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Purpose The relationships between integrated reporting quality (IRQ) and corporate governance characteristics have been studied extensively, but the results are still inconclusive and, sometimes, contradictory. The purpose of this paper is to systematize the results of previously published studies on the relationship between corporate governance and IRQ. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses several complementary theoretical perspectives (agency, stakeholder and signaling theory). The relevant aspects of the corporate governance system are the attributes and composition of the board, the existence of a social responsibility committee, the quality of the audit committee, integrated report assurance and ownership structures. The sample consisted of 61 papers published in top journals between 2015 and 2021. Meta-analytic procedures were applied on bivariate and partial correlations between IRQ and the identified corporate governance characteristics. Findings The results confirm that director independence, the existence of a social responsibility committee, institutional ownership and the hiring of a Big 4 auditor are significantly correlated with IRQ. On the other hand, board gender diversity, audit committee independence and dedicated assurance have a positive but nonsignificant impact on IRQ. Chairperson-chief executive officer duality does not seem to impact report quality, while ownership concentration has a negative but nonsignificant impact on IRQ. Research limitations/implications Future research can improve the measurement of focal indicators by using a common set of variables for comparability, favoring disaggregate measures of corporate governance and updating the measurement of some indicators. Future research could also propose new indicators in the area of corporate governance and expand the theoretical domain of IRQ research. Originality/value The findings emphasize the need to explicitly consider the role of corporate governance structures and arrangements in improving IRQ. Through meta-analysis, the paper aims to provide a comprehensive and generalizable set of findings, suggesting that corporate governance indicators cannot be overlooked as predictors of integrated reporting.

Research Question: Are the bibliometric indicators included in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and the academic criteria in the Economics domain relevant from the point of view of the assessment of the quality of the research activity? Motivation: This study is motivated by the fact that the research landscape changed significantly during the last years, with the growth of open access publishers. In addition, the number of journals and the value of the bibliometric indicators included in the JCR are growing. As such, the relevance of the academic criteria is affected. Data: Data for this study were collected from the JCR for 50 journals edited by five publishers. Tool: An original database created by the author starting from the JCR was used as a tool for the present study. Findings: The results have shown that the fast-publish editor selected for the study registers a high number of self-cites within the publishing house, and also that the self-cites are mostly directed towards the recently published papers, so that they influence the value of the bibliometric indicators. Practical implications: The importance of the findings of such research stems from providing evidence on the rise of a new type of publisher, open access, fast growing, fast publishing, fast citing. Also, the behaviour of Romanian academics and the criteria they have to comply with in their careers are affected. The results have implications for the authorities setting the criteria for academics.

Integrated reporting promotes changing the internal processes of companies to generate improved performance. One way toward this goal is to use integrated thinking as a tool to achieve a ‘better understanding of the factors that materially affect an organization’s ability to create value over time’, that is the six capitals, as suggested by the International Integrated Reporting Council. Our goal is to identify ‘effects of learning’ in the field of integrated reporting on the performance and reporting practices of companies. More specifically, we aim to identify how and to what extent integrated thinking translated into their reporting practices and performance, while companies implemented the International Integrated Reporting Framework. Therefore, we analyse and compare the reporting practices and performance of European companies included in the International Integrated Reporting Council’s Pilot Program for two moments in time: 2013 and 2016. We use a set of nineteen indicators, considered as the most important for the presentation of the six capitals. Thus, we provide insights about how integrated reports disclose information concerning the capitals. Results show improvements in performance and the diversification of indicators disclosed in the reports. However, changes are not exclusively attributable to integrated reporting; reporting experience is also a contributing factor. The study contributes to the literature on the impact of integrated reporting in practice.

Even though the sustainability reporting is voluntary, companies are increasingly adopting it. There is a multitude of reporting standards used by companies in this regard. Along with the voluntary guidelines, in 2014 was adopted a European Directive which became mandatory for a set of companies. Our research question is which are the changes brought in the reporting of the European companies by the Directive? In doing this, we focus on the energy companies. We selected them because they are environmentally-sensitive. We selected the European energy companies which included a report for last year in the GRI’s database. We downloaded the reports published by the sample companies in the period 2014 – 2017. We selected 2014 as a starting point because it is the year in which the Directive was approved. We selected 2017 because it was the first year in which the ED 2014/95/EU became mandatory. First of all, we extracted the words used in the Directive for writing the names of the indicators. Using NVivo Pro, we searched for the indicators in the selected reports. By analyzing the core indicators for the energy domain, we pursued to identify the sample companies’ commitment to sustainability. The contribution of our study is that it provides an insight into the Directive as a driver which influences the sustainability reporting.

The research on integrated reporting (IR) grew exponentially during the last decade. The present meta-analysis was motivated by the need to systematize the results of previously published studies employing quantitative methodologies. Therefore, we fill a research gap by discovering significant meta-analytic relations between IR and various economic, organizational, institutional, and country-level variables. Three major areas of research were identified: IR adoption, IR quality, and integrated thinking. The final sample consisted of 91 articles published in top journals between 2013 and 2021. The meta-analytic procedures were applied on bivariate and partial correlations between the three major areas of IR and other constructs such as company attributes, financial performance, corporate governance, social and environmental responsibility, market performance, industry- and country-level characteristics. The results confirmed that corporate governance variables (i.e., director independence, board gender diversity, the existence of a social responsibility committee, and quality of the audit committee) were the most important predictors of IR quality, especially in a voluntary reporting setting. On the other hand, financial reporting quality, financial performance, and firm leverage are not significantly associated with integrated reporting quality. Several implications and recommendations were derived from these meta-analytic results.

The European Directive 2014/95/EU as regards disclosure of non-financial and diversity information by certain large undertakings and groups is applicable by European Union-based entities starting with the financial year commencing on 1 January 2017. Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries are reported to face difficulties when implementing new European or global accounting regulations and models. We investigate the quality of non-financial disclosures in Poland and Romania, the biggest CEE countries, prior to the European Directive’s adoption and explain the diffusion of this type of reporting through the lens of the institutional pressures. We find that prior regulation, local institutional characteristics, ownership, industry and auditors have an impact on the quality of disclosures. Poland experienced a higher extent of voluntary reporting, but Romania faced prior regulatory demands for non-financial reporting (NFR). We find that the overall disclosure score is higher for Romania, which pr...

The authors investigated how enterprise resource planning systems are implemented and employed in a transition economy. Specifically, a longitudinal case study was conducted to investigate the fit between context variables that is, variables describing the organizational factors and the business environment, and the enterprise resource planning system, and the impact of this fit on organizational performance. It is shown how the case company’s enterprise resource planning system substitutes management techniques, facilitates strategy formulation, and implementation, thus significantly improving organizational performance.

Aligning the Romanian university education to the Bologna Treaty requirements generated the establishment of the professional skills that have to be obtained by students through business education. To enhance the skills to be acquired by a student along his preparation, the curriculum of the Faculty of Accounting and Management Information Systems within the Bucharest University of Economic Studies was changed several times. This paper follows the evolution of the curriculum for the bachelor’s degree of the Faculty of Accounting and Management Information Systems for a period of eight years. To highlight how the curriculum was adjusted according to the expectations of stakeholders the neo-institutional theory was used, applying the concepts of coercive, mimetic and normative isomorphism. The documentation sources were: curriculum for bachelor’s degree for the period 2005-2013, syllabuses used during 2011-2013, notes of discussions with representatives of the professional bodies, results of the surveys of students and graduates, interviews etc.