IASB's independence in the due process: an examination of interest groups’ influence on the development of IFRS 9

This mixed-method study examines whether and how the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) was influenced by interest groups during the development of the expected credit loss (ECL) model for IFRS 9 Financial Instruments. Content analysis of 327 comment letters revealed that the IASB was influenced. However, Fisher's exact test and chi-square goodness-of-fit test showed that, to a greater extent, the influence was not significant. Furthermore, qualitative analyses of the arguments put forward by interest groups showed that as a result of interest groups’ inputs, accounting requirements for the ECL model were made more operational, less complex and potentially productive of more comparable financial information.     

Shaping strategic change ‐ The case of the NHS in the 1980s

This article explores the question of why the management of change has become an issue in the National Health Service (NHS). It reports the results of a study which explored reasons for variability in the observed rate and pace of strategic service change in the NHS. The metaphor of ‘receptive’ and ‘non‐receptive’ contexts for change is introduced and eight ‘signs and symptoms’ of receptivity outlined. Some examples are presented. These results give us a logic and language which may enable us to understand processes of change in the NHS.     

From bookkeeping to strategic tools?: A discussion of the reforms in the Nordic hospital sector

This paper presents some aspects on the introduction of more accountable management control reforms in the Nordic hospital sector. A contingency model is used to analyse the complexity of the public sector government. Contextual and behavioural variables are discussed to explain the reform processes in the Nordic countries.Several international field studies in the hospital settings show that there are similarities and differences in the implementation of the management reforms in the European countries. The most striking difference is the level of central state versus local government participation in the reform processes. In the Nordic countries, the reform initiative is centrally driven. But there are differences as to the use of national standard prices and pricing of services made by the hospitals themselves. Commercial-like management logic such as accrual accounting is gradually being introduced on a general level. However, there are different motives and directions of changes in the countries.The interpretation and use of accounting information by key clinicians needs careful evaluation. It is at this level of the individual clinical actors that the most important decisions are made about how resources are spent on hospital patient treatments.     

Rating or no rating? That is the question: an empirical examination of UK companies

The aim of this paper is to examine the main determinants of the rating likelihood of UK companies. We use a binary probit specification to model the main drivers of a firm's propensity to be rated. Using a sample of 245 non-financial UK companies over the period 1995–2006, representing up to 2872 firm years, the study establishes important differences in the financial profiles of rated and non-rated firms. The results of the rating likelihood models indicate that the decision to obtain a rating is driven by a company's financial risk, solvency, default risk, public debt issuance, R&D, and institutional ownership, thus identifying a wider range of determinants and extending the current literature. The study also finds that the rating decision can be modelled by means of a contemporaneous or predictive specification without any loss of efficiency or classification accuracy. This offers support to the argument that the rating process is fundamentally forward-looking.     

Factors determining residents’ preparedness for floods in modern megalopolises: the case of the Tokai flood disaster in Japan

This study examines how flood risk perception and home ownership affect residents’ preparedness for floods, focusing specifically on the case of the Tokai flood disaster in Nagoya City, one of Japan’s biggest metropolises, in 2000. The greatest rainfall ever recorded in Nagoya City (566.5 mm) occurred on 11–12 September 2000; as a result, a local river burst its banks and flooded the city. A survey was conducted of residents of the affected area in Nagoya City and its adjacent region. The respondents were asked to rate the extent of their experience with, anticipation of, and preparedness for floods before and after the Tokai disaster in terms of taking special measures against floods. The results showed that the degree of preparedness for floods was determined by the level of fear of floods and the amount of damage sustained during the Tokai flood, especially for homeowners. However, the residents’ preparedness did not depend on their anticipation of floods. These findings show that preparedness for floods depends on ownership of a home, fear of flooding, and the amount of damage from previous floods rather than on previous experience with and anticipation of floods.     

New development: Between politics and strategic planning—the management of government priorities in Lithuania

ABSTRACT

How do political agendas impact on strategic planning practices? This article shows that recent changes to the framework for managing government priorities have made Lithuania’s strategic planning system more politically responsive by mobilizing political attention, leadership and state funding to major government commitments. However, these changes have not yet translated into any longer term outcomes because policy implementation practices did not change very much.     

Exercise boundary of the American put near maturity in an exponential Lévy model

We study the behavior of the critical price of an American put option near maturity in an exponential Lévy model. In particular, we prove that in situations where the limit of the critical price is equal to the strike price, the rate of convergence to the limit is linear if and only if the underlying Lévy process has finite variation. In the case of infinite variation, a variety of rates of convergence can be observed: we prove that when the negative part of the Lévy measure exhibits an α-stable density near the origin, with 1<α<2, the convergence rate is ruled by $\theta^{1/\alpha}|\ln \theta|^{1-\frac{1}{\alpha}}$ , where θ is the time until maturity.     

Determinants of debt: Empirical evidence on firms in the district of Santarém in Portugal

In recent decades, the theme of the capital structure and its determinants has caused some controversy and aroused great interest in the financial domain. Several theories and studies have emerged applying to this domain. This study aims to test the explanatory power of the determinants of debt which have the greatest support in the financial literature, size, growth, business risk, profitability, tangibility and non-debt tax shields and its validity in accordance with the theories of capital structure, on firms in Santarém's district. The sample contains financial data of 6184 firms for the period 2008–2012. The results indicate that firms in Santarém's district in Portugal have a high level of debt, using mainly short-term debt. The growth and profitability have proved to be determinants of debt, confirming the Pecking Order Theory.     

Integrating education and training,and their implications in NGOs’ disaster management: the case of Korea

This paper examines the education and training provided by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in disaster management. The research presented was prompted as a result of serious errors made by both staff and volunteers involved in recent disaster recoveries in South Korea, for example following the sinking of a ferry and the outbreak of MERS. This paper presents important lessons for international NGOs, as well as for national and regional NGOs.     

How firms manage their cash flows: an examination of diversification’s effect

We extend recently documented evidence that diversified firms hold significantly less cash than specialized firms to consider differences in how diversified and specialized firms adjust their cash flows to achieve their target cash balance. We find that diversified firms have higher free cash flows as a result of equal operating cash flows and lower investment in comparison to specialized firms. Diversified firms save less cash by placing less reliance on external financing; by issuing less debt and equity, and distributing higher cash dividends. Our findings support the hypothesis that diversified firms are able to hold less precautionary cash as they are in better position to finance investment opportunities internally from operating cash flows.     

Efficiency potential and determinants of efficiency: an analysis of the care for the elderly sector in Norway

The paper provides an analysis of efficiency in the care for the elderly sector in Norway. In a first step, we perform DEA analysis to calculate the degree of efficiency in each municipality and the national level efficiency potential. The analysis reveals substantial variation in efficiency across municipalities, and the national level efficiency potential is calculated to 10%. Tobit regressions and recently developed bootstrap methods are applied in a second stage to explain the variation in efficiency. The second stage analyses indicate that high fiscal capacity, a low degree of user charge financing, and a fragmented local council are associated with low efficiency.     

Students’ conceptions of learning in the context of an accounting degree

Students' conceptions of learning (CoL) play an important role in the learning process leading to the development of generic skills. This paper investigates whether CoL of accounting students can be developed by incorporating high-level cognitive skills progressively within the accounting curriculum. First, the study explored, using phenomenography, the variation in accounting students' CoL. The findings highlighted some nuances in accountings students' CoL and that lower-order CoL were prevalent among accounting students. However, more (less) third-year students than second-year students adopted higher- (lower-) order CoL. Upon examining the learning objectives, teaching methods and assessment of all units comprising the accounting major of the host university, evidence was found that CoL are progressively developed and shaped, albeit in a limited way, based on the levels of cognitive domain emphasised within the curriculum. The findings highlight the need for accounting educators to take a whole of the programme approach to developing higher-order CoL.     

Origins of the Plan Comptable Général: A Study in Cultural Intrusion and Reaction

This study examines the origins of the present-day French Plan comptable général, the first national accounting code in the world to be adopted under normal peacetime conditions. Its origins occurred during the Second World War when the Vichy Government appointed a commission to develop and implement a national accounting code. The intention was that the code be made obligatory for all enterprises and the commission would advise on adaptations of the code to meet the needs of particular industries. The original inspiration for the wartime project was the Goering Plan, the pre-war German national accounting code adopted in 1937 by the Nazi Government. Until now, the circumstances of the wartime French project have been largely unknown or forgotten due to the dispersal or disappearance of relevant official archives and other contemporary source documents. The object of this study is to throw light on why the Vichy Government undertook the project, and how it proceeded. From examination of records of the commission and other documents of the period, it is possible to make judgements about the relative influence of the German Occupation authorities and indigenous French priorities on the development of the Plan.     

Stock return predictability in emerging markets: Does the choice of predictors and models matter across countries?

This study aims to examine return predictability in 24 emerging markets disaggregated in different regions. We propose four specifications, including a benchmark model. Then, an augmented model appropriate for each country, including a large set of potential factors, is evaluated. Furthermore, a dynamic multifactor model is investigated for all countries. Finally, we relax the symmetric hypothesis in asset return predictability based on a non-parametric non-linear approach: the projection pursuit regression model. Our study reveals three main findings. First, we reject all previous findings supporting a standard model of asset return predictability that is valuable for all countries, as we show that each country has specific domestic factors (both macroeconomic and financial) useful to predict future returns. Second, our empirical framework shows that asset return predictability might be robustly modelled based on non-linear specification based on the projection pursuit regression model. Our findings’ explanatory power of out-of-sample estimations is economically relevant. Our results are useful for investors and policy-makers for portfolio diversification and regulation policies.     

Genetically modified organisms and the age of (Un) reason? A critical examination of the rhetoric in the GMO public policy debates in Ghana

Using narrative policy analysis we examined the adversarial rhetoric of claims-makers in their bid to undermine alternative and conflicting accounts of GMOs as environmental and human health risk and to forestall any challenges to the scientific authority of the technological deterministic account of the GMO policy debates in Ghana. The study shows that the GMO discourse was built with the rhetorical frames of smallholder farmer vulnerability and entitlement used in the account it contradicts, thereby legitimating its own appeal for responsive remedies. Civil society claims attacked GMOs as discriminatory and as an environmental and human health risk. Government and scientists engaged in unsympathetic counter rhetorical strategies in hopes of debunking or neutralizing the claim made by civil society. In other words, Government and scientists were denying the claim that GMO was discriminatory and posed significant human health risk, as well as the call to action to do something about GMOs. Civil society adapted the counter rhetoric of insincerity, claiming that scientists had some kind of “hidden agenda” behind their claim, such as eagerness to just earn money from their patents on GMOs. It is imperative that communication on GMOs includes the underlying assumptions, the uncertainties and the probabilities associated with both best and worst case scenarios. This is a necessary condition to minimise misinformation on GMOs but may be insufficient to completely erase conspiracy theories from the minds of the public especially when scientists and government are perceived to be biased towards multinational corporations that are ostensibly preoccupied with making profits.     

Preparing for the unknown… unknowns: ‘doomsday’ prepping and disaster risk anxiety in the United States

This article examines the collapse-based thinking energising ‘doomsday’ prepping: a growing American phenomenon centred on storing food, water and weapons for the purpose of surviving disasters. Existing understandings of prepping indicate that its practitioners are driven to prepare by peculiar and delusional certainty that apocalyptic collapse will occur in the near future. This view, however, has not yet been tested by empirical research. This article draws on ethnography with 39 preppers in 18 American states to present a new understanding of this phenomenon, as it shows prepping consistently being practiced in the absence of both apocalyptic predictions and certainty regarding the future occurrence of disaster. Demonstrating that preppers’ activities are undergirded by precautionary projections around numerous non-apocalyptic ‘threats’, the article argues that prepping principally responds to uncertain anxieties around disaster risks. Moreover, it establishes that these imprecise anxieties are regularly influenced by preppers’ consumption of disaster-based speculation in mainstream news media – showing that their concerns tend to emerge in response to numerous disaster risks that are widely reported and recognised in wider American culture, rather than marginal conceptions of ‘threats’. The article, therefore, contends that, rather than being a marginal apocalyptic practice, prepping is a phenomenon with clear, previously unacknowledged links to broader risk communications and concerns in the twenty-first century United States – one that must be understood as a reflection of the broader resonance of disaster-based speculation and uncertainty in this cultural context.     

Dynamics of inflation in India: does the new inflation bias hypothesis provide an explanation?

In this paper we estimate the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) policy response to supply shocks. In particular, we exploit an important strand of the recent literature (the new inflation bias hypothesis) to understand why the two frequently cited measures of inflation in India have persistently diverged in recent years. Specifically, it is argued that the difference in coverage and weighting pattern between the indices interacting with policies pursued by the RBI to control its preferred inflation measure WPI turned out to be inappropriate with respect to stabilizing expected CPI-IW inflation. This in turn provides an explanation for the persistent divergence between the two measures of inflation.     

Residents’ behavioural intentions to resist the nuclear power plants in the vicinity: an application of the protective action decision model

Nuclear power is growing rapidly in China. The ultimate goal of developing nuclear power is to mitigate the energy crisis, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and ensure sustainable economic development. However, the ‘not-in-my-backyard’ (NIMBY) attitude may influence the implementation of nuclear power projects. This study explores the determinants of behavioural intentions to resist nuclear power plants (NPPs) based on the protective action decision model (PADM). A survey of the residents (N = 432) near the Haiyang NPP significantly validated the hypothesized relations. Results suggest that information acquisition and public participation can significantly predict perceived knowledge. Perceived knowledge is important in predicting perceived benefits, NIMBY attitude, and behavioural intentions. Moreover, two inverted-U relationships for perceived knowledge with the NIMBY attitude and with behavioural intentions are observed. Furthermore, the NIMBY attitude and behavioural intentions are significantly stimulated by perceived risks, but failed to be motivated by perceived benefits. An inverted-U relationship between perceived benefits and perceived risk is also indicated. The results that the NIMBY attitude and residential distance to NPP have played significant roles in predicting behavioural intentions are obtained. Implications of our results and areas of further researches are discussed in this article as well.