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Examines the politics of accounting regulation when collective forces and social arrangements appear to mitigate potential conflict. Specifically, the process through which accounting law was redrafted in Austria in preparation for EU (European Union) membership is investigated, paying particular attention to the changes in the legal text of the Financial Reporting Act between the Ministerial and Governmental drafts. The Ministerial draft was the outcome of discussions between representatives of employers, employees, academics, and accountants in an attempt to reach consensus on the legal text in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice. These deliberations took place behind closed doors, but were followed by a process of public consultation. In these circumstances, it was possible to identify changes in those aspects of accounting law to which the main parties could not at first agree, and hence to assess the unconditional influence of powerful groups that is exercised in circumstances where disagreement between the parties is already apparent.

Chapter 9 explains the numerous roles that reporting plays in learning and points out that communication is the essence of reporting. Teachers are made aware of the different audiences of reporting and the importance of different reporting strategies. To support teachers in reporting practices, some reporting principles are mentioned, and various methods of reporting are illustrated with examples.

This chapter argues for a re-conceptualization of Weimar political trials as the performance of ideology. Erika Fischer-Lichte has recently argued that interwar theatrical innovations modernised and dramatised the notion of sacrifice as a catalyst for the construction of community. The same is true of political trials, where a community of fundamental opposition to the Weimar political order was played out. In political trials, Weimar extremists styled themselves fiercely committed idealists who, in their sacrifice, foreshadowed the victorious ideological community of the future — with the inertia and legalism of the judges as foil. Courtroom performances of ideology thrived in a media landscape eager for and attuned to trial coverage. Moreover, they resonated with trends in contemporary theatre, where innovators like Brecht, Piscator, and the protagonists of agitprop were seeking to break down the boundaries between politics and art.

The corporate supply of information about the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on exposure and performance does not meet the demands by outside shareholders and financial analysts. Technical and political barriers prevent relevant information from being disclosed. These barriers are discussed in this chapter along with efforts to create a global accounting standard for the impact of a volatile macroeconomic environment on corporate performance. Alternative interpretations of recent International Accounting Standards (IAS) are suggested. Current reporting practices in two global industries are compared with the recommendations of IAS and with the information that would be obtained if the MUST-analysis developed in this book were disclosed. The case for clear standards is strengthened by managers' incentives to remain opaque when disclosing information. International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the need for a new information paradigm as regards the macroeconomic influences on the firm are discussed.

It has been 25 years since the criminal trajectory methodology was first introduced. Scientists from multiple fields have now arrived at a much more balanced view of its strengths and weaknesses. The final chapter of this book looks back at the accumulated research on criminal trajectories and renews the call on criminological trajectory researchers to interface better with contemporary developmental science frameworks. This call is not intended to replace extant developmental and life-course theories of crime but, rather, to complement them by incorporating meta-theoretical propositions from the field of developmental science. To this end, this chapter offers 12 suggestions for the next generation of trajectory researchers. They range from methodological issues, including the need for stricter reporting standards and greater methodological rigor, to substantive research needs, such as the exploration of the role of biological processes, and the study of prospective links to trajectory groups of distinct behaviors and intentional self-regulatory strategies that foster desisting pathways of crime.

In this chapter, Klaus Dingwerth and Margot Eichinger scrutinize the rhetoric, policies, and disclosure practices in the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), with a specific focus on the role of intermediaries in making GRI information actionable. The authors show that the GRI’s normatively demanding rhetoric on transparency does not permeate the organization’s policies and practices. Moreover, disclosed information does not permit comparison across corporate reporting entities. As a result, transparency is ‘tamed’ in this case, insofar as it fails to facilitate holding disclosers to account. However, commercial organizations and ‘for-benefit’ groups are now using GRI data to produce corporate sustainability ratings. The authors analyze the enhanced prospects for empowerment deriving from the ‘marketization of transparency’ generated by the activities of these intermediaries, who sell their corporate ratings to social investors and others at premium prices. The authors conclude that, while such a marketization of transparency can indeed make disclosed information more actionable, its emancipatory potential is reduced if such actionable disclosure is priced out of reach for most, or if it squeezes out “for-benefit” civil society intermediaries with different audiences and values.

In this chapter, Janelle Knox-Hayes and David Levy analyse the role of multinational corporations in global environmental governance through the lens of corporate disclosure. They explore the premise that disclosure functions to reinforce the authority and legitimacy of corporations as increasingly important arbiters of (global environmental) governance. In assessing this claim, the authors document the rise of corporate non-financial sustainability reporting systems, including the Global Reporting Initiative and the Carbon Disclosure Project. The chapter argues that two competing institutional logics underpin the embrace and spread of non-financial disclosure: a logic of civil regulation, promoted by civil society actors and intended to secure greater corporate accountability, versus a functionalist corporate logic of sustainability management that highlights the instrumental benefits of disclosure to company managers, investors, and auditors. The chapter reveals how the growing ascendancy of a corporate instrumental logic shapes the quality and modalities of carbon and corporate sustainability disclosure.

In her reading of a 4-page story originally published in The New York Times Magazine, Isabel Macdonald finds in Sacco a critique of the standard of objectivity, a critique that is shared by many journalists today and that Sacco is uniquely situated to visually articulate on the comics page.

Marc Singer demonstrates how Sacco, often interpreted by scholars and critics as critical of the standard of objectivity, also employs the tactics of objective news reporting in his first long-form work, Palestine.

Focusing on Sacco’s Palestine, Safe Area Goražde, and The Fixer, Brigid Maher analyzes the role that translating and language play in Sacco’s work. In his comics journalism, Sacco foregrounds translation as a process, producing a more nuanced relation of journalist to subject than one often finds in mainstream journalism.

For all its promise, the activity on the new frontiers of philanthropy faces significant headwinds. For one thing, it tends to advantage service programs over advocacy ones, which may divert resources from fundamental social change objectives needed to open opportunities toward less effective ameliorative service activities. In addition, the field has rather optimistic expectations about potential return rates on social-impact investments and about the adequacy of investable opportunities. This chapter examines these and other obstacles and finds that there is reason for concern but not despair.

This chapter analyses the memoirs written by a number of print and broadcast journalists, who have reported from Northern Ireland during the violent conflict of the Troubles. The chapter interprets these sources according to a range of criteria: the extent to which the journalist is an ‘insider’ or an ‘outsider’; the spatial and temporal dimensions of their experiences; the ways in which these memoirs reflect upon the role of the journalist in a zone of conflict. The chapter focuses upon a number of contributions to this sub-genre: John Conroy; Mark Devenport; Henry McDonald; Malachi O’Doherty; Kevin Myers.

This chapter describes how the due diligence standard was developed in international tax law before 2008, and then how the standard was greatly modified after the financial crisis, the enactment of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2010 (FATCA), and the subsequent development of the Common Reporting Standards (CRS). The chapter outlines how the due diligence concept is applied to private actors, especially financial institutions, to prevent tax evasion. It ends with some conclusions including that while due diligence in international tax law is currently embodied in a specific set of rules, there remains an absence of an overarching standard of due diligence, so that the overall efficiency of the rules requiring due diligence is weakened.

This chapter examines the application of solution-focused brief therapy by school social workers working with youth that have experienced child maltreatment. It provides an overview of child maltreatment, the role of the school social worker when working with this population, the neurological impact of child maltreatment and two case examples. The case examples offer practical insight into the solution-focused techniques that may be applied as well as a discussion around appropriate conversations regarding age and mandated reporting. The chapter also makes a distinction between the services provided by agencies that specialize in treating child abuse and neglect versus the role of the school social worker. For example, once a claim is substantiated, treatment is provided by an agency that specialize in treating abuse and neglect, and the role of the school social worker is to focus on the child in the school environment.

Desire to improve lending information and reduce risk costs has given rise to credit reporting agencies, colloquially known as credit bureaus. Borrowers have an incentive to disguise their relative risk (if it is high) or to signal it (if it is low). This chapter examines first the conceptual rationale for the emergence of information sharing across lenders and then the foundation for a credit reporting industry. Next, the discussion focuses on the particular variety of credit reporting and its domestic regulation under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Availability of information files has led directly to a wide array of innovative, data-based decision tools and credit scoring products now available to assist lenders. The chapter then examines the resulting benefits to consumers, creditors, and the economy. The system is not without flaws, and the chapter also reviews currently available evidence on the accuracy and quality of credit reports.

The chapter begins with a discussion of various venues for reporting group work research including staff meetings, professional confrences, and scholarly journals. One way of disseminating research is through the use of practice manuals, and the nature or such manuals is described. Other means of dissemination are indicated. Sometimes the development of a practice manual is not desired and thus the chapter discusses how to prepare a more informal report of the intervention. The criteria for good and full presentation of practice research are listed. Finally, the value for all of group work of building databases related to group research is presented.

This chapter explores the creation of a set of institutions which launched new financial products to deliver capital and address risk in green businesses. It explores the creation of social banks such as Triodis, Socially Responsible Investment houses such as Trillium Asset Management and Jupiter Ecology Fund, and Impact Investors such as EcoEnterprises. The outcomes were positive, but not yet transformational. Social banking and impact investment remained small. SRI funds were larger but the execution of many such SRI funds was such that the industry symbolized the contested nature of sustainability. The SRI industry also spawned influential institutions, including CERES, environmental reporting, and sustainability indexes. Environmental reporting in particular spread to many large corporations, but there were many uncertainties concerning what was being reported and how to interpret it.

The goal of the reporting chapter is to provide guidance on reporting cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) with an emphasis on clarity and transparency. The chapter provides recommendations for each area of a CEA: design, methods and analysis, results, and discussion. It also presents several new areas, such as the need for more clarity in identifying the perspective of the analysis; a structured abstract format; and updated guidance on disclosure of conflicts of interest. Finally, we highlight the importance of reporting intermediate endpoints and disaggregated results, and of providing a detailed presentation of the Impact Inventory to best support the use of CEA in decision making.

As part of conducting research, reporting must occur. In addition to communicating the research result accurately, a report must motivate the team to act on the result, which often means modifying their build to increase the quality of their product. Approaches used to report user research findings back to the development team are just as important as the findings themselves. If the findings are not communicated to the development team effectively, the developers may not take action and miss potentially critical changes that could have made a difference in the development cycle and overall success of the project. If user researchers conduct the best possible study, identify the most critical issues, but fail to communicate or explain the findings in a way that motivates the development team, then changes may not occur. Many chapters in this book discuss methodologies for conducting user research; this chapter focuses on approaches to communicate the findings to the development team.