Soon Yong Ang

Purpose: This study examines how people involved in river-care initiatives understand and enact accountability when structural accountability systems are influenced by political control. Drawing on Archer's critical realism, it explores how identity and reflexive thinking enable actors to navigate the ethical limits of structural accountability in addressing river pollution and water scarcity. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative approach was adopted, combining reflexive life-history interviews with longitudinal fieldwork involving NGO officers and community members engaged in river-care programmes in Malaysia. Findings: River-care commitments are constrained by structural accountability shaped by political intervention and factionalism. Actors employ communicative, autonomous, and collaborative modes of reflexivity, often rooted in identity formation, to reinterpret, adapt, or circumvent imposed accountability demands. We term this reflexive accountability, manifested through human reflexivity grounded in moral judgement, identity, and lived experience, facilitating navigation of ethical limits. Originality/value: This study introduces reflexive accountability, illustrating how reflexivity enables actors to navigate the ethical limits of NGO accountability and water governance in politicised settings. It is a nuanced form of subjective accountability that complements structural accountability systems in addressing complex environmental challenges.

Purpose: While climate change has caused catastrophic consequences for both human and non-human habitats in the Anthropocene era, its impacts are unevenly distributed across the globe. Existing global climate change policies, discourses and practices – promulgated and adopted worldwide – fail to account for the systemic structural, political, historical, cultural, social and economic inequalities between the Majority and Minority World. Inspired by the decolonization agenda, this paper aims to deconstruct the Western technocratic theorization of public sector climate accounting and accountability from a Majority World perspective. Design/methodology/approach: Theoretically, the paper draws from a critical “climate justice” lens and Latour's (2017) concept of “Down to Earth” to critique the limitations of dominant scientific and technocratic approaches of public sector climate accounting and accountability, which have perpetuated socio-environmental injustice. It also advocates for a new climatic regime – “Terrestrial” – that offers an alternative politics which leads towards the earth. Empirically, the paper draws from three empirical narratives to illustrate how climate injustices materialize in practice in the Majority World. Findings: The paper argues that meaningful climate accountability requires reimagining political orientations beyond Minority–Majority national frontiers and adopting a planetary ethic that restores humanity's relationship with the earth. It urges international agencies and Global South states to address climate injustice by implementing a practical climate accounting and accountability framework comprising: (1) prioritizing local resilience and adaptive capacity over mitigation-focused agendas; (2) resisting neo-colonial extractive practices and exploring commonwealth governance alternatives; (3) fostering communitarian, Indigenous-informed participation; (4) rejecting hierarchical, technocratic approaches; and (5) developing alternative contextually grounded practices sensitive to local socio-political, cultural and environmental realities. Research limitations/implications: Future research on public sector accounting and accountability for climate change must move beyond descriptive assessments towards transformative frameworks addressing climate injustice in the Majority World. This includes examining the empirical application of novel climate accounting models above, theorizing the potential and limitations of accounting tools for adaptation, advancing participatory accountability practices, exploring alternative accounting possibilities and extending inquiry into commonwealth governance. Latour's ideas – especially the “new climatic regime”, the terrestrial approach and the empirical science of nature-as-process – also provide valuable avenues for reimagining how climate accounting can be theorized and enacted in practice. Practical implications: The paper develops a practical climate accounting and accountability framework in and for the Majority World, encapsulating five key features: (1) prioritizing local resilience and adaptive capacity over mitigation-focused agendas; (2) resisting neo-colonial extractive practices and exploring alternative models of commonwealth governance; (3) fostering communitarian, Indigenous-informed participatory initiatives; (4) rejecting hierarchical, technocratic approaches to accounting and accountability; and (5) advancing contextually grounded practices attuned to local socio-political, cultural and environmental realities, thereby addressing climate injustice in the Majority World. Originality/value: Little research theorizes public sector climate accounting and accountability from the Majority World perspectives.

This paper reveals the limitations of New Public Management (NPM) and introduces an alternative model for creating and sustaining public value through grassroots engagement in a non‐Western context. Focusing on a river‐care education project in Malaysia, it demonstrates how community‐led initiatives, targeting public values like clean water (SDG 6) and partnerships for goals (SDG 17), interact with local management practices to foster sustainable outcomes. Drawing on Bozeman's public value theory and Dewey's public interest approach, we present a multi‐layered framework incorporating political–ideological, institutional, techno‐managerial, and individual layers. This model emphasizes culturally responsive, localized practices and reveals that NPM's market‐driven focus does not fully address societal goals like equity, sustainability, and social justice. Through a qualitative case study approach and by proposing an adaptive, context‐sensitive approach, this study contributes to public sector accounting and management research, providing a pathway to public value creation aligned with Sustainable Development Goals in diverse, non‐Western settings.

As Vietnam navigates challenges to its animal, human, and environmental health (One Health) during rapid economic transitions, understanding local perceptions of sustainable food systems, particularly aquatic foods, is vital. This study employs a transdisciplinary, autoethnographic approach to exploring the cultural significance of aquatic food perceptions within Vietnamese communities. Data were primarily sourced through an autoethnographic triangulation method, involving detailed field diaries, vignettes, and interactive workshop data collected from local stakeholders. Our distinctive approach, involving researchers from environmental science, computer science, linguistics, political ecology, aquaculture, nutrition, human physiology, marketing, and accounting and accountability, as both participants and observers, illuminates the lived experiences that shape food perceptions within Vietnam’s specific food agro-ecosystems. By embedding aquatic food perceptions within the One Health framework, we identify key intersections between human, animal, and environmental health. Through cross-disciplinary narrative analysis, our study uncovers the social, political, economic, cultural, and linguistic dimensions surrounding aquatic food perceptions at local, regional, and national levels in Vietnam. Our study highlights the unique contribution of qualitative methods to addressing questions that hard data cannot answer in understanding perceptions of aquatic foods. The study emphasizes the need for an integrated, culturally informed, and transdisciplinary approach to addressing the complex factors influencing One Health outcomes in Vietnam. This research contributes to the broader discourse on sustainable food practices and One Health initiatives, proposing culturally informed interventions aimed at enhancing ecological resilience and public health.

This study aims to analyze the efficient market form of the Jakarta Islamic Index. The methodology used is an event study with a window period of 20 days, including ten days before and ten days after the announcement of composition changes held twice a year. The sample consists of 102, with 30 companies listed during the study period and 36 companies excluded and re-listed following the composition change announcements. The analysis technique used is the Paired Sample T-test. The findings reveal no differences in abnormal returns and trading volume activity before and after the announcement. This suggests that the market had already absorbed the announcement information before the event, resulting in a weak reaction and indicating that the announcement did not significantly impact the Jakarta Islamic Index. This implies that the index operates in a semi-strong form of market efficiency. Consequently, companies listed in the index may need additional strategies to improve their stock performance. To provide further insight, this study also examines the average stock trading activity of companies that enter and exit the composition of the Jakarta Islamic Index for the 2019-2023 periods.