Search Results (201)

The development of green buildings is essential to the low-carbon transition of the construction industry. As an important financial instrument linking green insurance with green building development, green building performance insurance (GBPI) addresses the “performance gap” between the actual operational performance of buildings and design targets. However, it remains at the pilot stage, and stakeholders’ willingness to participate remains limited. Based on evolutionary game theory, this study establishes a tripartite evolutionary game model involving the local government, insurance companies, and construction enterprises. Through theoretical derivation and numerical simulation, the study examines how initial probabilities and key parameters influence the evolution of the three stakeholders’ behavioral strategies. Monte Carlo analysis is used to assess the robustness of the main evolutionary outcomes under parameter uncertainty. Sobol sensitivity analysis further examines parameter interactions. The model results indicate that the local government plays a pivotal role in promoting green building performance insurance. Higher premium subsidy rates are associated with a greater fiscal burden for the local government, whereas higher actual premium rates are associated with lower payoffs for construction enterprises. These findings suggest that effective promotion requires a dynamic balance among the local government’s fiscal capacity, the operational sustainability of insurance companies, and the affordability of premiums for construction enterprises. Full article

ESG risk is financially relevant, yet ratings and disclosure scores primarily capture external evaluations or reported outcomes rather than the internal arrangements through which risks are anticipated, challenged, and monitored. This study examines how board composition, leadership structure, gender representation, and committee architecture signal ESG risk governance capacity in Greek listed firms included in the ATHEX ESG Index during 2021–2024. Using hand-collected firm-year data from annual reports, corporate governance statements, sustainability reports, and company disclosures, it develops a descriptive longitudinal baseline. Board size and director-role composition remained stable; independent non-executive directors were the largest category; executives occupied about one-third of board seats; female representation rose from 24.0% to 28.1%; CEO–chair separation predominated but was not universal; and the number of disclosed board committees remained stable. These patterns indicate visible formal monitoring arrangements but do not establish substantive effectiveness. The study contributes by distinguishing executive, dependent non-executive, and independent non-executive roles and integrating leadership and committee architecture into ESG risk governance assessment. It provides longitudinal evidence from Greece and a baseline for future research linking governance architecture to independently measured ESG risk outcomes. Full article

Conducted in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines, this systematic bibliometric review provides a structured examination of the literature on the link between digitalization, artificial intelligence (AI), and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure, focusing on the ways in which digitalization and artificial intelligence are likely to influence the disclosure of ESG of companies. The study employs a corpus drawn from the Scopus database. An observation of the interactions among several bibliometric indicators, depicted in statistical and graphical formats, illustrates the geographical distribution of publications, the influence of scientific journals, the evolution of keyword trends, and the organization of the field. The analysis indicates an estimated 56% annual growth in scientific output, along with a pronounced concentration of research activity in China. By contrast, regions such as Africa are underrepresented. Furthermore, the results highlight an overall positive and significant relationship between digitalization, artificial intelligence, and ESG disclosure. More specifically, the reviewed literature emphasizes the role of several explanatory factors, notably improved informational quality, transparency, and reduced information asymmetry, as well as the mediating effect of dynamic capabilities and innovation capabilities. This research offers an up-to-date and structured synthesis of the main determinants of the link between digitalization, artificial intelligence and ESG disclosure. In addition, it enriches the growing body of literature on the relationship between digitalization and sustainability. Specifically, it shows that digitalization can be a strategic tool for enhancing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosure. Full article

Upper Silesia, historically shaped by hard-coal mining and coal-based energy production, is undergoing a critical phase of just transition under the European Union’s 2050 climate-neutrality objective. This study examines the legal, institutional, and spatial conditions shaping this process and assesses declared social acceptance in seven mining subregions of the Silesian Voivodeship comprising 64 municipalities. The research combines structured desk research on European Union, national, and regional policy and legal instruments with a CATI survey of electricity consumers in the transformation area (N = 602). Particular attention is given to regulatory barriers affecting the revitalization and redevelopment of post-mining and post-industrial land. The document analysis reveals fragmented institutional responsibilities, weak coordination between sectoral strategies, and insufficient integration of mine-closure, revitalization, and spatial-planning regulations. The survey findings indicate that public support for the energy transition is conditional rather than unconditional. Respondents generally acknowledge the need for change; however, they expect the principal financial burden to be borne by the state budget and energy companies, while direct household financing receives only marginal support. The results also show that the survey measured self-reported familiarity with the term “energy transition” rather than objectively tested knowledge. The study contributes an integrated analytical framework linking governance, legal-regulatory constraints, post-mining land regeneration, and declared social acceptance in a coal region undergoing structural transformation. Full article

A persistent difficulty in monitoring private-credit risk is that narrative and quantitative information in periodic filings are produced jointly but evaluated separately. This leaves open the question of whether disclosure language is a useful signal of risk management behaviour or merely an echo of conditions already visible in published data. For business development companies (BDCs), this separation carries a particular cost: the sector sits at the intersection of private credit, fair-value accounting, and floating-rate funding, where filing language about portfolio conditions and the macro environment may reflect the cycle itself rather than add to what published rate and spread data already reveal. This paper asks two questions. First, do aggregate BDC text measures of macro and portfolio-credit language co-move with key macro series over time? Second, does cross-sectional text intensity relate in a stable, linear way to the same BDC’s reported ratios and their volatility? Using dictionary-based filing scores linked to over 590 BDC observations and macro series from 2010 to 2025, we find macro text in filings correlates strongly with variables such as the Federal funds rate and the two-year Treasury yield. Portfolio-credit text lines up with corporate spreads and the unemployment rate. At the firm-year level, associations between text and balance-sheet outcomes are weak. This indicates that BDC narratives are linked with the macro cycle, but there is not a tight mapping to risk metrics in reported financials from year to year, consistent with a degree of insulation in private credit from prevailing macro conditions. For creditors, investors, and supervisors of private-credit vehicles, this asymmetry of macro co-movement without firm-level signal has direct implications for how narrative disclosure should be weighted in risk monitoring and governance frameworks. The aggregate regression results are based on sixteen annual observations and should be interpreted accordingly. Full article

Digital financial reporting depends on identity services, enterprise systems, cloud platforms, automated controls and system-generated evidence. Cybersecurity weaknesses therefore enter external audit when a governance condition or control deficiency affects a material reporting process, an assertion, a disclosure, an estimate or the reliability of audit evidence. This article develops a non-deterministic control-to-assertion framework through a structured integrative review. The search, completed on 16 July 2026, covered English-language journal work published from 2000 to 15 July 2026 through Google Scholar and publisher search services. The final analytic set contains 32 peer-reviewed journal articles, four institutional sources and two public company filings used for worked application. The revision separates organisation-level cybersecurity governance deficiencies from process-level cyber control deficiencies. It also locates the model against COSO, COBIT 2019, NIST CSF 2.0, IT general control methods and relevant International Standards on Auditing. Existing sources provide taxonomies for governance, internal control, security outcomes and audit procedures. The new framework supplies the missing translation route between those taxonomies: governance condition, control state, financial reporting dependency, assertion-level misstatement risk, audit-evidence reliability, audit response and reassessment. Compensating, detective and corrective controls might interrupt or reduce the route, so no governance deficiency automatically produces a control failure or a material misstatement. Two worked documentary applications, The Clorox Company and MGM Resorts International, show how public incident facts enter account, assertion, evidence and procedure analysis. The framework does not estimate incident probability, expected loss or a cyber risk score. It provides a file-ready reasoning structure for entity-specific risk assessment under the auditing standards. Its main contribution lies in the separate treatment of misstatement risk and evidence reliability, followed by a traceable link to accounts, assertions, evidence sources, specialist input and audit procedures. Full article

The objective of this paper is to examine the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a test case of Gulf energy transition finance by analyzing how a hydrocarbon-dependent economy is constructing the financial, regulatory, and institutional architecture required to move from net-zero pledges to climate finance flows. Rather than treating climate finance as a set of isolated instruments, the paper conceptualizes the UAE’s approach as a state-led transition-finance model shaped by Gulf state capitalism, sovereign wealth accumulation, national oil company strategy, financial regulation, and post-COP28 climate diplomacy. Using a qualitative policy and institutional review, the paper maps the UAE’s transition-finance architecture across three interrelated dimensions: institutions and governance, financial instruments, and policy alignment. It examines the role of federal strategies such as Net Zero 2050 and the UAE Energy Strategy 2050, regulatory actors including the Central Bank of the UAE, the Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA), Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), and Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), and key financial mechanisms including green bonds and sukuk, sustainability-linked finance, sovereign wealth fund investments, national oil company decarbonization strategies, blended-finance platforms, and carbon-market mechanisms. The analysis finds that the UAE has developed a distinctive state-led, finance-centric model for financing the energy transition. This model enables rapid capital mobilization, de-risking of private investment, and strong international positioning, particularly following COP28 and the launch of ALTÉRRA. However, its effectiveness is constrained by unresolved tensions between net-zero ambition and hydrocarbon expansion, fragmented sustainable-finance regulation, limited carbon-pricing signals, uneven disclosure practices, underdeveloped domestic green capital markets, and restricted access to green finance for SMEs. The paper argues that the UAE’s climate-finance architecture is best understood neither as simple green diversification nor as symbolic climate positioning, but as an emerging Gulf model of transition finance: well-capitalized, and institutionally coordinated, yet structurally shaped by the same hydrocarbon rents and state-led governance logics it seeks to transform. By positioning the UAE as a benchmark, the paper contributes to debates on climate finance, state capitalism, and transition governance in hydrocarbon-dependent economies, while identifying the coherence gaps to be addressed for climate finance to support economy-wide decarbonization. Full article

Implementing the principles of sustainability in business practices evokes complex changes in the way companies operate and behave. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the concept of corporate sustainability from the corporate governance perspective. Based on the integrative review method, a multilevel conceptual model of sustainable corporate governance practice is designed. The model connects the global, macro and micro levels of sustainability paradigm paramount impacts on the corporate governance mechanisms, thus highlighting the path for creating and implementing more sustainability-related governance practices. The applicative contribution of the paper stems from the improved understanding of the corporate sustainability paradigm taken from the corporate governance perspective, while the model contributes to the reduction in tensions that corporate sustainability induces in the processes of corporate decision-making and management. To corroborate the model operability, we have inspected the current state of the adopted corporate sustainability practices in Croatian companies. The research results show that neither strategic nor operational integration of sustainability into business models has yet been achieved. Sustainability is primarily considered as compliance-based, without strategic approach to sustainability management that would nominate clear objectives and link them to annual top management goals and performance. Recommendations for the future research are provided. Full article

This study examines how Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can contribute to the development of a responsible governance orientation in hotel companies located in inland tourism destinations through internal organizational capabilities. Unlike approaches focused primarily on the external dimension of CSR, this research directs attention to the internal mechanisms that enable responsible commitments to be transformed into ethical, verifiable, and sustained management practices. Drawing on stakeholder theory and the resource-based view, the proposed model analyzes the effects of ethical organizational design, internal CSR implementation, and accountability and evaluation mechanisms on responsible hotel governance orientation. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 112 hotel managers in Extremadura, Spain, and uses partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), complemented by a multigroup analysis based on hotel category. The results show that ethical organizational design is the model’s primary antecedent, positively influencing internal CSR implementation, accountability and evaluation mechanisms, and responsible hotel governance orientation. Internal CSR implementation and accountability and evaluation mechanisms also act as explanatory pathways linking ethical structures to responsible governance. The multigroup analysis reveals distinct patterns across hotel categories, particularly in the relationships associated with ethical organizational design. At the practical level, this study offers guidance for strengthening responsible management in hotel companies through ethical structures, internal training, and continuous monitoring and improvement systems. Full article

Grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) systems paired with battery storage are becoming a core element of low-carbon distribution networks. This paper develops a complete closed-form formulation together with an independent, simulation-based verification of a single-phase grid-connected PV-battery microgrid sized for high-irradiance residential conditions in Saudi Arabia, using measured solar-resource and tariff data for Riyadh. A 6.25 kW monocrystalline array feeds a 400 V DC link through a perturb-and-observe boost stage; a bidirectional converter couples a 13.5 kWh LiFePO₄ battery; and an IEEE 1547 smart inverter interfaces a 230 V grid through an LCL filter. Governing equations for every subsystem are derived and evaluated numerically, and a Python re-implementation of the phasor power-flow model verifies the analysis over a 24 h cycle run to periodic steady state, reproducing the reference design values with a mean absolute error of 0.5%. Using measured monthly solar-resource and temperature data for Riyadh, a full twelve-month analysis gives an annual self-sufficiency of 51.8% and a PV self-consumption of 72.9% for the optimised energy-management scheme. A dedicated time-domain switching simulation with FFT analysis shows that the LCL filter limits grid-current total harmonic distortion to 0.8%, far below the L-filter value of 6.2% and below the 5% current-distortion reference of IEEE 519 (full compliance additionally requires the PCC short-circuit ratio). Twelve-month, battery-size and load-sensitivity studies confirm robustness, and a techno-economic assessment based on the Saudi Electricity Company residential tariff quantifies levelized cost, payback and battery degradation, showing that economic viability hinges on tariff reform. Full article

A This study examines the interplay between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices, artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, and financial performance within Saudi Arabia’s financial sector. It investigates whether AI adoption moderates the ESG–performance relationship, reflecting the sector’s ongoing digital transformation under Vision 2030. Drawing on 224 firm-year observations across banks, diversified financials, real estate investment trusts (REITs), and insurance companies, the study employs content analysis of annual reports to identify AI implementation. Panel regression models are used to test the effects of ESG practices on both accounting-based (ROE) and market-based (Tobin’s Q) performance measures, while examining AI’s moderating role. The results reveal that ESG practices significantly enhance accounting-based performance, particularly return on equity, while board size exerts a positive and board independence a negative influence. However, ESG does not significantly affect market-based valuation (Tobin’s Q). Notably, AI adoption negatively moderates the ESG–financial performance link, suggesting short-term challenges in integrating digital transformation with sustainability strategies. This study contributes to literature in three key ways. First, it provides new evidence from financial institutions in a developing economy—Saudi Arabia—where ESG and AI integration remains underexplored. Second, unlike previous research that proxies AI adoption through R&D expenditure, this study captures actual deployment of AI tools in operational activities. Third, it extends the ESG–performance debate by introducing AI adoption as a novel moderating factor. The findings offer actionable insights for managers and policymakers in emerging markets, underscoring the importance of developing organizational capabilities that harmonize AI-driven innovation with ESG principles to foster sustainable long-term value creation. Full article

This study examines whether the emissions-management performance of European listed firms is associated with geographical proximity and firm-level financial and governance characteristics. Using cross-sectional data for companies included in the STOXX Europe 600 index in 2023, the analysis combines spatial econometric models with a DBSCAN clustering approach to estimate direct and spillover effects and identify localized eco-spatial clusters. The results show significant spatial dependence and confirm that firms are more likely to achieve environmental outcomes similar to those of their neighbors operating in the same sector. Firm size, profitability, corporate social responsibility (CSR) committees, emissions reduction, and sustainability-linked executive compensation policies are positively associated with the emissions score, while CSR committees and sustainability-oriented policies also display significant spatial spillover effects. Overall, the findings are consistent with organizational learning and institutional convergence mechanisms and highlight the importance of considering localized spatial interactions when examining firms’ emissions-management performance. Full article

AI-driven digitalisation transforms how organisations process personal data and introduces risks that traditional Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) frameworks cannot adequately address. Automated decision-making and large-scale processing in AI, IoT, big data analytics, and blockchain environments create privacy concerns beyond the scope of existing DPIA methodologies. The EU AI Act extends this scope through the Fundamental Rights Impact Assessment (FRIA) under Article 27, which links data protection obligations to broader fundamental rights governance. This study addresses these gaps through a two-phase research design. Phase 1 conducts a systematic literature review of 25 studies and applies framework analysis to identify DPIA implementation challenges across four categories: legal and regulatory, risk assessment, scope, and complexity. AI-specific challenges appear across all four categories. Phase 2 develops a governance framework built on the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle and organised through a four-level hierarchy of Lifecycle Phase, Risk Management Domain, Control Objective, and Operational Activity. The framework translates relevant requirements of ISO 31000:2018, ISO/IEC 27701:2025, and ISO/IEC 29134:2023 into traceable activities and encompasses algorithmic fairness and socio-ethical impacts. The actionable DPIA framework supports compliance with the GDPR, the EU AI Act and the three ISO standards and will be of interest to company practitioners and other researchers investigating the theoretical and practice-based aspects of digitalisation and data privacy. Full article

Developing countries in which infrastructure development is heavily dependent on overseas development aid face significant sustainability challenges, including financing gaps and inadequate maintenance. Increasing private-sector investment is crucial for addressing these challenges. This paper proposes an innovative framework linking environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles with a revised joint credit mechanism (JCM) to attract private investment in infrastructure development, particularly in Pacific Island countries facing the climate crisis. Under the revised JCM, by allocating generated carbon credits to participating Japanese companies, rather than the Japanese government, corporations can monetise credits through market transactions, creating compelling economic incentives for private-sector engagement. In ESG-advanced markets, credits serve as strategic instruments for corporate value enhancement beyond revenue generation, while corporations require continuous credit acquisition to sustain investor confidence. Our revised framework provides a sustainable solution to both financing gaps and infrastructure maintenance challenges. Our analysis demonstrates that integrating market dynamics and corporate incentives into bilateral climate mechanisms holds substantial potential for mobilising private capital for sustainable climate infrastructure finance. This approach represents a promising departure from traditional donor-dependent models, effectively aligning corporate interests with sustainable development objectives while advancing national emission reduction commitments. Full article

Companies are increasingly valued according to sustainability criteria, so governance policies represent a credible source of information on the entity’s ability to create value for employees and the community. Intellectual capital becomes a valuable source of innovation, using non-financial factors as essential tools in sustainability reporting. The accounting professional is an important balancing point, supporting the processing and validation of non-financial information in digital reporting contexts. Numerous studies address these concepts separately without highlighting causal links between non-financial factors, professional accountants and sustainability reporting. This paper explores intellectual capital valorization through integrative perspectives in the context of sustainable performance, based on documentary synthesis and content analysis of non-financial information from 30 Romanian companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. The paper clarifies the contribution of extra-financial factors in measuring intellectual capital and the role of professional accountants in developing valid and compliant reports through intelligent information systems. Results indicate that non-financial indicators play an integrative role in developing global intellectual capital, while human expert reasoning maintains its primary role in interpreting and validating information. The proposed conceptual model highlights links between the main concepts, serving as a starting point for future quantitative studies. Full article