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The authors examine how performance measurement systems (PMSs) and academic agency influence the meaning of research quality in practice. The worries are that the notion of research quality is becoming too simplistically and narrowly determined by research quality's measurable proxies and that academics, especially manager-academics, do not sufficiently realise this risk. Whilst prior literature has covered the effects of performance measurement in the university sector broadly and how PMSs are mobilised locally, there is only little understanding of whether and how PMSs affect the meaning of research quality in practice.

The study is designed as a comparative case study of two university faculties in Finland. The role of conceptual analysis plays a notable role in the study, too.

The authors find that manager-academics of the two examined faculties have rather similar conceptual understandings of research quality. However, there were differences in the degree of slippage between the “espoused-meaning” of research quality and “meaning-in-practice” of research quality. The authors traced these differences to how the local PMS and manager-academics’ agency relate to one another within the context of increasing global and national performance pressures. The authors developed a tentative framework for the various “styles of agency”. This suggests how the relationship between the local PMS and manager-academics’ exerted agency shapes the “degrees of freedom” of the meaning of research quality in practice.

Given that research quality lies at the heart of academic work, the authors' paper indicates that exploring the three matters – performance measurement, the agency of manager-academics and the meaning of research quality in practice – in combination is crucial for the sustainability of the academe. The authors contribute to the literature by detailing the way in which local PMS and manager-academics' agency have material impacts on what research quality means in practice. The authors conclude by highlighting the pressing need for manager-academics to exercise the agency in efforts to safeguard a broad and pluralistic understanding of research quality in practice.

Motivated to know more about the internal means through which accountability for sustainability takes shape within organisations (in what ways and by whom), this paper aims to explore how accountability for sustainability is constructed within an organisation during a process of establishing a control system for sustainability.

This paper adopts a qualitative case study approach of a decentralised industrial group, operating mainly in Scandinavia, between 2017 and 2020. Both primary and secondary data are used (e.g. document analyses, semi-structured interviews, informal conversations and site visits) to inform the findings and analysis.

The findings reveal a multi-faceted path towards accountability for sustainability that involves several concerns and priorities at organisational and individual levels, resulting in a separate sustainability control systems within each subsidiary company. Although hierarchical structures for accountability exist, socialising accountability activities are needed to (further) mobilise sustainable accounts.

Successful sustainable control systems require employees making sense of formalised accountability instruments (e.g. policies and procedures) to establish their roles and responsibilities in organisations.

This paper proposes socialisation processes as important for driving forward sustainability solutions.

This study elaborates on the internal accountability dynamic for the construction of sustainable accounts. Its novelty is built upon the interaction of hierarchical and socialising accountability forms as necessary for establishing a control system for sustainability. It furthermore illustrates the relationship between the external and internal pathways of accountability.

Business Principles for Countering Bribery, 2003, helps companies design and implement anti-bribery policies, one of anti-corruption. Since then, the business environment has changed, can carry out anti-corruption activities from within the organization through a management system. Currently, the business world recognizes the existence of an integrated governance, risk management and compliance (GRC), where one of the goals is to overcome the risk of corruption in the organization. Therefore, this study aims to clarify the concept of integrated GRC implementation within the organization through previous studies from 2007 to 2021.

This study was designed in a systematic literature review based on five journal publishers’ articles/journals from the Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar databases. Keywords used to search consist of Anti-Corruption (AC); Governance (G); Risk Management (RM); Compliance (C); GRC. The four keywords G, RM, C and GRC, are filtered based on articles that correlate with AC.

Overall, this review shows a few concepts for integrated GRC implementation in organizations that effectively support the prevention and detection of corruption. Although no empirical research has been found in the literature review, these three GRC silos – governance, risk management and compliance – support anti-corruption. In other words, it is hoped that the successful implementation of the integrated GRC in the future can improve the anti-corruption capabilities to be achieved in every organization.

Research only discusses one internal function within the organization, of the many internal functions that are known to detect and prevent corruption.

Organizations can use this review to understand the importance of internal functions in combating the risk of corruption with a more consistent and committed commitment to implementing an integrated GRC.

As far as the authors’ search is concerned, there is no review of the concept of integrated GRC implementation against anti-corruption. It invites researchers to examine the actual implementation of this integrated GRC in organizations.