Einzelbesprechungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The influence of judges' attitudes on liability assessments related to failed audits exhibiting significant audit team over-time or significant use of off-shore auditors

This study provides evidence on how audit firms' decisions to use offshore (outsourced) auditors or to assign on-site (local) auditors extensive overtime affect judges' evaluation of auditor legal liability I conduct a behavioral experiment in which actual judges responded to a hypothetical audit lawsuit. The results suggest auditors may be penalized during the litigation process depending on the extent of overtime or off-shoring and judges' attitude toward the public accounting profession. Judges with a positive attitude toward public accounting assessed more liability for an audit firm that used offshore (outsourced) auditors than for the use of extensive overtime for on-site auditors or a control condition. However, judges with a negative attitude toward the auditing profession assessed higher liability for auditors except when on-site auditors bore significant overtime in the final weeks of the audit.     

Towards a fair degrowth-society: Justice and the right to a ‘good life’ beyond growth

A critical scrutiny is presented of the ethical assumptions of growth and degrowth theories with respect to distributive justice and the normative conditions for a ‘good human life’. An argument is made in favor of Sen's and Nussbaum's ‘capabilities approach’ as the most suitable theoretical framework for addressing these questions. Since industrialization economic growth has played a key-role as an attraction pole, around which issues of social justice, political stability, and welfare protection seemed to gravitate. Accordingly, it is considered as a necessary condition for both intragenerational and intragenerational justice. These assumptions have been subjected to substantial critique by degrowth-thinkers, according to which economic growth is rather a threat than a condition for intragenerational and intergenerational justice. However, a theoretical underpinning of these assumptions is missing so far. In the paper I analyze the ethical and moral assumptions in both approaches by focusing on the theories of justice that are implicitly laid down as a background for their arguments (welfarism, resourcism, and the capabilities-approach). In a detailed analysis of the main critical points formulated by degrowth advocates I take the capabilities approach perspective and show why it can offer a more adequate normative underpinning for the conceptualization of a degrowth society.     

Earnings conference calls and stock returns: The incremental informativeness of textual tone

Quarterly earnings conference calls are becoming a more pervasive tool for corporate disclosure. However, the extent to which the market embeds information contained in the tone (i.e. sentiment) of conference call wording is unknown. Using computer aided content analysis, we examine the incremental informativeness of quarterly earnings conference calls and the corresponding market reaction. We find that conference call linguistic tone is a significant predictor of abnormal returns and trading volume. Furthermore, conference call tone dominates earnings surprises over the 60 trading days following the call. The question and answer portion of the call has incremental explanatory power for the post-earnings-announcement drift and this significance is primarily concentrated in firms that do not pay dividends, illustrating differences in investor behavior based on the level of cash flow uncertainty. Additionally, we find that a context specific linguistic dictionary is more powerful than a more widely used general dictionary (Harvard IV-4 Psychosocial).     

When should a leader apologize and when not?

When corporate leaders or the organizations they represent mess up, they face the difficult decision of whether or not to apologize publicly. A public apology is a risky move. It's highly political, and every word matters. Refusal to apologize can be smart, or it can be suicidal. Readiness to apologize can be seen as a sign of character or one of weakness. A successful apology can turn enmity into personal and organizational triumph--while an apology that's too little, too late, or too transparently tactical can open the floodgates to individual and institutional ruin. Since the stakes are so high, Kellerman says, leaders should not extend public apologies often or lightly. One or more of the following conditions should apply: The apology is likely to serve an important purpose. The offense is of serious consequence. It's appropriate that the leader assume responsibility for the offense. The leader is the only one who can get the job done. The cost of saying something is likely lower than the cost of staying silent. The author draws her conclusions from hard data and abundant anecdotal evidence, examining notoriously bad apologizers as well as exceptionally good ones. While selectivity is key, good apologies usually do work. What constitutes a good apology? Acknowledgment of the mistake or wrongdoing, acceptance of responsibility, expression of regret, and assurance that the offense will not be repeated.     

The impact of Financial Times Deutschland news on stock prices: post-announcement drifts and inattention of investors

In this paper, we analyze the impact of Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) news on stock prices and trading volumes. Based on a sample of all news about German DAX, MDAX, and SDAX companies published in the news section of the FTD between 2006 and 2010, our results show that articles that contain positive (negative) information are associated with significantly positive (negative) abnormal returns and abnormal trading volumes around their publication. Furthermore, our results show an initial underreaction to these articles and subsequent post-publication drift. Based on the inattention hypothesis, we show that high-attention news (proxied by abnormal trading volume) almost instantaneously moves stock prices to their new valuation levels, whereas the price adjustment process takes much longer following low-attention news. Our results also hold within multivariate regressions where we additionally control for stock-specific characteristics (e.g., institutional ownership, size, and price-to-book ratio) as well as other attention-grabbing events (as measured by ad hoc announcements and cover-page news articles). Finally, we show that results primarily hold in the non-crisis period.     

The Impact of Environmental Turbulence on the Perceived Importance of Innovation and Innovativeness in SMEs

This study investigates how market turbulence, technological turbulence, and competitive intensity affect the perceived importance of innovation and innovativeness, and thus SMEs’ business performance. Structural equation modeling is conducted on a sample of 373 SMEs. Our findings show that both market and technological turbulence increase the perceived importance of innovation, but only market turbulence impacts SMEs’ innovativeness directly. The perceived importance of innovation mediates environmental turbulence’s influence on a firm’s innovativeness. Competitive intensity has no significant effect on the perceived importance of innovation and innovativeness. Finally, innovativeness enhances business performance when using both perceptual and lagged objective performance data.