Purpose-This paper reviews and synthesizes empirical research on how traditional accounting and audit firms engage with blockchain technology (BCT) in their daily operations. It critically reflects on the current state of knowledge, identifies gaps and outlines directions for future research. Design/methodology/approach-Based on 52 carefully selected articles from the Web of Science and Scopus databases, this systematic literature review uses a comprehensive mapping approach to uncover key patterns and identify critical gaps in the field. Findings-The review indicates that BCT is continuously evolving in the accounting and auditing profession, reshaping the roles of professionals and highlighting the growing need for technical skills. Key themes in empirical literature include BCT as a tool for accounting and auditing, organizational and ecosystem perspectives, opportunities and challenges, adoption and acceptance, education and skills, fraud and sustainability and cryptocurrencies. Originality/value-By (1) charting the progression of empirical blockchain research in accounting and auditing, (2) organizing existing work into a coherent thematic framework and (3) pinpointing unresolved questions poised to drive the next phase of study, this review provides an integrative overview that advances current understanding and guides scholars toward promising research avenues. Besides identifying potential pathways for further investigation, the study offers valuable insights that can guide stakeholders in formulating targeted strategies and technological solutions to strengthen auditing practices and adapt to evolving regulatory and digital landscapes.

This paper examines the association between commercialization in the auditing profession and auditors' dedication to the profession. The paper further explores the contingent role of environmental uncertainty in this relationship. We hypothesize that these relations are contextually situated and that in a transitional economy like Georgia, commercialization is positively associated with auditors' dedication to the profession. We furthermore hypothesize that under a high perceived level of environmental uncertainty, commercialization instead becomes negatively associated with auditors' dedication to the profession. Our study relies on the responses of 235 certified Georgian auditors. In line with our expectations, our findings indicate that increasing commercialization in the auditing profession is positively associated with increasing dedication to the profession. We further find that increasing environmental uncertainty has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between commercialization in the auditing profession and auditors' dedication to the profession, driven mainly by existential uncertainty regarding the survival of the auditing firm. Exploring these relationships, our study contributes to an emerging discussion on the role of commercialization in professionals' perceptions of and attachment to their profession. Our study further highlights the role of environmental uncertainty in affecting the work performed by auditors in emerging economies.

Drawing on board-member surveys and stage-specific text analyses of annual reports from 150 Stockholm-listed firms, this study distinguishes three stages of digital transformation (DT)—digitization, digitalization, and digital maturity—to examine how board roles and ownership structures shape firms' DT ambitions. Cross-sectional and two-year lag regressions show that boards emphasizing strategic resource provision consistently promote broader DT, whereas monitoring-oriented boards dampen it, with these effects strengthening over time. Ownership dispersion further amplifies DT, while dominant or highly concentrated blocks dampen it. Stage-specific analyses reveal that governance matters most during digitalization: strategic boards and dispersed ownership accelerate progress, while monitoring boards and concentrated ownership slow it down. In contrast, early-stage digitization appears largely insensitive to governance, while late-stage digital maturity depends more on board size and firm capabilities. This study advances corporate governance and technology strategy research by clarifying when and how governance mechanisms enable or constrain DT and by introducing a replicable, stage-specific DT metric for future studies.

The growing emphasis on sustainability in the retail sector, driven by regulatory frameworks, market trends and consumer demand, has placed management control at the forefront of facilitating sustainability practices. Despite increasing academic interest in this area, the literature is fragmented and provides limited sector-specific insight into how management control systems are configured to support sustainability. This systematic literature review develops an integrated contingency-informed framework that categorises types of management control for sustainability in retail. The framework illustrates how control systems can advance sustainability beyond mere compliance by linking different control types and configurations to retail-specific contextual conditions and sustainability outcomes. By providing a structured synthesis of existing research and outlining future research directions, this study contributes to contingency-based management control theory and offers insights for both academic research and managerial decision-making.

Purpose

This study aims to investigate how politically motivated Russian foreign ownership influences corporate sustainability disclosure in Georgia, an emerging economy marked by geopolitical vulnerability and a high concentration of foreign capital in strategic sectors.

Design/methodology/approach

We compiled a hand-collected dataset of 300 firm-year observations for 51 publicly traded entities admitted to Georgia's capital market between 2018 and 2023. Using the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) as conceptual benchmarks, we constructed firm-level sustainability disclosure scores. The analysis applies ordinary least squares regressions with controls for corporate governance, financial and disclosure-related characteristics, and incorporates sector and year fixed effects.

Findings

Russian-owned entities disclose significantly less sustainability information, particularly in the social and governance dimensions, while environmental disclosures appear less affected due to sector-specific regulations. These firms exhibit selective reporting behavior that favors discretion over accountability. The negative effect is unique to Russian ownership and is not observed among other foreign-owned firms.

Originality/value

This study conceptualizes and empirically validates politically motivated foreign ownership as a distinct form of foreign control that can undermine sustainability disclosure. The findings challenge the assumption that foreign ownership uniformly promotes transparency, particularly in strategically important sectors. The results carry important implications for regulators in emerging markets seeking to strengthen sustainability reporting and governance standards for firms owned by politically driven, non-Western investors.

Venture boards shape how high-growth ventures learn, decide, and access resources under uncertainty. This special issue advances venture board research by shifting attention from boards as structure (composition and formal attributes) to boards as capability (routines and relational processes that channel attention, orchestrate advice and monitoring, and enable timely decisions). The eight articles collectively explore board composition, its changes over the venture life cycle, consequences on boards, and outcomes. Building on these contributions and the wider literature, this editorial advances five directions for future research: theorizing boards as capabilities and mechanisms, embracing epistemological and methodological pluralism, unpacking micro-level decision dynamics, comparing venture boards with other sources of advice, and situating venture boards in their entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Background

Health care services are increasingly delivered by ethnically diverse teams. Understanding how these teams function and should be managed to improve clinical performance is critical to improving the quality and safety of care.

Purpose

The aim of this study was to identify configurations of conditions that enable ethnically diverse health care teams to improve their clinical performance.

Methodology/Approach

This study uses video data from 59 simulations collected at a simulation center in southern Sweden in October 2022 and December 2023, supplemented by survey data. The simulations include 28 observations of CEPS (Concept for Patient Simulation) and 31 observations of PROBE (Practical Obstetric Team-Training). Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis was used to explore combinations of conditions that lead to high performance.

Results

A laissez-faire leadership style does not enable high performance in either ethnically homogeneous or heterogeneous teams. Ethnically diverse health care teams excel with shared leadership, especially when these teams are larger and less experienced. In addition, small and experienced teams perform well with shared leadership, regardless of ethnic diversity. Autocratic leadership is ineffective in ethnically diverse teams and effective only in small, ethnically homogeneous teams.

Practice Implications

The study highlights the importance of active leadership for optimal performance in health care teams, regardless of ethnic diversity. These findings provide valuable guidance for managers and practitioners responsible for staffing or leading diverse teams in hospitals.

This study investigates when the reputation enhancing signals of family firms include early adoption of non-financial disclosure. Drawing on signalling theory, we examine the effect of family ownership on the early adoption of non-financial disclosure and the moderating role of contingency signals: founder chief executive officer (CEO) leadership and employee degrowth rate. We test our hypotheses with panel regressions on a dataset of Italian listed family firms over the period 2013-2017, years before the introduction of mandatory non-financial reporting. The results reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between family ownership and early adoption of non-financial disclosure, negatively moderated by the presence of a founder CEO and positively moderated by employee degrowth. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice.

Ingress: Hur kan man säkra kvaliteten och arbetsmiljön i multiprofessionella vårdteams som präglas av mångkultur? Det har en forskargrupp från högskolan i Jönköping tittat närmare på.