As ESG investments have grown, many companies are emphasizing them to impress capital markets and consumers with their responsibility and environmental consciousness. However, managers in unethical companies greenwashing ESG reports to keep clients. The present investigation employs quasi-natural experiment data obtained from a sample of 1200 Chinese A-share listed companies spanning the period from 2011 to 2021 to examine how the Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zone (GFRIPZ) affects ESG greenwashing. GFRIPZ can prevent publicly traded companies from ESG greenwashing. The statistical analysis of heterogeneity demonstrates that GFRIPZ in non-state-owned, mid-west, heavy-polluting, manufacturing industries reduces ESG greenwashing. GFRIPZ suppresses corporate ESG greenwashing better in companies with severe financial constraints and a poor corporate reputation. GFRIPZ's inhibition of corporate ESG greenwashing is enhanced by internal and external monitoring. This study shows how financial markets affect firms' ESG greenwashing. It helps implement GFRIPZ theoretically. It also recommends raising listed companies' awareness of ESG disclosure and reducing corporate ESG greenwashing.

Purpose: Agricultural accounting is gaining ground across different disciplines, rendering it a significant research area. This study aims to assess agricultural accounting research for the past 93 years in terms of publication frequency, subject areas, topics that received the most attention among researchers, as well as the institutions that contribute to this subject area.Design/methodology/approach: This study employs a bibliometric analysis collected through the Scopus database. The sample included 3,612 documents. The analyzed variables include the number of publications per year, documents published, country, author affiliation, keywords and active institutions. Analyses include graphical network maps.Findings: The findings of this study reveal the importance of supportive institutions, human capabilities and international collaboration in aiding research and development. It provides an overview of agricultural accounting literature over the years and aid researchers in this research domain to explore more studies and develop better arguments. The results also indicate the continuing growth in the number of publications in recent years by authorship; country include the USA, China, the UK, Australia and Germany; institutes include Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wageningen University and Research Centre; and the subject areas include Environmental Science; Agriculture and Biology sciences; and Social Sciences. The most frequent keywords connecting to author’s area of research, as highlighted in Figure 5, include agriculture, accounting, water accounting, environmental accounting and cost analysis.Research limitations/implications: The study is based on the Scopus database, which has limited coverage. The keywords of the literature search were restricted to “agriculture and accounting” or “agricultural and accounting” and the research approach limited to quantitative perspective.Practical implications: The findings may benefit policymakers as well as academicians toward understanding the areas of interest in agricultural accounting.Originality/value: This study provides the potential areas within agricultural accounting literature in a broader scope that deserve multiple accounting practices to cover diverse agricultural activities such as cost accounting, financial reporting, managerial accounting, auditing, taxation and financial information systems. The study suggests developing countries promote innovative research on agricultural practice to meet global scientific and technological developments.

The strategic role of company secretaries in corporate governance remains underdeveloped in academic discourse, despite their statutory presence and growing influence within board structures (Kakabadse et al., 2014; Tricker, 2019). This paper addresses this gap by systematically reviewing the evolving functions of company secretaries, with particular attention to their technical, commercial, and social attributes. The study employs a systematic literature review (SLR) methodology, guided by Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocols, and synthesises findings from 16 peer-reviewed publications spanning from 1993 to 2024. The results indicate a discernible shift in perception — from administrative facilitators to governance professionals who contribute to board effectiveness, regulatory compliance, and strategic communication. These findings are examined through the lenses of agency theory, stakeholders’ theory, resource dependence theory, and signalling theory. The review highlights notable jurisdictional and sectoral differences, particularly between developed and emerging markets, and identifies the increasing relevance of company secretaries in high-regulation industries such as financial services. The study concludes by emphasising the need for institutional empowerment and greater integration of company secretaries into strategic governance processes. This research contributes to the literature by bridging theoretical insights with practical implications, offering valuable guidance for scholars, regulators, and practitioners seeking to enhance governance quality through the expanded utilisation of company secretaries.

This study examines the spillover effects of auditor sanctions on client firms, and validates the extent to which social media communications empower traditionally weak investors’ voice. In the context of China which offers unique data from regulated interactive platforms, the study examines the effects of auditor sanctions on investors’ online voice, employing the DID model. Results suggest that auditor sanctions increase the number of questions and number of words in the questions asked by investors about client firms on online interactive platforms. The deep learning Pre-trained BERTBASE model for sentiment analysis demonstrates that auditor sanctions also significantly increase the number of questions with negative sentiments. The results still hold after multiple robustness tests. Such adverse spillover effects of auditor sanctions are more pronounced among non-state-owned client firms and firms with higher shareholding concentration. This study contributes by enriching the application of deep learning models in text analysis in the social sciences, validating the importance that investors attach to auditor sanctions and thus the effectiveness of the government regulation.

HRMARS is well established journal publisher based in Pakistan. It is publishing prominent journals in social sciences since 2011.