The purpose of this study is to examine the accounting standard-setting process in relation to emissions rights and related liabilities in the Korean context in order to provide a better understanding of accounting issues under an emissions trading scheme (ETS). Using an interpretive inductive approach, this study comprises semi-structured, face-to-face interviews and analysis of relevant documents. Interviews were carried out with a wide range of key players, including accounting standard setters (Korean Accounting Standards Board, International Accounting Standards Board, and Autorité des Normes Comptables), accounting experts, industry and government. This study identifies how problematic accounting issues on emissions rights and related liabilities have been addressed by accounting standard setters. The key accounting issues under ETS are linked mainly with free allowances. It is found that accounting standard setters attempt to establish the most appropriate accounting standard under the given circumstances reflecting a variety of considerations, and that the most common elements affecting the development of accounting standards for ETS are the legal and economic context, the existing accounting framework, and preceding models and practices. Nevertheless, these factors affect the development of accounting standards for ETS in different ways. Accordingly, the primary accounting issues on which each standard setter concentrates vary depending on different circumstances and considerations. This study investigates the accounting standard-setting process for emissions rights by Korean accounting standard setters, from the agenda-setting stage to the final publication of the standard. The findings reinforce the importance of political factors in the standard-setting process, including stakeholders’ participation in the process, prominent stakeholders, and the motivation, methods and timing of lobbying activities. In particular, the findings have important implications for the effectiveness of lobbying. Overall, the findings confirm that accounting standards are likely to be the political outcome of interactions between the accounting standard setter and stakeholders. The findings highlight desirable factors for accounting models of emissions rights. Desirability or appropriateness of standard is judged by the extent to which stakeholders in institutional environments consider the promulgation to be legitimate or authoritative. Therefore, accounting standard setters must make greater efforts to encourage stakeholders to participate in the standard-setting process in order to ensure institutional legitimacy. The originality of this study lies in its empirical research on accounting issues for ETS from a practical point of view. In particular, in its timely and detailed investigation of Korean accounting standard setters, this study provides a broader understanding of the accounting standard-setting process in the Korean context. The study also advances legitimacy theory by offering a framework particularly applicable to accounting standard setting process, which also incorporates stakeholder theory research. The study finds support from the framework and further contributes to the related literature by reviewing legitimacy conflicts. From an accounting policy point of view, the findings have implications for both national and international standard setters and provide guidance on how to achieve high-quality accounting standards with a high degree of compliance.

This thesis investigates the relationship between sustainability performance and ownership structure, measured using the ESG (environmental, social and governance) rating and ownership structure divided into four different ownerships (family/founder, institutional, corporate and governmental). In the pursuit of analysing the relationship between the ESG rating and the ownership structure, this study investigates publicly listed companies within the Nordic countries.This thesis has the aim of examining if a publicly listed company can use sustainability ratings and ownership structure, to understand broader market dynamics and help the manager thru this maximise firm value. Results from this could help them and the public in decision making processes around sustainability initiatives and how these characteristics influence the Nordic market dynamics, by having a better understanding of how the ESG ratings are prioritised among different ownership structures. This knowledge would allow management and the public to better understand how the ESG rating affects firm’s sustainability value as well as how market dynamics of this information is related to the market as a whole and direct competition.Using secondary data collected from Refinitiv database and Nasdaq, this thesis is a deductive and quantitative research that analyses companies for the target year 2020. In addition, this research can be considered to be a historic study.The findings of this research indicate a causal relation between sustainability performance and ownership structure, leading to the conclusion that a different ownership structure might influence and lead to a different score on the scale of sustainability performance. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the governmental ownership structure has the highest positive effect on sustainability performance.Concluding with discussing how this research contributes to the current field of knowledge on the topic through analysing the results using the legitimacy, shareholder, stakeholder and agency theory. The results are aligned with the legitimacy theory on ownership structure and the stakeholder theory. Additionally, the shareholder and the agency theory help with explaining why some structures put less value on sustainability performance than others.From the results one can conclude that sustainability performance is of importance to a varying degree among the different ownership structures. This tells us that there is still a gap in understanding why different ownership structures engage in different sustainability initiatives and future research is needed to examine why different structures engage in it over others.

This study focused on Corporate Community Involvement Disclosures (CCID), a theme usually disclosed under Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures (CSRD) in annual reports. The primary aim of the research is to investigate the genuineness and raison d'être of CCID in annual reports. To do this the researcher adopted a holistic approach employing an extensive theoretical framework, which integrates Legitimacy, Stakeholder, Agency, Signalling and Semiotics theories and asking three main research questions. Firstly, what are the motivations for CCID in annual reports? Secondly, what is the information content of CCID in annual reports? And lastly, how real is CCID in annual reports? That is can CCID be read and construed as a real measure of corporate community development (CCD)? Using content analysis and a quality score index the study examined a panel dataset covering the period from 1999 to 2009. The data was collected from a sample of 803 annual reports of 73 UK companies taken from the FTSE 350 companies and cutting across all ten industries of the Industrial Classification Benchmark (ICB) Index. Generally the study is more of a quantitative study with hypotheses developed and tested with panel data regression models in order to provide answers to the three research questions. However, due to the sensitivity of the third research question, in addition to panel regression, the researcher performed a qualitative analysis of question three using semiotics. The study provided evidence to show that CCID as disclosed in annual reports have an undertone of reputation/impression management like other CSR disclosures (CSRD). The community activities reported do not seem to address the expectations of the local communities per se; rather the disclosures seemed to be targeted at a wider stakeholder group that is likely to offer immediate reward for such disclosures. Similarly result from semiotic analysis revealed that signification of reality is either doubtful or unreal for most companies sampled. The study is unique as it is the first to explore the reality of CCID as it appears in annual reports using a combination of a panel study approach and semiotics. In addition a major contribution of the study is that it explored the ways in which multiple theoretical underpinnings can inform research by developing a CCID Meta-theory model and thus provided a robust and enriched analysis and unique insights into the CCID phenomenon.

This thesis challenges two key assumptions made in the current Islamic banking literature. Firstly, this thesis challenges and empirically invalidates the assumption that all Islamic banks are indistinguishable from their conventional counterparts and are thus equally unIslamic. To do so, this thesis uses the profit and loss sharing (PLS) criteria, which is central to the philosophy of Islamic banking and is the key principle differentiating Islamic from conventional banking, in theory and practice. By investigating variation in PLS levels between Islamic banks and comparing with conventional banks with and without Islamic windows, this thesis illustrates that the Islamic banking industry does not comprise a homogeneous group of banks that are all indistinguishable from their conventional counterparts. Rather, a typology of Islamic banks exists, comprising of three distinct groups of banks, each one following a different business model. While one group can genuinely be considered indistinguishable from conventional banks, another group shows clear evidence of pursuing PLS-oriented strategies in formulating its asset portfolio, differentiating itself from the purely debt-based intermediation model adopted by conventional banks. As such, empirical evidence shows that some Islamic banks are, in practice, operating closer to the PLS principle and can thus be considered more Islamic than others. Further investigation illustrates that the institutional environment matters for the provision of ideal PLS Islamic financing instruments. Secondly, this thesis overcomes two methodological issues to compare the corporate social performance (CSP) of Islamic and conventional banks. In doing so, this thesis challenges the second identified assumption from the literature, that religion-specific category of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is particular to Islamic banking, and invalidates it on conceptual, theoretical and empirical basis. A novel CSP Index based on the evidence-based disclosure criteria, comprising of 6 dimensions and 25 social performance indicators is constructed and complemented with three Social Performance Quantitative Indicators (SPQIs) to compare the CSP of Islamic and conventional banks. From this comparison, this thesis concludes that, contrary to the industry s claims and expectations held of it, Islamic banking does not offer an ethical alternative to conventional banking. Differences in the level and composition of CSP between the two industries are more subtle and require a nuanced approach to be studied.