Contesting public accountability: A dialogical exploration of accountability and social housing

This paper analyses the interaction between neoliberal inspired reforms of public services and the mechanisms for achieving public accountability. Where once accountability was exercised through the ballot box, now in the neoliberal age managerial and market based forms of accountability predominate. The analysis identifies resistance from civil society campaigns to the neoliberal restructuring of public services which leads to public accountability (PA) becoming a contested arena. To develop this analysis a re-theorisation of PA, as a relationship where civil society seeks to control the state, is explored in the context of social housing in England over the past thirty years. Central to this analysis is a dialogical analysis of key documents from a social housing regulator and civil society campaign. The analysis shows that the current PA practices are an outcome of both reforms from the government and resistance from civil society (in the shape of tenants’ campaigns). The outcome of which is to tell the story of the changes in PA (and accountability) centring on an analysis of discourse. Thus, the paper moves towards answering the question – what has happened to PA during the neoliberal age?     

Corporate social responsibility and corruption risk: A global perspective

This paper extends our knowledge on corporate corruption risk by examining whether and to what extent corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects firm-level corruption risk. Using a cross-country sample of major multinational firms, we find that firm-level CSR mitigates corruption risk. On closer examination, we find that the relationship between CSR and corruption risk is mediated by country-level variables such as institutional quality, protection of minority shareholders’ rights, stock market development and freedom of the press. Further, we find that in emerging countries, CSR mitigates corruption risk only when the country-level institutional quality is high and citizens enjoy press freedom. Our findings suggest that both formal institutions and the quality of civil society influence the effect of CSR on corruption risk. Our results remain robust to controls for endogeneity and potential sample selection bias.     

An examination of the political salience of corporate tax avoidance: A case study of the Tax Justice Network

Corporate tax avoidance (CTA) has become a high profile issue despite being a complex area of accounting practice. One reason for this has been the civil society campaign opposing tax avoidance. The paper provides a case study of one key civil society actor: the Tax Justice Network (TJN). Existing accounting analysis offers little to explain how some accounting issues acquire political attention and media coverage. To address this, the concept of political salience is introduced into accounting analysis – understood as the creation of focal points in campaigns – to consider how the TJN contributed to the political profile of CTA.     

The dark side of transparency: Does the Nigeria extractive industries transparency initiative help or hinder accountability and corruption control?

This study explores the dark side of transparency by problematizing the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) as a transparency, accountability and anti-corruption initiative in Nigeria. It does this by interrogating the underlying assumptions that transparency in the form of increased information disclosure inevitably leads to enhanced accountability and reduced corruption. Theoretic insights are drawn from the transparency literature as well as from the International Accounting Standards Board's framework for financial reporting. The findings enable a more nuanced understanding of transparency – where and when transparency works, and where and when it may lead to unintended outcomes. They show how increased information disclosure conceals and legitimises the weak and corrupt reporting systems and practices of government agencies. They highlight the importance of understandability of information disclosed as a key requirement of transparency. They illustrate that transparency is a complex social process by highlighting the means by which the government tries to gain control of the NEITI organisation and how NEITI's ability to operate effectively is dependent on the political will of the government in power. The findings also demonstrate that the instrument through which transparency is enacted is itself a central actor in the transparency process as historical corruption within the NEITI bureaucracy as well as the opacity of NEITI as an organisation lead to outcomes of distrust, uncertainty and doubt amongst NEITIs target audience.     

Corruption Distance and Foreign Direct Investment

We study the effects of “corruption distance,” defined as the difference in corruption levels between country pairs on bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI). Using a “gravity” model and the Heckman (1979) two-stage framework on a data set of forty-five countries from 1997 to 2007, we find that corruption distance adversely influences both the likelihood of FDI and the volume of FDI. A novel finding in this study is that we identify the asymmetric effect of corruption distance and find that the positive corruption distance, defined as the corruption distance from a high corruption source to a low corruption host country, is the prominent one that affects the behavior of bilateral FDI.     

Assessing the utility of risk management theory in the governance of new states: lessons from South Sudan

Abstract

South Sudan was born amid great hope for a country that boasted vast natural wealth. Inheriting a virtually lunar political and economic landscape, this hope quickly gave way under kleptocratic governance and corruption, a volatile political environment with recent horrendous violence, and the ensuing loss of oil revenues and cuts in foreign investment and aid. These current crises were based on a historical lack of effective and legitimate power: South Sudan, in reality, has historically existed as a geographical appellation, with a bare minimum of cohesive society and functional nation-state, but with far more potent of trans-historical interethnic antipathies among its fractious communities and competing regions. To date, the reasons for South Sudan’s quick failure are rooted in either the vague problems of newness (fragility) and/or missteps by its elites (risk). This article assesses the relevance of political risk management literature for guiding the governance of nascent states and seeks to establish some criteria for distinguishing generic weakness from the risky behavior of political elites in engendering state failure. It asks whether the political elites of South Sudan were thinking about risk prior to the crisis, and why this risk management was so flawed – if it existed in the first place. The challenge is not only in disciplining, codifying, and containering the future through law-like regulations – but in managing the hazardscapes and complex risk milieu, such as, triggers that activate blowups. Always politicians – and especially in South Sudan – do not think through these concepts, and if they do, things might go better.     

Corruption and democratisation: the litmus test of international donor agency intentions?

The growth of global corporations is synonymous with the spread of market capitalism. Market capitalism looks to regulated market economies and stable growth to expand and this in turn assumes states committed to economic liberalisation and the reduction in the barriers to trade. Such preconditions are assumed achievable through the promotion of democratisation—the liberal democratic model of government, now the favoured developmental template of multilateral and bilateral donor agencies. One major challenge to this approach is corruption at state and local level—and a major indicator of its acceptance is addressing corruption. As agencies who espouse a strong ethical stance internationally, corruption has appeared to be a highly visible reform issue for them during the 1990s. In spite of—or because of—such attention, levels of corruption appear to continue to rise and become more entrenched, while donor commitment may be under pressure to adapt, both as a possible consequence of the continued promotion of democratisation. This will force them to face the question of whether corruption may be an integral component of the model and whether they either confront the risks associated with it, or start to ignore corruption in favour of some wider agenda objectives that have less to do with international ethics and more to do with international realities of market capitalism.     

“Grand” corruption and the ethics of global business

The paper explores the ethical obligations of global business to refrain from corruption. Corruption is harmful for the growth prospects of host countries and can introduce inefficiencies and inequities. I argue that business corporations have an obligation to refrain from illegal payoffs as part of the quid pro quo implied by the laws that permit corporations to exist and to operate. The paper goes on to consider how firms might respond, and isolates situations where anti-corruption policies can be profitable for firms. It concludes with an analysis of international efforts to deter transnational bribery and with suggestions for additional international initiatives.     

Audit quality,accruals quality and the cost of equity in an emerging market: Evidence from Vietnam

This study explores the relationship between audit quality, accruals quality, and the cost of equity in the context of Vietnam. Particularly, we examine the impact of auditor size and accruals quality on the industry-adjusted earnings – price ratio. Using a sample of Vietnamese listed companies, the study shows that firms audited by a Big Four auditor are associated with a lower cost of equity than firms with a non-Big Four auditor. The results indicate that the auditors' information role is more relevant than the insurance role in a civil law context with a relatively low auditor litigation risk. In addition, the findings show that companies with better accruals quality are associated with a lower cost of equity. The study has implications for managers and regulators. The findings highlight the importance of ensuring sound auditing practices and maintaining high-quality financial reporting for corporations.     

Inflation and the evolution of firm-level liquid assets

This paper shows that inflation has been an important determinant of firm-level liquid asset holdings. Liquid assets as a share of total assets – the cash ratio – for U.S. corporations steadily declined from the 1960s to the early 1980s, and has since steadily increased. Our empirical analysis finds that inflation is a key factor accounting for these changes. We show that these liquid asset holdings are imperfectly hedged against inflation. Hence, changes in inflation alter the real value of a firm’s liquid asset portfolio causing them to readjust these balances.     

‘Professionals who understand’: Expertise,public interest and societal risk governance

This paper applies ideas from Beck, Power and Collins & Evans to investigate why crises triggered by societal risks heighten tension between self-regulated experts and the state, and why this increased tension threatens professional self-regulation. Using an Irish case of the regulation of professional auditors, we find that Beck helps us to understand the accounting bodies’ view of their own position as experts and their role in mitigating risk. Beck’s idea of a closed organizational roof, Collins and Evans (2002) work on waves of risk and expertise, and Power’s insights on the significance of public perception of risk are deployed as a framework to explore why these bodies lost power to a non-expert state which more clearly grasped the importance of lay power in a time of crisis. We propose the idea of professional regulation as a form of societal risk governance; this provides a frame to investigate why the state was able to harness a growing public disquiet to assert more control in their relationship with the professional bodies, and underscores the precedence of public interest over expertise in the self-regulatory debate. An analysis of the perspectives of government, profession and civil society illustrates inherent vulnerabilities in the authority of a self-regulated professional body excessively reliant on its own expertise.     

The impact of community expectations on corporate community involvement disclosures in the UK

Despite increase mistrust between corporations and societies in the aftermath of the global corporate misbehaviours, the literature examining the impact of community concerns on corporate communications is undeveloped. Our paper is timely; it contributes to the literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) by considering the impacts of community expectations on Corporate Community Involvement Disclosures (CCID) using a ten-year panel study. We advance CSR communication research by providing a fresh theoretical perspective – media-agenda-setting theory – to the broad CSR debate and the CCID subset of this debate. Our findings support the media-agenda theoretical expectation and provide important practice and policy recommendations for improving interactions between corporations and their communities.     

从股权结构到股东关系

近80年来,国内外学者围绕股权结构问题开展了广泛且颇具影响力的研究。其中,对股权结构定性或定量的测度是所有研究开展的基础。本文系统总结了股权结构相关研究的内容、技术路线及对股权结构的刻画方式。分析表明,仅从产权维度和垂直方向认识股权结构及代理问题存在明显的局限和偏差。为此,本文从横向网络以及股东之间多种形式的契约出发,考察股东关系对公司产权分布体系的影响。在股东关系的框架下,我们重构了公司股东的产权、利益和势力结构,并用一套较详细且操作性较强的指标体系对股东关系进行了刻画。本文提出的"关系基础"的股权结构将为深化与拓展股权结构、公司治理和投资者保护等研究提供有益的帮助。     

Mastering risks: An illusion: Truth and tropes on jeopardy

Drawing on examples from maritime insurance, this article seeks to show that historically rules and regulations have often taken into consideration the performativity of risk insurance so as to limit the range of insured risks and thus avoid the realization of the claims through embezzlement or kindred corruption.Today the question of performativity and corruption remains outside the pale of financial research. Having rejected the distinction between uncertainty and risk, financiers take risk quantification as an incontrovertible given. Quantifying risk has become a key feature in modern finance ever since the difference between risk and uncertainty was rejected by financiers. Two reasons underlie this state of affairs: first the prevalent rationalist paradigm as expounded by highly reputed university professors has elevated “quantifiable risk” to a dogma. Additionally, this idea of risk, and its quantifiable limits, gain acceptance by society to the extent that systemic risk is constrained by a further concept: efficient markets. Herein we develop an idea of ethical responsibility which leads to a novel definition of risk, sharply diverging from current practice and instruction, so as to meeting the contemporary needs of both finance and broader society.     

Light me up: power and expertise in risk communication and policy-making in the e-cigarette health debates

Abstract

This paper presents a detailed account of policy-making in a contemporary risk communication arena, where strong power dynamics are at play that have hitherto lacked theoretical analysis and empirical validation. Specifically, it expands on the understanding of how public health policy decisions are made when there is a weak evidential base and where multiple interpretations, power dynamics and values are brought to bear on issues of risk and uncertainty. The aim of the paper is to understand the role that power and expertise play in shaping public health risk communication within policy-related debates. By drawing on insight from a range of literatures, the paper argues that there several interacting factors that shape how a particular narrative gains prominence within a wider set of perspectives and how the arguments and findings associated with that perspective become amplified within the context of policy choices. These findings are conceptualised into a new model – a policy evaluation risk communication (PERC) framework – and are then tested using the Electronic cigarette debate as a case study.     

Corporate failures: Declines,collapses, and scandals

Numerous collapses and corporate scandals of large corporations have underscored the impact of corporate conduct on capital markets and society as a whole. These failures have highlighted the need for regulators to rethink regulatory frameworks and enforcement, and for corporations to rework their organizational structures and focus on business ethics. Establishing a clear understanding of the drivers of corporate failure is therefore key. In this paper, we review recent research that extends the debate on the causes and consequence of corporate failures.     

Media ownership,concentration and corruption in bank lending

Building on the pioneering study by Beck, Demirguc-Kunt, and Levine (2006), this study examines the effects of media ownership and concentration on corruption in bank lending using a unique World Bank data set covering more than 5,000 firms across 59 countries. We find strong evidence that state ownership of media is associated with higher levels of bank corruption. We also find that media concentration increases corruption both directly and indirectly through its interaction with media state ownership. In addition, we find that media state ownership and media concentration both accentuate the positive link between official supervisory power and lending corruption and attenuate the negative link between the regulations that empower private monitoring and corruption in lending. Media state ownership or media concentration also accentuates the positive link between banking concentration and corruption in lending. Furthermore, the links between media structure and corruption are more pronounced when the borrowing firm is privately owned.     

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.     

The accountability of NGOs in civil society and its public spheres

In the past two decades, globalisation has brought about many unexpected changes in the assumed role of governments. Part of this has included the role and rise of non-government organisations (NGOs) that have grown in number and power to fill services that governments are either unable or unwilling to provide. The prominence of NGOs in third-world countries fills a void of humanitarian services that are often lacking, but in all nations they have increasingly become potential vehicles for ideology instead of assistance, subject to capture by both sides of politics. In this respect, a new question and a new challenge face those who look for the accountability of NGOs in the public sphere—are NGOs doomed to fail by the environment that made them necessary? In other words, are they doomed to fail because they are unelected and unaccountable, and unlikely to rise above the limitations of the current system that made them necessary in the first place? The possible role for NGOs can be evaluated by examining alternative of ways of thinking about the “civil society”. This draws together interpretative strategies from philosophers such as Stanley Aronowitz, Carl Boggs, Craig Calhoun, Timothy Luke, Randy Martin and Charles Taylor. From their work, an ontic dialectical thinking is developed and can be used to assess whether NGOs can truly fill the democratic vacuum, and contribute towards the good society. More particularly, NGO contributions involve examining connections with accountability in a world in which public intervention and social awareness have been trivialised. A reinvigorated civil society can help to reconcile the role of NGOs to an authentic and effective end.