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This study aims to examine the value orientations of New Zealand agribusiness investors and how these orientations influence their reactions to the environmental and social implications of agribusinesses.

In the context of the New Zealand agricultural sector, the views of investors as published in print and broadcast media between 2018 and 2022 are gathered. The study uses qualitative content analysis to analyse the data. The study is based on the value-belief-norm theory.

The study reveals that New Zealand agribusiness investors express concern about the environmental (biospheric) and social (altruistic) impacts of the agribusiness sector, prompting calls for greater transparency, climate adaptation and ethical investment options. Additionally, they actively support local businesses to benefit their communities and preserve cultural heritage. Despite these biospheric and altruistic tendencies, investors also prioritise financial and non-financial interests (egoistic). This highlights a nuanced perspective guiding their investment choices – a balance between self-interest and contributing to the greater good. This signals a shift towards socially and environmentally responsible investment practices driven by multifaceted values.

The findings of this study highlight the role of non-pecuniary motives, like values, in determining the relevance of environmental and social information.

The study’s findings offer insight to agribusinesses on how investors’ value orientations shape their investment decisions. This understanding can guide businesses in framing a reporting strategy that enhances the likelihood of investors perceiving reporting as relevant and persuasive, thereby attracting more investments. In turn, this tailored reporting approach assists investors in making well-informed decisions in assessing the environmental and societal risks of agribusinesses.

The study offers a framework explaining how agribusinesses can increase the likelihood of investors finding firms reporting relevant and persuasive, leading to increased investments in environmentally and socially sustainable practices.

This study aims to examine how different combinations of firm determinants enhance environmental reporting (ER) in New Zealand.

This study collects data from annual and sustainability reports of 145 listed companies in New Zealand. This study uses content analysis to examine the extent of ER and then the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (FsQCA) to determine the configurations of determinants of reporting.

The findings reveal ten configurations of determinants showing that ER relies on the existence or non-existence of other firm determinants such as firm size, profitability, ownership and presence of an environment committee (EC). Among ten configurations, ER*∼ROE (ROE denotes return on equity; firms with no profitability but with ECs) stands out, indicating that ER is strongly influenced by the presence of an EC when no profitability exists.

The configuration analysis in this study extends the current ER literature.

The findings provide insight into the management to look for new paths when they make environmental-related strategies based on the existence and non-existence of firm determinants. The findings also support policymakers considering multiple combinations of criteria when mandating ER to promote better climate risk reporting in New Zealand.

Previous studies on determinants of ER mainly use regression analysis to analyse their data. In contrast, the current study uses configuration analysis.

New Zealand regulatory bodies guided preparers and auditors of financial statements to deal with potential COVID-19 impacts on the financial statements and audit procedures. This study provides evidence of auditors' response to the impact of COVID-19 on the reporting of key audit matters (KAMs) in audit reports of listed companies in New Zealand. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

A sample of 50 New Zealand listed companies was selected to compare the KAMs in 2019 (pre-COVID-19) and 2020 (during COVID-19). The study uses content analysis to evaluate the KAMs’ disclosures and descriptive analysis to examine the differences between 2019 and 2020 in terms of the auditor type, industry sector and accounting standards.

Auditors responded positively to the request from regulators to communicate the impacts of COVID-19. The findings show an increase in the amount and length of KAMs in 2020 compared to 2019, with 82% of companies and 61% of KAMs reporting the impact of COVID-19. The real estate and information technology sectors disclosed more on the impact than other sectors. In analysing the KAMs, accounting standards for inventories, property plant and equipment, impairment of assets, investment property, revenue from contracts with customers and leases were highly affected by COVID-19.

The findings support regulators to evaluate how well auditors communicated matters relating to COVID-19 in the audit report. Also, the findings will help standard setters to identify key accounting standards affected by COVID-19 of KAMs and provide insights to users on how the KAM reporting enhances communicative value during the pandemic.

The current study captures the impact of COVID-19 on the reporting of KAMs by comparing changes before and during the pandemic.

This study aims to demonstrate how Carney’s ladder of analytical abstraction is used to examine the motivations of banks for reporting human capital (HC) information.

The authors use semi-structured interviews of senior bank employees at eight large New Zealand banks. They analyse the managers’ views using a constructive mapping of responses applying Carney’s ladder of analytical abstraction. The findings are interpreted from a stakeholder theory perspective.

The authors find that the New Zealand banks report on HC to manage reputation, strengthen employee relationships and achieve competitive advantages. The results suggest that banks engage in opportunistic reporting to distract external stakeholders while advancing their interests.

The study will guide researchers in the use of Carney’s ladder of analytical abstraction in analysing qualitative data.

This study provides insights for businesses to improve the consistency and quality of HC reporting and ensure that the information needs of broader stakeholder groups are met.

Some previous voluntary reporting studies analyse their data using inductive analysis. The authors use Carney’s ladder of analytical abstraction as a framework to guide our inductive analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the effects of online learning on student engagement as a result of a shift from face-to-face to online learning during the COVID-19 lockdown in New Zealand.

The reflection expresses the accounting lecturers’ observations and experiences of student engagement in online learning during the COVID-19 lockdown focussing on the three facets of student engagement; social presence, cognitive presence and teaching presence.

The focus on social and teaching presence in online learning by Unitec academic staff had a positive impact on cognitive presence as student course success rates and course ratings were similar to rates achieved from face-to-face delivery despite a rapid transition to online learning.

This reflection is based on the experiences of three academic staff in one tertiary organisation.

The findings of this study can be helpful for tertiary institutions that are planning to adopt blended learning in the future. Academic staff may revisit teaching pedagogies to design new strategies and institutions may develop blended learning guidelines and tools to support academics to embrace blended learning.

The reflection shows the respect, support and care provided by academics to students building a sense of belongingness and supporting students’ mental well-being in a period of fear and anxiety about COVID-19.

This is a reflection on students’ online engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has not been addressed previously in the academic literature.