Search results

This paper aims to investigate the effect that ownership structure (public vs private) has on the demand for high-quality auditors, specifically in the US banking industry.

The authors predict that public banks are more likely to hire a high-quality auditor than private banks and pay a higher audit fee premium for that high-quality auditor (due to higher agency costs, more demand for financial information and higher litigation risk). The authors analyze 2008–2014 banking data from the Federal Reserve using probit and OLS regression analysis to examine if there is a higher probability that public banks choose higher quality auditors and pay higher audit fees when they do so.

The results show that private banks are less likely to hire Big 4 auditors and industry-expert auditors than public banks. The authors also find that both private and public banks pay higher audit fees for Big 4 and industry-expert auditors, and that public banks pay a higher premium for Big 4 auditors and industry experts than private banks.

The findings may not be fully generalizable to other types of firms, as banking is a heavily regulated and complex industry. However, inferences from this study may be generalizable to other similar industries such as insurance or health care.

The results of this paper imply that public and private banks have differing priorities when hiring their financial statement auditor. This may be of interest to investors and auditing regulators.

The findings of this paper underscore the value of hiring an industry-expert auditor in an industry that is highly complex and regulated. This may be of interest to managers and policymakers.

Due to data restrictions, the emphasis of prior literature on the banking industry has been on public banks. This study is the first to analyze the differences between public and private banks’ demand for audit services.

Coaches from both the professional and college ranks are often put forth as archetypal examples of effective leaders – individuals’ whose behaviors, styles, and wisdom provide the ever elusive playbook for how to successfully lead others. While numerous books and articles in the popular press put forth advice from leaders in the sports world, numerous empirical studies of the drivers of successful sports leadership and the factors that contribute to leader success in the context of sports have also been conducted. In this chapter, we first provide a broad review of empirical leadership research conducted within the sports world and examine how research within the sports context provides a suitable and advantageous setting for leadership research in general. Second, we offer a road map of opportunities for future leadership studies within the context of sports. The goal of this chapter is to stimulate and rally more thought-provoking research related to leadership in sports that generates insights for organizational leadership across contexts.

The current study examines public accountants' professionalism and professional commitment (PC) and their effect on job performance. Results provide support for four of five dimensions of Hall's (1968) professionalism framework (beliefs in professional affiliation, professional dedication, self-regulation, and social obligation) and Meyer et al.'s (1993) three-dimensional PC framework (affective, continuance, and normative professional commitment) for modeling public accountants. Support was also found for most of the hypothesized relationships between professionalism and PC. Beliefs in professional affiliation, professional dedication, and self-regulation positively influenced affective professional commitment (APC). Belief in professional affiliation was negatively influenced by continuance professional commitment (CPC) but positively influenced by normative professional commitment (NPC). Belief in social obligation was also positively influenced by NPC. As expected, professionalism and PC were associated with job performance. Professionalism had an incremental effect beyond PC on job performance and as well, PC had an incremental effect over professionalism on job performance. Identifying relationships between professionalism and professional commitment with desirable outcomes is important for justifying future investments in the public accounting profession. Understanding these issues will assist in determining the types of professional attributes and commitments that are and should be fostered by the accounting profession.

In recent years, practitioners have identified a number of problems with traditional performance management (PM) systems, arguing that PM is broken and needs to be fixed. In this chapter, we review criticisms of traditional PM practices that have been mentioned by journalists and practitioners and we consider the solutions that they have presented for addressing these concerns. We then consider these problems and solutions within the context of extant scholarly research and identify (a) what organizations should do going forward to improve PM practices (i.e., focus on feedback processes, ensure accountability throughout the PM system, and align the PM system with organizational strategy) and (b) what scholars should focus research attention on (i.e., technology, strategic alignment, and peer-to-peer accountability) in order to reduce the science-practice gap in this domain.

THIS number will appear at the beginning of the Leeds Conference. Although there is no evidence that the attendance will surpass the record attendance registered at the Birmingham Conference, there is every reason to believe that the attendance at Leeds will be very large. The year is one of importance in the history of the city, for it has marked the 300th anniversary of its charter. We hope that some of the festival spirit will survive into the week of the Conference. As a contributor has suggested on another page, we hope that all librarians who attend will do so with the determination to make the Conference one of the friendliest possible character. It has occasionally been pointed out that as the Association grows older it is liable to become more stilted and formal; that institutions and people become standardized and less dynamic. This, if it were true, would be a great pity.

The Promenade image retrieval system is described in terms of its design, development and architecture. Design, development and implementation issues are discussed in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. A preliminary usability study is presented and the data respiting from the preliminary study are analysed and discussed. Efficiency in terms of response time due to network delays, database processing, application processing and image characteristics and display is discussed. Response time results from 40 queries made to the image database are presented and discussed. The results of these studies demonstrate where improvements in the system need to be made in order to improve usability and response time.

Despite extensive adoption of Simons’ Levers of Control (LoC) framework, there is still considerable diversity in its operationalization which impedes the coherent development of the literature and compromises its value to researchers. The purpose of this paper is to draw researchers back to the conceptual core of the framework as a basis for stable, consistent definitions of the domain of observables.

We derive the conceptual core of the framework from Simons’ writings. We highlight instability in existing operational definitions of the LoC, weaknesses in the extent to which these definitions reference this conceptual core, and inconsistencies in the restriction of LoC to formal information-based routines.

We draw on the inconsistencies identified to build the case for commensuration or a “common standard” for the framework’s use on two levels: the constructs within the framework (through reference to the conceptual core of the framework) and the framework itself (through explicit inclusion of informal controls).

We illustrate the benefits of commensuration through the potential to guide the scope of the domain of observables in empirical LoC studies, and to study LoC as complementary or competing with other management control theories.

Our approach to resolving tensions arising from inconsistencies in the empirical definitions of LoC differs from others in that we focus on the strategic variables underlying the framework to define the conceptual core. We believe this approach offers greater potential for commensuration at the level of the constructs within the framework and the framework itself.