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To summarize and comment on a Risk Alert issued on February 3, 2015 by the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) to summarize its findings following examination of the preparedness of 57 broker-dealers and 49 investment advisory firms to address legal, regulatory and compliance challenges related to cybersecurity.

Comments on the meaning of the Risk Alert and summarizes OCIE’s exam observations.

These examinations grew out of the SEC’s Cybersecurity Examination Initiative which began last year. Cybersecurity is an Exam Priority for the SEC in 2015. Perhaps most reflective of the magnitude of this particular issue, 88 per cent of the broker-dealers and 74 per cent of the examined advisers reported that they have been the subject of a cyber-related incident.

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To summarize and comment on FINRA’s report on cybersecurity practices, published on February 4, 2015, which arose from its 2014 targeted examination of firms’ cybersecurity preparedness.

Explains the implications of the FINRA report and general guidance FINRA provides and expects all firms to consider in connection with developing their respective cybersecurity programs in eight areas: governance and risk management for cybersecurity; cybersecurity risk assessment; technical controls; incident response planning; vendor management; staff training; cyber intelligence and information sharing; and cyber insurance.

There is no doubt that cybersecurity is a key risk facing the financial services industry now. Accordingly, FINRA expects that firms will review the report and assess how the principles and effective practices provided therein could help build or improve cybersecurity readiness. The report reflects FINRA’s risk-management-based approach to cybersecurity issues, identifying principles and “effective practices” for member firms to consider, as opposed to decreeing specific requirements, policies or procedures.

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Beware of “Info‐Smoke” warns Art Plotnick in a recent American Libraries editorial. It clouds the meaning and purpose of libraries by embroiling them in the “world's hottest commodity”—information. “The information age” or “the information society” are clichés used with abandon by many librarians. “Information” is the buzzword for grant applications, articles, and new names for libraries and library schools. As Plotnick rhetorically asks, “Who isn't in the information business?”

The principal focus of this study involved the changes in bureaucratic and professional orientations of beginning teachers as they encountered the formal organization of the public school during their first year of professional teaching experience. The basic assumptions underlying the research were that teachers will relate in a positive fashion to both the norms of the bureaucracy and the norms of the profession during their initial encounter with the school in a professional capacity and that they will assume a “mixed type” dual role orientation. Data were collected from prospective teachers during their student teaching experiences and again, near the conclusion of their first year of full‐time professional employment. Responses to the Bureaucartic Orientation Scale and the Professional Orientation Scale suggests that experience in the school organization for beginning teachers is related to increased bureaucratic orientation and decreased professional orientation.

Many jurisdictions fine illegal cartels using penalty guidelines that presume an arbitrary 10% overcharge. This article surveys more than 700 published economic studies and judicial decisions that contain 2,041 quantitative estimates of overcharges of hard-core cartels. The primary findings are: (1) the median average long-run overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 23.0%; (2) the mean average is at least 49%; (3) overcharges reached their zenith in 1891–1945 and have trended downward ever since; (4) 6% of the cartel episodes are zero; (5) median overcharges of international-membership cartels are 38% higher than those of domestic cartels; (6) convicted cartels are on average 19% more effective at raising prices as unpunished cartels; (7) bid-rigging conduct displays 25% lower markups than price-fixing cartels; (8) contemporary cartels targeted by class actions have higher overcharges; and (9) when cartels operate at peak effectiveness, price changes are 60–80% higher than the whole episode. Historical penalty guidelines aimed at optimally deterring cartels are likely to be too low.

To speak of collective bargaining as a collaborative process seems a contradiction. Since 1935 when collective bargaining was institutional‐ized in the Wagner Act, the process has assumed that the disputing par‐ties are enemies, competing for scarce resources with different objec‐tives. This article explains the implementation of a new theory of col‐lective bargaining which encourages truthfulness, candor, and the acknowledgement of shared goals and avoids the negative and self‐defeating power plays of the adversarial collective bargaining process. As a result of this process, grievances in the observed company declined from 40 per year under previous contracts, to 2 in 18 months under the current contract; anger and hostility have been nearly eliminated; and there is a real spirit of cooperation present in the plant.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs’) masculinity, CEO characteristics (accounting background, turnover and ethnicity/race) and earnings management (EM) in Malaysia. It also examined the moderating effect of the CEOs’ ethnicity/race (Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera) on the relationship between CEO masculinity and EM.

The analyses were based on a panel data set of 260 corporates listed on the Bursa Malaysia from 2009 to 2019. Python/code was used to calculate the facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), while testosterone (TESTN) was calculated based on CEO age and fWHR. To estimate the results, panel data analysis with a fixed effect model was used.

The result shows that fWHR and TESTN have a significant positive effect on EM. CEO race has a significant impact on EM, implying that non-Bumiputera CEOs are more likely to be associated with EM. There was no statistically significant evidence that race moderates the relationship between CEO masculinity and EM.

The research contributes to the growing evidence in the field of neuroscience that it is possible to infer aspects of an individual’s behavior based on their facial structure and their TESTN levels. The findings provide new evidence supporting Malaysian Government policies in reducing masculinity on boards of directors and senior executive positions, which will positively affect the integrity of financial reports.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first research to explain whether the ethnicity/race of CEOs is related to EM and whether it has a significant moderate effect on the relationship between masculinity and EM.

This paper surveys published economic studies and judicial decisions that contain 1,040 quantitative estimates of overcharges of hard-core cartels. The primary finding is that the median long-run overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 25.0%:18.8% for domestic cartels and 31.0% for international cartels. Cartel overcharges are positively skewed, pushing the mean overcharge for all successful cartels to 43.4%. Convicted cartels are on average as equally effective at raising prices as unpunished cartels, but bid-rigging conduct does display somewhat lower mark-ups than price-fixing cartels. These findings suggest that optimal deterrence requires that monetary penalties ought to be increased.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between self‐efficacy and the outcomes that individuals achieve when they manage conflict at work. The authors propose that self‐efficacy is related to performance following a positive linear or curvilinear model depending on the outcomes assessed (objective versus subjective outcomes) and the conflict setting considered (transaction versus dispute).

Two studies were conducted. Study 1 was a face‐to‐face transaction in which self‐efficacy was measured using a survey. In study 2, participants were involved in a dispute and their self‐efficacy was manipulated using a false feedback technique.

Results suggest that high self‐efficacy participants obtain better objective (economic/substantive) outcomes. However, there is a curvilinear relationship, in a U‐inverted shape, between self‐efficacy and subjective (relational) outcomes, indicating that an increase in self‐efficacy improves subjective outcomes, but there are certain levels at which self‐efficacy may be dysfunctional.

Recent controversial findings in research into the relationship between self‐efficacy and performance are addressed in these studies. The present paper is one of the first to explore the role of self‐efficacy in a dispute and to consider the effects of self‐efficacy on subjective outcomes. Practical implications are discussed in light of the results.

This paper reviews the medico‐legal background to the development of the pilot programme for treatment and assessment of dangerous individuals with severe personality disorder. It raises the question: is personality disorder related to dangerousness, and (if so) what mediates the relationship? It then reviews recent findings suggesting that patients deemed to be dangerous and severely personality disordered are characterised by a combination of antisocial and borderline traits, and as such are a source of distress both to themselves and to others. It remains for future research to determine how this particular constellation of personality disorders is functionally linked to dangerousness, and whether the link is mediated by neuropsychological impairment resulting from early‐onset alcohol abuse, as recently proposed by Howard (2006). It is recommended that the current criteria for ‘dangerous and severe personality disorder’ be dispensed with.