Client-firm market reaction to regulatory action against a major accounting firm

This study assesses the audit client firm share price reactions to a disclosure that the California State Board of Accountancy considered revoking Ernst & Young's (E&Y) license to practice in California due to alleged gross negligence in the Lincoln Savings and Loan fraud scandal. The insurance hypothesis and/or the audit quality explanation justify the expectation of significant client-firm share price reactions. We find limited empirical support that the disclosure of the revocation event is associated with negative market responses for E&Y’s clients. Results also indicate that auditor-supplied insurance and audit quality are more important for client firms experiencing financial distress, higher growth rates, and higher return variability.     

Towards Ending the Silence: Working Women Caring for Children with Chronic Illness

This paper presents stories from women who work and care for a child with a significant chronic illness or disability. The purpose of this paper is to move towards ending the silence on their lives. A three-phase emergent research design responds to the question: What is life like for a full-time worker who is concurrently the primary carer of a chronically ill child? This paper considers the theory of Silencing the Self (Jack, 1991) in relation to the emergent themes of “Otherness” and “Doing it All.” As in Jack’s study, these women also engaged in silencing of the self. However, unlike the respondents in Jack’s study, these women did not demonstrate feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness for the future, nor were they alone in contributing to their silence. Indeed, many experienced silencing behaviors from others around them, and many rallied against the silence, not accepting that their burden should continue. Consideration of Jack’s theory is made to point out the distinctions between the women in this study and Jack’s study, and analytical commentary is provided to demonstrate the relevance of this analysis in light of the current debates surrounding the Work–Home Conflict and the rising levels of informal care provided by women in our communities.     

Leadership in the 21st Century: Understanding Global Terrorism

What should organization leaders (in both business and government, in all countries of the world) know about terrorism? They should know that terrorism has a deep history with instances of terrorist-type activities being recorded in the Bible, presently involving many of the world's countries with all continents but Antarctica recording one or more terrorist attacks in the last year, and has many facets to examine. Those parts include knowing about the perpetrators and their goals, the targets, the weapons, the events, and the effects of those events. Leaders should understandthe background of global terrorism and also how to respond to the negative effects of terrorist events. Presently, the United States is considered the top target in the World and is likely to be for the foreseeable future. Al Qaeda is probably the top Foreign Terrorist Organization aiming at the U.S. with intentions of using more lethal weapons and producing severe damage. The future will probably see a significant reduction in ideological terrorism and increases in single-issue terrorist groups attacking major cities with weapons of mass destruction. Further progress in understanding terrorism and its effects on business should come more from quality academic research in business (rather than from conjecture and opinions as at present) and from further quality academic research in other fields such as history, political science, and psychology.     

Time Management in the Cost Evaluation of Limited Resource Programs

Planning, implementing and evaluating an intervention program all hinge around time. A program’s actions are planned according to a forecast of the time required to achieve certain objectives, and the program’s implementation among a group of users is conditioned by its real time application. Similarly, program evaluation needs to take into consideration the time resource when analysing objectively the extent to which a program’s targets have been reached, and when conducting a cost analysis of the program. In limited resource programs, any disparity between the scheduled time and the real time available can have serious consequences, and even undermine a program’s efficacy. Time management, above all where resources are limited, is therefore the linchpin in the planning, implementation and evaluation of an intervention program. In this study we analyse the utility of PERT and CPM as basic tools for the efficient time management of limited resource programs.     

A Study on the Productivities of IT Capital and Computer Labor: Firm-level Evidence from Taiwan’s Banking Industry

The current paper extends the non-neutral stochastic frontier production function—which belongs to the class of a one-step procedure as defined by Wang and Schmidt (2002) and developed by Huang and Liu (1994)—from a cross-sectional setting to a panel data modeling. Using a newly-surveyed dataset from Taiwan’s commercial banks on their investments in information and communication technologies (IT), I find that IT capital and computer labor tend to exhibit higher productivities than their non-IT and non-computer counterparts, that IT capital has positive impacts on the marginal productivities of computer labor and borrowed funds, and that the mean technical efficiency is around 87.7%. Evidence is found that the total factor productivity of the banking sector grew at an average rate of 0.28% per annum, albeit fluctuating, for the past 8 years.     

Experimenting with Supply Chain Learning (SCL): Supplier Diversity and Ethnic Minority Businesses

This paper reports on an innovative UK-based ‘Supply Chain Learning’ (SCL) initiative to encourage the corporate sector to consider supplier diversity in respect of ethnic minority businesses. This follows academic and policy interest in programmes to empower ethnic minority enterprises to achieve breakout to mainstream markets and business growth. The first phase of the initiative, entitled Supplier Development East Midlands (SDEM) is examined. By adopting an inter-organisational action learning approach, some of the key attributes of the programme are delineated, focusing on the recurrent action-reflection cycle taking place in a learning group comprising SDEM, LPOs (Large Purchasing Organisations) and small EMSs (Ethnic Minority Suppliers).     

Synergies and price trends in sequential auctions

In this paper we consider sequential second-price auctions where an individual's value for a bundle of objects is either greater than the sum of the values for the objects separately (positive synergy) or less than the sum (negative synergy). We show that the existence of positive synergies implies declining expected prices. When synergies are negative, expected prices are increasing. There are several corollaries. First, the seller is indifferent between selling the objects simultaneously as a bundle or sequentially when synergies are positive. Second, when synergies are negative, the expected revenue generated by the simultaneous auction can be larger or smaller than the expected revenue generated by the sequential auction. In addition, in the presence of positive synergies, an option to buy the additional object at the price of the first object is never exercised in the symmetric equilibrium and the seller's revenue is unchanged. Under negative synergies, in contrast, if there is an equilibrium where the option is never exercised, then equilibrium prices may either increase or decrease and, therefore, the net effect on the seller's revenue of the introduction of an option is ambiguous. Finally, we examine a special case with asymmetric players who have distinct synergies. In this example, even if one player has positive synergies and the other has negative synergies, it is still possible for expected prices to decline.Received: 12 December 2000, Accepted: 1 May 2002, JEL Classification: D44Flavio Menezes acknowledges the financial support from ARC (Grant A000000055) and CNPq. Monteiro acknowledges the financial support from CNPq and the hospitality of CERSEM where part of this paper has been written. We thank Richard Engelbrecht-Wiggans, Peter Sørensen and two anonymous referees for useful comments.     

Discrete discrepancy in factorial designs

Discrepancy measure can be utilized as a uniformity measure for comparing factorial designs. A so-called discrete discrepancy has been used to evaluate the uniformity of factorials. In this paper we give linkages among uniformity measured by the discrete discrepancy, generalized minimum aberration, minimum moment aberration and uniformity measured by the centered L₂-discrepancy/the wrap-around L₂-discrepancy. These close linkages provide a significant justification for the discrete discrepancy used to measure uniformity of factorial designs.     

Legal Protection From Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation: Findings From Litigation

Since 1964 with the enactment of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the courts have held that although Title VII prohibits discrimination because of sex, sex has been construed to mean gender, but gender and sexual orientation are different. Traditionally sexual discrimination has been interpreted to protect women in male/female encounters. Thus protection for homosexuals based on sexual orientation has not been covered. However, there are some interesting aspects to the concept of discrimination due to sexual orientation, including defining same-sex harassment as being harassment, equal opportunity harassment, and sexual stereotypes. In addition, how homosexuals may be protected under state laws, unions, company policy, and the constitution is discussed as well as protection for public sector employees. An analysis of 98 litigated cases alleging discrimination based on same sex or sexual orientation harassment led to the development of a logit model predicting future case outcomes based on case characteristics. These are type of harassment, physical contact, type of employees, and whether there was equal opportunity harassment. Implications from the study are that the issues of protection from discrimination are complex and one cannot necessarily assume that this type of discrimination is not protected. Recommendations for more effective managerial actions are provided.     

The Arbitration of Labor Disputes in China Today: Definition and Implications

Over the past 12 years China has strongly encouraged the use of a formalized arbitration process to resolve, among other conflict areas, labor disputes. Using a formal resolution process is meant to calm labor unrest by giving employees both individual and collective voices in workplace issues. Ultimately, China recognizes that, as did the United States with passage of the National Labor Relations Act, giving employees voice quells potential social revolution and helps business by making use of employee ideas while attracting the best employees. This paper discusses some history of the Chinese labor dispute resolution process and its specific provisions promulgated in two laws and a set of regulations. Strengths and weaknesses of the process are enumerated and the importance of the process to foreign investors, employers, and employees is laid out.