Search

The need to reduce public sector costs and debt has resulted in the implementation of requirements in many countries. Spain belongs to a group of countries which monitor the financial health of their local governments, using financial indicators enforced by law, and reporting this information periodically. The objective of this paper is to analyse whether the introduction of the 2012 Spanish legislation regarding fiscal stability and budgetary balance and Ministry of Finance Order 1781/2013, which develop new indicators, have led to improvements in the financial health of local governments. The results of our analysis show that the introduction of legal requirements is effective and that the disclosure of indicators for benchmarking purposes has been beneficial and positive, although this is not so in all cases. The practical implication of this study is that the dual demands of evaluating the financial situations of local governments and disclosing this information reinforce their responsibility with respect to the general interest. This enables the comparative evolution of indicators, concluding that requirements are also needed to ensure that the goals are achieved, thereby helping to restore the reliability and transparency of their activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reforms in higher education have been passed in many European countries in the last decades, mostly trying to adapt national systems to new European and global challenges. This study examines some consequences of such major reforms in France and Spain. Specifically, these reforms introduced new agencies whose remit was inter alia to provide evaluation of research and to make such assessments pivotal for academic career progression. The paper investigates empirically whether, and to what extent, these new forms of authority have been capable of engendering the expected change to the system of academic career evaluation. The respective policy approaches and policy implementation in France and Spain reveal that these reforms triggered a reconfiguration of powers at various levels of academic life – affecting strategies for successful career development. Policy-making implications are relevant when these two countries are compared, suggesting that more radical policy approaches (coercive isomorphism, the French case) do not result in more change to academic evaluation practices than mimetic ones (the Spanish case). It is also important to note that coercive isomorphism encountered more frictions in its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines tax-related sustainability reporting among electric utilities. Our sample consists of the 32 electric utilities included in the S&P Global Sustainability Yearbook 2022. A content analysis was conducted to examine their level of tax-related sustainability reporting. The concepts of isomorphism and diffusion underpin the interpretation of the findings. Two sources of coercive isomorphism are identified: the State, via Directive 2014/95/EU, making sustainability reporting mandatory in the EU, and the laws transposing it; and European multinational corporations' influence on Latin American subsidiaries. We also identified normative and mimetic isomorphism related to awards and responsible tax initiatives in Spain. • Tax-related sustainability reporting among electric utilities. • Coercive isomorphism identified: State and European multinational corporations. • European multinational corporations' influence on Latin American subsidiaries. • Heterogeneous responses to institutional pressures in different geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to run a comparative analysis of the recruitment websites of the largest national companies of two different countries, Spain (companies within the IBEX 35 stock market index) and the USA (companies within the Dow Jones stock market index). Using an e-recruiting taxonomy of best practices with 27 attributes, we test the extent to which the selection of specific functionalities reflects different types of isomorphic relations due to socio-economic, technological or cultural forces. Our results show that (i) there is a high level of homogeneity within the two groups as regards the selection of e-recruitment attributes included in their websites and (ii) there are significant differences between DJIA and IBEX 35 e-recruitment attributes, showing low levels of alikeness among their websites. Results are discussed in terms of the institutional forces that may drive companies toward isomorphism in the design of their e-recruitment attributes and content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to present evidence that there are different types of supportive faculty members. We conducted a case study on a sample of Croatian and Spanish universities by using an already tested ENTRE-U scale for measuring the faculty members' attitudes. These two scenarios are quite different in terms of their innovation systems, economic context and university system. We tested and found no evidence of any statistically significant difference due to the country. These two facts suggest the possible existence of an isomorphic trajectory when implementing entrepreneurial universities regardless the context. University managers should be aware of the existence of three different types of supportive individuals. Each of these groups requires a certain program of human resource development. This shifts the debate to how entrepreneurial universities should manage the tensions arising from the need of some degree of specialization in any of the three roles of the faculty members, namely teaching, researching and transfer of the knowledge stemming from research results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]