Contesting authentic practice and ethical authority in adventure tourism

This paper examines the discourses of authenticity and ethics employed by adventure tourists regarding the use of the natural environment. In one case, full-time traveling rock climbers use their dedication to the sport and annual visits to the Red River Gorge as evidence for their authoritative voice on ethical climbing practice. While they identify the growing numbers of leisure climbers as a problem for sustainability, many also take up temporary employment as guides and are directly involved in the introduction of new climbers to the area. In another case, two groups of wilderness enthusiasts – “ADK 46ers” and “Summit Stewards” – lament the environmental and social impacts of other recreational users in the Adirondack Park. Despite being visitors themselves, Summit Stewards and 46ers use their sense of place and knowledge of Adirondack history and ecology to substantiate their authority as purveyors of ethical practice. In both cases, senses of responsibility are inspired by senses of place, but are articulated through notions of authenticity and used as justification for ethical authority. While validating their presence in these outdoor spaces, the use of such rhetoric also minimizes their own impacts yielding further tensions among user groups.     

Implicit recourse and credit card securitizations: What do fraud losses reveal?

In this paper, we develop and test a model of implicit recourse in asset-backed securitizations. Fraud losses on securitized assets are generally incurred by the bank and do not affect the performance of securitization trusts, while credit losses do affect the trust’s performance and are potentially borne by the owner of the securitized assets. Thus, the classification of losses as either fraud or credit losses provides a potential avenue of implicit recourse to manipulate the performance of securitization trusts. Using annual data from 2001 to 2006, we find that the performance of the credit card securitization portfolio is negatively related to fraud losses reported by the bank. We examine these results in light of the proposed Basel II capital rules and argue that a bank’s incentive to provide implicit recourse will increase under the anticipated regime.     

Management Guidance Pre‐ and Post‐Restatement

We examine whether the quality of restating firms’ management guidance differs in periods before and after restatement announcements. While characteristics of restating firms and the consequences of restatement have been a central topic in accounting and auditing research, the quality of management guidance around restatements is less well understood. We consider two competing characterizations of the link between management forecast accuracy and bias and restatement (an event that tends to signal poor financial controls): “Forecast–Opportunism Explanation” and “Forecast–Ability Explanation”. Under the Forecast–Opportunism Explanation, pre‐restatement weaknesses in financial controls enable managers to manipulate earnings toward forecasts and to meet or exceed opportunistically biased forecasts, and the post‐restatement strengthening of financial controls constrains opportunistic behavior. Under the Forecast–Ability Explanation, pre‐restatement weaknesses in financial controls impede managers’ ability to issue accurate forecasts, and post‐restatement improvements remove impediments so that the accuracy of forecasts improves; forecast bias remains unaffected. Evidence indicates that before a restatement, restating firms’ forecasts are more accurate and relatively more downwardly biased than control firms’ forecasts. Post‐restatement, restating firms have less accurate and less downwardly biased management guidance. Our overall results are consistent with the Forecast–Opportunism Explanation.     

The influence of relative values of outside director stock options on firm strategic risk from a multiagent perspective

Prior work has examined the effects of absolute levels of outside director stock option grants on risk behavior without recognizing that relative stock option values could differentially affect risk taking. Drawing from the house money effect perspective, we extend this literature by examining how positive deviation from prior outside director option grants values influences firm strategic risk. Additionally we draw from the behavioral agency model and the power literature to develop a multiagent contingency framework suggesting the effect of positive director pay deviation depends on the incentives and power of CEOs reflected in CEO stock ownership and CEO duality, respectively. Our empirical results indicate positive pay deviation has a positive effect on firm risk taking while high ownership and duality independently and jointly weaken this base relationship. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Financial Costs of Caring in the British Labour Market: Is There a Wage Penalty for Workers in Caring Occupations?

Recent evidence from the USA suggests that people engaged in occupations involving providing care for others, such as childcare and teaching, suffer a wage penalty. After taking into account job and individual characteristics such as level of education and work experience, people in these occupations in the American study earned about 6 per cent less than their peers in other types of occupation. However, we do not yet know if people working in similar occupations in other countries also suffer the same degree of disadvantage. The issue is important because, despite the perception that people in caring jobs place a relatively low weight on the level of remuneration when making career decisions, a number of studies have shown clear evidence of an association between pay and the propensity to give up working in a caring occupation. There are implications too for social inequality as many caring jobs are done by women and associated wage penalties could contribute to the persistent gender gap in pay. This study compares and contrasts the predictions of neoclassical economics, cultural feminist theory and social closure theory. Data are taken from 17 waves of the British Household Panel Survey and include a total of 23,773 individuals, giving 110,677 person‐year observations. These data are analysed using multi‐level linear regression. The results show clear evidence of a statistically significant wage penalty associated with working in some caring occupations. Those occupations requiring lower levels of educational qualification, such as nursing assistants and auxiliaries, are particularly hard‐hit by the wage penalty. On the other hand, some occupations, such as medicine and teaching, have fared better than comparable non‐caring occupations over the same period. We discuss the implications of these results for the gender gap in pay, poverty, social inequality and the future supply of caring workers.     

Supporting ALARP decision making by cost benefit analysis and multiattribute utility theory

Current guidance in the UK and elsewhere indicate upper and target risk limits for the operation of nuclear plant in terms of individual risk per annum. ‘As low as reasonably practicable’ (ALARP) arguments are used to justify the acceptance or rejection of policies that lead to risk changes between these limits. The suitability of cost‐benefit analysis (CBA) and multiattribute utility theory (MAUT) are assessed for performing ALARP (‘as low as reasonably possible’) assessments, in particular within the nuclear industry. Four problems stand out in current CBA applications to ALARP, concerning the determination of prices of safety gains or detriments, the valuation of group and individual risk, calculations using ‘disproportionality’, and the use of discounting to trade‐off risks through time. This last point has received less attention in the past but is important because of the growing interest in risk‐informed regulation in which policies extend over several timeframes and distribute the risk unevenly over these, or in policies that lead to a nonuniform risk within a single timeframe (such as maintenance policies). The problems associated with giving quantitative support to such decisions are discussed. It is argued that multiattribute utility methods (MAUT) provide an alternative methodology to CBA which enable the four problems described above to be addressed in a more satisfactory way. Through sensitivity analysis MAUT can address the perceptions of all stakeholder groups, facilitating constructive discussion and elucidating the key points of disagreement. It is also argued that by being explicitly subjective it provides an open, auditable and clear analysis in contrast to the illusory objectivity of CBA. CBA seeks to justify a decision by using a common basis for weights (prices), while MAUT recognizes that different parties may want to give different valuations. It then allows the analyst to explore the ways in which different parties might (or might not) come to the same conclusion even when weighting items differently.     

Firm characteristics and audit committees complying with ’best practice‘ membership guidelines

This study investigates demand and supply characteristics associated with firms that voluntarily established audit committees meeting ‘best practice’ membership guidelines. We focus on a set of best practice criteria rather than on the separate elements of the best practice criteria as in past studies. We conduct our tests using a sample of New Zealand listed companies that, relative to firms in other capital markets, are smaller and have more concentrated ownership. This setting differs from prior research because we expect the costs of voluntarily achieving best practice to be reasonably high. The results show that demand factors are not significantly related to the presence of an audit committee that conforms with best practice membership guidelines. However, supply factors (i.e. those firms with larger and more independent boards) are more likely to form audit committees that meet best practice. These results suggest that compliance costs will be greater for firms with smaller and less independent boards of directors if they are required to comply with best practice requirements.     

International compliance with new Basel Accord principles for risk governance

We assess international compliance with the Basel Committee's 2010 guidance on governance of banking organisations. Based on an extensive examination of regulatory documents in selected advanced economies, we find that reform is incomplete in jurisdictions most affected by the financial crisis, and with the largest financial centres. In contrast, other countries less affected by the financial crisis have enacted risk governance reforms as protection against potential future contagion. We provide insights for policy‐makers charged with improving governance at banks, and a richer understanding for international regulators as they revise the guidelines and aim for greater compliance at the national level.     

The limits of the wage impact of discrimination

In spite of almost 40 years of active enforcement efforts by the EEOC, as well as the strong intervention by the plaintiff bar, the most popular benchmark by which we measure the influence of prejudice on wages paid to female and minority workers has changed very little. This paper maintains that to a large extent this seeming immunity of discriminatory wage gaps to the legal remedies provided by Title VII results from the mismeasurement of those effects. An alternative to the standard Oaxaca decomposition of the wage gap is offered which allows us to put plausible ranges around the true impact of antidiscrimination laws. Not only does this reduce the residual impact of the discrimination that appears to withstand Title VII remedies, it also suggests that the pre‐Title VII impact of discrimination on wages accounted for little of the gap observed at the time of its passage. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Strategic and Business Planning Practices of Fast Growth Family Firms

Fast-growth family firms were surveyed about their business and strategic planning practices. Of the 65 fast-growth family firms surveyed, the majority prepare written formal plans. The business plans are in sufficient detail to enable the business to tie planning to actual performance and to adjust management compensation accordingly. The majority of the firms regularly share information with employees regarding comparisons between actual company performance results and goals or planned performance. Further, the majority of the firms describe their business strategy as a high quality producer strategy rather than as a low-cost or time-based strategy. Further, when bringing new products to market, these fast-growth family firms adopt a first mover or early follower strategy. Implications of these findings for growth-oriented family firms are presented.