A comparative study of the accounting research trends (1994-2014) between Spain and Italy

Consistent with the social and institutional paradigm, countries with similar cultures, such as Italy and Spain, may show similar trends in the development of accounting research. This article develops a Comparative International Accounting History perspective, which is aimed at comparing accounting history subjects and themes in different countries. This research analyses publication patterns in accounting, understanding emerging topics and fields. It compares the last 20 years of Italian and Spanish accounting journals, developing a content analysis of each issue in the 20-year time frame from 1994 to 2014. Highlighting common trends and insights, this article adds to previous literature that examines publishing patterns of research in accounting journals from a historical point of view. It demonstrates that accounting research is developing beyond the institutional paradigm, showing an internationalisation process and trends consistent with Anglo-Saxon Journals

“Integrated” Public Groups: Insights on Boundaries and Divestment Opportunities

This paper analyses recent tendencies of managing public real estate and public stake-holdings in a sample of Italian municipalities. The data, retrieved from the Italian Ministry of Interior (Central Department of Local Finances), has been analysed to understand if the local public group, intended in a wider sense and including both subsidiaries and real estate property, is changed over time, in terms of size and composition. The first results show that there has not been adequate divestment to postulate on a general reduction of the boundaries of the “Integrated” Public Groups

Sustainable Development Goals as unifying narratives in large UK firms' Twitter discussions

Since 2015, the United Nations have called for a global effort to reach Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Firms play a vital role in contributing to SDGs. While many empirical approaches were used to map firms' contributions to SDGs, online social networks are an underexplored but promising setting. This paper maps large UK firms' discussions on Twitter, specifically focusing on their SDG-related discussions, with complex network methods from statistical physics. Results show that: 1) SDGs are the topics that tie conversations among major UK firms together; 2) compared to the environmental and economic dimensions, the social dimension is predominant; 3) the attention to different SDGs varies depending on the community and sector firms belong to; 4) the use of retweets on SDGs-related tweets highlights a high stakeholder engagement on global challenges; 5) large UK companies and stakeholders generally behave differently from Italian ones. This paper provides theoretical contributions, combining institutional, stakeholder and legitimacy theories. It also contributes to developing the literature on businesses and SDGs with an interdisciplinary approach. It offers practical implications and a big-data based tool to monitor firms' discussions on SDGs on Twitter. Last, the paper proposes new avenues for further research