Employment quality index for the South African labour market

ABSTRACT

While the South African government specifically set targets on job creation in its numerous economic strategies since the economic transition, various local studies examined the levels and trends in labour force, employment and unemployment to evaluate if these targets were met. However, the quality of employment has not been thoroughly examined. This is the first local study that fills the existing research gap by deriving a composite, multidimensional employment quality index by taking 18 indicators from seven dimensions into consideration: wage, work hours and flexibility, employment security, income security, social benefits, skills and participation. Using the 2010–16 Quarterly Labour Force Survey data, the empirical findings indicated that highly educated, white male workers aged at least 35 years, who lived in urban areas of the Western Cape and Gauteng provinces, and were involved in high skilled occupations in the formal, public sector enjoyed significantly better employment quality.     

Does rice farming shape audit quality: Evidence from signing auditors level analysis

This study examines whether signing auditors from rice planting regions affect audit quality. Using a sample of 12,223 firm-year observations from the Chinese stock market over the period of 2004–2015, our findings reveal that signing auditors from rice regions are significantly negatively associated with the likelihood of unclean audit opinions, suggesting that signing auditors with rice culture are more likely to succumb to the managers and hamper independence, and thus are more inclined to issue favorable audit opinions, and eventually impair audit quality. Furthermore, audit firm size and industry expertise attenuate the negative relation between signing auditors with rice culture and audit quality. In addition, above findings are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests using different measures of audit quality and signing auditors from rice cultivating areas and our conclusions still stand after using the Heckman two-step approach, placebo test and differences-in-differences method to address the potential endogeneity problem.     

CEO internal experience and voluntary disclosure quality: Evidence from management forecasts

Internally‐promoted CEOs should have a deep understanding of their firm's products, supply chain, operations, business climate, corporate culture, and how to navigate among employees to get the information they need. Thus, we argue that internally‐promoted CEOs are likely to produce higher quality disclosure than outsider CEOs. Using a sample of US firms from the S&P1500 index from 2001 to 2011, we hand‐collect whether a CEO is hired from inside the firm and, if so, the number of years they worked at the firm before becoming CEO. We then examine whether managers with more internal experience issue higher quality disclosures and offer three main findings. First, CEOs with more internal experience are more likely to issue voluntary earnings forecasts than those managers with less internal experience as well as those managers hired from outside the firm. Second, CEOs with more internal experience issue more accurate earnings forecasts than those managers with less internal experience as well as those managers hired from outside the firm. Finally, investors react more strongly to forecasts issued by insider CEOs than to those issued by outsider CEOs. In additional analysis, we find no evidence that these results extend to mandatory reporting quality (i.e., accruals quality, restatements, or internal control weaknesses), perhaps because mandatory disclosure is subjected to heavy oversight by the board of directors, auditors, and regulators. Overall, our findings suggest that when managers have work experience with the firm prior to becoming the CEO, the firm's voluntary disclosure is of higher quality.     

Employing structural topic modelling to explore perceived service quality attributes in Airbnb accommodation

This study employs the structural topic model to extract service quality attributes from 242,020 Airbnb reviews in Malaysia. 22 service related topics were extracted from the corpus and four topics have not appeared in previous Airbnb studies. A widely used modified SERVQUAL questionnaire (MSQ) is cross-validated in this study by comparing its service quality attributes with the results of the topic modelling, which indicates that this MSQ can cover general Airbnb service quality attributes. This study also examines the different preferences of Malaysian and international Airbnb users and the changing patterns of the top six service quality attributes during a five-year period. The findings reveal that Malaysian Airbnb users care more about the appearance and location of the property, and international Airbnb users pay more attention to whether the property can accommodate a group of people. In addition, communication with the host is found to play an increasingly important role in Airbnb users’ lodging experiences.     

Contracting Institutions,Agro‐food Trade and Product Quality

The agro‐food sector has experienced a profound transformation of contractual arrangements along the value chain, coinciding with important technological innovations and product quality upgrading. Our understanding of the impact that this transformation has had on trade flows in the agricultural sector is very limited. In particular, we have limited knowledge about the extent to which the patterns in agro‐food trade have been driven by the quality of contractual institutions. Using existing measures which capture the sensitivity of agro‐food products to contractual imperfections, we show that countries with better contract enforcement specialise in the production of food which requires higher level of relationship‐specific investments. We also find that countries with better contracting institutions and producing contract‐intensive goods specialise in exporting high quality foods. In addition, we show that the quality of contracting institutions might importantly affect the process of product quality upgrading.     

Advancing environmental productivity: Organizational mindfulness and strategies

This study investigates the importance of mindfulness‐based organization systems and policies on the organization's continuous efforts to become a greener company. The study is devised as a pooled cross‐sectional time series analysis of productivity in energy consumption, water utilization, and waste generation and recycling of U.S. companies. The data set taken from U.S. Newsweek 500 recorded 600 companies dispersed into 63 industries during the period of 2012–2014 and provided 1,498 company–industry–year observations. The study found that systems and policies (e.g., deployment of third‐party auditors for its environmental metrics report; linkage of the remuneration of company's senior executive team with the achievement of environmental performance targets; and establishment of a committee at the Board of Directors' level whose mandate includes sustainability of the company in environment‐ and resource‐related matters) connect the company's mindfulness to its effort in improving the environmental quality through the company's productivity in energy consumption, water utilization, and waste generation and recycling. The relationships are positive and significant. Also, systems and policies serve as a motivator for the firm to continue to improve upon the current achievements. The study emphasizes the importance of translating organizational and individual mindfulness into organization policies and systems in order to motivate the organization to continuously improve its productivity in energy consumption, water utilization, and waste generation and recycling leading to improvements in environmental quality.     

Enhancing relationships in e-tail: Role of relationship quality and duration

This research deals with antecedents and outcomes of relationship quality in e-tail. SMART-PLS analysis of survey data from India (n = 644) showed that perceived value, e-service quality, interaction, discounts and transaction related factors were found to have a positive effect on relationship quality (RQ). RQ mediates the relationship between these antecedents and self-brand connect and loyalty. Support for serial mediation was found with RQ and self-brand connect preceding loyalty formation. Relationship duration positively moderated the effect of RQ on self-brand connect. RQ was conceptualized as a formative second order factor. E-tailers may invest in antecedents of RQ and they may devise strategies to increase the duration of relationships.     

基于跨国并购的创新网络嵌入、网络异质性与创新质量研究

区别于现有研究通常将跨国并购视为一个“事件”研究其对并购企业技术创新的影响，基于创新网络视角，文章采用中国上市公司数据，通过关系嵌入和结构嵌入两个维度探讨基于跨国并购的国外创新网络对创新质量的影响机制。研究发现，通过跨国并购嵌入创新网络的直接联系促进了创新质量提升，间接联系和结构洞对创新质量产生了显著的抑制效应。网络异质性对基于跨国并购的创新网络嵌入与创新质量具有倒U型调节作用，在网络异质适度阶段，网络异质性正向调节基于跨国并购的创新网络嵌入的创新质量效应，在网络异质过度阶段，网络异质性具有负向调节效应。研究发现为新兴经济体企业实施跨国并购，有效嵌入国外创新网络，配置创新资源，提升创新质量，提供了有价值的参考。     

Ground Roasted Coffee Consumers’ Ability to Determine Actual Quality: The Use of Attributes and the Role of Education Level in Mexico

This study contributes to the understanding of the consumer’s ability to distinguish levels of quality of a product comparing it to an objective evaluation. Also, it was hypothesized that a higher level of education would lead to a better ability to discriminate quality. Perceived and objective quality are compared using a semi-experimental design with subjects evaluating coffee attributes. Objective values are provided by certified expert coffee cuppers, whereas perceived values are obtained from regular coffee drinkers. Results suggest that the importance placed on each attribute (aroma, flavour, body, and residual flavour) by the consumer is different from that placed on each attribute by the experts. Furthermore, the most relevant attribute for the consumer (flavour) is distinct from the one most relevant for experts (residual flavour). Additionally, the consumer is unable to distinguish quality levels as an expert can do, regardless of his education level.     

The impact on stock prices of deferral and elimination of internal control audit requirement for small firms

This paper examines the cumulative market reaction to the events related to deferral of internal control audit requirement under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and its elimination under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 for nonaccelerated filers (small firms). We document that small firms experienced negative cumulative abnormal returns around these events; and the differences between the cumulative abnormal returns for small firms and the two control groups (accelerated and large accelerated filers) were negative and significant at the 1% level. These results support the notion that market participants value the reliability of financial information irrespective of the firm size. Within the small firms, we find no firm characteristic significantly explains the market reaction to the events considered. That is, all small firms lost market value in reaction to the events that delayed and eliminated their internal control audit requirement.