The Development of Specialist Industry Knowledge in Government Auditing

Government auditors play an important role in overseeing public agencies, yet there is little understanding of the types of knowledge that specialist industry auditors require in this environment and how this knowledge is acquired. This study develops a portfolio of knowledge items that various sources have suggested are important for industry-specialist auditors. It was found that the items perceived to be of greatest importance to government auditors were contained under the broad knowledge categories of "accounting", "auditing", and "entity-specific factors". Most of the specialised knowledge is acquired on the job, although some of this knowledge may be better acquired through formal training.     

COMPETING PAYMENT SCHEMES*

This paper presents a model of competing payment schemes. Unlike previous work on generic two‐sided markets, the model allows for the fact that in a payment system, users on one side of the market (merchants) compete to attract users on the other side (consumers, who may use cards for purchases). It analyzes how competition between card associations and between merchants affects the choice of interchange fees, and thus the structure of fees charged to cardholders and merchants. Implications for other two‐sided markets are discussed.     

FORM OF CONTROL: A CRITICAL DETERMINANT OF ACQUISITION PERFORMANCE AND CEO REWARDS

Based on two research streams, we investigate whether acquiring firms’ form of control might be associated differently with CEO rewards or excess returns. We theoretically reason that in manager-controlled corporations acquisitions may be detrimental to the interests of shareholders and CEO rewards might be based on nonperformance criteria. In owner-manager-controlled and owner-controlled firms acquisitions may benefit the stockholders. While CEO rewards of owner-controlled firms may be based on performance criteria, however, executive rewards of owner-manager-controlled firms may be based on both performance and nonperformance factors. The findings indicate that for manager-controlled firms acquisition announcements result in negative excess returns to shareholders. For owner-controlled and owner-manager-controlled firms such announcements result in positive excess returns. The findings also suggest that increases in corporate size due to acquisitions are significantly and positively associated with CEO rewards of manager-controlled and owner-manager-controlled firms. For owner-controlled firms, excess returns are significantly and positively associated with CEO rewards. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

RELATED AND UNRELATED DIVERSIFICATION AND THEIR EFFECT ON HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT CONTROLS

This paper examines the link between related and unrelated diversification and human resource management (HRM) controls. The paper presents a model proposing that the type of corporate (macro) controls used by related or unrelated firms implies a relative emphasis on either flexibility or fit among HRM practices in that related firms emphasize flexibility and unrelated firms emphasize fit. This emphasis on flexibility or fit, in turn, has implications for the use of HRM (micro) controls such as clan, behavior, and outcome controls such that related firms exhibit the use of all three types of HRM controls, while unrelated firms exhibit a relative emphasis on the use of outcome controls. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.