The impact of audit committee quality on financial reporting quality and audit fees

This study examines the association between the quality of audit committees on financial reporting quality and external audit fees in an environment where the formation of audit committees was unregulated. The study uses a sample of 87 New Zealand firms in 2001 when no regulations or listing rules existed for audit committees. The results show no significant association between the quality of an audit committee and the quality of financial reporting. These results are robust to alternative measures of earnings quality. Similarly, the quality of audit committees has little impact on the level of fees paid to external auditors. The results suggest that the benefits of ‘best practice’ audit committees may be less than anticipated by regulators and policymakers.     

Segregation and Black political efficacy

The impact of segregation on Black political efficacy is theoretically ambiguous. On one hand, increased contact among Blacks in more segregated areas may mean that Blacks are better able to coordinate political behavior. On the other hand, lesser contact with non-Blacks may mean that Blacks have less political influence over voters of other races. As for non-Blacks, inter-group conflict theory suggests that greater contact yields greater conflict between the groups while inter-group contact theory suggests exactly the reverse. We investigate this question empirically. We find that exogenous increases in segregation lead to decreases in Black civic efficacy, as measured by an ability to elect Representatives who vote liberally and more specifically in favor of legislation that is favored by Blacks. This tendency for Representatives from more segregated MSAs to vote more conservatively arises in spite of the fact that Blacks in more segregated areas hold more liberal political views than do Blacks in less segregated locales. We find evidence that this decrease in efficacy is driven by more conservative attitudes amongst non-Blacks in more segregated areas.     

Learning how to restructure: absorptive capacity and improvisational views of restructuring actions and performance

This paper examines the role of learning in corporate restructuring. Drawing from two viewpoints of organizational learning, absorptive capacity and organizational improvisation, we examine whether experience with corporate restructuring modes (sell‐offs, spin‐offs) influences subsequent restructuring and financial performance. Consistent with an absorptive capacity view, cumulative and repetitive experience with sell‐offs was related to the adoption of an ensuing sell‐off and to higher performance. Conversely, and consistent with an organizational improvisation view, short‐term and contemporaneous experience with spin‐offs was related to the subsequent use of spin‐offs and to increases in financial performance. The findings contribute to a dynamic explanation of corporate restructuring and its influence on financial performance, illustrate differences between learning in a repetitive situation and learning when repetition is rare, and indicate when absorptive capacity and organizational improvisational views are most profitable. Overall, these findings show that different kinds of restructuring experiences were associated with different modes of restructuring and performance records. Considered collectively, the organizational learning perspective offers insights into why some corporate restructuring strategies appear as intentional and deliberate actions while others resemble more spontaneous and simultaneous responses. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

INNOVATION AND COMPETITION IN GENERATION AND RETAIL POWER MARKETS

There has been considerable merger activity in EU energy markets in recent years. It could be argued that competition authorities should be required to take into account potential innovation effects of mergers. In the UK, regulators are now trying to achieve multiple objectives within the current framework. There is a danger that if markets are expected to deliver mutually incompatible objectives they will be unable to achieve any of them.     

Experiencing ‘natural’ heritage

There have been a number of studies conducted on visitation patterns to the Wet Tropics rainforest in north-east Queensland, Australia. However, little has been undertaken in exploring the visitors' attitudes and behaviours (based on activities pursued) in the rainforest, and their ‘experience’ of this World Heritage environment. This papers sets out to advance research in this area by drawing on over 1000 surveys conducted with domestic and international visitors in various sites in the rainforest throughout 2008. Broad trends emerged that when on-site, visitors demonstrated a propensity to learn from the environmental and cultural information relevant to these rainforest sites. In terms of activities, visitors participated in a range of passive and active rainforest activities, the most popular of which included rainforest walks (76.4% of respondents), viewing scenery (72.6%) and viewing wildlife (59.3%). The significance of these findings is that they deepen our understanding of how ‘natural’ heritage visitor sites are gazed upon, experienced and consumed by visitors.     

Institutional analysis for new public governance scholars

ABSTRACT

Over the past several decades, prominent public management and policy scholars have repeatedly identified institutional analysis as a promising tool for empirical research, particularly for the study of ‘new governance’ phenomena where policy is enacted and implemented by actors that span organizations, sectors, jurisdictions, and governance levels. Yet, relatively few empirical studies directly measure and model institutions in management and policy settings. In a systematic review of the literature, we identify challenges and barriers that may prevent management and policy scholars from engaging with institutional analysis, along with examples of studies that illustrate how to overcome these challenges in practice.     

Decomposing the Sources of Earnings Inequality: Assessing the Role of Reallocation

This study exploits longitudinal employer–employee matched data from the U.S. Census Bureau to investigate the contribution of worker and firm reallocation to changes in earnings inequality within and across industries between 1992 and 2003. We find that factors that cannot be measured using standard cross‐sectional data, including the entry and exit of firms and the sorting of workers across firms, are important sources of changes in earnings distributions over time. Our results also suggest that the dynamics driving changes in earnings inequality are heterogeneous across industries.