Forensic accounting services in English local government and the counter-fraud agenda

ABSTRACT

Fraud is a growing challenge for English local government, yet the resources and support local authorities (LAs) have available to prevent, detect and investigate it are limited. Forensic accounting services (FAS) provided by external specialist private sector firms, particularly those undertaking mandatory external audit, might be one solution. Research reported in this paper suggests, however, that existing English LA users are not all convinced. Nevertheless, better awareness and understanding of what FAS have to offer, perhaps through case studies of successful implementation, would be a valuable contribution to helping local government enhance its counter-fraud capabilities and make informed decisions about how best to meet the increasingly complex fraud challenge.     

Supplier evaluation in the context of circular economy: A forward step for resilient business and environment concern

Resource depletion is a concern for the global economy; many think that available resources on the planet will not be able to cater to an ever-growing population. Thus, economies are trying to become circular, leaving behind the linear tradition linear approach. In the circular economy (CE), physical resources and energy are made to loop back into the supply chain (SC) for a more extended period. Proper selection of suppliers is an essential criterion towards proper execution of the CE principle in SC. In this research, we have constructed a framework for evaluating the supplier concerning the CE implementation. Further, this research identifies the criterion and sub-criterion, which are pertinent for evaluating the supplier in CE context. Fuzzy-based ‘Criteria Importance Through Inter-Criteria Correlation (CRITIC)’ method is justifiably applied to determine the aggregated weights of the criteria. Finally, ‘Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS)’ method is used to determine the suppliers' ranking in the Indian automobile industry. Six criteria and 24 sub-criteria are obtained as per recent literature and then inputs from experts. ‘Environment’ criterion came out as the most favourable criterion with a subjective weight of 0.230. The current research is one of the first such attempts to provide criteria for supplier selection in a CE environment. The developed framework would help organisations in implementing CE-based supplier selection. The identified criteria and sub-criteria would provide organisations with means to evaluate suppliers and help suppliers develop an effective and efficient CE based on the SC.     

Audit report lag: the role of auditor type and increased competition in the audit market

This study investigates the effect of auditor type (private vs. state) and increased competition in an audit market on audit report lag (ARL). This is the first study to provide evidence regarding the effect of audit market competition on ARL. Utilising structure–conduct–performance theory, we predict that competition pressures private auditors to be more efficient and to have less reporting lag than state auditors. We also predict that competition among auditors after a liberalisation period forces auditors to be more efficient and to record less ARL than before. We use a unique data set in Iran, whereby the audit market liberalisation (an audit market where services were previously provided primarily by a state entity) has resulted in both state and private auditors simultaneously providing audit services. The findings are consistent with the following hypothesis, that is ARL is shorter for private auditors than it is for state auditors, and ARL decreases as competition increases in the Iranian audit market. Consistent with the structure–conduct–performance theory, the findings suggest that increased competition in the audit market results in higher efficiency, as reflected by a shorter ARL.     

Historical path of traditional and modern idea of ‘conscious universe’

What this study shows is that although the ‘idea of conscious universe’ is given further advance by some discoveries of modern sciences, it was articulated by many ancient and previous thinkers. Philosophically, the idea of ‘Consciousness’ can be traced back to ancient times and can be proven through historical documents in various traditions, cultures and religions. In this study, the ideas are provided from perspectives of West, East and Islam. Simply, the term ‘awareness’ and the concept of ‘ability to be aware of the environment’ imply the notion of ‘Consciousness’ in linguistic and psychology. In a comparative study, we show that philosophical and scientific views in the past and contemporary period highly recommended the existence of ‘Consciousness’ attribute. In fact, all of the mentioned studies are talking about the same ideology based on the qualitative perceptions. However, there are some differences in parts, but the major theme is same.     

Intraday volatility and periodicity in the Malaysian stock returns

Many empirical studies using high-frequency intraday data from a variety of markets indicate that PGARCH models give superior return volatility forecasts than those produced from standard GARCH models. This paper investigates into modelling approaches of four versions of PGARCH models of high-frequency data of Bursa Malaysia, in particular where the intraday volatility of double U-shaped pattern. It is examined through half-hourly dummy variables, quarterly-hourly dummy variables, Fourier Functional Form (FFF) based variables and spline-based variables. The non-periodic GARCH models, i.e., GARCH, EGARCH and TARCH are used for comparison of performance of best fit. The analysis show that among the four versions of PGARCH models, the half-dummy and the spline-based versions perform the best. EGARCH produced consistently superior results to other GARCH specifications.     

Mitigating Aggressive Small Trade at Tourist Destinations Through Cognitive Restructuring

The goal of the article was to use established theories of individual, organizational, and community learning to hypothesize ways tourism leaders could facilitate their small independent traders that harass visitors’ unlearning of aggressive selling behaviors. Nine hypotheses were posited. For example by tourism leaders: placing greater emphasis on traders’ engagement in the desired nonaggressive selling behaviors than on stopping their engagement in aggressive ones; not supporting traders’ engagement in aggressive selling behaviors but instead openly supporting their engagement in nonaggressive trading; and taking steps to strengthen the traders’ role in their community’s tourism sector. The discussion has implications for how small traders’ selling behaviors are managed at tourist destinations.     

Conflicting Bifuzzy Multi-attribute Group Decision Making Model with Application to Flood Control Project

We propose a group decision making model based on conflicting bifuzzy sets (CBFS) where evaluation are bi-valued in accordance to the subjective assessment obtained from the experts for the positive and negative views. This paper discusses the weighting methods for particular attribute and subattribute with emphasis given to the unification of subjective and objective weights. The integration of CBFS in the model is naturally done by extending the fuzzy evaluation in parallel with the intuitionistic fuzzy. We introduce a new technique to compute the similarity measure, being the degree of agreement between the experts. We end up the paper by demonstrating the applicability of the proposed model to the empirical case of flood control project, one of the project selection problems.     

The impact of external environmental on business process management and organizational performance

The external business environment as a variable for explaining the impact of business process management (BPM) on organization performance is investigated. The developed model is tested using partial least squares, using a survey on human resource/information technology managers in Malaysia. Statistical results show that dynamism and hostility influence the degree of implementation of BPM. The extent of BPM also has an impact on organization performance. The model can be used by organizations to assess their level of BPM success depending on specific environmental characteristics. This research also contributes to understanding an environment–BPM–performance interface in a developing economy, not previously examined.