The Impact of Ethical Leadership, the Internal Audit Function, and Moral Intensity on a Financial Reporting Decision

Two elements of corporate governance??the strength of ethical executive leadership and the internal audit function (IAF hereafter)??provide guidance to accounting managers making decisions involving uncertainty. We examine the joint effect of these two factors, manipulated at two levels (strong, weak), in an experiment in which accounting professionals decide whether to book a questionable journal entry (i.e., a journal entry for which a reasonable business case can be made but there is no supporting documentation). We find that ethical leadership and the IAF interact to determine the likelihood that accountants book the entry. Specifically, accountants are less likely to book a questionable journal entry when there is a weak ethical leader and a strong IAF compared to all other conditions. In addition, we find that accountants question the appropriateness and ethicalness of the request to book an undocumented journal entry more in the weak ethical leader and strong IAF condition than in the other conditions. These results suggest that the IAF has a different impact on financial reporting decisions depending on the ethicalness of executive leadership and that a strong IAF may cause accountants to question the appropriateness and ethicalness of an undocumented journal entry when combined with weak ethical leadership. We also find that the interactive effect of ethical leadership and the IAF on an accountant??s decision is fully mediated by his/her perception of the moral intensity of the issue. Thus, accountants, who perceive greater moral intensity associated with booking the entry, are less willing to do so.     

Symposium. An innovative approach to course restructuring in leadership education. Course restructuring in leadership education. Using differentiated literature to promote professional thinking. Pedagogical and andragogical challenges in leadership studies

In his germinal writing, The Child and the Curriculum, John Dewey (1902) made the forceful case for the development of a curriculum that could integrate and valuate students' desires and needs as crucial elements of education. Similarly, Ralph Tyler's (1949) famous and widely influential curriculum rationale called for the participation of the entire community as an element of curriculum decisions, but this element of his work has been largely absent from educational discourse, especially in a time of national accountability in elementary, secondary, and even postsecondary institutions. In this symposium, we offer a position paper by Dr. Cathy Kaufman that seeks to return students' needs to the forefront of curriculum planning for an interdisciplinary audience. Our respondents, Robert Millward, Ted Pappas, and Winnie Younkin, themselves representing interdisciplinary backgrounds and interests, add their own perspectives to this intersection of leadership education, and the all‐too‐often muted voice of the student in the curriculum development process.     

A real-world,multi-site,observational study of infusion time and treatment satisfaction with rheumatoid arthritis patients treated with intravenous golimumab or infliximab

Objectives: To assess real-world infusion times for golimumab (GLM-IV) and infliximab (IFX) for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients and factors associated with treatment satisfaction.

Methods: An observational study assessed infusion time including: clinic visit duration, RA medication preparation and infusion time, and infusion process time. Satisfaction was assessed by a modified Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire for Medication (patient) and study-specific questionnaires (patient and clinic personnel). Comparative statistical testing for patient data utilized analysis of variance for continuous measures, and Fisher’s exact or Chi-square test for categorical measures. Multivariate analysis was performed for the primary time endpoints and patient satisfaction.

Results: One hundred and fifty patients were enrolled from six US sites (72 GLM-IV, 78 IFX). The majority of patients were female (80.0%) and Caucasian (88.7%). GLM-IV required fewer vials per infusion (3.7) compared to IFX (4.9; p?=?.0001). Clinic visit duration (minutes) was shorter for GLM-IV (65.1) compared to IFX (153.1; p?<?.0001), as was total infusion time for RA medication (32.8 GLM-IV, 119.5 IFX; p?<?.0001) and infusion process times (45.8 GLM-IV, 134.1 IFX; p?<?.0001). Patients treated with GLM-IV reported higher satisfaction ratings with infusion time (p?<?.0001) and total visit time (p?=?.0003). Clinic personnel reported higher satisfaction with GLM-IV than IFX specific to medication preparation time, ease of mixing RA medication, frequency of patients requiring pre-medication, and infusion time.

Limitations: Findings may not be representative of care delivery for all RA infusion practices or RA patients.

Conclusions: Shorter overall clinic visit duration, infusion process, and RA medication infusion times were observed for GLM-IV compared to IFX. A shorter duration in infusion time was associated with higher patient and clinic personnel satisfaction ratings.     

Social Indicators

This article was prepared by Helen Owens of the Institute research staff.
Until the mid-1960's it was generally accepted that gross national product provided not only a measure of economic performance but also a useful overall indicator of some aspects of human welfare. The limitations of GNP with respect to most non-market phenomena were well recognised but the implicit assumption was made that the unmeasured aspects of welfare were positively related to changes in income as recorded in national accounts statistics. However, in the last decade or so, growing recognition of social costs and problems asociated with material advancement has led economists and other social scientists to look for new approaches to the measurement of social 'progress'.¹     

Union Rules Intrude Upon the Nonunion Domain: Workplace Investigations and the NLRB

This paper examines the new legal landscape for nonunion employers who contemplate conducting investigations of alleged wrongdoing by their employees. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled that a certain right (the Weingarten right) previously guaranteed only to union members applies equally to at-will employees in nonunionized firms. As a result, all employees now possess the right to ask that a coworker be present during an investigatory interview. While the Weingarten right is sensible in a union environment, significant public policy and practical problems arise when this right is extended to the nonunion environment. This paper offers advice on managing the investigative process, given this new right, and it discusses the propriety of imposing union rules on the nonunion workplace.     

New product development in Thomson Holidays UK: The use of research

New product development in the holiday business can be seen either as the continuation of an annual cycle or in the more classic sense as product innovation. The paper is concerned with the latter and describes the varying roles of market development and contribution of research to new package holiday developments at Thomson Holidays. It is shown that, unlike the field of fast-moving consumer goods, the live product test, without any kind of pre-launch testing, is often a more appropriate and cost-effective use of research time and funding.