The role of accountability in determining the relationship between financial reporting quality and the performance of public organizations: Evidence from Vietnam

Drawing on the new public management and agency theory, this study examines the mediating role of accountability in the relationship between financial-reporting quality and the performance of public organizations. The research model and hypotheses tested with a survey of 177 responses obtained from accountants and managers working in the public sector in Vietnam. Our analysis shows that accountability has a mediating role on the relationship between financial-reporting quality and performance, with significant implications for public organizations seeking to improve both their financial-reporting quality and their organizational performance with better designed systems of accountability.     

股权结构对并购绩效的影响——基于中国上市公司实证分析

本文在理论分析基础上,以沪深两市40家上市公司2002年到2008年年报数据为样本,首先利用因子分析法对财务比率指标体系综合打分以衡量并购绩效,然后使用多元线性回归法实证检验了股权结构与并购绩效二者间关系。研究发现：中国上市公司并购前后绩效总体而言是先降后升的;国有股东属性与公司并购绩效负相关;管理层持股与公司并购绩效负相关,但并不显著;上市公司的股权集中度与并购绩效负相关;流通股比例与并购绩效正相关。最后针对本文研究结果提出一些建议。     

上市公司信息披露质量提升能否改进公司绩效?——基于2002—2005年深市上市公司的经验证据

本文采用深交所对上市公司信息披露质量的评级作为信息披露质量代理变量,以Jensen指数、净资产收益率、总资产收益率及总资产周转率作为公司绩效代理指标,检验了2002—2005年深市上市公司信息披露质量对公司绩效的影响。研究发现,信息披露质量与公司绩效之间存在显著内在关联性,信息披露质量较高的公司,其市场表现和财务绩效也都较佳。因此,合理引导公司信息披露,对于提升上市公司绩效具有重要导向效应。     

Innovation budget pressure,quality of IS information,and departmental performance

Evidence suggests that innovation budgets need to be carefully managed due to increasingly demanding markets, changes in technology and greater international competition. Companies often express concern over the magnitude of their innovation costs, potentially inhibiting them from investing in new product development. This has given rise to concern for innovation budget pressure, which focuses on constraining costs to budgeted levels even if further expenditure might facilitate enhancements in terms of the quality and speed of the innovation process. However, suggestions have been made that decision systems in these settings could benefit in terms of performance outcomes from improvements in information system (IS) information quality. The literature suggests that the impact of quality of IS information on departmental performance is dependent on whether there is an emphasis on innovation budget pressure. The results of this study show that when innovation budget pressure is high, quality of IS information enhances performance. In contrast, when the emphasis on innovation budget pressure is low, quality of IS information does not promote performance.     

Board characteristics and Chinese bank performance

Using a sample of 50 largest Chinese banks during the period of 2003–2010, we explore a comprehensive set of board characteristics (size, composition and functioning of the board) and analyze their impacts on bank performance and bank asset quality in China. We find that the number of board meetings and the proportion of independent directors have significantly positive impacts on both bank performance and asset quality while board size has a significantly negative impact on bank performance. We find new evidence that the degree of bank boards’ political connection is negatively correlated with bank performance and asset quality. The findings suggest that the board of directors plays a significant role in bank governance in China.     

The role of performance measures and incentive systems in relation to the degree of JIT implementation

The shift to world-class manufacturing strategies has necessitated complementary changes in management accounting systems (MAS). Using survey data obtained from top manufacturing executives at 253 US firms, this study empirically examines the relationship between the level of just-in-time (JIT) practices implemented by US manufacturing firms and the performance measures and incentive systems that are incorporated in their MAS. The statistical tests provide empirical evidence that the use of non-traditional performance measures such as bottom-up measures, product quality, and vendor quality, as well as incentive systems of employee empowerment and compensation rewards for quality production are related to the degree of JIT practices implemented.     

内部控制鉴证对会计盈余质量的影响研究——基于沪市A股公司的经验证据

内部控制鉴证产生与发展的主要目标是提高财务信息质量,因此会影响盈余质量。我国目前的内部控制鉴证是否有效地提高了会计盈余质量?内部控制鉴证的执行如何影响会计盈余质量?本文通过实证分析沪市A股公司2006—2008年内部控制鉴证的经验证据,发现内部控制鉴证提升了公司会计盈余质量,在控制了管理层信号传递动机以后结论仍然稳健。最后,本文根据实证分析结果和我国上市公司内部控制鉴证业务现状,提出了完善内部控制鉴证的若干政策建议。     

Early Birds versus Just-in-Timers: The effect of procrastination on academic performance of accounting students

This study investigates the effect of procrastination on academic performance. Prior research has often relied upon self-reported measures of procrastination, which are only weakly correlated with actual procrastination. We use the start and submission of a set of online homework problems as two objective, direct measures of student procrastination and the grade on the assignments as a measure of performance. In our study, there were a number of potential benefits to submitting online assignments ‘just-in-time’. Thus, there was a direct benefit to procrastination, which students had to weigh against potential drawbacks. With a sample size larger than those previously reported in the literature, we find that for both procrastination measures, task procrastination is associated with lower task performance. To ensure that our results are not just an association between performance and student quality, we test for the association between task procrastination and task performance, while controlling for student quality. We find that even after controlling for student quality, task procrastination is associated with lower task performance.     

Does Earnings Quality Influence Corporate Social Responsibility Performance? Empirical Evidence of the Causal Link

The study examines the causal links between earnings quality and corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance using a large sample of United States (US) firms from 1992 to 2013. We first find that the association between earnings quality and CSR performance is positive and significant. We then test the flow of causality using Granger's (1969) lead–lag analysis to determine whether changes in earnings quality cause changes in CSR performance or vice versa. Our findings show that changes in earnings quality cause changes in a firm's CSR performance but not vice versa. Further analysis shows that earnings quality reduces the cost of equity capital for firms with higher CSR performance. These findings suggest that one plausible means by which firms with higher earnings quality can maintain better CSR performance is to reduce their cost of equity capital.     

The quality premium with leverage and liquidity constraints

This research analyzes the causes of the quality premium, one of the most intriguing and successful investment strategies in equity markets. While previous research has argued that psychological biases explain the performance of the quality minus junk factor, our paper analyzes a leverage constraint explanation within a rational risk-based framework. The quality factor is multidimensional in nature, which suggests that a combination of risk, frictions, and behavioral biases is a reasonable explanation. Once we incorporate margin requirements and liquidity restrictions, we find that tighter conditions result in a higher intercept and a lower slope for the empirically implemented capital asset pricing model when using 10 quality-sorted portfolios. Our paper shows that, indeed, not only behavioral biases explain quality, but also market frictions account for its performance.     

政府采购的市场比较制度研究

政府采购产品和服务相对于政府自我生产具有更高的潜在效率。为验证这一判断,并发挥绩效评估的激励约束功能,在政府采购的实践中,必须对采购绩效进行准确评估。而准确评估的前提就是要有一套客观准确的评估依据。市场效率具有客观实在、现实最优、实时动态、操作性强等特性。运用市场比较制度,可以有效解决评估依据的客观性和准确性问题。该制度利用市场效率,从价格、时效、质量三个方面对政府采购绩效进行比较,其比较结果为政府采购计划控制、过程管控、绩效评估提供依据。     

Comprehensive Performance Assessment—Springboard or Dead-Weight?

Since its election in 1997, the Labour Government in the UK has emphasised the need to improve the quality of public services. In the case of local government, this emphasis has led to the introduction of Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA). This article considers the merits of actual and intended CPA strategy within the wider context of public service performance measurement. The author concludes that the methodology leading to the December 2002 results and the intended way forward raise legitimate questions as to whether CPA can justifiably lay claim to being a comprehensive measure of performance.     

Best Value: Is It Delivering?

The enhancement of public service performance has been a central concern of successive Labour governments since 1997. Best Value is intended to address this by replacing the former policy of compulsory competitive tendering with a policy that has been likened to a local government version of total quality management. In this article the authors draw on a survey of local government officers to explore the extent to which BV is providing the basis for improvements in the quality of local services and finds mixed results.     

业绩归因的自利性披露及市场反应研究——汇率单边升值情境下的纺织业表现

本文以人民币持续单边升值为研究背景,考察不利环境中纺织业企业的业绩归因信息披露质量。我们试图研究递进的两个问题。一是,上市公司在非财务信息披露过程中,是否存在对业绩归因的自利性操纵行为?二是,自利性业绩归因信息披露之后,投资者决策是否被误导,股价是否能够向着公司所期望的方向改变?     

Zombie Board: Board Tenure and Firm Performance

We show that board tenure exhibits an inverted U‐shaped relation with firm value and accounting performance. The quality of corporate decisions, such as M&A, financial reporting quality, and CEO compensation, also has a quadratic relation with board tenure. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that directors’ on‐the‐job learning improves firm value up to a threshold, at which point entrenchment dominates and firm performance suffers. To address endogeneity concerns, we use a sample of firms in which an outside director suffered a sudden death, and find that sudden deaths that move board tenure away from (toward) the empirically observed optimum level in the cross‐section are associated with negative (positive) announcement returns. The quality of corporate decisions also follows an inverted U‐shaped pattern in a sample of firms affected by the death of a director.     

Corporate governance quality and financial leverage: Evidence from China

This study explores the ways of how corporate governance quality affects firms' financial leverage using a panel sample of non-financial listed firms in China during 2000–2018. Empirical results indicate that improved corporate governance quality has a robust and negative effect on financial leverage for the full sample and subsample by ownership, industry, scale, etc. This negative effect is mediated by corporate internal and equity financing. Furthermore, in terms of the corporate performance, we show that financial leverage significantly reduces financial performance, especially during the economic downturn, and it could be offset by the improved corporate governance quality.     

Measuring the performance of IT services: An assessment of SERVQUAL

As many organisations search for ways to compete more effectively in today's ever-growing markets, information technology (IT) has become quite critical in organisational control due to the enormous size of its expenditure. As a result, managers have faced growing pressure to measure the performance of IT departments. However, the applicability of traditional performance measures in an IT setting is at best questionable and, thus, there is an urgent need for alternative measurement systems. One such measure is service quality as perceived by customers of IT service. This study develops a conceptual “gaps model” of IT service quality, which identifies seven gaps between customers and suppliers of IT service. Furthermore, the study examines the applicability of SERVQUAL, perhaps the most popular standardised survey instrument designed to measure service quality, as the measure of IT service quality.     

The effect of automated service quality on bank financial performance and the mediating role of customer retention

The impact of automated service quality on bank financial performance and the mediating role of customer retention have received little attention, as scholars have focused on issues of usability and measurement. This study begins by showing the impact of technology on the way banks conduct business and proceeds to discuss automated service quality definitions and the potential influence of automated service quality on retention and financial performance. A mediating model that links service quality to bank financial performance through customer retention in the automated service context is proposed. The results of this empirical study confirm the role of customer retention as a mediator in the effect of automated service quality on financial performance. Implications of the findings are discussed and the limitations of the study and the potential for future research are considered.     

Modeling board governance,environmental expertise,and social engagement effects on firm environmental performance: Panel data evidence

Prior research establishes that board governance quality measures positively impact firm environmental performance. In this study, we propose an empirical model using structural equation modeling (SEM) to explore additional enhancements to board governance, namely board environmental expertise (BEE) and board social engagement (BSE) and show that they incrementally improve firm environmental performance (EN). Our proposed latent construct measure, BEE, goes beyond traditionally dichotomous measures used in the literature. BEE has a total effect on firm environmental performance that is over two thirds the size of effects arising from traditional governance quality measures (GOV). The second enhancement of our model is the focus on BSE, a novel construct to the CSR literature. In addition to possessing environmental knowledge enabling expertise, we demonstrate that a board with a deeper commitment to society will further improve firm environmental performance. Using SEM, we find that the indirect effects of GOV, BEE, and BSE on EN represent a substantial portion of the total effects on EN. Hence, ignoring these indirect effects would result in substantial understatement of the effects of improvements to governance on environmental performance.     

信息披露考核降低了股价崩盘风险吗？

深交所自2001年起对于上市公司的信息披露工作进行考核。本文从信息透明度的 角度,利用深交所上市公司信息披露考核数据,考察信息披露质量对股价崩盘风险的影响。研 究发现：（1）深圳证券交易所的信息披露考核对于股价崩盘风险有显著影响,整体来看上市 公司的信息披露质量与股价崩盘风险存在显著的负向关系;（2）对于经营业绩较差的公司而 言,信息披露质量与股价崩盘风险的负向关系更加显著;（3）相对于非主板公司而言,信息披 露质量对主板公司的股价崩盘风险的抑制作用更加显著。