Determinants of online intellectual capital disclosure by Spanish local governments

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yolanda Ramírez ◽  
Ángel Tejada ◽  
María Pilar Sánchez

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the extent of intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) through websites and social media in Spanish local government (SLG) and analyze the factors that explain their disclosure.Design/methodology/approachThe study applies content analysis and regression techniques. The ICD is analyzed for Spanish municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants and provincial capitals over a period from January 2018 to February 2020.FindingsFindings emphasize that the quantity of disclosed information on intellectual capital (IC) is in the low level, particularly with regard to human capital (HC). Furthermore, the results show that the information provided via social media mainly concerns the relational capital (RC). On the other hand, results obtained indicate that larger municipalities, with lower financial autonomy and whose citizens have a high income level use the online media (both websites and social media) more actively to disclose information about IC. Finally, municipalities led by women and with high level of citizens' education exert a positive influence in the ICD only on websites.Practical implicationsThis paper makes a number of key contributions to the existing body of knowledge, focusing on ICD, a neglected area in the public sector accounting literature. It explores and identifies the supply-side and demand-side determinants of information affecting the ICD in local governments. The results of this research could be useful for policymakers, regulators and governments' managers to improve the online information addressing ICD issues.Originality/valueThis paper adopts an innovative perspective by investigating the use of alternative tools for ICD in local government context (websites and social media). To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that focuses on investigating the determinants of online ICD in local governments.

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Brusca ◽  
Francesca Manes Rossi ◽  
Natalia Aversano

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse and compare how austerity has influenced online sustainability information in Italy and Spain. Design/methodology/approach – The authors relate austerity policies to online information in order to ascertain whether austerity plays a role in the financial, organizational, social and environmental information disclosed on local government (LG) websites. The research has been conducted by analysing the websites of all Italian and Spanish LGs with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Findings – The results show that institutional and legislative pressures, as well as austerity measures, have played a relevant role in the increased production of information by LGs, although not all information is fully provided. Originality/value – The results may be of interest to managers and politicians as a stimulus to increase the flow of information. They may also be useful to policy makers, regulators and other stakeholders in order to foment environmental information.


Author(s):  
Mohd Hisham Mohd Sharif ◽  
Indrit Troshani ◽  
Robyn Davidson

The increasing diffusion of social media is attracting government organizations worldwide, including local government. Social media can help local government improve the manner in which it is engaged with community and its responsiveness whilst offering cost savings and flexibility. Yet, there is paucity of research in relation to the adoption of social media Web services in local government organizations. The aim of this chapter is to investigate the factors that drive the adoption of social media Web services within Australian local government. Using qualitative evidence, the authors find technological, organizational, and environmental factors that drive the decisions of local government organizations to adopt social media Web services. In addition to extending the existing body of knowledge, this chapter offers insight concerning important managerial implications for helping local governments to better understand social media adoption in their organizations.


2015 ◽  
pp. 900-916
Author(s):  
Mohd Hisham Mohd Sharif ◽  
Indrit Troshani ◽  
Robyn Davidson

The increasing diffusion of social media is attracting government organizations worldwide, including local government. Social media can help local government improve the manner in which it is engaged with community and its responsiveness whilst offering cost savings and flexibility. Yet, there is paucity of research in relation to the adoption of social media Web services in local government organizations. The aim of this chapter is to investigate the factors that drive the adoption of social media Web services within Australian local government. Using qualitative evidence, the authors find technological, organizational, and environmental factors that drive the decisions of local government organizations to adopt social media Web services. In addition to extending the existing body of knowledge, this chapter offers insight concerning important managerial implications for helping local governments to better understand social media adoption in their organizations.


Kybernetes ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (5) ◽  
pp. 1347-1379
Author(s):  
Jing Peng ◽  
Guoping Tu ◽  
Yanhong Liu ◽  
Hao Zhang ◽  
Bibing Leng

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a feasible scheme for local governments to regulate corporate environmental data fraud and to discuss whether the influence of the construction of online information disclosure platform on the environmental behavior of enterprises is better than the offline spot check. Design/methodology/approach Under the background of changing environmental fees into taxes in China, this paper conducts evolutionary game analysis between local governments and enterprises in view of the existing problem of environmental data fraud. Furthermore, through the introduction of government information disclosure platform, this paper discusses the impact of the integration of direct government regulation and indirect public concern regulation on the evolution of environmental behavior of both sides. Finally, the evolutionary game is simulated by adopting system dynamics to analyses the implementation effect of different cases on the game process and game equilibrium. Findings The results showed that the introduction of information disclosure platform mechanism can effectively suppress the fluctuations existing in the game play and stabilize the game. Moreover, it is worth noting that the regulatory effect of local governments investing part of the monitoring cost in the construction of online information platform is proved to be better than that of putting all the monitoring cost into offline investigation. While optimizing the monitoring cost allocation, the local government still needs to attach great importance to organically combine the attention of the public and media with the governmental official platform. Practical implications The obtained results confirm that the proposed model can assist local government in refining the effects of their environmental regulatory decisions, especially in the case of corporate data fraud under environmental tax enforcement. Originality/value Previous literature only suggested that local governments should reduce the cost of supervision to change the corporate behavior to a better direction, but no further in-depth study. Thus, this study fills the gap by discussing the positive transformation effect of local government cost allocation scheme on corporate environmental behavior.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 548-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Bellström ◽  
Monika Magnusson ◽  
John Sören Pettersson ◽  
Claes Thorén

Purpose To fully grasp the potential of using social media, one must know what governments and citizens are communicating in these media. Despite much statistics published, there is a dearth of research analyzing information content in detail. The purpose of this paper is to identify the kind of information exchange that occurs between a local government and its constituent citizens using social media. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents a qualitative single case study of the Facebook presence of the municipality and city of Karlstad, Sweden, one of the most prominent local governments on Facebook in the country. Facebook page data were collected between May 2015 and July 2015. A content analysis was performed on the data to explore new and existing categories that drive the analysis. Findings The paper identifies 11 content categories for municipality posts and 13 content categories for user posts (citizen or organization). The frequency for each content category reveals that the page owner is first of all using its Facebook page to promote different happenings in the municipality while the page user is asking questions to the municipality or other users. Research limitations/implications The study is limited to one municipality, but achieves analytical generalizability in its findings. In other words, the categories and mode of communication are a finding in and of itself that in future research may be validated in terms of commonality on a national scale. Practical implications Management concerns about opening up a municipality Facebook page for user posting may be exaggerated: positive posts are as common as complaints. If an organization wants to use the Facebook page for increased user participation and collaboration, it seems that users, both citizens and organizations, welcome such opportunities. However, such posts are not likely to receive many comments or shares from other users. Originality/value The paper is one of the first that uses content analysis to categorize both page owner posts and user posts on a local government Facebook page. The content categories identified in the paper provide novel and detailed insights on what types of information exchange occur on social media between a local government and citizens but also highlight the need to distinguish organizations from citizens among the visitors to the government Facebook page. Different types of user will post different types of content. The identified content categories can serve as a basis for future empirical research within e-government research.


2015 ◽  
pp. 771-787
Author(s):  
Mohd Hisham Mohd Sharif ◽  
Indrit Troshani ◽  
Robyn Davidson

The increasing diffusion of social media is attracting government organizations worldwide, including local government. Social media can help local government improve the manner in which it is engaged with community and its responsiveness whilst offering cost savings and flexibility. Yet, there is paucity of research in relation to the adoption of social media Web services in local government organizations. The aim of this chapter is to investigate the factors that drive the adoption of social media Web services within Australian local government. Using qualitative evidence, the authors find technological, organizational, and environmental factors that drive the decisions of local government organizations to adopt social media Web services. In addition to extending the existing body of knowledge, this chapter offers insight concerning important managerial implications for helping local governments to better understand social media adoption in their organizations.


Author(s):  
Mohd Hisham Mohd Sharif ◽  
Indrit Troshani ◽  
Robyn Davidson

The increasing diffusion of social media is attracting government organizations worldwide, including local government. Social media can help local government improve the manner in which it is engaged with community and its responsiveness whilst offering cost savings and flexibility. Yet, there is paucity of research in relation to the adoption of social media Web services in local government organizations. The aim of this chapter is to investigate the factors that drive the adoption of social media Web services within Australian local government. Using qualitative evidence, the authors find technological, organizational, and environmental factors that drive the decisions of local government organizations to adopt social media Web services. In addition to extending the existing body of knowledge, this chapter offers insight concerning important managerial implications for helping local governments to better understand social media adoption in their organizations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-623 ◽  
Author(s):  
XiaoBo Tang ◽  
Shixuan Li ◽  
Na Gu ◽  
MingLiang Tan

Purpose This study aims to explore the repost features of microblogs acting to promote the information diffusion of government-generated content on social media. Design/methodology/approach This study proposes a topic−sentiment analysis using a mixed social media analytics framework to analyse the microblogs collected from the Sina Weibo accounts of 30 Chinese provincial police departments. On the basis of this analysis, this study presents the distribution of reposted microblogs and reveals the reposting characteristics of police-generated microblogs (PGMs). Findings The experimental results indicate that children’s safety and crime-related PGMs with a positive sentiment can achieve a high level of online information diffusion. Originality/value This study is novel, as it reveals the reposting features of PGMs from both a topic and sentiment perspectives, and provides new findings that can inspire users’ reposting behaviour.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Łukasz Bryl ◽  
Justyna Fijałkowska ◽  
Dominika Hadro

Purpose This study aims to examine intellectual capital disclosure (ICD) on Twitter by 60 of the world’s largest companies and explains the main themes communicated to stakeholders. The second objective is to determine which topics provoke most stakeholders’ reactions. Design/methodology/approach The authors perform content analysis on more than 42,000 tweets to examine ICD practices along with the reactions of stakeholders in the form of retweets and “favorites” toward the information disclosed. Findings Intellectual capital (IC) is an important theme in corporate disclosure practices, as more than one-third of the published tweets refer to IC. The world’s largest companies focus on relational capital information, followed by human and structural capital. The main IC themes disclosed were management philosophy, corporate reputation and business partnering. Tweets related to IC are of greater interest to stakeholders than other tweets and provoke more reactions. There is no complete consistency between the topics most intensively disclosed by companies and those that elicit the most vivid responses from the addressees. Practical implications This study offers an understanding of the world’s largest companies’ practices that refer to ICD via social media and has implications for organizations in the creation and use of communication channels when developing a dialogue with stakeholders on topics regarding IC that may lead to better management of IC performance. Originality/value This paper is a response to the call for studies on ICD via social media, which is strongly highlighted in the recent literature concerning future research on IC and until now was almost absent in the field of business units. This research provides in-depth insights into the use of Twitter to disclose IC elements and indicates which fields and topics of this disclosure provoke stakeholders’ reactions, which is a novelty in ICD studies.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karol Król ◽  
Dariusz Zdonek

Purpose The range of official business that can be handled online has grown in the recent decade. In many cases, e-services are a must. At the same time, the economic impact and social importance of mobile technology have increased. Mobile devices are becoming more and more popular, and their applications diversify. It comes as no surprise that mobile users expect e-services and official information to be available through this channel. The purpose of this paper is to identify problems (difficulties) occurring when browsing websites of local government units (LGU) on mobile devices. Design/methodology/approach The comfort of website browsing depends mostly on the development technique, and the way content is published. Responsive websites are much easier to view on mobile devices than “static” ones. The study involves 400 websites of LGU in Poland. The websites were subjected to quantitative and qualitative analyses with selected techniques and computer tools. Findings The set of 400 websites contained 119 (29.75%) that were not responsive. It exhibited a substantial potential for the optimisation of websites for mobile devices. The study revealed the most common usability failures such as distorted images, “scattered icons”, partial responsiveness and bothersome messages in pop-ups. Originality/value The research identified the most widespread problems with the tested websites. The study yielded recommendations for local governments, which may be useful when managing content, upgrading the website or replacing it with a new one.


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