Enhancing environmental information transparency through corporate social responsibility reporting regulation

This research aims to contribute to the scientific debate about the lack of interlinkages between mandatory non-financial reporting and sustainable business models. For our purposes, a counter-accounting analysis was conducted on the non-financial reports of a sample of 145 Italian firms interested by the Directive 2014/95/EU effects. Specifically, the study adopts an empirical approach to evaluate environmental information transparency, which represents one of the main critical issues concerning the non-financial declarations prepared by European Italian Public Interest Entities (PIEs) to comply with Directive 2014/95/EU. The results highlight that corporate governance and report characteristics affect environmental transparency. Furthermore, the results confirm the overall attitude to avoid the disclosure of unfavourable or unavailable environmental information through impression management strategies. Finally, the analysis underlines the opportunities for policymakers to rethink mandatory non-financial reporting to sustain the ecological transition of European PIEs.     

New development: China renews reform of central–local fiscal relations and provides for basic national public services

China’s reform on central–local fiscal reform has slowed down in recent years. The appointment of a new finance minister experienced in local government affairs is expected to renew the reform affirmed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress in late 2017. China has unprecedentedly identified a comprehensive list of 81 national basic public services as entitlements. Eighteen of them are subject to national and local standards, and co-financed by central and local governments. A new cost-sharing method for 10 of these services classifies sub-national jurisdictions into five tiers, in which the central government’s share declines from 80% to 10%. These measures, effective in 2019, aim at creating a ‘harmonious and moderately prosperous society’.     

Does Targeted Monetary Policy Matter? A Perspective from China

Several major central banks have experimented with targeted monetary policy to improve credit resource allocation. This policy only applies to ‘eligible’ banks. For example, The People's Bank of China conducted seven targeted reductions of reserve requirements during 2014–15. This article documents the phenomenon of targeted monetary policy and evaluates its effects. The results show that, in the case of China, this policy has generated an extra significant, positive return on the stocks of eligible banks, amounting to 1.2–1.3 per cent in a four‐day treatment period. This substantial return gives commercial banks an extra incentive to align with the policy goals of central banks.     

Transport infrastructure equities in mixed-asset portfolios: estimating risk with a Garch-Copula CVaR model

Transport infrastructure is an important subsector within infrastructure, but knowledge of its equities in terms of risk-return characteristics and contribution to portfolio performance is still limited. This study assesses the subsector individually and in a multi-asset, index-based portfolio. In doing so, we apply a t-Copula-based Conditional Value-at-Risk model to simulate risk and returns. Our findings reveal that the subsector has a relatively low dependency on other equities, performs like other alternative asset classes such as general real estate, and does not grant significant risk diversification benefits for mainstream institutional investors such as pension funds. Investors aiming for higher target returns may however assign substantial weights to transport infrastructure, supporting our conjecture that it does not share the same asset class characteristics as general infrastructure. By contrasting Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) scores for both the mean-variance framework and the t-Copula simulation, we further document the limitations of traditional VaR approaches. Hence, this study’s results support the use of risk assessment tools that incorporate non-normal distributions to represent multivariate dependence structures.     

Why We Should Change Our Attitude Towards Distressed Firms

This article surveys ‘creditor‐friendly’ and ‘enterprise‐friendly’ bankruptcy regimes with a focus on the methodology underlying the filter test in distress, as reflected both in its academic treatment and in legal practice. I find that the test exhibits pro‐liquidation bias in designating liquidation of a firm with recovery potential as the Type II error, and in underplaying the benefits of a possible turnaround. Further influences militating against continuation include the power conferred on creditors through the balance sheet criterion and the undervaluation of intangible assets. I make the case for reversing such biases to establish a presumption in favour of continuation.     

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.     

Lifestyling entrepreneurs’ sociological expressionism

This study explores the tourism host-home relationship investigated through documentary analysis of photographs choreographed through mutual negotiation between hosts and researcher (collaborative auto-driving) and participants’ spoken narratives (photo-elicitation interviews); we identify the significance for tourism product construction. Major findings concern the sociological expressionism of the tourism lifestyle entrepreneur who creates a certain personal brand identity or ‘lifestyling’ through their commercial home presentation; ‘private’, ‘inclusive’ and ‘temporal’ classification categories of hosts’ favourite spaces in the home are identified, based upon the individual spatial management strategies employed. Depictions of favourite spaces emphasised emotional and sensorial dimensions rather than material things present, and were described as spaces of contentment and tranquillity essential for energising hosts in the ongoing production of the commercial home.     

Forget about ‘the ideal worker’: A theoretical contribution to the debate on flexible workplace designs,work/life conflict,and opportunities for gender equality

This study integrates insights from Self-Determination Theory and Boundary Theory to present scenarios on how flexible workplace designs can trigger multiple motivational processes underlying gendered work/nonwork integration behaviors, and how these affect work/life conflict. We disentangle processes underlying work engagement and work/life conflict, explaining the paradoxical outcomes found with regard to gender inequality in terms of work/life performance, satisfaction, and health. Policy makers and organizations need an increased understanding and a reconceptualization of these issues, realizing that the ideal worker does not exist. Instead, a long-term perspective is needed in order to truly realize the potential benefits of flexible workplace designs for all stakeholders. Organizations need to take responsibility for preventing individual workers’ depletion and stimulating the regeneration of workers’ resources.     

“We are all so different that it is just … normal.” Normalization practices in an academic hospital in the Netherlands

Internationally, academic hospitals are giving increasing attention to diversity management. This paper sheds light on the actual praxis of cultural diversity management by professionals in workplace interactions. An ethnographic study in a Dutch academic hospital showed that normalization practices were obscuring diversity issues and obstructing inclusion of cultural minority professionals. The normalization of professionalism-as-neutral and equality-as-sameness informed the unequal distribution of privilege and disadvantage among professionals and left no room to question this distribution. Majority and minority professionals disciplined themselves and each other in (re)producing an ideal worker norm, essentialized difference and sameness, and explained away the structural hierarchy involved. To create space for cultural diversity in healthcare organizations in the Netherlands and beyond, we need to challenge normalization practices.