Mandatory disclosure,greenhouse gas emissions and the cost of equity capital: UK evidence of a U-shaped relationship

This paper examines the effects of disclosing greenhouse gas (GHG) information mandatorily on the cost of equity capital (COC) using a longitudinal unbalanced panel database of the United Kingdom's FTSE 350 firms for the period 2011–2016. We use a nonlinear panel quantile regression (PQR) model to examine the relationship between GHG disclosure (GHGD) and COC in the United Kingdom. This technique was supplemented by conducting a two-step generalised method of moment (GMM) estimation to address any concerns related to the potential existence of endogeneity problems. Our findings suggest that high-level GHGD appeared to be negatively associated with COC up to a certain level, which is known as the turning point; then, any increase in GHGD is likely to increase the COC. This means that the nonlinear association between GHGD and COC is evidenced in our study and takes a U shape. Likewise, our findings are associative of a moderating effect of the 2013 carbon disclosure regulation (CDR) on the GHGD–COC nexus. We argue that mandatory GHGD and GHG risk are linked so that those companies that are associated with higher GHG risk have a tendency to be better disclosers. Consequently, we urge regulators to design GHGD regulations in a way that mirrors corporate environmental risk and leads to a lower COC in order to align the interests of corporations with those of the society at large.     

New Labour and Community Protests: the Case of the Govanhill Swimming Pool Campaign, Glasgow

Taking the case study of a community based protest against the closure of a swimming pool in Glasgow, this paper seeks to raise important critical questions about some of the key ideas informing New Labour's urban policy agenda: social capital and active community. It argues that normative notions of active citizenship seriously conflict with bottom-up community protests, highlighting in the process issues of power and inequality. Against claims that New Labour is promoting government through community, here we claim that in the context of this community protest, there was government against community.     

The use of the postal questionnaire in accounting history research

This methodological article discusses the first project in accounting history to use the postal questionnaire as a research tool. The historical context was the changing nature of the company audit in Britain, and this article outlines the process by which the questionnaire was devised, the stages through which the project developed, the data that were collected, and how these were analysed and interpreted. A significant innovation was to sample, in equal proportions, accountants who qualified in each decade from the 1920s and 1930s down to the 1980s, and direct the questioning toward their early training and careers, thereby generating historical trends in the responses. Some of the results of the survey are given here by way of illustrating the weaknesses and strengths/costs and benefits of the technique in comparison with oral history and traditional documentary sources.     

Entrepreneurial Intentions and Outcomes: a Comparative Causal Mapping Study

This paper uses a causal map methodology to consider the contrasts between entrepreneurial intentions and outcomes. In evaluating a series of propositions drawn from the extant literature the study finds that the elicited causal maps are consistent with contrasts in entrepreneurial intentions, but not outcomes. This suggests that the existing emphasis on entrepreneurial strategies being deliberate, conscious processes may be misplaced: non-deliberate, emergent strategies may be just as influential in producing entrepreneurial outcomes. The study develops a series of output propositions suggesting that entrepreneurial outcomes are associated with causal maps which connect the internal operations of the business with the external environment. This implies that entrepreneurial success may be a result of intuitive systems thinking in which connections are made between the environment and the internal operations of the business.     

A generalized lot sizing model for the process cycling problem

Most scheduling/lot sizing models for the single-machine problem assume that aggregate demand equals aggregate production; and that backorders are to be avoided. Where working inventories are low, the scheduler may wish to avoid short production runs and willingly incur some backorder penalties so as to increase the length of production runs and reduce setup costs per unit of time. The model proposed here identifies optimal lot sizes with respect to the backorder/setup cost relationships. Use of the model will result in an optimally balanced inventory even when aggregate inventory levels are changing.