How and why auditors’ social exchange relationships influence their attitudes and behaviors: Implications for audit quality

External auditors regularly interact with various parties at work, such as their accounting firms, engagement team members, and clients. These interactions can help shape the nature of auditors’ social exchange relationships with these entities, which in turn may influence their behavior toward these targets. This installment of Accounting Matters draws from recently published research by Herda and colleagues to (1) explain how constructive auditor-target connections can develop and lead to beneficial outcomes like reduced auditor burnout and turnover intentions, as well as more citizenship behavior, and (2) discuss how these upshots might ultimately affect audit quality. This topic is important because audit quality translates into improved financial reporting, which helps stakeholders who rely on audited financial statements to make informed business decisions. Specifically, we underscore the key role auditors’ perceptions of fair treatment from a relationship partner play in fostering a strong psychological bond with the target via perceived support. We further consider how auditors’ consequent commitment to the target can result in favorable organizational outcomes, including enhanced audit and financial reporting quality. We also discuss practical implications for accounting firms.     

Optimal targeting of latent tourism demand segments

This paper identifies for the first time the optimal target markets employing the latent tourism demand expenditure, a novel concept in tourism literature. The study quantifies latent tourism demand between each pair of origin-destination through distinguishing by type of tourism and seasonality. It works with market shares that are estimated via a fractional regression model. Moreover, latent demand is clustered using a market segmentation approach based on a latent class regression. Finally, the optimal target markets are chosen depending on the expected latent tourism expenditure. The result has clear policy implications in terms of which markets are promoted, the optimal channels of communication and the maximum budget for each marketing campaign.     

Incorporating active adjustment into a financing based model of capital structure

The conventional partial adjustment model, which focuses on leverage evolution, has difficulty identifying deliberate capital structure adjustments as it confounds financing decisions with the mechanical autocorrelation of leverage. We propose and estimate a financing-based partial adjustment model that separates the effects of financing decisions on leverage evolution from mechanical evolution. The speed of adjustment (SOA) is firm-specific and stochastic, and active targeting of capital structure has a multiplier effect that depends on the size of financial deficit. Overall, we find expected SOA from active rebalancing (30%) more than doubles what is expected from mechanical mean reversion alone (13%).     

钢铁行业成本核算制度研究

为了解决钢铁行业普遍亏损、经营困难等问题，对当前钢铁行业成本核算面临的各种问题进行分析，相应的提出新制度实施的必要性。而后详细阐述了钢铁行业成本核算制度的基本步骤，且针对行业现有问题说明了新制度的优越性，提出可以选择性使用的作业成本法，最后阐释了新制度可能会对钢铁行业产生的影响和企业在面对新制度想要改善目前严峻形势必须用辩证的眼光看待这一现象，具体问题具体分析，对症下药才是关键。     

Deal characteristics and M&A performance: How do hospitality firms fare?

The global hospitality industry has experienced significant consolidation in the past several decades. While evidence in the general business literature suggests that the target firm shareholders gain instead of the acquiring firm shareholders, some studies in the hospitality industry have suggested that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are also beneficial to acquiring firms. Using a comparative study design and a comprehensive sample over 41 years, we empirically examine whether M&As create more value in the hospitality industry than in other industries and whether certain deal characteristics may explain the potential performance differential. Overall, we find that M&As in the hospitality industry outperform M&As in non-hospitality sectors. When examining deal attributes, we find that relative size of target, cash method of payment, and an unlisted target are characteristics positively related to merger performance and help explain some of the performance differential. We contribute theoretically and empirically to the literature by demonstrating that industry and deal effects play an important role in M&A performance.     

Seemingly inconsistent analyst revisions

In about 20%–30% of cases where an analyst revises two outputs (namely, earnings estimates, target prices, or stock recommendations) simultaneously, the two estimates are revised in opposite directions. Existing literature notes that these inconsistent outputs are widespread, and concludes that they are lower-quality, driven by strategic bias, and are viewed as less valid by investors. We find that these characterizations are generally inaccurate. Apparent inconsistency is largely driven by accounting and economic factors, with only limited evidence that investment banking-related conflicts play a role. Moreover, inconsistent outputs are neither less accurate than consistent outputs nor do they resolve less investor uncertainty upon their release. Overall, our results suggest that researchers should be cautious in interpreting the correlation between analyst outputs as a measure of bias or quality, and in using a single analyst output as a proxy for an analyst's overall views.     

作业成本法在A港口物流公司成本管理中的应用研究

港口物流企业长期以来没有足够重视成本管理,现已存在诸多问题,如成本信息失真、经营责任制不够完善、成本与生产经营脱节等,所以改变现行成本管理方法显得尤为迫切。基于此,引入作业成本法为港口物流企业的成本管理提供理论和实践上的指导。结果表明,作业成本管理更具有优越性和精准性,适用于港口物流企业。最后根据结论,对港口物流企业如何进行成本管理提出了相关对策建议。     

成本控制认识的误区及解决对策的探讨

传统的成本控制认识存在着不少的误区,导致了企业成本控制失效,竞争力下降。基于价值链的理论基础和知识经济对企业成本控制的要求,从成本控制的主体、客体、控制方式以及控制目标四个方面来探讨这一问题并提出了解决对策。     

制造企业物流成本计算体系的探讨

我国物流成本远远高于发达国家,原因是多方面的,但与目前物流成本核算中的不合理密切相关。所以,要降低物流成本,必须从根本上改变物流成本核算的方法和体系。为此,本文对物流成本的计算体系进行了探讨。     

基于web的高校教学与科研精细化管理模式研究

本文探讨了将高校教学与科研目标管理转换为多层次指标和权重的绩效管理的方法,采用精细化的管理理论,设计了利用网络和计算机技术解决高校教学与科研的考核与奖罚的管理模式。对高校信息化、精细化、标准化管理和过程控制具有重要意义。