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When financing capital investments, financial executives are often confronted with “lease or borrow” decisions. Leasing is financially justifiable when the non‐taxpaying lessee leases from a full taxpaying lessor. However, surveys have found that tax paying lessees do utilise the leasing market, suggesting that the tax factor is not the only consideration.

This study is interested in the tourist satisfaction of Kenting Wind Chime Festival, as well as in tourist's characteristic and their revisiting commitment. The purpose is to survey customer satisfaction, which has significant implications for the economic performance of the firm, and to focus on local festival activity. Since 1994, Taiwan has continuously promoted festival activities, and the 2006 Kenting Wind Chime Festival is the first of 12 major festivals selected for promotion by Taiwan Tourism Bureau.

ANOVA analysis was applicable for the inference relationships among tourist characteristics, satisfaction, and revisiting commitment. Additionally, it was supplemented by open questions interviews. The survey period was from January 21 to February 12, 2006.

Three findings have been concluded in this survey. First, the 2006 Wind‐Chime Festival tourists are mostly coming with their families, and they are first‐time visitors, who have received information from television and network, and had plans in advance. Second, for festival activity, local show is more popular than theme part equipments. Finally, it must be emphasized that local damper (e.g. mountain tempest) is not passive bounded.

On the one hand, the 216 subjects are restricted to family, and the inference will be limited. On the other, the single item to collect data for understanding the tourists' satisfaction in Wind Chime Festival was used.

Managers should develop the completely understanding of media, because most tourists are influenced by television and networks.

The paper shows that customer‐oriented and integrative tourism programs improve tourist satisfaction.

Under IAS 24 a related party transaction (RPT) is a “transfer of resources, services or obligations between related parties, regardless of whether a price is charged” (IASB). The purpose of this paper is to consider the interest of the business group and the directing activity of the parent company for the interpretation of the RPT. Considering the interest of the group means to interpret the intra-group transactions not as isolated transactions, as usually done by the empirical studies, but in a wider perspective, that of the group.

This paper builds on explanatory multiple case studies in order to answer the following research questions: why the interest of the business group and the directing activity of the subsidiaries by the parent company are important in the interpretation of RPTs. How RPTs can be interpreted in the light of the directing activity of the holding company.

Dominant shareholder tends to demonstrate that the group it is not managed as a single economic entity and sometimes that subsidiaries are not really controlled. The case studies show that a regulation that imposes the transparency of the directing activity has at least two effects: the controlling shareholder finds it convenient to delegate the decision-making power and to not carry out RPTs among firms that do not present clear economic links. Thus, the transparency of the directing activity seems to be a disincentive to the establishment of a pyramidal group with expropriation purposes.

It is appropriate that the interpretation of the RPT take into account not only the disclosure of the RPT (e.g. type and nature), but also the following disclosure: the reason and the business purpose that lead to RPT; the interest of the company in engaging such transactions; and the procedures for their approval. The independence of subsidiaries directors is necessary to ensure the management autonomy of the boards, and in the case of directing activity they have to protect outsiders in the case of detrimental transactions ordered by the controlling and directing company that are not carried out in the interest of the group.

Unlike what has been done so far by the literature on RPT, this paper considers the interest of the group to interpret the intra-group transactions and the separation between control and direction. It means do not interpret RPT as isolated transactions, as usually done by the empirical studies, but in a wider perspective, that of the group.

It is hard to find good news stories about disasters. Disasters seriously damage an organisation’s health. Of businesses that experience a disaster, 40 per cent never reopen and 30 per cent close within 2 years. Perhaps because of this, over 80 per cent of UK facility managers in a recent survey now report that they maintain a Business Continuity Plan which most of them review at least once a year. An increasing number, however, now find themselves responsible for a portfolio of international facilities spanning continents and time zones. This paper looks at some real life implications of global business recovery planning. In the wake of September 11th, one can hardly do less. This paper provides strategies and justifications for international emergency planning procedures and processes. Practitioners will gain valuable information from actual events and case studies to validate the concepts offered as a model. It may seem that some of the information and processes which are outlined in this paper are obvious; but that is the point. The obvious can be overlooked, and excuses can be made for the lack of implementation of emergency plans. But those excuses will not stand in the light of real disasters and cataclysmic events.

HARROGATE will be notable as the venue of the Conference in one or two ways that distinctive. The Association Year is now to begin on January 1st and not in September as heretofore; and, in consequence, there will be no election of president or of new council until the end of the year. The Association's annual election is to take place in November, and the advantages of this arrangement must be apparent to everyone who considers the matter. Until now the nominations have been sent out at a time when members have been scattered to all parts of the country on holiday, and committees of the Council have been elected often without the full consideration that could be given in the more suitable winter time. In the circumstances, at Harrogate the Chair will still be occupied by Sir Henry Miers, who has won from all librarians and those interested in libraries a fuller measure of admiration, if that were possible, than he possessed before he undertook the presidency. There will be no presidential address in the ordinary sense, although Sir Henry Miers will make a speech in the nature of an address from the Chair at one of the meetings. What is usually understood by the presidential address will be an inaugural address which it is hoped will be given by Lord Irwin. The new arrangement must bring about a new state of affairs in regard to the inaugural addresses. We take it that in future there will be what will be called a presidential address at the Annual Meeting nine months after the President takes office. He will certainly then be in the position to review the facts of his year with some knowledge of events; he may chronicle as well as prophesy.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and learning orientation (LO) separately on two dimensions of performance (profitability and growth).

A sample of 196 Finnish software companies is analyzed using a partial least squares approach.

The paper provides evidence that the effects of entrepreneurial orientation on profitability are mediated by learning oriented behaviors. Furthermore, in contrast to expectations inherited from prior research, LO does not appear to have a similar effect on growth.

The paper refers to an empirical study of software companies in Finland. Further research in other countries and industry settings is needed to confirm and extend the results.

The results suggest that software company managers in entrepreneurial software firms should develop a culture that includes nurturing learning, in order to support the creation of profitability.

The paper extends the prior research by investigating the EO‐LO relationship separately in the growth and profitability dimensions of performance. Furthermore, it provides evidence for the benefits of combining EO with LO in SMEs in the dynamic software industry, while prior studies on the topic have focused on larger organizations.

This essay employs a visual approach to explore some of the ways that spatial practices become markers of a globalising and glocalizing world. Images are offered that reflect some of the symbolic competition created by more and less recent migrants as they lay claim to ‘contested terrains’ by changing what they look like. Although often dismissed as mere “marking” of territory, such ordinary practices by migrants of symbolic home or community building are crucial to understanding global cities. One indicator of their importance is the, often hostile reactions by the dominant society to them. A brief review of some of the most important theoretical perspectives on these interrelated phenomena, such as those of Saskia Sassen, David Harvey, and Manuel Castells, isolates common expectations about the visibility of resulting competing spatial practices in shared multiethnic residential and commercial environments. It is argued that many of the contradictions created by the concentration of global capital can be seen in the neighborhood streetscapes of global cities. From Georg Simmel, through Henri Lefebvre, and Lyn H. Lofland, the visible, and the symbolic, have been central to urban analysis. Therefore, the ubiquitous aspects of what Jackson called ‘vernacular landscapes,’ such as commercial signs and graffiti in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, London, New York, and Rome are addressed.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

Globalisation is generally defined as the “denationalisation of clusters of political, economic, and social activities” that destabilize the ability of the sovereign State to control activities on its territory, due to the rising need to find solutions for universal problems, like the pollution of the environment, on an international level. Globalisation is a complex, forceful legal and social process that take place within an integrated whole with out regard to geographical boundaries. Globalisation thus differs from international activities, which arise between and among States, and it differs from multinational activities that occur in more than one nation‐State. This does not mean that countries are not involved in the sociolegal dynamics that those transboundary process trigger. In a sense, the movements triggered by global processes promote greater economic interdependence among countries. Globalisation can be traced back to the depression preceding World War II and globalisation at that time included spreading of the capitalist economic system as a means of getting access to extended markets. The first step was to create sufficient export surplus to maintain full employment in the capitalist world and secondly establishing a globalized economy where the planet would be united in peace and wealth. The idea of interdependence among quite separate and distinct countries is a very important part of talks on globalisation and a significant side of today’s global political economy.

Several studies, especially in Asian economies, have investigated the antecedents, implications and consequences of related-party transactions (RPTs). This paper aims to review this literature to collate, gauge and critically discuss understandings of the relationship between RPTs and risk, with a particular focus on audit risk.

The paper discusses RPTs and how they have been associated with corporate scandals and the expropriation of shareholders’ wealth. RPTs are defined as per accounting standards and the main types of RPTs are described based on the extant literature. Two key research design issues are discussed: measures used to operationalize RPTs and observable variations in sample size across RPT studies. Evidence is presented on the negative effects of RPTs and the role of regulation, corporate governance and auditing in reducing risks.

Prior studies have associated RPTs with the expropriation of shareholders’ wealth, declining firm valuations, lower-quality financial reporting, increased risk of material misstatements and decreases in long-term firm performance. Further, the evidence suggests that regulation, corporate governance and auditing can mitigate the negative effects of RPTs.

This paper provides insights for regulators on the effects of enforcement, corporate governance and external audits on reducing the negative effects of RPTs, and highlights the increased risk of material misstatements in financial statements when RPTs are conducted. Moreover, it reveals how RPTs affect risk assessments for auditors.

This paper represents the first comprehensive review of the empirical RPT literature. It provides a starting point for future investigations of RPTs, not least because it reveals important limitations with the extant body of research in this domain. It also offers salient insights and implications for practitioners and policy makers.