Making sense of complex data using interactive data visualization

An important role for accountants today is to provide decision support to senior management by assisting them in the analysis of large, complex data sets. Interactive data visualization (IDV) facilitates this process by allowing users to navigate, select, and display data via an easy-to-use interface often used as a component of data analytics. Given the increasing popularity of IDV as a tool for making sense of complex data, it is important that accountants become familiar with and learn how to use this technology. This case provides a hands-on opportunity to organize complex accounting data to create IDVs for decision makers to use. Further, the case enables students to understand the potential impact of IDVs on preparers and users of accounting information. Students will assume the role of a division controller in a hypothetical company and create an IDV to assist the chief executive officer (CEO) in decision making.     

Supply Chain Integrity: A Key to Sustainable Supply Chain Management

As stakeholders continue to increasingly hold firms accountable for environmental and social performance in their supply chains, the importance of understanding how firms can be more sustainable becomes more prescient. Based on the underlying premise of stakeholder theory that business and ethics decisions are intertwined, the current research introduces the concept of supply chain integrity (SCI) to explore how the interdependence of business and ethics decisions can lead to improvements in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices. Exploratory analysis employing secondary data sources in an elastic net (EN) logistic regression provides support for the proposed construct, by providing preliminary empirical evidence that SCI, measured through two subdimensions of structural and moral SCI, can be linked to firm sustainability. The research contributes to the supply chain management literature by: (1) introducing the concept of SCI; (2) performing an exploratory econometric analysis to provide initial validity of the SCI construct; and (3) providing a research agenda to guide further research on the concept of SCI and its role in SSCM.     

Early internet IPOs versus subsequent entrants

This paper examines whether investors in early Internet IPOs earned superior returns to those who invested in later entrants. We document three differences between early public firms in a new Internet technology and their followers: underpricing, operating characteristics at the IPO, and stock price performance after the IPO. We find that there is value in going public relatively early in a new Internet technology. Specifically, long-term returns are significantly higher for the early entrants. We also find evidence, consistent with previous studies that examine hot IPO markets, that the early public firms have better operating characteristics at the IPO than later entrants.     

Social entrepreneurship: towards conceptualisation

The marketing in strategy dialogue and the emerging marketing/entrepreneurship interface paradigm stress the need for marketers to research entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneur‐ship, the entrepreneurship leading to the establishment of new social enterprises and the continued innovation in existing ones, is much discussed but little understood and given the increasing importance of such organisations should be addressed. This paper conceptualises social entrepreneurship as a multidimensional construct involving the expression of entrepreneurially virtuous behaviour to achieve the social mission, a coherent unity of purpose and action in the face of moral complexity, the ability to recognise social value‐creating opportunities and key decision‐making characteristics of innovativeness, proactiveness and risk‐taking. The paper discusses implications for policy and practice and concludes with a consideration of theoretical issues and directions for future research. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

A bell system view of videotex

Within the last few years videotex has attracted considerable attention. Unfortunately, but as frequently is the case with novel services that are still evolving, a precise definition of videotex is somewhat difficult to obtain. To some people the term videotex applies to a wide variety of time-shared computer services for the home and business market, while to others, the term videotex is very specific perhaps best exemplified by the UK Prestel service. In its most narrow and specific meaning, videotex is a subset of online, time-shared computer services. It utilizes the home TV set for display to access a large, central database of frames of general information in colour with graphics. The database is organized in a tree fashion, and the main target is the home market.     

USING DIVIDEND POLICY AND MANAGERIAL OWNERSHIP TO REDUCE AGENCY COSTS

In this study we examine dividends and chief executive officer (CEO) stock ownership as interrelated mechanisms that may be used to reduce agency costs. We find a significant nonmonotonic relation between dividend yield and CEO stock ownership. Our evidence shows that until the CEO becomes entrenched, increased executive stock ownership reduces agency costs and decreases dividend yield. Beyond that point, increased stock ownership increases dividend yield. Whether additional stock ownership can reduce agency costs depends upon the CEO's degree of control in the firm.     

A structural assessment of the original and a modified version of the CAD scale

Validation of Cohen's CAD scale was attempted on a sample similar to that used in the scale's original development. Results were not in accord with the underlying theory. This prompted an attempt to refine the CAD instrument by deletion of ineffective items. The revised scale was examined for reliability and validity. Results were sufficiently weak to suggest that marketers should have diminished confidence in applying CAD as a measure of interpersonal orientation and should initiate development of other approaches for personality assessment.