Firm Opacity and the Clustering of Stock Prices: the Case of Financial Intermediaries

Journal of Financial Services Research - In this study, we develop and test the hypothesis that because of opacity, the stock prices of financial firms will cluster on round fractions more than the...     

Examining the Boundaries of Ethical Leadership: The Harmful Effect of Co-worker Social Undermining on Disengagement and Employee Attitudes

In recent years, scholars have sought to investigate the impact that ethical leaders can have within organisations. Yet, only a few theoretical perspectives have been adopted to explain how ethical leaders influence subordinate outcomes. This study therefore draws on social rules theory (SRT) to extend our understanding of the mechanisms linking ethical leadership to employee attitudes. We argue that ethical leaders reduce disengagement, which in turn promotes higher levels of job satisfaction and organisational commitment, as well as lower turnover intentions. Co-worker social undermining is examined as a moderator of the relationship between ethical leadership and disengagement, as we suggest that it is difficult for ethical leaders to be effective when co-worker undermining prevails. To test the proposed model, questionnaires were administered to 460 nurses in Romanian hospital settings over three time points separated by two-week intervals and the hypotheses were tested using generalised multilevel structural equation modeling (GSEM) with STATA. The findings revealed that ethical leadership has a beneficial effect on employee attitudes by reducing disengagement. However, the relationship between ethical leadership and disengagement was moderated by co-worker social undermining, such that when undermining was higher, the significance of the mediated relationships disappeared. These results suggest that while ethical leaders can promote positive employee attitudes, their effectiveness is reduced in situations where co-worker undermining exists.

     

Intermittent exporting: unusual business or business as usual?

Review of World Economics - We construct an empirically supported definition of incidental and perennial exporting and investigate to what extent incidental exporting is a steady-state of firms, to...     

Targets' Accounting Conservatism and the Gains from Acquisition*

We present evidence on the effects of target firms' accounting conservatism in a merger and acquisition transaction. Conservatism is distinct from other accounting or accrual quality constructs examined in prior work. Its unique features can lead to potential benefits for both the targets and the acquirers. The use of conservatism by targets reduces acquirers' risks of acquiring underperforming assets or overpaying for well-performing assets. In addition, targets' conservatism results in greater production of verifiable information that can help the acquirers better estimate and realize synergies of the combined firm. Consistent with these arguments, we find that firms with greater accounting conservatism are more likely to receive a bid. We also find that targets' conservatism increases the deal premium and the announcement returns of both the targets and the acquirers, respectively. Overall, these results indicate that conservatism provides benefits to both sellers and buyers of equity in an acquisition transaction.     

Corporate Social Reporting Practice: Evidence from Listed Companies in Bangladesh

This article presents an empirical investigation into the corporate social reporting practices of listed companies from Bangladesh, where corporate social reporting is a matter of voluntary disclosure. Analysis of annual reports published in 2007 reveals that only 15.45% of listed companies made such disclosures. This article presents an extensive survey of the contents, form, nature, and extent of corporate social reporting practices of listed companies. Analysis over a wide range of industries reveals that companies in the banking sector secure the highest rank in terms of corporate social reporting; three fourths of all disclosures are generalized qualitative statements without any attempt at attestation; more than one half of the disclosures are located in the director's report; and the mean amount of disclosures was less than half a page.     

Voice and power: Feminist governance as transnational justice in the globalized value chain

Women constitute the majority of workers in global value chains (GVCs), yet few GVC scholars focus on the governance of gender. Based on an investigation (2013–2017) started after the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, this article presents “voice to the subordinate strata” as the first principle of feminist governance in the GVC. Findings reveal the matrix of power, which includes the International Labour Organization and the state that underpins the political economy of the Southern factory. This study provides a transformative model of feminist governance as transnational justice. As the relational ethic that links justice in the workplace to the quality of a woman's life, feminist governance is also the moral economy of the GVC wherein the woman worker is valued as a citizen in the global economy.     

Islamic legal methodologies and Shariah screening standards: Application in the Indonesian stock market

This article provides a framework for applying the principles of Islamic legal methodology to determine the optimal Shariah screening standards for Islamic equity markets. It is argued that using maslahah mursalah (unrestricted benefit) is an appropriate method for identifying appropriate financial standards and its principles stipulate that the benchmark that yields the best economic returns to investors should be chosen. The methodological framework is applied to the Indonesia equity market where the economic implications of the Islamic stock screening standards of the Indonesian Islamic Shariah Stock Index and four global indices are assessed. Portfolios are constructed by applying Islamic stock screening standards for each of the indices by using data on 377 stocks listed in the Indonesian stock market for 5 years. The performances measured by the Sharpe ratio, Treynor index, and Jensen alpha reveal that the Dow Jones Islamic Index screening criteria performs the best. Based on the method of maslahah mursalah, the article recommends using the screening standard of this index in the Indonesian stock market to maximize benefits to investors. While the approach used in this article is applied to Islamic equity markets, the methodological framework can also be used for other similar cases in Islamic finance.     

It is not about what you read,but how you read it: the effects of sequencing rational and emotional messages on corporate and product brand attitudes

The study aims to examine the effects of message sequencing on attitudinal responses, namely on the effects of rational to emotional and emotional to rational message sequences on consumer attitudes toward the corporate and product brand. A between-subjects experiment was conducted using a stratified random sample. Participants were exposed to advertisements that communicate marketing messages either in a rational to emotional sequence or in an emotional to rational sequence for a product advertised by an organization. All attitudinal responses to the corporate and product brand were collected through a questionnaire that was given at the end of the experiment. The findings suggest advertisements that communicate marketing messages in an emotional to rational sequence produced more favorable attitudes toward the product brand among consumers as compared to advertisements that communicate in a rational to emotional sequence. However, no significant differences were found on consumer attitudes toward the corporate brand. These results remain true regardless of gender.     

The relationship between self-disclosure style and attitudes to responsibility accounting

This study investigates the relationship between self-disclosure and attitudes to responsibility accounting. The results indicate that (1) factor analysis of an existing self-disclosure instrument replicated a five factor solution and (2) reported self-disclosure was directly related to the attitudes to a responsibility accounting system because such a system requires making public one's performance. More specifically, the attitudes to responsibility accounting were found to be positively related to the amount and control of depth factors of self-disclosure and to be negatively related to the positive-negative, honesty-accuracy and intended disclosure factors.