Effects of Materiality, Risk, and Ethical Perceptions on Fraudulent Reporting by Financial Executives

This paper examines fraudulent financial reporting within the context of Jones' (1991) ethical decision making model. It was hypothesized that quantitative materiality would influence judgments of the ethical acceptability of fraud, and that both materiality and financial risk would affect the likelihood of committing fraud. The results, based on a study of CPAs employed as senior executives, provide partial support for the hypotheses. Contrary to expectations, quantitative materiality did not influence ethical judgments. ANCOVA results based on participants' estimates of the likelihood that a "typical CPA" would manipulate reported results indicated that both materiality and risk significantly influenced the likelihood of fraud, but that the perceived morality of the action did not. In contrast, results based on participants' self-reported behavior indicated that materiality and the perceived morality of the action would influence the likelihood of fraud, but that financial risk would not. Regardless of the measure used for the likelihood of fraud, the results indicate that financial executives continue to be influenced by quantitative materiality when misstatements are clearly material on qualitative grounds.     

A Typology of Situational Factors: Impact on Salesperson Decision-Making about Ethical Issues

We explore two dimensions of situational factors expected to influence decision-making about ethical issues among sales representatives – universal vs. particular and direct vs. indirect. We argue that these distinctions are important theoretically, methodologically, and managerially. We test our hypotheses by means of a survey of 252 sales representatives. Our results confirm that considering universal and particular and direct and indirect situational factors contributes to our understanding of decision-making about ethical issues within a sales context, specifically willingness to engage in an unethical act. We also find that personal factors act independently and interact with situational factors in decision-making about ethical issues. Both demographic factors, age and gender, and personality factors, Machiavellianism and self-monitoring, have main effects on decision-making, and some of these factors interact with situational factors to affect decision-making. For example, age of the decision-maker (younger) and size of commission (larger) interact such that the likelihood of choosing an unethical alternative is greater.     

Towards a theoretical model of technology adoption in hospitality organizations

Technology is an important strategic asset for hospitality organizations to improve organizational performance and strategic competitiveness. However, adoption and diffusion of technology are complex processes, which are affected by a number of internal and external factors. As a result, understanding the factors affecting a hospitality organization's technology adoption behavior is of paramount importance to both practitioners and academia. This study proposes a model that describes the process of technology adoption in hospitality organizations. Specifically, two modifications of the existing Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) have been proposed in order to capture the adoption behavior at the organizational level.     

Retaliation: The form of 21st century employment discrimination

During the past decade, retaliation as a basis for employment discrimination claims has risen dramatically from fourth to second place (behind race), increasing by 46%. By definition, retaliation is the act of an employer, through a manager, inflicting an adverse action (such as discharge, discipline, or demotion) against an employee who has complained of discrimination. Retaliation claims open the possibility of punitive damages, examples of which are given in this article. Drawing 1361 cases from a 21-year database, we report the characteristics of retaliation claims and offer recommendations to prevent and manage such claims.     

Collaboration practices, strategic capabilities and performance in Japanese and American product development: Do they differ?

Do New Product Development (NPD) collaboration practices differ across national subsets and, if so, does this make a difference to overall NPD performance? To address these questions, we studied the NPD programs of both Japanese and American firms and explored whether there are differences between the use of internal and external collaboration and strategic innovation practices. We further examined whether this had any significant effects on overall program performance. We found that the American firms we surveyed used collaboration practices significantly more often than the Japanese firms. However, when taking all factors into consideration, only strategic innovation capabilities were significantly linked with both overall performance and nationality. Thus, the use of collaboration without developing innovation capabilities is not enough for performance effects.     

Ecotourism impacts in the Nicoya Peninsula,Costa Rica

Ecotourism promotes responsible travel to natural areas, environmental conservation and the well‐being of local communities. Eco‐lodges are an important component of ecotourism ventures but an infrequently researched component of this field. Considering their influence on the natural environment (design and operation) and local communities (employment practices and purchases), the success of ecotourism depends, in part, on the performance of eco‐lodges. This project studies the effects of the Punta Islita (PI) eco‐lodge on the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica. An interdisciplinary nested‐scale analysis, combining guest and household interviews with multi‐temporal remote sensing analysis of forest cover change of the lodge and surrounding areas, is used to evaluate the environmental, economic and social impacts of ecotourism in the region. Our results show significant positive contributions of the PI eco‐lodge on forest cover, environmental conservation, and local economic incomes within the surrounding communities. For local livelihoods, the PI eco‐lodge was seen as having positive social, cultural and economic impacts for nearly all societal variables for both employees and their neighbours. The PI eco‐lodge was also perceived as reducing alcoholism, drug addiction and prostitution, where conventional tourism on the Peninsula was shown to increase these ‘societal ills’. Land value and product pricing were the few variables believed to have increased as a result of tourism on the Peninsula. For conservation, the PI eco‐lodge property had the highest rates of reforestation within the Nicoya Peninsula and remains the scale most reforested in both forest cover change and total forest cover. In fact, at the landscape scale, we find that the Pacific coast of the Nicoya, where the bulk of ecotourism occurs, has undergone reforestation, whereas forest interiors have been deforested. Historically, reforestation occurred as cattle ranching credit programs were halted by the government and households in the area left to find better job opportunities. The PI eco‐lodge, as a source of good employment, resulted in worker migration back to the surrounding area, resulting, in some cases, in increased deforestation. Overall, we feel that the PI eco‐lodge serves as an example of successful ecotourism. However, increasing development in the region, in particular by standard hotel operations and large condo developments, seeks to capitalise on the region's natural beauty and may reverse land cover trends if they are not accompanied by adequate forest conservation strategies and stresses the importance of monitoring and assessing the impacts of accommodations tied to nature‐based tourism operations. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pairs Trading: Performance of a Relative-Value Arbitrage Rule

We test a Wall Street investment strategy, "pairs trading,"with daily data over 1962–2002. Stocks are matched intopairs with minimum distance between normalized historical prices.A simple trading rule yields average annualized excess returnsof up to 11% for self-financing portfolios of pairs. The profitstypically exceed conservative transaction-cost estimates. Bootstrapresults suggest that the "pairs" effect differs from previouslydocumented reversal profits. Robustness of the excess returnsindicates that pairs trading profits from temporary mispricingof close substitutes. We link the profitability to the presenceof a common factor in the returns, different from conventionalrisk measures.     

离开高盛以后

2009年3月,已在高盛度过27年的公司联席总裁和联席CEO乔恩·温克里得意外递交了辞呈,此前不久,他刚被定为现任CEO劳埃德·布兰克费恩的候选继任者之一。之后,正值盛年的49岁的温克里得在华尔街销声匿迹。此事引起轩然大波,各方传言四起。如今,在离开高盛近一年之后,温克里得首次面对记者,透露了作别高盛的真实原由。     

The Mortgage and Financial Crises: The Role of Credit Risk Management and Corporate Governance

This paper discusses the role of risk management and corporate governance as causal factors in the onset of the financial crisis. The boom and bust in the housing market precipitated serious strains in financial markets. These strains resulted in the onset of the financial crisis in August 2007 with the collapse of the asset-backed commercial paper market. This collapse occurred because the solvency of a number of large financial firms was threatened by huge losses in complex structured financial securities. Why did these firms have such high concentrations in mortgage-related securities? Given the information available to firms at the time, these high concentrations in mortgage-related securities violated basic principles of modern risk management. We argue that this failure to apply well-understood risk management principles was a result of principal-agent problems internal to the firms and to breakdowns of corporate governance systems designed to overcome these principal-agent problems.