‘An Examination of the Ethical Commitment of Professional Accountants to Auditor Independence’

This research explores the relationship between work context and professional ethics. Specifically, we analyze through an online survey of professional accountants the degree to which changing work conditions have altered individual accountants’ commitment to the core professional value of auditor independence. We argue that certain changes in the condition of work have made some categories of accountants more susceptible to the logic of commercialism rather than the logic of professionalism. We find general support for this argument. We observe that accountants working outside of public accounting have a higher commitment to independence than do accountants working in the context of public accounting firms. We further observe that accountants in large international accounting firms (i.e. the “Big Four”) report lower commitment to auditor independence than do others in public accounting. And we observe that older accountants report stronger commitment to auditor independence. One finding, however, contradicts our general thesis. We find that commitment to one’s client does not necessarily result in a loss of commitment to the core professional value of independence. We conclude that changes in the context of work have contributed to the demise of ethics among professional accountants and suggest that further research be done to elaborate the relationship between client commitment and independence commitment.     

Doing Unto Others: The Reciprocity of Helping Behavior in Organizations

Reciprocity is a fundamental aspect of social life, and a phenomenon studied from a wide variety of philosophical, theological, and social scientific perspectives. In this study, we use social exchange theory to investigate why employees help other employees. We hypothesize, based on the norm of reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960), that a significant cause of an employee's helping behavior is how much organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) the employee has received from coworkers. To provide evidence of the discriminant validity of OCB received as an antecedent of helping behavior, we also assess its effects on another form of extra-role behavior, voice, as well as in-role performance. We found, in a sample of 157 employee-supervisor dyads, that OCB received was related to helping behavior after controlling for several antecedents of helping behavior identified in past research, and was less related to voice and in-role behavior, as hypothesized. Implications for theory and practice are presented.     

专业市场核心竞争力的理论分析

核心竞争力是企业逐渐积累起来的,支撑其持续发展的知识和技能的有机结合。就专业市场而言,其核心竞争力的本质是由专业市场本身内在的一般规律所导致的多个能保持和降低交易成本的知识和技能的完备结合。它由核心产品经营技能、组织协调技能和现代信息技术、组织关键能力三个要素构成。基于这一分析,可以得出识别专业市场核心竞争力的基本思路。     

信息化进程中的组织变革与IT治理

信息技术对组织的技术性嵌入,改变了组织的内部与外部环境,若要使组织的信息化取得预期的效果,组织的变革是必需的。传统的理论认为,这种变革必然导致组织架构的扁平化、分散化及柔性化。但是在实践中发现,事实并非一定如此,由于监管的困难及委托代理问题的存在,信息化有可能因为人为的因素而导致组织的层级结构得到加强。这就需要组织实施有效的IT治理,使组织变革朝有利于组织发展的方向进行。     

信息时代组织协调新特点研究

今天所发生的信息技术革命,不是由生产的变化驱动的,而是由协调的变化驱动的。所以必须分析和了解集中化与分权化的矛盾、信息技术对组织结构的影响、不同环境对协调的影响、组织协调的阻碍因素、规范价值和组织文化的协调、从上级协调到团队协调的特点。     

基于绍兴实践的跟踪审计组织管理探析

跟踪审计是践行免疫系统理论的有效方式。笔者结合近年当地开展跟踪审计的实践,力求从多角度对跟踪审计的组织管理进行探讨。文章首先分析了目前制约跟踪审计发展的一些因素,主要包括法律依据、人才支撑和风险防控等方面的欠缺。笔者认为推动跟踪审计深入发展,需要加强跟踪审计的组织管理,据此文章围绕跟踪审计计划的制定、目标的确定、方式的选择、力量的整合以及过程的控制等方面开展了详细的分析论述。文章还在加强跟踪审计组织管理基础上,就如何进一步优化跟踪审计管理效果进行了思考,提出了找准审计定位、强化技术支持和有效化解风险等观点。     

Organizational Communication Research on Motorola

With China' s accession to the WTO, it is faced with huge challenges and opportunities. One of the biggest challenges is to foster intercultural thinking and working abilities so that China can compete with other powers. This paper tries to set Motorola Solution as an example to discuss cross-cultural business communication problems.     

Predicting organizational identification at the CEO level

To develop further insight into antecedents of the CEO's psychological orientation toward the firm, we investigate what might lead CEOs to identify with their firms. Although research suggests that CEO organizational identification can be quite consequential for the firm, little research attention has been paid to its determinants. To predict how the special context of the CEO position might lead to identification, we consider a set of motives that members have for identifying with their organizations and consider how unique features of the CEO position might be relevant to those motives. Our theory and supportive findings help explain how the context of the CEO position, including variables often conceptualized as control mechanisms in agency theory research, can have important effects on subsequent CEO organizational identification. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corporate hierarchy and vertical information flow inside the firm—a behavioral view

Little is known about how corporate hierarchies influence managers' propensity to pass information upward within the firm. Two streams of literature arrive at seemingly conflicting and untested predictions. Information economists maintain that middle managers pass more suggestions up the firm's line of command as the corporate hierarchy increases in order to avoid corporate omission errors. In contrast, scholars of organizational psychology suggest that hierarchies lead to evaluation apprehension and foster a perceived lack of control among mid‐level managers, leading to their reduced willingness to, and interest in, passing information up within the organization. Drawing on field data and model‐guided experimental studies, we provide original empirical evidence for the relevance of all the mechanisms above, and we delineate the conditions under which either mechanism prevails. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The rate and potential of capability development trajectories

This paper examines differences in the rate and potential of firms' capability development trajectories. Capability development trajectories are the paths over which firms' capabilities change with experience and other activities. While prior research focused on factors affecting capability development rate (the fraction of the gap between a firm's current and potential capability eliminated with each unit of activity), we argue that capability development trajectories also differ in potential (the maximum capability level a firm could achieve through repeating a given set of activities over time). We develop and estimate a formal model of capability development, showing that larger underwriting projects lead to a lower rate of improvement toward higher potential capabilities, and derive implications for research on industry dynamics and the nature of competitive advantage. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.