Black economic empowerment,legitimacy and the value added statement: evidence from post‐apartheid South Africa

We examine why companies in South Africa voluntarily provide a value added statement (VAS). The VAS can be used by management to communicate with employees and thereby establish a record of legitimacy. Since we want to establish if the VAS is used to establish symbolic or substantive legitimacy, we examine whether production of a VAS is associated with actual performance in labour‐related areas. To measure labour‐related performance, we use an independent Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) rating. We find that BEE performance is significantly and positively related to the voluntary publication of a VAS. Our results suggest that BEE performance and disclosure of a VAS are two elements of a strategy used by South African companies to establish their substantive legitimacy with labour.     

Market risk disclosures,corporate governance structure and political connections: evidence from GCC firms

This paper investigates the joint effect of political connections, in the form of the royal family member on board, and corporate governance on the market risk disclosures of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) financial firms from 2007 to 2011. Previous research suggest that politically connected firms reduce the level of transparency in the GCC. However, we find that better corporate governance improves transparency and can be used as an effective tool in curbing the potentially adverse impact of politically connected board members on firms’ transparency. Our results have important implications for policy makers and can be generalized to other emerging markets.     

图式与英语写作的语篇信息缺失

图式是进行语篇分析的有力工具.中国学生在英文写作中,常常不知不觉地在使用汉语的逻辑思维方式和修辞概念,其话语推理方式和写作习惯不同于西方人,从而造成理解上的困难,在谋篇布局方面受汉语"迁移"的影响比较明显,中国学生其实是在用汉语的思维方式来为英语的文章布局.对于图式的掌握,可以帮助他们在写作时合理规划语篇,写出符合英语思维习惯的文章,以保持文章的连贯和流畅.     

批评性话语分析探微——以奥巴马就职演说辞为例

本文以奥巴马就职演说辞作为语料,运用批评性话语分析的理论及方法,从分类、及物性和转换三个层面阐述语篇功能与意识形态之间的互动关系。     

“明斯基时刻”之考辨

最近这场信贷危机和经济衰退之后,“明斯基时刻”作为标语在金融媒体、时事评论和学术出版物当中广泛传播。对该术语考辨后发现,源自后人发明的“明斯基时刻”尽管具有“危机拐点”和“危机过程或阶段”这两种不同含义,但它们却均是对明斯基思想的贬低乃至歪曲。该标语将明斯基的“金融不稳定性假说”简化以及曲解为单纯的“时刻”、“时段”、“融资分类法”或“非理性疯狂”,结果是,每个时期的金融危机,无论其特征如何,都可以冠之以“明斯基时刻”,而该假说所描述的动态机理却被忽视了。明斯基为我们所做出的最为重要且鼓舞人心的贡献在于“明斯基动态”,即他对现代金融化经济变得如此不稳定的内生动态机制的理解,而这种洞见如今却依然游离于主流思想之外,饱受忽视甚至压制。     

英汉词汇衔接对比与翻译

词汇衔接是实现语篇连贯的重要手段。词汇衔接有重述和搭配两种主要方式。好的衔接词汇的翻译不但可以实现译文语篇的连贯,而且还可再现原作的文体风格。     

Are CEOs incentivized to shelter good information?

Prior theoretical studies on the agency problem hold different opinions from the empirical literature on two questions: (a) Are CEOs incentivized to shelter good information? (b) Are CEOs incentivized to evenly shelter good and bad information? This paper demonstrates that CEOs with high pay‐performance incentives tend to successfully shelter good information rather than bad information. Furthermore, CEOs with high pay‐performance incentives shelter good information by using real earnings management and textual manipulation but not accrual‐based earnings management. These asymmetric information manipulation behaviors help to decrease corporate cash flow volatility as well as the jump and crash risk on the stock market.     

Social media influencers: A route to brand engagement for their followers

Social Media Influencers (SMIs) are micro‐celebrities with large followings on social media platforms who engage consumers and hold the potential to promote customer‐brand relationships across different product categories. SMIs have an existing relationship of trust with consumers, and consumers seek out the content created by SMIs for valuable information and advice. This study explores the process of brand engagement between consumers and brands in the digital content marketing environment, specifically examining the research question: Do SMIs act as a route to brand engagement for their followers? The context for this study is the beauty community on YouTube; over 60,000 user comments were analyzed through automated text analysis. This study is among the first to provide empirical evidence that SMIs do act as a route to brand engagement through the three dimensions of cognitive processing, affection and activation.     

Non-GAAP Earnings and the Earnings Quality Trade-off

Using a large sample of earnings press releases by Australian firms, we compare multiple attributes of non-GAAP earnings measures with their closest GAAP equivalent. We find that, on average, non-GAAP earnings are more persistent, smoother, more value relevant, and have higher predictive power than their closest GAAP equivalent. However, the same set of non-GAAP earnings disclosures are also less conservative and less timely than their closest GAAP equivalent. The results are consistent with non-GAAP earnings measures reflecting a reversal of the trade-off between the valuation and stewardship roles of accounting inherent in accounting standards and the way they are applied. We also find that differences in several of these attributes between GAAP and non-GAAP earnings are more evident in larger firms, firms with lower market-to-book ratios, firms with a higher proportion of independent directors, and firms that report profits rather than losses. Our evidence is consistent with the argument that accounting standards impose significant amounts of conditional conservatism at some cost to the valuation role of accounting information. Non-GAAP earnings measures can therefore be seen as a response to the challenges faced by a single GAAP performance measure in satisfying the competing demands of value relevance and stewardship.     

Firm life cycle and the disclosure of estimates and judgments in goodwill impairment tests: Evidence from Australia

The goodwill impairment disclosure literature examines the association between firm-and country-level factors and the disclosure of estimates and judgments used in the goodwill impairment test under International Accounting Standard 36. Although the accounting literature provides competing predictions about the relation between firm life cycle and these disclosures, prior studies did not explore the role of firm life cycle in these disclosures. This paper fills in this gap in the literature, and documents that, in Australia, these disclosures vary by life cycle stages and that firm size moderates this association. We, however, find that the differences are more pronounced for some disclosure items than for others.