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Despite the extensive research on the determinants of audit pricing in both public and private settings, there is a lack of research about the differences in audit fees between voluntary audits and mandatory audits. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap.

First, a theoretical framework is developed to justify differences in audit pricing between voluntary and mandatory audits. Next, using a sample of Spanish private small and medium enterprises (SMEs) running from 2009 to 2014, the authors empirically test whether the fees charged for voluntary audits differ from those charged for mandatory ones. The authors also examine whether the premium observed among large auditors is persistent in the SME setting, and whether this premium differs depending on whether the audits are voluntary or mandatory.

Although a preliminary analysis does not report significant differences in pricing between voluntary and mandatory audits, additional analyses using samples restricted by company size show that voluntary audits are charged with a premium. The authors observe a premium related to large auditors, and find no significant differences in the audit pricing of Big 4 auditors depending on the mandatory/voluntary nature of the audit, but the premium associated with Middle-Tier auditors disappears in the voluntary setting.

This paper contributes to the previous literature by introducing the examination of differences in audit pricing between voluntary and mandatory audits. As far as the authors know, this is the first study to examine the differences in audit pricing between voluntary and mandatory audits. It also elaborates on studies on audit pricing in SMEs.

A pesar de la extensa investigación sobre los determinantes de los honorarios de auditoría tanto en el entorno de las empresas cotizadas como de las no cotizadas, existe poca investigación sobre las diferencias en los honorarios entre las auditorías voluntarias y las obligatorias. El presente estudio aborda esta carencia.

En primer lugar, se desarrolla un marco teórico que trata de justificar diferencias en el precio de la auditoría entre auditorías voluntarias y obligatorias. Después, usando una muestra de pymes españolas no cotizadas para el período 2009–2014, testamos empíricamente si los honorarios cargados en las auditorías voluntarias difieren de los cargados en las auditorías obligatorias. Examinamos también si la prima observada entre los grandes auditores en el entorno de las pymes es persistente, y si esta prima difiere en función de si la auditoría es voluntaria u obligatoria.

Aunque el análisis preliminar no reporta diferencias significativas en el precio de la auditoría entre auditorías voluntarias y obligatorias, análisis adicionales usando muestras restringidas por el tamaño de las compañías muestran que las auditorías voluntarias soportan una prima con respecto a las obligatorias. Observamos también una prima relacionada con los auditores grandes y medianos, y no encontramos diferencias significativas en el precio de la auditoría para las Big 4 en función de la naturaleza obligatoria/voluntaria de la auditoría, mientras que la prima asociada con los auditores medianos desaparece en el entorno voluntario.

El estudio contribuye a la literatura previa al introducir el análisis de las diferencias en el precio de la auditoría entre auditorías voluntarias y obligatorias. Hasta donde sabemos, éste es el primer estudio que examina las diferencias de precio entre ambos entornos. El estudio también extiende la literatura previa sobre los honorarios de auditoría en las pymes.

The fundamental role that the new optical multimedia information technologies play in the museum context is analysed as a solution to problems in the management of museographic documentation. The advantages that the new technical means can give museums are assessed. The new optical means of information storage are analysed and the problems hindering the hypermedia interactive development in these institutions are exposed; legal, technological, standardisation and resources. Finally, the state of some existing applications is described at three levels; a) projects of collaboration for the growth and spread of information on projects for the development of multimedia databases; b) institutional projects for research into computerised system managers of image documentation; and c) individual projects from different centres belonging to different countries.

This chapter aims to present the context, the approach and the pedagogical tools deployed at École Centrale Marseille (ECM) to promote gender equality in engineering education. The ECM has put several mechanisms in place such as challenging traditional gender stereotypes, social representation of the engineering profession and facing the realities of a professional world that is overwhelmingly masculine, including awareness of the glass ceiling effect on access to positions of responsibility and prevention of sexual harassment. The ECM model combines multidisciplinary studies with a professional grounding with the aim of educating students to be able to transform society. In 1997, the ECM founded the Mediterranean Network of Engineering Schools with the main goal of fostering sustainable development in the Mediterranean basin. The ECM has been part of the community of practice on gender equality initiated by Mediterranean Network of Engineering Schools through its participation in the H2020 TARGET project on gender equality in research and higher education.

This chapter examines the potential and barriers for evidence-based practices in Californian schools. In a large and complex school system, the state plays an important role in legitimating the use of certain types of evidence, but evidence-based practices are heavily determined by the resources, actors, and prevailing cultures in a local district environment. Until recently, high-stakes accountability policies mandated improvements in student test performance and intrusive interventions for failure. In recent years, the state has shifted to a different accountability approach that emphasizes local control and the use of multiple measures of school performance to pursue continuous improvement around locally developed goals and interventions. Amid this context, two stories arise about evidence-based practices in California. In one story, a set of major and highly touted districts have led the way in demonstrating evidence-informed continuous improvement district-wide. In these districts, the new state accountability approach, enabling leadership, long-term commitments to collective learning, networked opportunities to learn, and access to elite external expertise have contributed to fairly extensive practices of disciplined team problem-solving involving rich data. In a second story, schools and districts that face resource scarcity, high turnover, and conflict and in which past high-stakes accountability left a deep imprint on prevailing norms and routines, leaders and teachers have had difficulty establishing a conducive context for collective learning. However, given ingrained practices and limited absorptive capacity, it is not entirely clear how to enable productive evidence-based practices in such contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an integrated approach for understanding the relations among the theoretical and operational antecedents of consumer involvement in the context of financial products. The theoretical antecedents of involvement have been conceptualized as the consumer's personal profile, purchase situation, and target product; the operational antecedent includes the purchase availability manipulation.

The research is based on a field study among private customers of a leading financial institute and on two experimental designs within lab settings. The independent variables include the theoretical and operational antecedents and the dependent measure comprises the involvement measure.

The findings emphasize that the theoretical antecedents constitute an effective manipulation of involvement, whereas the operational antecedent has only limited effect.

Financial managers should consider the type of financial service, distribution channel, social context and advertising medium, in conjunction with the consumer's profile, to increase the overall involvement.

The research provides a new view at the way predictions of involvement are formed within the financial context. This view is enabled by including the antecedents of product involvement along with the manipulation of product availability. When these components are considered jointly, a richer set of predictions can be offered than previously conceptualized. To this end, the research calls for a more comprehensive approach for manipulating involvement that bases its activation on the theoretical antecedents.

This study aims to examine whether firms that appear to exhibit high sustainable outputs are more likely to pay higher audit fees than firms without such outputs.

The sustainability outputs are measured using a sustainable product portfolio consisting of four products: clean energy products, eco-design products (EDP), environmental products (EP) and sustainable building projects (SBP). The audit fee variable is measured by the natural logarithm of the total amount of audit fees. The study tests two models of the association between these outputs and audit fees; Model 1 tests this association in the absence of the moderating variable (sustainability committee), and Model 2 tests the association in the presence of the moderating variable.

An analysis of data on 261 European firms from the Refinitiv Eikon database from 2010 to 2019 shows that high sustainability outputs are significantly and positively associated with audit fees. More importantly, this association is moderated by the presence of a board-level sustainability committee, suggesting that this type of committee reflects a factor considered by auditors in their audit risk assessment practices. The findings indicate that in Model 1, one (EP) out of four variables has a significant and positive association with audit fees, while in Model 2 and in the presence of sustainability committee, two variables (EP and EDP) have a significant and negative association with audit fees. However, the robust analysis shows that three variables (EP, EDP and SBP) have significant and negative associations with audit fees.

The study findings have important implications for policymakers, auditors and firms’ managers. For policymakers, the findings provide support for the argument that sustainable attitudes incentivise firms to manage sustainable product profiles more effectively. As such, policymakers should incentivise firms to establish a sustainability committee and regulate its role and responsibilities. Auditors should coordinate with the sustainability committee to facilitate audit efforts and reduce audit fees.

Understanding the relationship between sustainable products and audit fees will allow firms to improve their portfolio of sustainable products. In addition, other social implications of this study relate to improving relationships with society by establishing a sustainability committee that is responsible to communicate with that society.

The results support the argument that firms should manage sustainable product portfolios more effectively. In addition, the results of the study highlight the importance of a new variable as a moderator, the sustainability committee, which has not been examined before.

In 1899 the medical practitioners of Dublin were confronted with an outbreak of a peculiar and obscure illness, characterised by symptoms which were very unusual. For want of a better explanation, the disorder, which seemed to be epidemic, was explained by the simple expedient of finding a name for it. It was labelled as “beri‐beri,” a tropical disease with very much the same clinical and pathological features as those observed at Dublin. Papers were read before certain societies, and then as the cases gradually diminished in number, the subject lost interest and was dropped.

A pæan of joy and triumph which speaks for itself, and which is a very true indication of how the question of poisonous adulteration is viewed by certain sections of “the trade,” and by certain of the smaller and irresponsible trade organs, has appeared in print. It would seem that the thanks of “the trade” are due to the defendants in the case heard at the Liverpool Police Court for having obtained an official acknowledgment that the use of salicylic acid and of other preservatives, even in large amounts, in wines and suchlike articles, is not only allowable, but is really necessary for the proper keeping of the product. It must have been a charming change in the general proceedings at the Liverpool Court to listen to a “preservatives” case conducted before a magistrate who evidently realises that manufacturers, in these days, in order to make a “decent” profit, have to use the cheapest materials they can buy, and cannot afford to pick and choose; and that they have therefore “been compelled” to put preservatives into their articles so as to prevent their going bad. He was evidently not to be misled by the usual statement that such substances should not be used because they are injurious to health— as though that could be thought to have anything to do with the much more important fact that the public “really want” to have an article supplied to them which is cheap, and yet keeps well. Besides, many doctors and professors were brought forward to prove that they had never known a case of fatal poisoning due to the use of salicylic acid as a preservative. Unfortunately, it is only the big firms that can manage to bring forward such admirable and learned witnesses, and the smaller firms have to suffer persecution by faddists and others who attempt to obtain the public notice by pretending to be solicitous about the public health. Altogether the prosecution did not have a pleasant time, for the magistrate showed his appreciation of the evidence of one of the witnesses by humorously rallying him about his experiments with kittens, as though any‐one could presume to judge from experiments on brute beasts what would be the effect on human beings—the “lords of creation.” Everyone reading the evidence will be struck by the fact that the defendant stated that he had once tried to brew without preservatives, but with the only result that the entire lot “went bad.” All manufacturers of his own type will sympathise with him, since, of course, there is no practicable way of getting over this trouble except by the use of preservatives; although the above‐mentioned faddists are so unkind as to state that if everything is clean the article will keep. But this must surely be sheer theory, for it cannot be supposed that there can be any manufacturer of this class of article who would be foolish enough to think he could run his business at a profit, and yet go to all the expense of having the returned empties washed out before refilling, and of paying the heavy price asked for the best crude materials, when he has to compete with rival firms, who can use practically anything, and yet turn out an article equal in every way from a selling point of view, and one that will keep sufficiently, by the simple (and cheap) expedient of throwing theory on one side, and by pinning their faith to a preservative which has now received the approval of a magistrate. Manufacturers who use preservatives, whether they are makers of wines or are dairymen, and all similar tradesmen, should join together to protect their interests, for, as they must all admit, “the welfare of the trade” is the chief thing they have to consider, and any other interest must come second, if it is to come in at all. Now is the time for action, for the Commission appointed to inquire into the use of preservatives in foods has not yet given its decision, and there is still time for a properly‐conducted campaign, backed up by those “influential members of the trade” of whom we hear so much, and aided by such far‐reaching and brilliant magisterial decisions, to force these opinions prominently forward, in spite of the prejudice of the public; and to insure to the trades interested the unfettered use of preservatives,—which save “the trade” hundreds of thousands of pounds every year, by enabling the manufacturers to dispense with heavily‐priced apparatus, with extra workmen and with the use of expensive materials,—and which are urgently asked for by the public,—since we all prefer to have our foods drugged than to have them pure.

There are very few individuals who have studied the question of weights and measures who do not most strongly favour the decimal system. The disadvantages of the weights and measures at present in use in the United Kingdom are indeed manifold. At the very commencement of life the schoolboy is expected to commit to memory the conglomerate mass of facts and figures which he usually refers to as “Tables,” and in this way the greater part of twelve months is absorbed. And when he has so learned them, what is the result? Immediately he leaves school he forgets the whole of them, unless he happens to enter a business‐house in which some of them are still in use; and it ought to be plain that the case would be very different were all our weights and measures divided or multiplied decimally. Instead of wasting twelve months, the pupil would almost be taught to understand the decimal system in two or three lessons, and so simple is the explanation that he would never be likely to forget it. There is perhaps no more interesting, ingenious and useful example of the decimal system than that in use in France. There the standard of length is the metre, the standard of capacity the cubic decimetre or the litre, while one cubic centimetre of distilled water weighs exactly one gramme, the standard of weight. Thus the measures of length, capacity and weight are most closely and usefully related. In the present English system there is absolutely no relationship between these weights and measures. Frequently a weight or measure bearing the same name has a different value for different bodies. Take, for instance, the stone; for dead meat its value is 8 pounds, for live meat 14 pounds; and other instances will occur to anyone who happens to remember his “Tables.” How much simpler for the business man to reckon in multiples of ten for everything than in the present confusing jumble. Mental arithmetic in matters of buying and selling would become much easier, undoubtedly more accurate, and the possibility of petty fraud be far more remote, because even the most dense could rapidly calculate by using the decimal system.

The latest information from the magazine chemist is extremely valuable. He has dealt with milk‐adulteration and how it is done. His advice, if followed, might, however, speedily bring the manipulating dealer before a magistrate, since the learned writer's recipe is to take a milk having a specific gravity of 1030, and skim it until the gravity is raised to 1036; then add 20 per cent. of water, so that the gravity may be reduced to 1030, and the thing is done. The advice to serve as “fresh from the cow,” preferably in a well‐battered milk‐measure, might perhaps have been added to this analytical gem.