Should Independent Directors Have Term Limits? The Role of Experience in Corporate Governance

We examine the role of independent directors with extended tenure in board‐level governance, monitoring decisions, and advising outcomes. These directors exhibit a higher level of commitment as they attend more board meetings and take more committee memberships. Firms with a higher proportion of these directors have lower chief executive officer (CEO) pay, higher CEO turnover‐performance sensitivity, and a smaller likelihood of intentionally misreporting earnings. These firms also restrict the expansion of resources under the CEO's control as they are less likely to make acquisitions, while the acquisitions they do make are of higher quality. Efforts to impose term limits on directors may, therefore, be misguided.     

Chinese intellectual property rights? Know before you go

China's membership in the World Trade Organization further encourages foreign direct investment. Organizations establishing a multinational enterprise in China, and intending to utilize their intellectual property rights as a method of conducting their business enterprise, must be familiar with the current laws and developments regarding their protection and enforcement. This article focuses on Chinese intellectual property laws with examples of both infringements and enforcements. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Insights Regarding the Applicability of the Defining Issues Test to Advance Ethics Research with Accounting Students: A Meta-analytic Review

Numerous researchers have investigated accounting students’ levels of moral reasoning, ethical choice and judgment employing the Defining Issues Test (DIT) and using its P score as an indicator of moral reasoning. Not surprisingly, a number of DIT studies report conflicting results. Moreover, despite widespread use of the DIT, there is concern that it may not adequately measure all facets of ethical judgment (cf. Bailey et al., Behav Res Account 22(2):1–26, 2010). Thus, we endeavor to provide insight not only into the contradictory results but also about the applicability of the DIT for studying accounting students. To do so, we collect published and unpublished DIT studies employing accounting students as subjects and use meta-analysis to aggregate findings across these studies to quantify their results, examining commonly employed variables. We show significant relationships between P scores and some variables (length of professional experience, choice of major, political ideology, gender, GPA and education level) but not others (age). Further, our findings demonstrate that the DIT provides added insights when exploring questions of ethical choice, and ethics instruction, particularly when the instruction is embedded in an accounting course. Finally, we find that the level of DIT P scores reported in the studies relates to whether the study was published. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research.     

SME internationalization and performance: Growth vs. profitability

Lu and Beamish (2001) examined the effect of two internationalization strategies, exporting and foreign direct investment (FDI), on SME performance (ROA). We extend this research by examining the differential effects of these strategies on two other dimensions of SME performance: growth and ROS. We develop and test four sets of hypotheses using a sample of 164 Japanese SMEs. We find that exporting activity has a positive impact on growth, but negative impact on profitability. FDI activity has a positive relationship with growth, but a U curve relationship with profitability. Exporting activity has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between an SME’s FDI activity and firm growth, a negative moderating effect on the relationship between an SME’s FDI activity and firm profitability. An SME’s age when it starts to make FDIs has a negative moderating impact on the relationship between FDI and firm growth and profitability.     

The Effect of Overconfidence and Underconfidence on Consumer Value

Although the effect of knowledge miscalibration (i.e., the inaccuracy in subjective knowledge relative to objective knowledge) on consumer purchase decisions has been investigated, its effect in the usage stage of consumption is little understood. This paper examines the effect of knowledge miscalibration in terms of both overconfidence (i.e., when subjective knowledge is inflated) and underconfidence (i.e., when subjective knowledge is deflated) on the dimensions of consumer value (i.e., efficiency, excellence, play, and aesthetics). The paper makes the case that overconfidence and underconfidence should be treated separately as they trigger different consumption consequences. Several hypotheses are tested through two studies: a covariance‐based study (Study 1) and an experimental study (Study 2). In Study 1, overconfidence and underconfidence are measured, while in Study 2 they are experimentally manipulated. Findings of both studies show that underconfidence negatively influences efficiency, excellence, and aesthetics, and overconfidence negatively influences play. Also, Study 1 finds a negative effect of underconfidence on play and Study 2 finds a negative effect of overconfidence on excellence and aesthetics. Findings reveal that knowledge miscalibration negatively impacts consumers’ usage experiences. This implies that in designing product or service experiences suppliers benefit from ensuring that consumers achieve a reduced level of knowledge miscalibration.     

Fairytale authenticity: historic city tourism,Harry Potter,medievalism and the magical gaze

ABSTRACT

This article makes an original contribution to debates about authenticity by asking how tourist experiences of the medieval historic environment are linked to fairytales, providing a new way for tourists to imaginatively authenticate heritage. The architecture of some historic cities is preponderantly medieval, an era which is strongly associated with fairytales. Magical-historical double affectiveness has been compounded in the collective imagination by modern fairytales such as the fantasy Harry Potter and Game of Thrones which employ historic city locations and faux-medieval settings, establishing a fluid magi-heritage simulacrum. This is concretised by the appearance in many historic cities of evidence of magical placemaking and staged magical authenticity, such as wizarding shops. The study used a visual methodology to examine 14 historic cities including Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, York, and Canterbury, demonstrating how the magical gaze employs fairytale schemata to imaginatively authenticate places. The findings illustrated how heritage tourists serendipitously encountered the medieval-fairytalesque, unfolding the agency of monumental cathedrals and castles and discovering stories and the historicisation of mythology within the extraordinary-ordinary streetscape. The research findings imply that in an era when the fantasy genre is increasingly popular, the experiential authenticity of heritage tourists may be enhanced by the ‘heritage marvellous.’     

The Importance of gender Across Cultures in Ethical Decision-making

Business ethics attracts increasing attention from business practitioners and academic researchers. Concerns over fraudulent behavior keep attentionfocused on ethics in businesses. The accounting profession pays particularattention to matters of ethical judgment. The profession has adopted a strictcode of conduct and many states require the passage of an ethics exam to gaincertification. The more that is understood about the relationship of gender and ethics, the better chance of education and training programs will bedesigned to improve ethical awareness and sensitivity. Prior studies have found that personal characteristics are an important aspect of cultural norms.This study analyzes the responses of students from eight different countries toquestions on their probable actions to an ethical dilemma.     

Outward foreign direct investment by emerging market firms: A resource dependence logic

This study examines and extends the resource dependence logic of diversification for a better understanding of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) activities by emerging market firms. We contend that the diversification logic is bounded by state ownership, an important but less considered component of interdependence. Our empirical results, based on panel data analysis of Chinese listed firms, suggest that the level of interdependence between Chinese and foreign firms in China in multiple forms, including symbiotic, competitive, and partner interdependencies, is positively associated with the level of the Chinese firms' OFDI activities. However, Chinese firms with higher levels of state ownership are less susceptible to the pressures imposed by foreign firms to invest abroad. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.