内部治理机制与自由现金流代理成本的研究

由于现在上市公司存在两权分离的状况,企业持有自由现金流量会产生一定的代理成本问题.为了抑制其产生的代理成本,本文在自由现金流量理论的基础上,从企业内部治理机制出发,选取我国深沪A股的上市公司为样本研究企业内部治理机制与自由现金流量代理成本的关系,希望通过改善内部治理机制合理控制自由现金流量,从而降低其代理成本.     

委托代理关系下内部控制与公司治理

"绿大地"财务造假案再一次警示在公司治理制衡关系发生变化的情况下,经营者占据控制地位,以经营者为实施主体而建立的内部控制制度不能担当起保护投资者利益的使命.由"绿大地"事件分析了我国双重委托代理关系下上市公司治理和内部控制的现状.基于这种现状,在综合公司治理和内部控制嵌合关系的基础上,指出我国上市公司治理和内部控制整合的可能性和必要性,并进一步提出了二者的整合框架.     

我国非上市公司治理机制有效性的检验——来自我国制造业大中型企业的证据

本文利用国家统计局公布的制造业大中型企业年度财务数据,实证考察了我国非上市公司的治理问题,对相关治理机制的有效性进行检验。本文的研究表明,不同于上市公司主要依靠董事会等内部治理机制和信息披露等外部监管,控股股东的特征在我国非上市公司治理中的作用尤为突出。外部法律制度环境的改善将显著降低非上市公司的代理成本,而税务实施在非上市公司的治理中扮演重要的公司治理角色,成为目前我国经济转型阶段可资借鉴的重要的法律外制度。本研究为我国非上市公司治理问题以及相关治理机制的有效性提供了较早的证据。     

论高质量审计与提升负债的治理效应——基于代理成本与代理效率视角的经验检验

以2007～2010年我国A股上市公司为样本,分别从代理成本和代理效率的视角考察了高质量审计是否有助于提升负债的治理功效。研究发现:高质量审计与短期借款之间存在协同治理效应,该效应有助于提升代理效率但无助于降低代理成本;进一步地,高质量审计与短期借款之间的协同治理效应仅显著存在于金融发展水平高地区的上市公司中。此外,附加检验的结果显示,高质量审计有助于透过改进代理效率提升商业信用的治理功效且这一效应只在法治化程度较高地区的上市公司中存在。上述研究结论揭示了我国当前制度环境下高质量审计提升债务治理功效的路径及影响因素。     

公司治理及财务治理相关问题探讨

我国国有公司由于特殊的委托代理关系,使得治理结构存在着先天性的制度缺陷,而良好的公司治理结构是提高经济绩效的基本手段,本文分析了公司治理及财务治理间的联系及区别,并对存在的问题提出了几点建议。     

上市公司治理结构对会计信息质量的影响研究

随着我国经济的快速发展,上市公司数量逐渐增多,其披露的会计信息质量则是参差不齐.会计信息是公司治理的产物,公司治理与会计信息质量之间存在着理论基础的交叉重叠,委托代理理论和产权理论是两者共同的理论基础.因此,公司治理结构模式与会计信息质量之间存在着相互影响的关系.本文在分析这种理论关系的基础之上提出了完善公司治理与提高会计信息质量的相关建议.     

公司治理与上市公司股利政策

本文首先探讨了公司治理与股利政策的关系,进而比较了中美公司治理结构方面的差异。通过比较美国与中国上市公司股利政策的不同,并且分析了中美股利政策差异的公司治理原因,对完善我国上市公司治理制度和股利政策有极大的借鉴意义。     

上市公司利益相关者治理评价及实证研究

有鉴于利益相关的相关问题已成为现行公司治理框架中不可或缺的一部分，本设置代理投票制度、累积投票制度、职工监事制度三个利益相关治理评价指标，考察中国上市公司利益相关参与公司治理和利益相关权益的保护状况。评价结果显示，我国上市公司利益相关治理水平很低，还处在建立健全的初步阶段，还不足以对企业业绩和企业价值产生显影响。我国上市公司亟侍建立和完善利益相关治理机制，以便充分重视和解决利益相关问题，提升整体公司治理绩效，最终达到提高公司业绩和价值的目的。     

上市公司外部审计制度变革：基于公司治理的思考

公司治理与外部审计制度密不可分。当前，上市公司治理结构的不完善，是导致外部审计制度的固有缺陷，造成审计质量低下的重要原因。本文从上市公司外部审计制度与公司治理的关系出发，以公司治理角度对现行外部审计制度进行分析，提出公司治理决定了审计制度，审计制度对公司治理又会起到积极作用，健全的审计制度可以促进公司治理的完善的观点。鉴于上市公司治理的现实状况。本文提出以监事会为中心、以董事会为中心与以独立董事为中心的三种外部审计制度模式。以期重新构建上市公司内部治理框架．提高审计机制运行效率．     

内部审计与公司治理的互动研究

随着公司治理结构的不断改进，正确认识并重视内部审计在公司治理中的特殊地位和重要作用，并完善中国上市公司的内部审计制度，以促进内部审计与公司治理的良性互动，是当前经济体制建设中的一项紧迫任务。本文在分析内部审计和公司治理之间相辅相成关系的基础上，对上市公司如何提高内部审计质量、完善公司治理提出了一些建议。     

Internal audit,alternative internal audit structures and the level of misappropriation of assets fraud

In recent years, the importance of good corporate governance has received significant public and regulatory attention. A crucial part of an entity's corporate governance is its internal audit function. At the same time, there has been significant public concern about the level of fraud within organizations. The purpose of this study is to assess whether organizations with an internal audit function are more likely to detect and self‐report fraud than those without. In this study, we use a unique self‐reported measure of misappropriation of assets fraud for the first time. The fraud data are from the 2004 KPMG Fraud Survey, which reported fraud from 491 organizations in the private and public sector across Australia and New Zealand. The internal audit data are from a separate mail survey sent to the respondents of the KPMG Fraud Survey. We find that organizations with an internal audit function are more likely than those without such a function to detect and self‐report fraud. Furthermore, organizations that rely solely on outsourcing for their internal audit function are less likely to detect and self‐report fraud than those that undertake at least part of their internal audit function themselves. These findings suggest that internal audit adds value through improving the control and monitoring environment within organizations to detect and self‐report fraud. These results also suggest that keeping the internal audit function within the organization is more effective than completely outsourcing that function.     

非营利组织的内部控制研究

非营利组织内部控制的目标包括:保证其目标的充分实现程度;保证其信息的可靠性和完整性;保证其资源运行的经济性、安全性及完整性;保证其产品和服务的质量;保证其公信力.非营利组织内部控制的要素包括控制环境、风险管理、控制活动、信息与沟通、监督与检查.我国应该循序推进内部控制规范的制定;有效发挥内审机构在内控建设中的作用;积极...     

Risk Management as Passionate Imitation: The Interconnections Among Emotions,Performance Metrics,and Risk in a Global Technology Firm

This paper traces the evolution of risk management practices in a global technology company between 2000 and 2015. We extend recent research that has highlighted the emotional aspects of riskwork. We detail how a passionate interest—‘we can do better at risk management’—emotionally ‘hooked’ the staff in the company's Sourcing Unit. Risk management, emotion, and management controls were intertwined. When top management singled out one of the key metrics clearly as a risk‐related metric for the Sourcing Unit, the employees felt a strong sense of relief, which gave rise to subsequent extensive risk measurement. We also contribute to the more general debate about accounting and its entanglement with emotions. Little is known about the ‘birth’ and the reasons for durability of passionate interests. Following Tarde (1903/2013), such ‘birth’ and endurance can be explained by analyzing how passionate imitation emerges as a result of a series of dislocal events—in our case a fire, new performance metrics, and natural disasters. These events triggered emotions that provided the necessary energy for three forms of passionate imitation: a) ‘we need to imitate our main competitor’ and risk mapping; b) ‘others in the organization are imitating us and our suppliers should imitate us’ and risk measurement; and c) ‘others in the organization (more specifically the Product Development Unit) should imitate us’ and proactive risk avoidance. This passionate imitation helped explain why the sourcing staff continued to be emotionally ‘hooked’ to risk management, that is, how the passionate interest endured and became vested.     

Accounting for self interest in the credit crisis

Taking as its starting point Alan Greenspan’s ‘shocked disbelief’ in the failure of institutional self interest to prevent the credit crisis, this paper sets out to explore two related questions. How was self interest constructed in financial markets? And how might we account for its failure? Conceptually the paper draws upon Callon’s (1998) analysis of ‘agent–networks’, the importance this gives to the agency of non-humans, and his complementary notions of ‘framing’/‘disentanglement’ and ‘overflowing’ as these allow and subvert the calculation of self interest. Empirically, the paper then presents a sketch of these processes in the rise and then fall of the market for collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) that was central to the credit crisis. The final substantive section of the paper reflects on the role and ‘hyperreal’ interaction of accounting and models as ‘mediators’ in these processes.     

Audit committee quality indices,reporting quality and firm value

We investigate the relation between audit committee (AC) quality indices, financial reporting, internal control quality and firm value using a US dataset for the period 2002–12. The indices are developed by linking firm value with principal component analysis (PCA) factors based on a broad set of 82 AC variables, some of which influence the quality of the AC, but are not addressed in prior literature. Significant AC factors include ‘overlapping directors’, ‘busyness’ and ‘foreign director’, and we use these factors to develop ‘high’ and ‘low’ AC quality indices. We show that low AC quality firms are more likely to manage earnings, be external auditor dependent with respect to non‐audit tax services, and switch to a lower quality auditor. Low AC quality firms are also more likely to have internal control concerns disclosed by predecessor auditors, including accounting issues, financial restatements, audit opinion concerns and deficiencies that undermine internal control effectiveness. Further, they are more likely to receive an audit report containing additional explanatory notes. Conversely, high AC quality firms are significantly less likely to have these concerns. Our findings highlight the value of using AC quality indices in delivering greater oversight of the financial reporting process.     

Organizational legitimacy,conflict, and hypocrisy: An alternative view of the role of internal auditing

This article provides a commentary on Everett and Tremblay's (2014) analysis of ethics and internal audit by further exploring the role of the internal audit function within Nils Brunsson's model of organized hypocrisy (Brunsson, 1986, Brunsson, 1993, Brunsson, 2002). Specifically, we extend Everett and Tremblay's discussion of internal auditors as ‘moral’ actors and propose that the counter-coupling of an organization's primary outputs–talk, decision and action–provides internal auditors with the necessary tools to carry out conflicting ethical roles within the organization.     

Changes in the Public Accounts Committee of a Less Developed Democratic Country: A Field Study

This paper complements prior studies on the public accounts committees (PACs) by considering the notions of ‘agency’ and ‘structure’ of institutional theory in tandem in understanding the changes in structures and activities of the PAC of a less‐developed democratic country – Bangladesh. While prior studies examined ‘external’ institutional pressures on the development and operation of the PAC in various settings, the role of internal and external institutional agents in this context has not been their primary focus. Our empirical evidence from a qualitative field study indicates that over the past two decades, Bangladesh's PAC underwent significant changes to its internal governance structures and administrative processes. While these changes were indirectly driven by pressures from international donor agencies, PAC members and the national audit office played a key role as institutional agents in initiating and institutionalising the changes in PAC governance and operation.     

New development: Scarcity,policy gambles,and ‘one-shot bias’—training civil servants to speak truth to power

ABSTRACT

Allocating scarce resources to meet policy objectives incurs opportunity costs. A vital element of ‘speaking truth to power’ thus involves officials advising ministers on the opportunity costs of high-risk ‘pet projects’. In democracies, the brevity of ministerial office can produce ‘one-shot bias’—radical policy-making that deploys ministers’ time-limited powers to the full, yet risks producing significant opportunity costs for public service organizations. Examples include the UK’s recent social security, healthcare and European policies. Training in the economics of organization, development of new techniques for coping with uncertainty in opportunity-cost estimates, and stronger incentives for decision-makers to consider ‘benefits foregone’ by their actions could all provide greater protection against the downsides of one-shot bias.     

Income Shifting in the Spanish Dual Income Tax*

Based on a model of behavioural response to taxes, and using the Taxpayers Panel from the Instituto de Estudios Fiscales for the period 1999–2009, we analyse whether the dual nature of the Spanish personal income tax (PIT), reinforced by the 2007 reform, has influenced taxpayers’ behaviour, causing them to convert part of their ‘general income’ (from labour, real estate or economic activities) into ‘savings income’ (from movable capital or capital gains). We also extend the analysis of income shifting and study whether Spanish taxpayers also responded to the different tax treatments given to the two types of savings income (from movable capital and capital gains) until 2007, transforming savings income from one type to the other. The results of our study demonstrate three facts. First, Spanish taxpayers did respond to the different tax rates, shifting income from the general base to different forms of savings, especially capital gains. The highest‐income individuals and the self‐employed and business owners are the groups where this behaviour was most marked. Second, the self‐employed and business owners also turned income from movable assets into capital gains, guided by their different tax rates. And third, we find signs of ‘anticipation’ and ‘learning’ effects caused by the 2007 tax reform. We believe that the results obtained will enrich the growing literature on income shifting.     

Controllers’ use of informational tactics

Controllers typically have a ‘dual accountability’ towards the finance function and operational management, respectively. This dual accountability at times confronts them with conflicting expectations. In this paper, we suggest that ‘informational tactics’ constitute an important resource which controllers rely on so as to handle these expectations and to successfully present themselves vis-à-vis their different internal stakeholders. Drawing upon interview data, we demonstrate that informational tactics relate to different dimensions of information control (i.e. ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘what’ information is to be exchanged) and that they depend on the respective room for manoeuvre a controller has in a given situation. Overall, our analysis adds a more nuanced picture to the literature on controllers’ handling of information and demonstrates the fundamental role of informational tactics for their everyday work.