Do Better‐Governed Australian Firms Make More Informative Disclosures?

Abstract:   We investigate whether and if so, how, corporate governance 'quality' ¹ is related to the information flows from a company and how the share market and its agents respond. Specifically, we study links between the 'quality' of a firm's corporate governance (CGQ) and the informativeness of its disclosures. We employ six indicators of informativeness. They include document counts, properties of analysts' forecasts and a 'timeliness' metric, in the spirit of Ball and Brown (1968) , that reflects the average speed of price discovery throughout the year. Our results suggest the answer to our question is 'Yes': better‐governed firms do make more informative disclosures.     

The organizing vision of application service provision: a process-oriented analysis

The processes by which information systems (IS) innovations become institutionalized are the subjects of much debate within the field of organization theory. Yet few empirical studies exist which examine how IS innovations come to be adopted and diffused across organizations. This paper draws from neo-institutional theory by extending the work of Swanson and Ramiller, using their concept of the organizing vision as a lens for observing and analysing an emerging information systems innovation targeted at small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which came to be known as application services provisioning (ASP). We observe that over time, the initial euphoria and ‘hype’ which surrounded the organizing vision of ASP was replaced by scepticism and distrust, as powerful institutional interests in the form of leading technology firms, industry analysts and IT consultancies were ultimately unsuccessful in their attempts to disseminate ASP throughout the wider business and not-for profit IS user communities. The lessons from this research suggest that a processes-oriented analysis of how organizing visions are interpreted, legitimised and mobilized is critical for understanding and explaining how underdevelopment of an organizing vision at an early stage, may inhibit its later adoption and institutionalization.     

The strategic management of a large scale IT project in the financial services sector

This article explores theoretical and empirical work on IT strategy formulation. While the managerialist focus upon a structured rational text-book model is common in the literature, it is not supported by empirical research on IT projects in the financial services sector.     

The Usefulness of Experimental Auctions in Determining Consumers' Willingness-to-Pay for Quality-Differentiated Products

The validity and effectiveness of using experimental auctions to elicit consumers' willingness-to-pay for closely related, quality-differentiated products is examined. The effect of panelists' demographics on bid values and auction winners, and the impact of experimental procedures on auction prices are analyzed. Demographic variables are poor predictors of bids and auction winners. Experimental procedures such as panel size and initial endowment influence market price level. Relative bid differences for paired samples are primarily influenced by relative differences in taste panel ratings. Relative willingness-to-pay values elicited through experimental auctions appear valid, while actual willingness-to-pay values are influenced by experimental design.     

Consumer needs and requirements for food and ingredient traceability information

The introduction of improved food traceability systems has aimed to restore consumer confidence in food safety and quality, in part by being able to provide consumers with more information about the origins of foods and food ingredients. However, little is known about consumers' opinions and beliefs associated with traceability, nor their preferences for information provision. In the current paper, consumer information needs and requirements regarding traceability are investigated. Semi‐structured interviews with consumers in four European countries focused on the need for traceability, the preferred means of communication, labelling and bodies held responsible for traceability and dealing with fraud. Results show that there is a clear consumer need for varied information about food and the production processes involved. Rigorous and accountable traceability systems may assist in making such information available to consumers.