Christine Porter and Matthew Sherwood
This paper aims to examine the relation between SEC regulations centered on board of director independence and financial reporting quality and investigates the different routes to…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the relation between SEC regulations centered on board of director independence and financial reporting quality and investigates the different routes to board independence.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample includes 1,248 firm observations whose board composition is compared between 2001 and 2008. Each firm is categorized based on how they increase board independence. The authors test the hypotheses using ordinary least squares regression models.
Findings
Results show that firms choose between multiple routes when complying with the independence requirements, and how firms operationalize the SEC requirement impacts financial reporting quality. Specifically, firms that achieve increased board independence through increased board size are associated with higher financial reporting quality. However, there is no association between higher financial reporting quality and a subsequent increase in audit fees. Suggesting the reporting quality results from the board monitoring function and not from an increase in auditor effort.
Originality/value
No evidence exists on how a firm’s chosen route to increased board independence relates to financial reporting quality.
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Mónica Truninger and Ana Horta
Like many other countries, a reform of school meals policies has been implemented in Portugal, wherein nutritional and health criteria are considered in the design of the public…
Abstract
Like many other countries, a reform of school meals policies has been implemented in Portugal, wherein nutritional and health criteria are considered in the design of the public plate. Given that a large literature on school meals focus on cities seen as sites for promising transformation regarding health, resilience and sustainability, it is pertinent to examine how these policies are being received in rural areas. Similar to other vulnerable regions in southern Europe, rural areas in Portugal have been affected by depopulation, the re-localisation of public services (e.g. schools, health centres and courts of justice) to larger conurbations, a drastic reduction of farming areas and its reconversion from sites of production to sites of consumption that thrive on tourism. While research on children’s attitudes, experiences and practices in rural areas had picked up the attention of social scientists, research on children’s relations and engagements with school meals in these areas does not abound. This chapter addresses three issues: first, how the catering staff and health professionals experience children’s engagements with school meals after the policy reform; second, how the discourses of the school staff and parents around the rural and gastro-idylls contrast with the reported food practices and experiences of everyday life, and third, how the multiple engagements of children with animals, plants and other nature conflict with or are juxtaposed to the images of the rural idyll. Drawing from focus groups material with children aged between 7 and 9 years old living in the rural hinterland of an inland medium-size city in Portugal, focus groups with parents and interviews with stakeholders (e.g. school and kitchen staff, local authorities, nutritionists and catering firms) the chapter aims at contributing to a broader understanding of children lived experiences with food consumption in rural contexts.
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A central tension in routine dynamics is the paradox of the [n]ever-changing world: how can we consider each routine performance as unique, when it is simultaneously a…
Abstract
A central tension in routine dynamics is the paradox of the [n]ever-changing world: how can we consider each routine performance as unique, when it is simultaneously a recognizable variant of the behavior from the past? Emergent from this paradox is the question of how we can consider routines to be the “same” over time, even as they change. Organizational traditions, which often persist over decades, present a potentially informative case of this paradox as their core rituals are simultaneously recognizable and recognizably in significant flux over the long-term. In this paper, the author draws on a case history of “the Unicorn,” a tradition at a US summer camp that began as a quiet activity for a few children in 1985 and by 2017 had become a weekly spectacle witnessed by hundreds of campers. By drawing on routine dynamics and tradition literatures, the author shows how action visibility and influence by different organizational constituencies over time slowly enabled these changes. This longer-term lens helps illuminate the under-researched, mutually constitutive relationship between routines and traditions, and their long-term dynamics.
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Sherwood C. Frey and Dana R. Clyman
Sparta Glass Products has been losing significant market share over the last several quarters in the non-glare-glass market, with a price 10% above the competition. Lowering the…
Abstract
Sparta Glass Products has been losing significant market share over the last several quarters in the non-glare-glass market, with a price 10% above the competition. Lowering the price is under consideration. Unfortunately, fully allocated costs are such that the lower price results in a loss. Issues to be discussed and analyses to be conducted include the relevant costs for the decision and the reactions from competitors.
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Thalia Anthony, Juanita Sherwood, Harry Blagg and Kieran Tranter
This article provides a historical literature review and exploratory descriptive case study of one U.S. Federal agencyʼs efforts to design an appropriate government-wide…
Abstract
This article provides a historical literature review and exploratory descriptive case study of one U.S. Federal agencyʼs efforts to design an appropriate government-wide leadership development curriculum for incumbent top or senior civil servants. The U.S. Federal Executive Institute was founded in 1968, it spans the 20th and 21st centuries, it illustrates changes in the compact that exists between government and its top civil servants over time, and it illustrates challenges this agency confronts addressing the task of interagency leadership development. The main findings are three continuities and three discontinuities between curriculum development then and now. Conclusions outline issues for future interdisciplinary research to inform the intellectual roots for 21st century curricula aligned to emerging roles and the challenges top career executives actually confront.
Thalia Anthony, Juanita Sherwood, Harry Blagg and Kieran Tranter
Miet Timmers and Veerle Lengeler
Drawing on in-depth interviews with 34 women and men of the working sandwich generation (WSG) in Flanders, this chapter presents a taxonomy of nine coping strategies that the WSG…
Abstract
Drawing on in-depth interviews with 34 women and men of the working sandwich generation (WSG) in Flanders, this chapter presents a taxonomy of nine coping strategies that the WSG uses to balance intergenerational care with a job: an acceptance strategy, a boundary management strategy, a help-seeking strategy, a planning strategy, a governance strategy, a self-care strategy, a time focus strategy, a values strategy and a super-sandwich strategy. Individuals of the WSG do not use just one strategy, but combine different strategies simultaneously or consecutively. Moreover, different strategies are also strongly linked to each other so that there is a certain degree of ‘overlap’.
Since ethnographers tend to study poor, urban black communities most often, it is not surprise that the methodological literature contains a wealth of information designed to help…
Abstract
Since ethnographers tend to study poor, urban black communities most often, it is not surprise that the methodological literature contains a wealth of information designed to help scholars do this kind of work. Far less is known about the challenges ethnographers face when “studying up,” that is exploring middle and upper-middle-class communities. Less is know too about the challenges of working in a suburb versus an urban community. This chapter helps to fill that void. By chronicling the challenges I faced in the field while collecting the data for Blue-Chip Black, my book about the identity options of middle and upper-middle-class suburban blacks, I show that the strategies ethnographers of the urban poor employ in their work are not necessarily transferable to studies of the upper classes. I identify a set of methodological tools appropriate for analysis of the upper classes. I then turn to the theoretical contributions of my study as a way of showing the kinds of insights that can be gleaned from a study of those near the top of the class ladder.