From schoolyard to workplace: The impact of bullying on sales and business employees' machiavellianism,job satisfaction,and perceived importance of an ethical issue

Bullying can precipitate many negative outcomes at work, but previous research does not adequately address how such misbehavior affects employee dispositions and attitudes; how these characteristics impact ethical decision making is also underexplored. Given these research gaps, the purpose of this study is to assess (1) the impact of bullying on Machiavellianism and job satisfaction, and (2) the influences of Machiavellianism and job satisfaction on perceived ethical issue importance, a measure of ethical decision making. Three hundred eighty‐four sales and business employees working for different firms operating in the United States answered a self‐report questionnaire. The findings showed that, after accounting for social desirability bias, workplace bullying was positively associated with Machiavellianism and negatively associated with job satisfaction. Machiavellianism was negatively related to the perceived importance of an ethical issue embedded in a vignette highlighting Machiavellianism and latent bullying behaviors. In addition, job satisfaction was positively related to ethical issue importance. Finally, both Machiavellianism and job satisfaction mediated the relationship between bullying experiences and importance of an ethical issue, as evidenced by their significant indirect effects. HR professionals should minimize bullying and Machiavellianism to reduce the corrosive effect on the ethical environment and enhance work attitudes and ethical decisions.     

Debt contract strictness and auditor specialization

The conflicts of interest among managers, shareholders and creditors resulting in agency costs, can be mitigated by restricting managers’ adverse behavior, through financial covenants to better align the various stakeholder interests. Thus, debt contract strictness represents an important aspect of agency costs between creditors, shareholders, and management that is not always captured by interest rates. The contract setting provides a unique opportunity to investigate how creditors may rely on auditors to alleviate information uncertainty stemming from reliance on management's financial reporting and thus alleviate the creditor's potential loss of invested capital. After controlling for borrower risks, loan characteristics, and audit factors, we show that auditor industry specialization is significantly associated with a reduction in the strictness of debt contracts, consistent with creditors viewing certain industry expert auditors as effective monitors against financial reporting manipulation aimed at the avoidance of debt covenant triggers that protect creditors against potential loss. Further, we find that the association between loan strictness and auditor specialization is attenuated by stronger corporate governance systems, external monitors, and prior lender relationships.     

External regulation,independent director attendance,and governance effects

In this study we examine how the regulation of director attendance disciplines directors’ behavior, and consider the governance effect of such regulations. This examination exploits the differences between the requirements for director attendance at board meetings enacted by the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SHSE) and by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE). Using a difference-in-differences model with a sample of A-share listed firms from 2006 to 2017, we document that the rate of meeting attendance by independent directors who serve with firms listed on the SHSE (SHIDs) has increased significantly since the exchange’s enforcement of the regulation on attendance. This positive effect has been more pronounced for independent directors with legal backgrounds. Further investigations find that the regulation of attendance plays a corporate governance role through the mechanism of enhanced monitoring. The attendance regulation increases the SHIDs likelihood of casting dissenting votes, and it leads to both better accounting performance and higher firm value. In addition, SHIDs are more likely to depart from firms listed on the SHSE, and to transfer their directorships to firms listed on the SZSE, which has a less constraining attendance requirement. Our findings provide evidence of how external regulation shapes director attendance and voting behavior in emerging markets.     

Personality and Saving Behavior Among Older Adults

This study investigates how psychological characteristics influence saving behavior within a sample of 1,380 U.S. preretirees aged 50–70 from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Using the 3M Model of Motivation and Personality as a theoretical basis, structural equation model results revealed that financial self‐efficacy (FSE) directly explains saving behavior and is central to understanding the link between other psychological characteristics and the saving behavior of older adults. Through higher FSE, increased positive affect and reduced negative affect indirectly supported saving behavior. Moreover, the results revealed personality traits indirectly explained saving behavior. Conscientiousness and extroversion indirectly supported saving behavior; whereas openness to experience and neuroticism indirectly undermined saving behavior. This study connects broad personality traits with saving behavior, which provides information about how older adults' psychological composition is related to their saving practices.     

Men at work. Wages and industriousness in southern Sweden 1500–1850

ABSTRACT

In his classic works on the industrious revolution, Jan de Vries argues that demand for new consumer goods trigged eighteenth century Europeans to work more. This implies that industrious behaviour and new consumption patterns were two parallel and interdependent processes that preceded the industrial revolution. However, there is an alternative explanation for any increase in labour output on household level, namely that the labourers were forced to work more to meet ends. An indication of this could be that day labourers’ relative wages decreased over time. In this article, we investigate this by studying wages from annual and casual labour in southern Sweden and compare their levels with consumption baskets.     

产能治理与企业债务结构再平衡—基于商业信用与银行信贷关系视角

我国上市制造业企业的商业信用与银行信贷关系存在长期互补特征,但信号理论对互补强度的演变过程缺乏有效的解释力.为探索信号理论之外的互补机制,反思企业债务结构的信贷偏移效应,文章提出了产能驱动假说,利用面板门限模型,得到了以下结论:(1)商业信用与银行信贷会随产能增长而呈现从"替代"到"互补"的演变特征,且互补强度(单位商业信用上升伴随的信贷上升)会随产能膨胀出现从"弱"到"强"的二次突变特征,即产能扭曲会使企业债务结构快速向银行信贷偏移,这为理解企业信贷依赖的形成路径提供了产能层面的微观解释.(2)企业债务结构再平衡能力具有异质性,高研发投资及低调整成本企业借助产能治理来修正信贷依赖的能力更强,因此降低调整成本、扶植企业创新应成为优化融资结构的重要政策路径.文章在信号理论之外提出了产能驱动假说,解释了我国企业债务结构扭曲的动态特征,并从技术创新与调整成本视角为推动企业实现债务结构再平衡提供了政策参考.     

Working on the Railroad: Public Accounting Talent in the United States—The Case of Haskins & Sells (Now Deloitte)

Nineteenth century US railroads were the first ‘big businesses’ and had profound influence on society. This paper addresses one source of talent for the early US public accounting profession—railroads. Following the end of the US Civil War (1861–65), industrial expansion was a revolutionary experience, with large trusts appearing in the wake of the railroad's maturing influence on the development of a vast continental economy. Accounting practice also was impacted by railroads. For example, the development of annual reports, income measurement, the standardization of reporting by regulators, developing fixed and variable cost, and throughput concepts for capital intensive business—all were related to the railroads. This paper focuses on a significant link between the emerging public accounting profession and the railroads by examining how an early major US public accounting firm relied upon accounting skill developed within railroads as an important source of talent. Arguably, talent is the most important resource of a professional firm. While it is a commonly held view that the immigration of UK accountants in the late nineteenth century was the source of public accounting talent, this paper provides evidence of a competing explanation—the sourcing of talent from a firm (Haskins & Sells) that continues to the present day as Deloitte. Key leadership and personnel of that time gained their experience while working on the domestic railroads.     

Relative Effects of IFRS Adoption and IFRS Convergence on Financial Statement Comparability

One of the primary objectives of both adoption of IFRS and convergence between IFRS and U.S. GAAP is to increase financial statement comparability. Using a unique setting in Germany, we compare the effectiveness of these two approaches in achieving this desired outcome. Our empirical tests show that both adoption and convergence lead to an increase in comparability after the new enforcement regulation in 2005. However, difference‐in‐differences tests show that adoption does not lead to a significant incremental increase in comparability beyond convergence. The findings of this study should be of interest to regulators and standard setters as they assess alternative methods of aligning domestic standards with IFRS.     

Information in stock prices: the case of the 2016 U.S. presidential election

On the day before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the odds of Hillary Clinton winning the presidency, according to political prediction markets, were above 90%. Surprisingly, Donald Trump won the Electoral College handily. In this study, we examine how movements in specific stock prices foreshadowed the eventual outcome. Specifically, we conduct a series of standard event-study tests focused on pharmaceutical companies, which became a focal point during the presidential campaign. Results show that while stocks of pharmaceutical companies significantly underperformed the market prior to the election, prices substantially increased beginning three days before the election outcome. This increase is both statistically significant and economically meaningful and robust to various event-study methodologies. These results suggest that some sectors of the stock market seemed to anticipate the election outcome.