Marshall A. Geiger, Rajib Hasan, Abdullah Kumas and Joyce van der Laan Smith
This study explores the association between individual investor information demand and two measures of market uncertainty – aggregate market uncertainty and disaggregate…
Abstract
Purpose
This study explores the association between individual investor information demand and two measures of market uncertainty – aggregate market uncertainty and disaggregate industry-specific market uncertainty. It extends the literature by being the first to empirically examine investor information demand and disaggregate market uncertainty.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper constructs a measure of information search by using the Google Search Volume Index and computes measures of aggregate and disaggregate market uncertainty using institutional investors' trading data from Ancerno Ltd. The relation between market uncertainty, as measured by trading disagreements among institutional investors, and information search is analyzed using an OLS (Ordinary Least Squares) regression model.
Findings
This paper finds that individual investor information demand is significantly and positively correlated with aggregate market uncertainty but not associated with disaggregated industry uncertainty. The findings suggest that individual investors may not fully incorporate all relevant uncertainty information and that ambiguity-related market pricing anomalies may be more associated with disaggregate market uncertainty.
Research limitations/implications
This study presents an examination of aggregate and disaggregate measures of market uncertainty and individual investor demand for information, shedding light on the efficiency of the market in incorporating information. A limitation of our study is that our data for market uncertainty is based on investor trading disagreement from Ancerno, Ltd. which is only available till 2011. However, we believe the implications are generalizable to the current time period.
Practical implications
This study provides the first concurrent empirical assessment of investor information search and aggregate and disaggregate market uncertainty. Prior research has separately examined information demand in these two types of market uncertainty. Thus, this study provides information to investors regarding the importance of assessing disaggregate component measures of the market.
Originality/value
This paper is the first to empirically examine investor information search and disaggregate market uncertainty. It also employs a unique data set and method to determine disaggregate, and aggregate, market uncertainty.
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Daniel Gyung Paik, Joyce Van Der Laan Smith, Brandon Byunghwan Lee and Sung Wook Yoon
The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between off-balance-sheet (OBS) operating leases and long-term debt by analyzing firms’ debt risk profiles measured by…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between off-balance-sheet (OBS) operating leases and long-term debt by analyzing firms’ debt risk profiles measured by the constraints on firms in the financial ratios in their debt covenants.
Design/methodology/approach
This study determines debt risk profiles using three measures: the ex ante probability of covenant violation (Demerjian and Owens, 2016), firms in violation of debt covenants and firms close to covenant violations.
Findings
High-risk firms according to all three measures, on average, have a significantly lower level of operating leases, indicating that these firms use OBS leases as a substitute for long-term debt. Interestingly, for firms operating in industries in which leases are widely available, firms with a high probability of covenant violation have a significantly higher level of operating leases, indicating that these firms use OBS leases as a complement to long-term debt. Further analysis indicates that lease financing is less costly than debt financing for these firms.
Research limitations/implications
Overall, evidence of this study indicates that firms facing financial constraints may attempt to lease more of their assets, but the availability of leasing is constrained by their debt covenant obligations and the strength of the leasing market in its industry.
Originality/value
This study identifies states in which risky firms may treat leases as either complements or substitutes for long-term debt, implying that the leasing decision relates to the availability of an active leasing market for a firm’s assets and the firm’s financial constraints. The findings of this study support recent research showing that debt and leases are complementary in the presence of counterparty risk providing insight into the paradoxical relationship identified in prior research between leases and long-term debt.
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Sadia Samar Ali, Rajbir Kaur and Jose Antonio Marmolejo Saucedo
Using the theory of sensibility and McClelland et al.’s (2013) metaphorical analysis, this study aims to analyse the accounting metaphors and meta-metaphor of The Hollow Men, a…
Abstract
Purpose
Using the theory of sensibility and McClelland et al.’s (2013) metaphorical analysis, this study aims to analyse the accounting metaphors and meta-metaphor of The Hollow Men, a poem written by T. S. Eliot.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis uses McClelland et al.’s (2013) five-step procedure to ascertain the poem’s metaphor use.
Findings
The Hollow Men depicts accountants as ritualistic and accounting voices as quiet and meaningless while its meta-metaphor conveys accounting as rites and shadows.
Research limitations/implications
Although The Hollow Men’s use of Form 4 metaphors, where neither figurative nor literal source term is named, places an onus on the reader to infer meaning from accounting metaphor use, the analysis provides readers with a valuable structure for evincing accounting metaphors that present pervasive accounting issues facing the modern world.
Practical implications
Accountants, according to The Hollow Men, are hollow, devotees to plunderers and property and rain dancers. The Hollow Men situates the quest for accounting as a ritual for order and the preservation of the status quo.
Social implications
The Hollow Men’s mages of accounting immersion in rites and shadows accord with the conceptual metaphors of accounting as magic and accounting as history.
Originality/value
The originality of this study rests in its introduction to McClelland et al.’s (2013) metaphorical analysis of accounting research.
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Sadia Samar Ali, Rajbir Kaur and Jose Antonio Marmolejo Saucedo
A SPLENDID conference, I thought. True, there were those who complained, those who thought some of the papers were elementary and those who thought that we had come a long way to…
Abstract
A SPLENDID conference, I thought. True, there were those who complained, those who thought some of the papers were elementary and those who thought that we had come a long way to learn very little. I don't agree at all. Some of the papers did, I admit, deal with basic considerations but it does nothing but good to re‐examine the framework of our services from time to time. In any case other papers were erudite, and for the first time I have seen an audience of librarians and authority members stunned, almost, into silence.
Maryam Safari, Vincent Bicudo de Castro and Ileana Steccolini
The major purpose of this paper is to answer the overarching questions of how multinational corporations (MNCs) address the multiple institutional logics of accountability and…
Abstract
Purpose
The major purpose of this paper is to answer the overarching questions of how multinational corporations (MNCs) address the multiple institutional logics of accountability and pressures of the field in which they operate and how the dominant logic changes and shifts in response to such pressures pre- and post-disaster situation.
Design/methodology/approach
In-depth interpretive textual analyses of multiple longitudinal data sets are conducted to study the case of the Fundão dam disaster. The data sources include historical documents, academic articles and public institutional press releases from 2000 to 2016, covering the environment leading to the case study incident and its aftermath.
Findings
The findings reveal how MNCs' plurality of and, at times, conflicting institutional logics shape the organizational behaviors, actions and nonactions of actors pre-, peri- and post-disaster. More specifically, the predominance bureaucracy embedded in the state-corporatist logic of the host country before a disaster allows the strategic subunit of an MNC to continue operating while causing various forms of environmental damage until a globally visible disaster triggers a reversal in the dominant logic toward the embrace of wider, global, emergent social and environmental accountability.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to discussions regarding the need to explore in depth of how MNCs respond to multiple institutional pressures in practice. This study extends the literature concerning disaster accountability, state-corporatism and logic-shifting by exploring how MNCs respond to the plurality of institutional logics and pressures over time and showing how, in some cases, logics not only reinforce but also contrast with each other and how a globally exposed disaster may trigger a shift in the dominant logic governing MNCs' responses.
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Current research methodologies in the field of information science employ induction or deduction, ignoring the third fundamental mode of cognition, retroduction. This paper seeks…
Abstract
Purpose
Current research methodologies in the field of information science employ induction or deduction, ignoring the third fundamental mode of cognition, retroduction. This paper seeks to introduce the Retroductive Recognition of Absence (RRA) methodology that expands inquiry from its current inductive and deductive bases to include the intuition‐based retroduction/abduction of Charles Sanders Peirce.
Design/methodology/approach
In brief, RRA consists of an iterative performance, of its nine‐step heuristic, with each iteration narrowing the scope of the research, while increasing the depth of examination. The nine steps are: perceive a phenomenon leading to surprise; perform the fundamental and primary retroduction; synthesize the phenomenon into a hypothesis; bracket intuitive prejudices; immerse in the data; conceptualize; hypothesize; select the hypothesis most efficient to test; and test the hypothesis. The iterations continue until the researcher reaches a hypothesis testable by inductive or deductive methods. This RRA methodology incorporates a “definition heuristic” that defines any previously undefined concept, a heuristic based on Spradley and McCurdy's classification of definitions.
Findings
A study of Compelled Nonuse of Information (CNI) demonstrated the usefulness of RRA in the study of phenomena from an initial “hunch” to a testable hypothesis. As such, the RRA methodology decreases subjectivity and imparts rigor to the study of absent or newly emergent phenomena that have no theoretical basis, no data, and no pre‐existing, coherent body of literature.
Originality/value
This paper presents the philosophy and practice of the RRA methodology and the retroductive philosophical inquiry postulated by Peirce.
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Ayodele Oniku and Anthonia Farayola Joaquim
The study aims to examine female sexuality in marketing communications and how it shapes the millennial buying decisions in the fashion industry. The focus of the study is to…
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to examine female sexuality in marketing communications and how it shapes the millennial buying decisions in the fashion industry. The focus of the study is to connect fashion industry and marketing communication to understand how female sexuality influence buying behaviours and decisions of the millennial.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was underpinned by the dimensions of skin colour, brand image and market share in sexual appealing marketing communication, and the millennial in the study comprises youths between the age of 21and 40 years and demographically defined by Wells and Guber (1966) as bachelors, Full nests 1 and 2. Multistage stage sampling was used with a structured questionnaire.
Findings
Findings show that youths, 2019 buying decisions and behaviours are strategically influenced by different manifestations of female sexuality in the context of the study and equally affect market share and patronage.
Research limitations/implications
The study shows what shapes the marketing communication strategies of the rising fashion industry but is limited to the millennial buying decisions and not the larger fashion industry consumers.
Practical implications
The needs for fashion industry to understand the influence of increasing use of female sexuality in marketing communication on male and female consumers and the effects on their respective buying behaviours is strategic to the industry as shown in the study.
Social implications
Female sexuality in marketing communication is strategic to fashion industry in today's market among youths.
Originality/value
The millennial constitutes a larger percentage of the developing economy market with rising income thus the need to understand their buying behaviours in the fashion industry