F. Johnny Deng, Kamal M. Haddad and Paul D. Harrison
This study aims to advance the understanding, in a cross‐cultural context, of the roles that ethical vs. self‐interest considerations play in project continuation decisions…
Abstract
This study aims to advance the understanding, in a cross‐cultural context, of the roles that ethical vs. self‐interest considerations play in project continuation decisions. Fifty‐eight executive MBA students from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) completed a project continuation decision using an instrument previously employed by Harrell and Harrison (1994) on U.S. subjects, and Harrison, Chow, Wu and Harrell (1999) on Chinese nationals from Taiwan. Results indicated that while the PRC subjects generally had a lower tendency than these other groups to continue an unprofitable project, they still tended towards continuance. Further analysis revealed that the PRC subjects’ decisions were motivated by an emphasis on their self‐interest as well as ethical considerations. The role of self interests in the PRC subjects’ decisions seems consistent with recent claims that China’s new market ethic is shifting people towards emphasizing their own economic welfare over that of the collective entity. Also of substantive interest was that as compared to their U.S. counterparts, the PRC subjects’ ethical reasoning had a different structure. The relative impacts of their ethical reasoning dimensions also differed from those from their U.S. counterparts.
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Chee W. Chow, Kamal M. Haddad and Anne Wu
This study contributes exploratory evidence on the relationships between corporate culture and company size, competitive environment and corporate performance in the U.S. and…
Abstract
This study contributes exploratory evidence on the relationships between corporate culture and company size, competitive environment and corporate performance in the U.S. and Taiwan. The findings indicate that environmental uncertainty – one aspect of industry dynamics – failed to uncover any widespread effects of this variable on Taiwanese firms’ corporate culture. In contrast, not only did we find that the corporate cultural aspects most valued differed from country to country, but that they related to corporate performance in different ways.
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Although the extant literature widely recognizes the impact of corporate culture on performance, such findings are either speculative or mostly based on US companies, thus may not…
Abstract
Although the extant literature widely recognizes the impact of corporate culture on performance, such findings are either speculative or mostly based on US companies, thus may not be generalisable to other national settings. In addition, while industry effect is considered in a few studies, its combined effect with other factors on performance has not been explored. This study modifies the existing model of corporate culture on performance by adding industry effect to the model. This is also the first study that tests such a relationship in a Middle East setting. Due to its unique culture, data collection in the Middle East region has been difficult if not impossible. More research in this region is needed since most of it is still in its infancy. This study investigates firms in Bahrain, the financial hub of the Arab World, to shed some insight onto this region. The results confirm a positive relation between Culture and performance and marginal industry effect between banks and hotels.
Taha Almarayeh and Beatriz Aibar-Guzmán
This study aims to assess the board of directors’ effectiveness in curbing earnings management (EM) in Jordan, a country where Islamic religious values strongly influence…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to assess the board of directors’ effectiveness in curbing earnings management (EM) in Jordan, a country where Islamic religious values strongly influence corporate practices.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a sample of 51 Amman Stock Exchange-listed firms from 2012 to 2022, generalised least squares regression is used to examine the association between board characteristics and EM.
Findings
Most board characteristics do not significantly affect EM. Interestingly, board activity is significantly and positively associated with EM, suggesting that the board’s monitoring function has been relegated to a secondary role.
Research limitations/implications
Formal corporate governance mechanisms may prove ineffective, as their effectiveness in limiting EM is undermined by informal rules.
Practical implications
Regulators should adapt corporate governance rules to the context in which they are embedded. Greater attention to religious dynamics could improve board oversight effectiveness.
Originality/value
This study provides a new perspective to analyse the relationship between corporate governance and EM. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first studies to explore this issue within the context of Islamic countries.
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Mostafa Kamal Hassan, Bassam Abu-Abbas and Hany Kamel
The authors investigate the impact of disclosure tones and financial risk on the readability of annual reports in the banking sector. The authors also examine the moderating…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors investigate the impact of disclosure tones and financial risk on the readability of annual reports in the banking sector. The authors also examine the moderating effect of banks' financial risk on the tone–readability relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
This study relies on the agency theory and the social psychology theory to formulate its testable hypotheses and explain the empirical findings. It uses a sample of 390 bank-year observations from banks listed in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Stock Exchanges during the period 2014–2019. It also employs random effect regressions to analyze the data and to examine the reverse causality/endogeneity in order to obtain robust findings.
Findings
This study’s results demonstrate that easy (difficult) to read annual reports is significantly associated with positive (negative) tone. Bank managers characterized as “too positive/optimistic” and banks with higher financial risks publish less readable annual reports. The results also show that the interaction between negative tone and a bank's financial risk is inversely associated with reading difficulty, indicating that managers prepare easy text to clarify causes of their banks’ high risks, yet they communicate this easy text with a negative tone that reflects their feelings/emotions towards the financial risks of their banks.
Practical implications
This study’s findings call for the use of a plain English text that bears a neutral tone and urge financial analysts to go beyond the financial aspects of annual reports. They also stimulate policymakers to draft policies, which ensure the presence of audit committee members who possess a broad expertise to uncover the linguistic issues embedded in the annual reports.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study dedicated to exploring the tone–readability association in the GCC's banking sector.
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Y. Helio Yang, Kamal Haddad and Chee W. Chow
Reviews the literature on capacity planning at strategic, tactical and operational levels but points out that, in practice, many enterprise resource planning systems make…
Abstract
Reviews the literature on capacity planning at strategic, tactical and operational levels but points out that, in practice, many enterprise resource planning systems make unrealistic assumptions for production planning; and the advanced production software packages which can deal with uncertainty are both complex and expensive. Uses a theoretical company to demonstrate how a normal Excel spreadsheet can be used in conjunction with a common add‐on package (@RISK) to improve analysis and run Monte Carlo simulations as a basis for decision making. Compares the results produced with standard spreadsheet analysis and discusses the additional financial and operational insights they provide into the implications of different capacity levels under conditions of uncertainty. Warns that the validity of the simulation depends on the quality of the data and model; and that human judgement is still required to actually make a decision.
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Kamal Haddad, Gangaram Singh, Don Sciglimpaglia and Hung Chan
– The purpose of this study is to examine the relevance and limitations of using a top journal approach as a proxy for an article's value or contribution.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the relevance and limitations of using a top journal approach as a proxy for an article's value or contribution.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors determined the citations for all articles published in 2001 and 2003 in 26 key marketing journals included in the Social Science Citation Index and 50 journals included in Google Scholar to rate the impact of a specific article. They also assessed these articles to examine the source of citations, as a way of measuring impact.
Findings
This study indicates that articles published in the journals most often considered the top three or four in marketing are cited by others significantly more often than the ones published in the other journals. However, the authors found substantial misclassification errors from using publications in these “top” journals to infer a top article status across three different criteria for defining a top article.
Originality/value
These findings strongly support the need to evaluate each article on its own merits, rather than abdicating this responsibility by using journal ranking as a proxy for an article's value or contribution.
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Chung‐Ching Chiu, Chih‐Hung Tsai and Yi‐Chan Chung
In the early industrial age which with high intensity of machine and labor, using financial measurement index was good enough to tie in company’s mechanization and philosophy of…
Abstract
In the early industrial age which with high intensity of machine and labor, using financial measurement index was good enough to tie in company’s mechanization and philosophy of management and been in efficiency. But being comply with “New Economic age,” a new economic environment is full of knowledge and information, the enterprise competition had changed from tangible assets, plants to intangible innovation ability of knowledge. As recognizing the new tendency by enterprise, they value gradually the growth and influence from learning. Practice of organization learning not only needs firm structure and be in coordination with both hardware and software, but also needs an affect measurement model to offer enterprise to estimate learning performance. It’s a good instrument of financial performance measure mold in the past years, But it’s for measuring the past, couldn’t formulate enterprise trend to future, hard to estimate investment for future, such as development of products, organization learning, knowledge management etc, as which intangible assets and knowledge ability just the key factors of being win around competition environment in the future. In 1992, Kaplan and Norton brought up Balance Scorecard (BSC) on Harvard Business Review, as an instrument helping enterprise to measure performance, which is being considered to be a most influence management instrument. It added non‐financial index such as customer, internal process and learning growth besides traditional financial index, as offering enterprise an index to measure and manage intangible assets and intellectual property. As being aware of organization learning is hard to be ignored in the new economic age, this research is based on learning and growth of BSC, and citing one national material company try to let the most difficult measurement performance of organization learning, to be estimate through BSC, analyze of factor and individual case, to discuss the company how to make the related strategy and vision of organization learning to develop learning and growth of the structure of BSC, subject the matter of out put factors to be discussed, and measure the outcomes as a result of research. The research affect offers (1) the base implement procedure of carrying out BSC; (2) the reference of formulating measurement index while enterprise using BSC to estimate performance of organization learning; (3) the possibility bottleneck maybe forcing while carrying out BSC, to be an improvement or preventive for enterprise.
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Stanislaus Agava, Sahaya G. Selvam and Judith Pete
Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic took institutions of learning and the workplaces by surprise. Offering online learning was an alternative for institutions of higher learning. Were…
Abstract
Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic took institutions of learning and the workplaces by surprise. Offering online learning was an alternative for institutions of higher learning. Were the Kenyan institutions adequately prepared for this? The present study had three specific objectives: (a) to establish the status of policy preparedness of online teaching and learning in Kenyan universities; (b) to explore the infrastructural preparedness of the universities; and (c) to find out the level of competency preparedness of lecturers and students in embracing the facilities for online teaching and learning. The study had an embedded mixed method research design. Data were gathered using an online questionnaire, from 112 lecturers and 372 students, who were conveniently sampled, representing 34 universities and university colleges. Findings suggest that almost all represented institutions have a policy on online teaching and learning, though 50% of participants’ report that the policy did not exist prior to the onset of COVID-19. On the level of infrastructural preparedness, the personal ownership of digital devices among participants is very impressive, though 50% of institutions do not provide any device. Thirdly, the level of competency in the use of the three sets of online platforms for teaching and learning is far below the expected average, but this is improving since the onset of COVID-19. Lecturers have statistically more perceived competence than students (p<0.01). The implication of these results is discussed. And we conclude that the period of forced online teaching and learning need not be considered as a stop-gap measure during COVID-19, but as a way forward for improved self-learning and lifelong learning.