A factor analytic comparison of outshopping behavior in larger retail trade areas

Three patronage factors appear to motivate outshopping behavior across larger retail areas. The results are supported by research which has typically concentrated on smaller retail trade areas. This correspondence suggests a generalized outshopping behavior which may be attributable to the inability of retailers to completely satisfy all dimensions related to the shopping experience.     

Internal audit reporting lines,fraud risk decomposition,and assessments of fraud risk

The main purpose of this research is to examine the effects of internal audit reporting lines on fraud risk assessments made by internal auditors when the level of fraud risk varies. Significant emphasis has been placed on the importance of reporting lines in maintaining the autonomy of internal auditors, but the perceived benefits of requiring internal audit to report directly to the audit committee have not been validated or systematically investigated. Results of an experiment involving 172 experienced internal auditors and additional survey findings indicate that internal auditors perceive more personal threats when they report high levels of risk directly to the audit committee, relative to management. Perceived threats lead internal auditors to reduce assessed levels of fraud risk when reporting to the audit committee relative to when reporting to management. This finding runs counter to the anticipated benefits of requirements that the internal audit function report directly to the audit committee, and it reveals potential conflicts of interest and independence threats created by the audit committee itself. We also investigate the effects of fraud risk decomposition on risk assessments made by internal auditors. We find that fraud risk assessment decomposition does not have the same effects on internal auditors as it has on external auditors, and the effects of decomposition do not align with the expected benefits of decomposition.     

Valuing Volunteers: Expanding the Relevance and Reliability Debate

Volunteers’ inputs to public and other not‐for‐profit organisations are significant. However, while statisticians gather data on volunteering, accountants do so less often due to a debate as to whether the relevance of recognising volunteer input in financial reports outweighs the reliability of that data and the costs of its derivation. This paper presents a survey of voluntary organisations that publish financial reports. It explores whether the promise of funding for volunteer effort has been matched with increasing financial reporting of volunteering. The results show there is little recognition of volunteer labour in financial reports, reflecting the unresolved relevance‐reliability debate in the accounting profession.     

International rankings of government performance and source credibility for citizens: experiments about e-government rankings in the UK and the Netherlands

International organizations are an alternative to national governments as a source of information for citizens about governments’ performance. Experiments about high UK e-government performance reported in an international ranking find a United Nations (UN) source increases citizens’ perceptions of the truthfulness of reported performance and increases perceived high performance compared to national government reporting identical information. The UN source also has higher perceived honesty, helpfulness and knowledgeability. A replication experiment in the Netherlands generalizes the finding about perceived higher truthfulness. International sources boost the credibility of information about high performance, improving citizens’ perceptions of national governments.     

Information Asymmetries about Measurement Quality

This article studies contracts between a principal and an agent that are robust to information asymmetries about measurement quality. Our main result is that an information asymmetry about measurement quality not only reduces the usefulness of a given performance measure for stewardship purposes, it also qualitatively changes the way the performance measure is used if the information asymmetry is sufficiently large. We also study the manipulability of performance measures, assuming that poor measurement quality creates room for manipulation via selective (cherry‐picked) corrections by the agent. With known imperfect measurement quality, manipulability lowers the cost of providing incentives. Manipulability introduces overstatements only, while imperfect measurement introduces both overstatements and understatements. However, with an information asymmetry about measurement quality, manipulability can increase the cost of providing incentives, since there is now an induced information asymmetry about manipulability.     

Correction to: A multi-country,multi-sector replication challenge to the validity of the cultural tightness-looseness measure

Asia Pacific Journal of Management - The original version of this article unfortunately contained mistakes. Appendix heading was misplaced and first entry of the Appendix table was incorrectly...