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The use of generative artificial intelligence (genAi) language models such as ChatGPT to write assignment text is well established. This paper aims to assess to what extent genAi can be used to obtain guidance on how to avoid detection when commissioning and submitting contract-written assignments and how workable the offered solutions are.

Although ChatGPT is programmed not to provide answers that are unethical or that may cause harm to people, ChatGPT’s can be prompted to answer with inverted moral valence, thereby supplying unethical answers. The authors tasked ChatGPT to generate 30 essays that discussed the benefits of submitting contract-written undergraduate assignments and outline the best ways of avoiding detection. The authors scored the likelihood that ChatGPT’s suggestions would be successful in avoiding detection by markers when submitting contract-written work.

While the majority of suggested strategies had a low chance of escaping detection, recommendations related to obscuring plagiarism and content blending as well as techniques related to distraction have a higher probability of remaining undetected. The authors conclude that ChatGPT can be used with success as a brainstorming tool to provide cheating advice, but that its success depends on the vigilance of the assignment markers and the cheating student’s ability to distinguish between genuinely viable options and those that appear to be workable but are not.

This paper is a novel application of making ChatGPT answer with inverted moral valence, simulating queries by students who may be intent on escaping detection when committing academic misconduct.

This paper aims to examine how social and environmental issues were accounted for and traded off within decision-making for Australia’s largest seawater desalination plant. This is done through an investigation of disclosures contained within key publicly available documents pertaining to the project.

The study deploys content analysis to initially identify relevant disclosures. Themes and subthemes are based on definitions of social and environmental accounting adapted from prior research. Relevant information was used to develop “silent accounts” to identify and analyse accountability issues in the case.

It was found that a number of claims made throughout reporting were unsupported or insufficiently explained. At the same time, it is found that various forms of basic measurements used to describe social and environmental issues conveyed the rationale of decision makers. It is concluded that many of the claims were asserted rather than evidenced; yet, the manner and context of their presentation gave them the appearance of being incontestable truths. Further, it is argued that the portrayal of social and environmental issues through measurable means is emblematic of values associated with contemporary neoliberal and public sector reforms.

The findings and conclusions of this study are contextually bound and therefore limited to this case.

This paper illustrates problems with the reporting of non-financial information and strengthens our understanding of the use of “silent accounting”. It illustrates the value of this approach to research examining accounting and accountability issues.

The findings contribute to the literature on social and environmental accounting by providing unique empirical analysis of non-financial disclosures within publicly available reporting.

The purpose of this study is to examine how mindfulness reduces consumers’ buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) payment scheme usage and how that relates to their overall well-being.

This study uses partial least squares structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses of a conceptual framework which is rooted in the extant literature, using an approximately representative sample of Australian consumers (N = 275).

This study finds empirical evidence for the ability of mindfulness to reduce BNPL usage through increasing consumers’ financial self-control and decreasing their impulse buying tendency. This study also obtains empirical evidence that greater BNPL usage is associated with lower subjective evaluations of consumers’ overall well-being by increasing their current money management stress and decreasing their expected future financial security.

Future research could build on the effect of mindfulness that the authors find in this study and how it could be leveraged as a protective mechanism for consumers’ financial decision-making. Such research could involve mindfulness-based interventions, such as instant messaging within smartphone applications. Doing so would also help assess causality, thus addressing the limitation of the cross-sectional nature of this study.

The findings have implications for public policymakers and business practitioners. Financial counselors are encouraged to include the measurement of personality traits such as impulse buying tendency and financial self-control in intake meetings with clients and consider the benefits of offering short mindfulness training. Given the negative effect of BNPL usage on consumers’ financial and overall well-being, and the reputational risks this implies, BNPL providers are recommended to take more responsibility to ensure consumers do not fall into a debt trap, while retailers are advised to take steps to make payment processes more “mindful.”

Although mindfulness has established effects on consumer behavior, its beneficial influence on consumer financial decision-making has rarely been explored. This study also contributes to a better understanding of the antecedents and consequences of consumers’ BNPL payment scheme usage. Although its prominence is increasing in daily life, and despite the concerns of consumer advocates, policymakers and regulators regarding its risks, the topic of consumers’ BNPL usage has received little attention in academic research so far. Finally, this study extends the emerging financial well-being literature by demonstrating how BNPL usage can reduce consumers’ overall well-being through the mediating effect of increasing current money management stress and decreasing expected future financial security.

ON THE 15TH OF JANUARY 1803 Marjory Fleming was born in a house in the High Street of Kirkcaldy; and in her short life of almost nine years she wrote the diaries and poems which have made her something of a legend. But was she really a child genius, protegée and dear friend of Walter Scott, and the toast of literary Edinburgh—as some of her biographers would have us believe? The mists of Victorian sentimentality are hard to pierce, and facts have become confused by romantic embroidery.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate public disclosures and accountability for government decision-making in the case of a major prison project delivered through a Public–Private Partnership (PPP) in the State of Victoria (Australia).

The study explores a unique case to provide insights into public disclosures for PPPs in a jurisdiction that is a recognised leader in PPP policy and practice. The analysis is theoretically framed by an understanding of neoliberalism and New Public Management, and draws on data from case-specific reporting, media reporting and public policy, to examine interconnections between accounting, public discourse and accountability.

The analysis shows how publicly available information relating to key government decisions routinely lacked supporting evidence or explanation, even though areas of subjectivity were recognised in public policy. Accounting was deployed numerically and discursively to present potentially contestable decisions as being based on common-sense “facts”. The implied “truth” status of government reporting is problematised by media disclosure of key issues absent from government disclosures.

Under neoliberalism, accountingisation can help depoliticise the public sphere and limit discourse by constructing ostensible “facts” in an inherently contestable arena. By contrast, democratic accountability requires public disclosures that infuse a critical dialogical public sphere.

The paper shows how neoliberalism can be embedded in public policies and institutional practices, and buttressed by the use of accounting. The analysis illuminates the persistence and “failing forward” character of neoliberalism, whereby crises are addressed through further neoliberalisation.

This paper investigates how contemporary public policy for public-private partnerships (PPPs) deals with non-financial values and thereby shapes the way social, cultural and environmental issues are accounted for.

A case study critically analyses PPP policy in Victoria, Australia, an acknowledged leader in the area. The investigation of the policy’s approach to non-financial value focusses on the treatment of social and environmental issues, particularly in relation to indigenous cultural heritage values.

It is found that important non-financial issues are characterised as risks to be quantified and monetised in PPP project assessment. A critical analysis shows that this approach obscures many significant dimensions of social, environmental and Indigenous cultural heritage value. The resultant relegation of non-financial values in public discourse and decision-making is seen to entrench unsustainable practices.

The paper shows how public policy may shape actions and outcomes that impact directly on social, environmental and indigenous cultural heritage values.

This study provides insights into contemporary social and environmental accounting and accountability for PPPs. It adds to the understanding of the implications of public policy framings of non-financial values.

A creative identity, the incorporation of creativity into self-definition, is associated with creative outcomes. Given the importance of creativity to organizational success, understanding creative identity and in particular creative identity work (the formation and maintenance of creative identity) can be useful in understanding creatives within organizations. To be considered creative, individuals need to not only produce unique artefacts, but these artefacts need to be assessed by legitimate judges as being creative. Judges may be within an organization (e.g., senior researchers within a laboratory) or may be external to an organization (e.g., award judges in international advertising competitions). Underpinning creative identity work is the creative assessment, however this assessment is ambiguous and contextual. In other words, what is considered creative in one context or by one judge may not be considered creative in another context or by different judges. The ambiguity of the creative assessment makes creative identity work a precarious undertaking. Based on two case studies – a R&D laboratory and an advertising agency – this research explores the strategies which creative individuals employ in their creative identity work in response to the ambiguity of the creative assessment. This research contributes to the growing area of creative identity research by unpacking three specific strategies used as part of identity work of creatives: defending, emotional distancing and differentiating. These strategies assist the creatives in maintaining a coherent sense of who they are within the organizational context despite the unpredictability of the creative assessment.

Filicide, the killing of a child by a parent, is one of the only crimes committed by women and men in roughly equal numbers. Women's violence against their children, however, more profoundly confounds common understandings of the links between gender and family violence, leading to its ambivalent treatment within the media. When men kill their children, they are usually characterised as either monsters or as sad, failed men. When women kill their children, they are usually represented as bad mothers or mad mothers suffering under the burdens of the pathological female body. In both cases, a mental illness/distress lens is common, though how it manifests is inflected by gender. This chapter examines recent Australian news representations of maternal filicide-suicide. Focussing on the mental illness/distress frame in news, it examines the ideological work this frame does in decontextualising and de-gendering maternal filicide, framing women's mental illness/distress in ‘psychocentric’ terms that strip it of political or social significance and subjecting it to an individualised lens that obscures the gendered aetiologies of women's use of violence.

The vision of robotics in the home promises increased convenience, comfort, companionship and greater security for users. The robot industry risks causing harm to users, being rejected by society at large or being regulated in overly prescriptive ways if robots are not developed in a socially responsible manner. The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the challenges and requirements for designing responsible domestic robots.

The paper examines definitions of robotics and the current commercial state of the art. In particular, it considers the emerging technological trends, such as smart homes, that are already embedding computational agents in the fabric of everyday life. The paper then explores the role of values in design, aligning with human computer interaction, and considers the importance of the home as a deployment setting for robots. The paper examines what responsibility in robotics means and draws lessons from past home information technologies. An exploratory pilot survey was conducted to understand user concerns about different aspects of domestic robots such as form, privacy and trust. The paper provides these findings, married with literature analysis from across technology law, computer ethics and computer science.

By drawing together both empirical observations and conceptual analysis, this paper concludes that user centric design is needed to create responsible domestic robotics in the future.

This multidisciplinary paper provides conceptual and empirical research from different domains to unpack the challenges of designing responsible domestic robotics. In doing this, the paper seeks to bridge the gap between the normative dimensions of how responsible robots should be built, and the practical dimensions of how people want to live with them in context.