The role of corporate governance in meeting or beating analysts’ forecast

Meeting or beating analysts’ forecasts is a topic of considerable interest in the academic and business communities. Some studies indicate a favorable market response when firms meet or beat analysts’ earnings forecasts, but others suggest managers opportunistically manage earnings to achieve earnings targets. We investigate the relation between corporate governance mechanisms and meeting or exceeding analysts’ expectations and find that attributes of corporate governance are related to the likelihood of consistently meeting or exceeding consensus forecasts. We extend current literature by showing that some attributes of strong corporate governance mechanisms lower agency costs associated with consistently meeting or beating analysts’ expectations. We also find that compensation committees reward managers for consistently meeting or beating analysts’ forecasts.     

Ownership changes, accounting practice and the redefinition of the corporation

This paper examines the role of accounting in facilitating and legitimating the conglomerate movement in American business during the 1960s. We argue that the profileration of conglomerate mergers contributed to a reconceptualization of the corporation that emphasized its financial rather than its productive capacities. This conception of the firm has now been institutionalized; its logic motivates the takeovers and restructuring that characterize contemporary business. Our case illustrates the rhetorical power of accounting as a symbolic system for legitimating new corporate forms and practices.     

Local IndustryEmployment Share and the Experiences of Displaced Workers

This article examines how industries' share of employment in local labor markets affects displaced workers' reemployment, industry switching, and earnings losses. A key result is that workers displaced from industries with low employment shares are more likely to switch industries after displacement. Earnings loss estimates indicate that for most workers, displacement from an industry that employs a smaller share of the local labor force is associated with larger earnings losses.     

Approaches to locating expertise using corporate knowledge

In many organizations people need to locate colleagues with knowledge and information to resolve a problem. Computer-based systems that assist users with finding such expertise are increasingly important to industrial organizations. In this paper we discuss the development of Expertise Finders suitable for use within the engineering design environment, as illustrated through the use of a scenario. A key feature of this work is that the Expertise Finder returns both recommended contacts and supporting documentation. The Expertise Finder bases its results on information held within the organization, e.g. on-line publications repositories, human resource records, and not on individually compiled Curriculum Vitaes or other forms of user-maintained records. The recommendations are presented to the user with due regard to the social context, and are supported by the documents used to make the recommendation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Addressing Issues Relating To Going-Gongern Audit Qualifications And Corporate Failure

This study examines the incidence of going-concern audit qualifications and of corporate failure for Australian publicly listed companies over the period 1980-90. The analysis includes a review of annual reports for companies that attracted going-concern qualifications but did not subsequently fail, in order to identify potential indicators of survival. The differences between the indicators noted for failed companies that had their last accounts qualified on the basis of going concern, and those of failed companies not qualified, was also examined. Other issues of interest include a comparison of going-concern qualifications by Big Eight (Six) and other audit firms, and the extent and location of disclosure of going-concern problems in the annual report.     

Evaluating flood risk management options in Scotland: A participant-led multi-criteria approach

The characteristics of flood risk management include complexity, large spatial scales, inter-temporal issues, plural values and conflicts of interests. It is argued that issues with such characteristics require public participation in the decision making process. This study builds on existing deliberative processes to develop a new participant-led multi-criteria method to evaluate flood risk management options in Scotland. The results show that participants preferred regeneration or planting of native woodland to other flood management options, and least preferred building flood walls and embankments. The design of the workshops allowed a rich dataset to reveal the thinking behind such results and provided a deeper understanding of why participants came to these conclusions.     

Sounding “Different”: The Role of Sociolinguistic Cues in Evaluating Job Candidates

An increasingly diverse labor pool has increased the likelihood that HR recruiters will encounter job seekers who speak with different dialects. Prior studies have investigated the effects of applicant dialect on employment selection outcomes. In this article, we merge this research with stereotyping, “modern racism,” and sociolinguistics literatures to formulate propositions surrounding two questions of interest: (1) Do prospective employers categorize job applicants using sociolinguistic cues? and (2) If so, what impact does this categorization have on evaluations of applicant employability? We believe this research can provide significant insights into HR practice as discriminatory behaviors change and adapt to fit social norms, particularly in employee recruitment and selection contexts. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.