there are more and more cases where this language becomes an incomprehensible foreign language. The objective of accounting as promulgated by accounting regulators is characterized by large volumes of complex principles, which none but the most specialised accounting professionals can interpret. This very often results in many classes of accounting information users not being able to properly understand the message being conveyed. This paper aims to reflect on the primary objective of accounting by considering its historic evolution from its ancient roots as a record keeping function, through its bookkeeping phases up to when it actually began to resemble accounting as we know it in the contemporary business environment. Throughout this reflection, consideration is given to its intended purpose for the specific time period under consideration. The paper concludes that even though accounting has evolved much in its perceived objectives, the complexity of the contemporary business environment contributed to complex accounting principles and practices. Nonetheless, the key purpose of accounting should never be lost, that being that it is the language of business and as such it must be understandable to business stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The competitiveness of the South African metals manufacturers is under the spotlight, since new investments in the metals and engineering industry in South Africa have been poor, and growth in the Chinese trade has had a negative competitive effect on domestic metals manufacturing output and employment. The purpose of the study was to determine how supportive the business intelligence process is in enabling successful competitiveness in practice. A theoretical model was designed and empirically tested by metals manufacturers, where four theories were selected to act as mediators between the business intelligence process and successful competitiveness. This study tested four hypotheses by applying Spearman's rank-order correlations and a structural equation model. A total of 63 responses were received and analysed. The study found that the building blocks of the business intelligence process combined in a single factor do not directly lead to successful competitiveness, but only when all the theories' principles, combined into a single factor, act as mediators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]