Asheq Rahman, Hector Perera and Frances Chua
International business, Accounting and Finance.
Abstract
Subject area
International business, Accounting and Finance.
Study level/applicability
Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels (advanced financial accounting, international accounting, other accounting and business courses with an international setting.
Case overview
The case uses the Asia Pulp & Paper Company’s (APP) entry into the international debt market to highlight the consequences of different business practices between the East (in this case, Indonesia) and the West. On the one hand, it shows that APP was set up as the “front” to access international debt capital; on the other, it reveals the naïvety of Western lenders who parted with their funds without conducting a thorough background research on the financial viability of the company they invested in. The APP debacle is a poignant reminder for market participants and business/accounting students that the divergence of the business settings across countries can make business contractual arrangements tenuous and corporate financial information irrelevant to its users. It also exposes the unique ways of how some Asian countries conduct their business affairs.
Expected learning outcomes
The following are the expected learning outcomes: comprehend the impact of differences in culture and ethnic origin on business practices; evaluate the impact of cultural nuances on the legality of contracts in the international business setting; understand the impact of currency fluctuation on the financial position of multinational firms; and be more cautious in conducting business and entering into contracts with foreign firms.
Supplementary materials
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Subject code
CCS 1: Accounting and Finance.
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Lin Mei Tan, Fawzi Laswad and Frances Chua
Employability skills are critical for success in the workplace, even more so in this era of globalisation of economies and advancement in technologies. However, there is ample…
Abstract
Purpose
Employability skills are critical for success in the workplace, even more so in this era of globalisation of economies and advancement in technologies. However, there is ample evidence of the gap between the skills acquired by graduates at universities and the skills expected by employers in the workplace. Applying the modes of grasping and transforming the experience embodied in Kolb’s experiential learning theory (ELT) (1976, 1984), the purpose of this paper is to examine the development of employability skills of accountancy students through their involvement in two extracurricular activities: community accounting and an accountancy club.
Design/methodology/approach
Underpinned by Kolb’s (1976, 1984) four modes of ELT and work-integrated learning to develop professional competencies required for future work, an online survey of accounting students was conducted to assess their reflections on involvement in these two aforementioned extracurricular activities over a two-year period.
Findings
The findings indicate that the students had developed useful cognitive and behavioural skills from their participation in these extracurricular activities. These findings are consistent with the literature on internships and service-learning, both of which have been associated with transferable skills development.
Originality/value
Prior studies focused on in-classroom learning activities or internships to help students develop various essential skills required in the workplace. However, extracurricular activities have received little attention in the accounting education literature. This study provides insights into skills accounting students can gain from extracurricular participation in community accounting and an accountancy club.
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Hanène Medhaffar, Moez Feki and Nabil Derbel
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the stabilization of unstable periodic orbits of Chua’s system using adaptive fuzzy sliding mode controllers with moving surface.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the stabilization of unstable periodic orbits of Chua’s system using adaptive fuzzy sliding mode controllers with moving surface.
Design/methodology/approach
For this aim, the sliding mode controller and fuzzy systems are combined to achieve the stabilization. Then, the authors propose a moving sliding surface to improve robustness against uncertainties during the reaching phase, parameter variations and extraneous disturbances.
Findings
Afterward, the authors design a sliding observer to estimate the unmeasurable states which are used in the previously designed controller.
Originality/value
Numerical results are provided to show the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method.
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This study seeks to examine the influence of national and religious identification on conflict styles among Christians and Muslims in Western Europe.
Abstract
Purpose
This study seeks to examine the influence of national and religious identification on conflict styles among Christians and Muslims in Western Europe.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were gathered in France, Germany and the UK (n=909) in 2008. Conflict was measured using Oetzel's Conflict Style Measure. To test the hypothesis and answer the research questions, multiple regression models were constructed.
Findings
National and religious identification had a significant influence on conflict style preference. Muslims prefer more compromising and obliging conflict styles, while Christians prefer the dominating style. France is more dominating than Germany or the UK. Significant interactions revealed how individuals' religion and national identification influence conflict styles.
Research limitations/implications
The use of self‐report instruments is the primary limitation.
Practical implications
Individuals' lived experiences have a significant influence on their conflict preference. The results in France, Germany and the UK point to varied ethnic and religious lived experiences.
Social implications
The primary social impact of this paper is that it informs individuals and governments of the effects of religion on individuals' management of conflict. In the wake of the bombings of September 11, the 2005 French riots, and the 2005 London bombings, understanding the potential influence of religion on the management and conceptualization of conflict offers vast societal impacts for society at large.
Originality/value
There are few studies in conflict that examine the influence of religion and/or national identification. Moreover, this is one of the few studies to examine how Muslims manage conflict.
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Matthew C. Sonfield and Robert N. Lussier
The purpose of this paper is to investigate, in a multi‐country context, the inclusion of family‐member managers and non‐family‐member managers in family businesses, and the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate, in a multi‐country context, the inclusion of family‐member managers and non‐family‐member managers in family businesses, and the relationship of this variable to certain management activities, styles and characteristics.
Design/methodology/approach
This four‐country study involved survey research and correlational testing of nine hypotheses. The four countries, Croatia, France, India and the USA, provided a mixture of entrepreneurial contexts. Given limited prior research in this area, this study is exploratory and broadly focused.
Findings
There was limited support for the relationship between the percentage of non‐family‐member managers and the nine management activities, styles and characteristics studied, both between and within countries. The strongest support was for the positive relationship between the percentage of non‐family managers and the use of sophisticated financial management methods.
Research limitations/implications
Inherent in the choice of countries are some variations among the four country samples. Future research can build on these findings with more focused studies in areas that seem worthy of further analysis.
Practical implications
This study, along with further research, should allow family business owner/managers to better understand the possible impacts of bringing non‐family managers into their firms. Family businesses may not need to be concerned that their firms will lose their “familiness” if they hire non‐family managers.
Originality/value
This study begins to fill a gap in the family business literature identified by prior researchers and, as noted above, creates a base for future research and for possible practical implications for family firm practitioners.
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Initial public offerings (IPOs) underpricing is a world-wide phenomenon in the stock market. It is generally explained with asymmetric information and risk. The purpose of this…
Abstract
Purpose
Initial public offerings (IPOs) underpricing is a world-wide phenomenon in the stock market. It is generally explained with asymmetric information and risk. The purpose of this paper is to complement these traditional explanations with a theory where investors also worry about the after-market illiquidity that may result from asymmetric information after the IPO.
Design/methodology/approach
The model blends such liquidity concerns with adverse selection and risk as motives for underpricing and liquidity. The model's predictions are supported by evidence for 798 French IPOs realized between 1995 and 2008. Using various measures of liquidity, the author finds that expected after-market liquidity and liquidity risk are important determinants of IPO underpricing.
Findings
The author finds evidence that less liquid the aftermarket is expected to be, and the less predictable its liquidity, the larger will be the IPO underpricing.
Practical implications
The study provides empirical evidence that shares outstanding and author IPO characteristics play a vital role on post-IPO liquidity. According to the results obtained, three IPO characteristics, that is, relative size, blockholder and underpricing of offering have an explanatory for the liquidity and trading activity of the shares outstanding. It should be noted that this explanatory power is much greater before isolating the market effect. Nevertheless, given the evidence to show that these operations are executed during upmarket periods when trading volume is high, the non-exclusion of the market effect may attribute these variables with more explanatory power than they actually possess. Be that as it may, even after eliminating the market effect, their explanatory capacity is still considerable.
Originality/value
The author has found that underpricing is negatively related to the breadth of shareholders but positively related to institutional shareholders after the IPO. When a company is underpriced, it is likely, on average, to have a higher breadth of shareholder base and lower concentration of large outside investors.
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In this article the importance of students as staff in a selection of multi‐national stores in France and Ireland is compared. The employment of students was significantly lower…
Abstract
In this article the importance of students as staff in a selection of multi‐national stores in France and Ireland is compared. The employment of students was significantly lower in the French than Irish stores, and it is argued, using the work of Rubery and Gadrey et al., that this is related to cross‐national differences in the organisation of retailing in each country; in particular the skills sought of staff, their wage costs, and the organisation of working hours. The combination of these factors results in students being sought‐after employees in the Irish retail system, while in the French retail system students are rarely viewed as an effective labour source.
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Delfina Gomes, Garry D. Carnegie and Lúcia Lima Rodrigues
The purpose of this paper is to look at the adoption of double entry bookkeeping at the Royal Treasury, Portugal, on its establishment in 1761 and the factors contributing to this…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to look at the adoption of double entry bookkeeping at the Royal Treasury, Portugal, on its establishment in 1761 and the factors contributing to this development. The Royal Treasury was the first central government organization in Portugal to adopt double entry bookkeeping and was a crucial first step in the institutionalisation of the technique in Portuguese public administration.
Design/methodology/approach
Set firmly in the archive, this paper adopts new institutional sociology (NIS) to inform the findings of the local, time‐specific accounting policy and practice at the Portuguese Royal Treasury.
Findings
Embedded within the broader European context, this study identifies the key pressures exerted upon the Royal Treasury on its formation in 1761, which resulted in major accounting change within Portuguese central government from that date. The study provides further evidence of the importance of the state in the institutionalization of accounting practices by means of coercive pressures and highlights for Portugal the importance of individual actors who, as powerful change agents, made key decisions that influenced accounting change.
Originality/value
This study examines a major instance of accounting change in European central government and broadens the application of NIS in accounting history research to a different country – Portugal – and to a different time – the eighteenth century. It also serves to illuminate the difficulties of collecting pertinent evidence pertaining to this long‐dated time period in identifying certain forms of institutional pressures.