Public-Interest Arguments in Privatising Government Audit

The privatisation of the state audit office of Victoria in 1996–97 engendered a widespread debate that was joined by the two main accounting bodies in Australia. Although the accounting bodies adopted divergent positions, both rationalised their arguments in terms of public interest. An analysis of this paradox shows that the accountants pursued their commercial interests through intra-professional conflict and cooperation behind the cloak of public-interest arguments, showing little concern for the public accountability function of public-sector audits and reporting requirements.     

Location and input mix decisions for energy facilities

The issues of designing and locating a secondary energy generation facility are considered in a generalised Weber model. The effects of factor substitution, transmission costs and line losses on planning problems are analysed. In general location and design problems are shown to be non-separable so that traditional approaches to these issues, which implicitly assume this type of independence, raise the prospect of suboptimisation.     

Capital Maintenance and Investment: Complements or Substitutes?

This paper studies the properties of demand for capital maintenance services and its interaction with investment under variable capital utilization rate and adjustment costs. The depreciation rate varies with the maintenance effort and the utilization rate of capital. We show that the properties of the demand functions for maintenance services and capital goods depend closely on the sign of the cross derivative of the depreciation function, i.e., on whether the marginal efficiency of maintenance decreases or increases when the rate of capital utilization rises. In our model, it is impossible to reconcile some unquestionable empirical facts and some minimal regularity conditions on the demand function for maintenance services if this cross derivative is positive. In all cases, investment and maintenance are gross complements. Received September 9, 2001; revised version received April 22, 2002 Published online: December 5, 2002 ? Springer-Verlag 2002     

Impact of relational norms, supplier development and trust on supplier performance

Supplier relationship management and supplier development initiatives assume a fundamental role in enterprise supply chain management. An important aspect of effective supplier relationship management is the role of trust. This paper seeks to understand whether supplier relationship management or supplier development initiative should be emphasized as a firm strives to achieve superior supplier performance. The analysis and discussion draws upon sourcing strategy literature and is based on empirical survey-data of mid to upper level managers with responsibility for supply management initiatives in their respective organizations in Denmark and in the USA. It examines the interrelationships among “relational norms”, “trust”, “supplier development initiatives” and ensuing “supplier performance”. The data analysis shows that firms must emphasize relation and trust building activities before investing in supplier development initiative. Supplier perception audits must be routinely performed to gauge the level of trust and strength of relational norms.     

A Global Value Chain Analysis of the ‘Regional Strategy’ Perspective

In this counterpoint paper we argue that the findings presented by the ‘regional strategy’ literature do not capture the full array of global activities of the multinational enterprise (MNE). While this literature makes an important contribution to the field by showing that sales and production activities in the MNE are regionally structured, we argue that this assessment is biased for two reasons. First, this approach overly focuses on geographical location of downstream activities, while disregarding that of knowledge creation and other relevant upstream activities in the MNE. Second, the approach associates the firm's value creation only with its internalized activities and does not capture the value created through any activities that are externalized. Many MNEs rely to a significant extent on value creation outside the firm's legal boundaries. We argue that such omissions are likely to lead to biased interpretations using different theoretical lenses, such as the knowledge‐/resource‐based view, internalization theory and more general transaction cost economics. Based on our reasoning, we provide recommendations for future research both within and beyond the ‘regional strategy’ literature.     

Auditor realignment and 8−K disclosures—Usefulness for investor decision making

This study extends prior studies on auditor changes by testing (1) whether investors react to 8-K disclosures, and (2) the probability of investors anticipating a potential switch. The study includes 136 firms that both switched and did not switch auditors. It is hypothesized that investors would find it difficult to ascertain the true motives behind auditor changes. Event methodology and logit analysis are used. The results indicate a negative drift in abnormal returns prior to the switch, followed by significant positive abnormal returns on the day of the switch, and a positive drift after the switch.     

Political culture and foreign direct investment: The case of Italy

Does the political culture of an area have any impact on the foreign direct investment (FDI) decisions of multinational corporations (MNCs)? This question is difficult to address empirically, as locations differ in many dimensions. We therefore address this question by examining MNC investment location decisions with regard to different regions within a single country. The country we examine is Italy, which exhibits one of the highest levels of variation with regard to the political culture of its geographical regions. We find that political culture as represented by the pattern of support for political parties at different points on the political spectrum has a significant impact on the MNC investment location decision. Thus, in choosing between locations on a short list, where economic and financial location factors are roughly similar, political culture can have a determining influence. In the case of Italy, a Center-right orientation is conducive to MNC FDI, while a Center-left orientation is not. A Far-left orientation is found to have a very negative effect on FDI.     

Estimating DEA technical and allocative inefficiency using aggregate cost or revenue data

In this paper, we address the question of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) evaluation of efficiency when aggregate cost or revenue data must be used. We show that the DEA technical inefficiency measure using total revenues as the single output variable or total costs as the single input variable equals the aggregate technical and allocative inefficiency. We employ this result to estimate allocative inefficiency and construct statistical tests of the null hypothesis of no allocative inefficiency analogous to those of the null hypothesis of no scale inefficiency. We illustrate our method using revenue and personnel data for the top U.S. public accounting firms over 1995–1998. Our empirical results indicate the existence of statistically significant allocative inefficiency in the public accounting industry.