Race and the Dynamics of Men’s Mobility into Management from Working Class Jobs

Within the context of the “particularistic mobility thesis” we examine African American/White differences in the incidence, determinants and timing of mobility into management at a refined level, namely, when groups share similar “rank and file” and “elite blue collar” working class jobs. Findings from a Panel Study of Income Dynamics sample of men support theory and indicate that from both job categories, African Americans, relative to Whites, have lower rates of mobility, reach management through a route that is relatively formal and structured by a traditional range of stratification-based causal factors and take longer to reach management. Further, as predicted by theory, racial disadvantage experienced by African Americans are greater among those tracked from rank and file than elite blue collar jobs. Discussed are implications of the findings for understanding African American disadvantage in the American labor market on both an intra-and inter-generational basis.     

How the Legal System Affects the Equity Mix in Executive Compensation

We examine variation in relative use of equity-based compensation (equity mix) across firms from different legal environments by studying 381 non-US firms from 43 countries during the 1996-2000 period. These firms are from countries that provide varying degrees of legal protection for shareholders. The data indicate association between equity mix and the degree of legal protection of shareholder rights. Specifically, firms use relatively more equity-based compensation if in a legal environment where shareholder rights are more strongly protected and where laws are more effectively enforced. These findings add to the literature demonstrating a relationship between institutional factors and financial decisions.     

The Roles of Some Key Stakeholders in the Future of Accounting Education in Australia

This article explores the role of institutional and systemic leadership in changing higher education in accounting in Australia. In particular, it discusses the roles of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, the Australian Business Deans' Council Teaching and Learning Network, and the professional accounting bodies in meeting the challenges confronting accounting education in the tertiary sector today and in the coming years. The intersection of these leadership roles is exemplified in an accounting discipline research project that explores the critical non-technical skills stakeholders require in graduate students and discusses stakeholders' roles and responsibilities in their development .     

Measurement of feelings of obligation to volunteer: the Obligation to Volunteer as Commitment (OVC) and Obligation to Volunteer as Duty (OVD) scales

While definitions of volunteering centre on the concepts of freedom and choice, in practice volunteering can be imbued with aspects of obligation. This paper describes the development of measures of feelings of obligation to volunteer. As a foundation for scale development, a literature review of feelings of obligation to volunteer suggested two dimensions of obligation: commitment, related to the devotion of volunteers who engage in serious leisure and the rewards that result, and including sub-dimensions of reward, affective attachment, flexibility and side bets; and duty, related to volunteers’ feelings of being burdened by their volunteer pursuits, comprised of the sub-dimensions of expectation, burden and constraint. These two distinct dimensions of obligation to volunteer evolved as two measures in a scale-development process that included review of potential items by subject experts and volunteers, exploratory factor analyses of potential items using data from a student sample and validation of the scale with a volunteer sample.     

Measuring a contract's breadth: A text analysis

We use a computational linguistic algorithm to measure the topics covered in teacher contracts. Topic modeling metrics are used to assess a contract's expansiveness. Our topic, diversity measurement, is then related to the prevalence of support staff. If more specialized services are provided, then contracts should be broader as they cover more employment relationships. We confirm a strong, statistically significant relationship and, thus, have a valid measurement of contract breadth.     

Lead independent directors and accruals quality

We investigate the association between firms having a lead independent director (LID) who serves on the audit committee and accruals quality using a sample of 32,346 observations during 2001–2018 period. Our results suggest that firms with an LID who serves on the audit committee are associated with higher accruals quality. The results suggest that these firms are associated with an increase in accruals quality equal to 6.60% of the accruals quality metric's median value. We also find that as board size increases, the positive influence of an LID on accruals quality weakens—but only for firms with an LID who does not serve on the audit committee. Supplemental analyses indicate that our inferences still hold when using a changes model, when examining a firm's initial adoption or elimination of the LID position, and when using an entropy balancing approach.