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This case covers the framework and process to determine fair value as specified in International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 13. It illustrates an instance in which auditors interpret the concept of fair value to be consistent with other principles in standards such as the principle of prudence in the conceptual framework. In addition, a lot of the discussion in the case is applicable to accounting education in any regulatory jurisdictions given the convergence of US generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and IFRS 13. In addition, while fair value accounting may have been designed to give investors more useful information, in practise it could involve highly subjective judgement and the resulting implementation may be affected by incentives of different stakeholders. The CK Tang’s case provides an excellent opportunity to discuss incentives of varies parties in determining the fair value in financial reporting decisions. In short, this case could be a good jumping-off point to talk about management and auditors’ incentives in financial reporting in general.

Publicly available information (e.g. financial reporting standards, corporate announcements and reports, news reports) was used as the basis for this case.

The case centres on an iconic Singaporean integrated retailing and property landlord entity: Tang holdings. As part of its succession planning, the company’s founding family decided to take its listing arm, C.K. Tang Limited (CK Tang hereafter), private in May 2006. The Tang brothers, who represented the controlling family, initiated several attempts to delist the company. The minority shareholders of CK Tang were unhappy that the offer price was below the net asset value of the company. The minority shareholders also highlighted that the reported fair value of the flagship Tang Plaza complex understated its highest and best use and might not possibly comply with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 13.

The case can be used for class discussions with undergraduate students or master students in intermediate accounting courses.

This study examined a mediating model of income and pay satisfaction with a direct path (income → pay satisfaction) and an indirect path with two mediators (income → the love of money → pay equity comparison → pay satisfaction). Results of the whole sample showed that the indirect path was significant and the direct path was insignificant. When the indirect path was eliminated, income contributed positively to pay satisfaction. We then tested the model across two moderators: culture (the United States versus Spain) and gender. This study provides the following theoretical and empirical contributions: the direct relationship between income and pay satisfaction depends on the indirect path and the extent to which (1) income enhances the love of money and (2) the love of money is applied to evaluate pay equity comparison satisfaction. If both conditions exist, income leads to pay dissatisfaction. If the second condition does not exist, income does not lead to pay dissatisfaction. Pay satisfaction depends on (1) one’s love of money and (2) how one compares. The role of the love of money in pay satisfaction is “not”universal across cultures and gender.

Aiming at obtaining a high-quality global path for a mobile robot which works in complex environments, a modified particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, named random-disturbance self-adaptive particle swarm optimization (RDSAPSO), is proposed in this paper.

A perturbed global updating mechanism is introduced to the global best position to avoid stagnation in RDSAPSO. Moreover, a new self-adaptive strategy is proposed to fine-tune the three control parameters in RDSAPSO to dynamically adjust the exploration and exploitation capabilities of RDSAPSO. Because the convergence of PSO is paramount and influences the quality of the generated path, this paper also analytically investigates the convergence of RDSAPSO and provides a convergence-guaranteed parameter selection principle for RDSAPSO. Finally, a RDSAPSO-based global path planning (GPP) method is developed, in which the feasibility-based rule is applied to handle the constraint of the problem.

In an attempt to validate the proposed method, it is compared against six state-of-the-art evolutionary methods under three different numerical simulations. The simulation results confirm that the proposed method is highly competitive in terms of the path optimality. Moreover, the computation time of the proposed method is comparable with those of the other compared methods.

Therefore, the proposed method can be considered as a vital alternative in the field of GPP.

We investigate the innovative supply chain contracts developed and implemented by Barilla, the leading Italian pasta company, in sourcing high-quality durum wheat from farmers in Northern Italy in the Emilia Romagna region.

Using case study techniques to gather information, we captured the evolution of the supply chain contracts adopted by Barilla. We gained information mainly through semi-structured interviews with Barilla’s managers, co-op and consortium managers representing farmers, Barilla’s quantitative data related to contracts’ elements and structure, preliminary experimental results, agri-business magazines, industry reports, and academic literature.

These contracts helped the company improve not only its long-term profits and strategic objectives such as supply security, but also the farmers’ income as well as environmental sustainability, thus providing triple bottom line benefits.

We investigate how Barilla and its suppliers – with the support of additional stakeholders, such as regional institutions – combine in their innovative contracts fixed and market-based prices as well as quality and sustainability-based premiums for desired triple bottom line benefits.

Much research has explored high levels of son preference in India, finding that parents often report a desire for more sons than daughters. While scholars have noted that a nontrivial portion of respondents claim to have no sex preference, little is known about (1) the characteristics of this group and (2) how such parental preferences relate to child outcomes. We use data from a representative study of rural South Indian households (n = 7,891 adults) to address these gaps. Descriptive results show that a sizable portion of respondents – one in four – indicated that, at the start of their marriage, they had no preference for the number of daughters or sons they wanted. Further, multinomial regression results show that those who reported no sex preference at the time of marriage were more likely to be female, older, and less likely to be sterilized than those who reported equal or son preference, with additional distinctions across educational attainment and religion. Turning to child-level outcomes, we examined whether parents’ sex preferences related to adolescent mental health through ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models (n = 1,245 adolescents). Adolescents whose mothers stated no sex preference reported significantly fewer anxiety and depressive symptoms than their peers. Fathers’ sex preferences were not significantly related to adolescent mental health. These findings suggest that a lack of sex preference may hold meaningful and positive implications for adolescent mental health. Further, although son preference is a widespread phenomenon, singular attention on those with son preference may mask important nuances among Indian families.

This study examined the relationship between early career teachers' (ECTs') perceived professional competence (PC) and teacher buoyancy (TB) and the contribution of such dynamic interaction between ECTs' perceived PC and TB to their thriving in the face of everyday teaching challenges.

The study adopted a concurrent mixed-methods research design. A total of 218 ECTs taking a postgraduate, part-time initial teacher education programme completed two quantitative measures: Professional Competence Questionnaire and Teacher Buoyancy Scale – Extended Version. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between PC and TB. Qualitative data via semi-structured interviews were collected from 14 survey respondents and were interpreted through a case study approach.

The quantitative findings showed: (1) Competence in classroom teaching predicts the personal and contextual dimensions of teacher buoyancy; and (2) Competence to work in schools predicts the personal dimension of teacher buoyancy. The qualitative findings showed two cases that exemplified how the dynamic interaction between ECTs' perceived PC and the personal and contextual dimensions of TB supported their development of teaching expertise.

The paper provides empirical findings on the relationship between PC and TB. It highlights ECTs' perceived Competence to work in schools as goal alignment and engagement with school policy as a crucial facilitating condition that develops ECTs' capacity to face daily challenges and engenders their thriving in terms of development of teaching expertise.

After decades of focus on disaster, crisis, and trauma itself, in recent years more attention has been devoted to the study of human strengths and resilience, as reflected in the rise of positive psychology and strengths-based social work. In particular, psychological growth after trauma has been increasingly studied, and one of the official terms referring to the phenomenon is posttraumatic growth (PTG). The PTG literature reflects work on positive psychology, trauma recovery, and resilience. The main components associated with PTG are new possibilities, interpersonal growth, personal growth, appreciation for life, and spiritual change (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2014). These domains have been tested and measured with a scale, the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory. While PTG and related concepts such as resilience have been studied in various populations, they have not yet been investigated extensively in Southeast Asia (SEA) populations. This chapter explores the psychological examination of resilience and PTG in the SEA context, with some discussion of the background of both positive psychological concepts and PTG research cross-culturally, and their application to the SEA region specifically. Brief relevant trauma history of the region, such as human-made and natural hazards impacting the region’s individuals and communities, and similarities and differences in the results of these traumas will be described. Implications for broader international work as well as cultural and clinical implications also will be discussed in this chapter.

Disaster responders play a crucial role in providing aid to individuals and communities following catastrophic events. Being tasked to protect and preserve life and property, these groups of professionals are constantly exposed to various hazards, which puts them at risk of negative mental health consequences. This chapter describes and discusses these mental health effects and interventions for disaster responders in Southeast Asia. The chapter defines who the disaster responders are in Southeast Asian countries. Drawing from the literature, this chapter enumerates the various positive and negative psychological consequences of disaster response, and the risk and protective factors associated with disaster response work. This chapter also describes the different interventions, such as psychological first aid and psychotherapy, following the Inter-agency Standing Committee (IASC) (2007) guidelines on conducting mental health and psychosocial support services (MHPSS), and focusing on the Southeast Asian context. This chapter ends with a discussion of the different challenges of providing MHPSS in Southeast Asia and with some recommendations on how to improve the delivery of these services and the mental health of disaster responders in general.

Continuous process improvement is a hard problem, especially in high variety/low volume environments due to the complex interrelationships between processes. The purpose of this paper is to address the process improvement issues by simultaneously investigating the job sequencing and buffer size optimization problems.

This paper proposes a continuous process improvement implementation framework using a modified genetic algorithm (GA) and discrete event simulation to achieve multi-objective optimization. The proposed combinatorial optimization module combines the problem of job sequencing and buffer size optimization under a generic process improvement framework, where lead time and total inventory holding cost are used as two combinatorial optimization objectives. The proposed approach uses the discrete event simulation to mimic the manufacturing environment, the constraints imposed by the real environment and the different levels of variability associated with the resources.

Compared to existing evolutionary algorithm-based methods, the proposed framework considers the interrelationship between succeeding and preceding processes and the variability induced by both job sequence and buffer size problems on each other. A computational analysis shows significant improvement by applying the proposed framework.

Significant body of work exists in the area of continuous process improvement, discrete event simulation and GAs, a little work has been found where GAs and discrete event simulation are used together to implement continuous process improvement as an iterative approach. Also, a modified GA simultaneously addresses the job sequencing and buffer size optimization problems by considering the interrelationships and the effect of variability due to both on each other.