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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between voluntary disclosure of intangibles and financial analysts’ earnings forecasts properties.

Disclosures about intangible assets were hand-collected through content analysis of annual reports of a sample of US non-financial firms, while analysts’ earnings forecasts properties were collected from Bloomberg Professional database. The authors relied on correlation and multivariate regression analyses to test the research hypotheses.

The results show that increased intangible disclosures affect analysts’ earnings forecasts accuracy, dispersion, and favourable consensus recommendations. However, this effect varies according to the nature of intangible assets.

The results may be of interest to different market participants such as corporate managers, financial analysts, and standards setting bodies that recently published guidelines on voluntary disclosure of intangibles.

This study develops a new comprehensive index to measure the content of narrative disclosures about a large number of intangibles, such as human, structural, and relational assets. The findings contribute to the current debate on the value-relevance of narrative disclosures on intangibles to investors and financial analysts.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on how climate change risk reporting might evolve in various world regions in the post COVID-19 pandemic era.

Using a multiple-case study approach and adopting an institutional theory lens, we assess whether the pandemic is likely to strengthen or weaken institutional pressures for climate change risk disclosures and predict how climate-related risk reporting will evolve post-pandemic.

The authors find that climate change risk reporting is likely to evolve differently according to geographical location. The authors predict that disclosure levels will increase in regions with ambitious climate policy and where economic stimulus packages support sustainable economic recovery. Where there has been a weakening of environmental commitments and economic stimulus packages support resource intensive business, climate change risk reporting will stagnate or even decline. The authors discuss the scenarios for climate change risk reporting expected to play out in different parts of the world.

The authors contribute to the nascent literature on climate change risk disclosure and identify future directions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the link between ownership structure, earnings management (EM) preceding mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and the acquiring firm's subsequent long‐term market performance.

The authors measure the magnitude of discretionary current accruals using two methodologies, that of Teoh et al. and that of Kothari et al. The latter methodology is used to control for the presence of extreme performance prior to the event. The calendar‐time Fama‐French three‐factor model was used to evaluate long‐term stock performance and to minimize potential problems related to the cross‐sectional dependence of the returns.

It was found that firms using stock as a financing medium exhibit significant positive discretionary accruals during the year preceding the M&A and during the year of the acquisition. It was also documented that voting right concentration and control‐enhancing mechanisms are not associated with any significant level of earnings management. Finally, a negative association was found between EM and abnormal stock returns over a three‐year period following the acquisition.

These results suggest that the concentrated ownership alignment effect dominates the entrenchment motives and acts as a deterrent mechanism to prevent controlling shareholders from managing earnings in stock‐financed M&A.

The authors’ results highlight the importance of maintaining good legal and extra‐legal protection of minority shareholders. Regulators can play an important role in preventing dominant shareholders from engaging in opportunistic EM in stock‐financed M&A.

The paper extends prior literature by taking a closer look at dominant shareholders’ motivations to manage earnings in stock‐financed M&A. Large shareholders have strong incentives to manage earnings upward prior to stock‐financed transactions to limit the dilution of their controlling position.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between board of directors' independence and executive compensation disclosures transparency.

The paper examines compensation disclosure practices of a sample of 181 firms listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Board independence from management is assessed through an aggregate score which takes into account the proportion of independent directors, board leadership structure (i.e. CEO is the board chairperson), and the existence and independence of board committees. A cross‐sectional regression analysis is used to examine the relationship between board independence and the extent of compensation disclosure.

The paper finds that board independence from management is positively related to the transparency of executive compensation‐related information. In addition, this study documents a positive (negative) relation between firm size, US cross‐listing, growth opportunities (leverage) and the extent of executive compensation disclosure.

The study's results provide support to the managerial opportunism hypothesis in executive compensation. These findings highlight the importance of the board of directors as an effective governance mechanism which limits managerial rent‐seeking in the design as well as the disclosure of executive compensation practices.

This paper extends prior disclosure studies by examining the impact of board characteristics on the transparency of executive compensation disclosures in a principles‐based governance regime. Furthermore, executive compensation disclosure provides an interesting setting in which to examine the ability of the directors to act independently from managers in a conflict of interests situation.

Accounting research has emphasized target and bidder managers' incentives to manipulate earnings during corporate control contests. However, prior studies examining earnings management by takeover targets have obtained mixed results. Moreover, the existing evidence is mainly based on US data and hostile mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions. The purpose of this study is to examine earnings management by friendly takeover targets in the year preceding the deal announcement in Switzerland.

The paper examines earnings management practices of a sample of 50 Swiss firms that were targets of a friendly takeover proposition during the period 1990‐2002. Discretionary accruals are used as a measure of earnings management. It uses a matching approach and a cross‐sectional regression analysis to test the hypothesis of earnings management by takeover targets.

The paper expands and provides further international insights to the existing literature through the investigation of earnings management by takeover targets managers in a European setting and in a friendly corporate control environment.

These empirical findings document the existence of a significant downward earnings management during the year preceding the transaction. These results suggest that earnings management incentives may differ between negotiated friendly and hostile disciplinary transactions.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the optimal profit-and-loss sharing (PLS)-based contract when market frictions occur.

This paper opts for an adverse selection analysis and Monte Carlo simulation to assess the less risky contract for the principal and the agent when musharakah, mudarabah and venture capital financings are used in imperfect markets. Furthermore, this framework enables us to capture the level of market frictions that the principal can bear and the level of audit that he/she may undertake to mitigate bankruptcy.

The simulation results reveal that Musharakah is the less risky contract for the principal compared to Mudarabah and venture capital when the shock is low and high. Furthermore, our findings indicate that the increase of market frictions engender higher audit cost and profit-sharing ratios. The increase of the safety index in the case of high shock is most likely attributed to the increase of the audit parameter for all contracts to mitigate the selfish behavior of the agent. Accordingly, the principal tends to require a higher profit-sharing ratio to compensate for the severer information asymmetry.

This paper has two main limits. First, the results were not compared to real data because the latter are not available. Second, this paper is a general framework to determine the less risky contract for the principal and does not consider the firm and sectoral characteristics. However, it can be extended in various ways where stress can be put on conflicts of interest between the principal and the agent with the aim to determine the contract that aligns their interests. In addition, the examination of firm dynamics in the case of equity and debt financing can provide further arguments for economic agents regarding the value of the firm, the growth rate and the lifetime of the project when information is asymmetrically distributed.

The findings shed some light on the necessity of the Islamic finance experts to re-think of the promotion of Musharakah because it dominates the two other contracts when market frictions occur.

Although Maghrabi and Mirakhor (2015), Alanzi and Lone (2015) and Lone and Ahmad (2017) among others showed that profit and loss sharing can ensure economic growth, findings may motivate economic players to consider Musharakah financing with the aim to reach financial inclusion and social, which is in line with Shari’ah requirements and Islamic values.

Although several papers highlighted the financial contracting theory from Shari’ah perspective, they ignored the financial issues that are associated to adverse selection. This paper provides theoretical evidence regarding the selection of the less risky financing mode in case of equity financing using Monte Carlo simulation.

The role of macrolevel factors in entrepreneurial intention remains as an underexplored issue in the literature. The purpose of this study is to reduce this gap by testing the effect of economic development on entrepreneurial intention.

This study adopts a quantitative approach that formally tests for a quadratic relationship between economic development measured by the gross domestic product (GDP) and the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI)) and entrepreneurial intention based on longitudinal data covering 72 countries over the 2010–2016 period. Data are gathered from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The results reveal the existence of a U-shaped relationship between the country's GDP per capita and individuals' entrepreneurial intention. The results also support a similar relationship between GCI and entrepreneurial intention. These findings suggest that individuals' entrepreneurial intentions differ between countries depending on the level of economic development.

To the authors' knowledge, this article presents the first attempt to investigate the role of economic development on entrepreneurial intention based on longitudinal data covering a large sample of countries. Moreover, by providing evidence of a U-shaped relationship between economic progress and individuals' propensity to attempt an entrepreneurial career, this study enhances the understanding of the macrolevel determinants of entrepreneurial intention.

This study examines how far female tour guides in Egypt experience sexual harassment and how they cope with it.

A qualitative research method is employed, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 full-time female tour guides working for several travel agencies in Egypt. Thematic analysis was used to extract the main ideas from the transcripts.

The findings show that female tour guides in Egypt would encounter annoying gender harassment mostly from tourists they serve, and they might suffer from irresponsible behavior – gender harassment, unwanted sexual harassment, and sexual coercion – from their local managers. When facing sexual harassment, female tour guides usually tend to adopt one of the following three coping strategies: (a) indifference to sexual harassment they encounter, (b) heroism by taking legal action when exposed to sexual harassment or (c) fatalism by taking inconsequential action such as complaining the harasser to his direct manager or filling in an official complaint inside their workplace. The selection of the coping strategy is usually based on the female victim's personality and the organizational and social context she adapts to.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in tourism, human resources management and gender studies in which empirical studies on the sexual harassment that female tour guides encounter, particularly in non-Western contexts, have been limited so far.

The purpose of this paper is to examine novel corporate governance-based determinants of risk disclosures among index-listed Finnish companies. Therefore the focus of the study is on explaining the board’s monitoring role in relation to corporate managers.

Firms’ risk disclosures are analysed in terms of their Quantity and Coverage. The authors focus on two board characteristics not examined in prior related literature: first, non-executive board members’ self-interested financial incentives, measured by their share or option ownership, and annual compensation and second, non-executive board members’ competence, measured by their experience in the company and managerial capability proxied by prior education. The sample is composed of the OMXH-25-listed firms, representing the most traded and followed firms among Finnish publicly listed companies.

The authors find that the risk disclosures of these firms can be explained by financial incentives (wealth and compensation) and competence-related factors (attrition rate and education). The results indicate that among the “best disclosers”, the narrative risk disclosures are, on average, on a high level, and variation in risk reporting is largely associated with board characteristics.

The relatively small sample size makes the results vulnerable to type two error. Further research could continue by examining the impact of board work on corporate disclosures across countries and disclosure items.

Board members’ financial incentives and competence impact the dynamism of board work. In this way, they are also associated with board members’ disclosure decisions.

This paper contributes to the extant literature by demonstrating the impact of previously unexamined board characteristics on the quality of the narrative risk disclosures of highly followed firms.