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The aim of this paper is to revisit the board independence–audit fees (BI–AF) relationship while taking into account the ownership structure of the firm. Two effects are unfolding along the ownership concentration spectrum: separation of ownership and control (principal–agent problems) and separation of voting and cash flow rights (principal–principal problems).

The study is conducted over a seven-year period (2002-2008) using panel regressions on a sample of Canadian publicly traded companies. The authors use a moderated regression analysis incorporating two-way interactive terms (ownership × BI) and a sub-group analysis.

The results show a positive and significant relationship between BI and AF when ownership is concentrated in the hands of a dominant/controlling shareholder. The higher the gap between voting and cash flow rights of the ultimate owner, the stronger the relationship between BI and AF. Overall, evidence supports both the demand-based perspective on AF and the expropriation effect argument.

Results support a one-size-fits-all approach to governance despite growing concerns from academics and interest groups about the appropriateness of pursuing such strategy when ownership is concentrated in the hands of a dominant/controlling shareholder.

By taking the excess voting rights into account (difference between voting rights and cash-flow rights of the ultimate owner), the authors propose a refined classification of the sample firms along the ownership concentration spectrum.

The measurement capabilities of the data envelopment analysis (DEA) models are used to train the artificial neural network (ANN) models for the best performance modeling of the sawmills in Ontario. The bootstrap DEA models measure robust technical efficiency scores and have benchmarking abilities, whereas the ANN models use abstract learning from a limited set of information and provide the predictive power.

The complementary modeling approaches of the DEA and the ANN provide an adaptive decision support tool for each sawmill.

The trained ANN models demonstrate promising results in predicting the relative efficiency scores and the optimal combination of the inputs and the outputs for three categories (large, medium and small) of sawmills in Ontario. The average absolute error in predicting the relative efficiency scores varies from 0.01 to 0.04, and the predicted optimal combination of the inputs (roundwood and employees) and the output (lumber) demonstrate that a large percentage of the sawmills shows less than 10% error in the prediction results.

The purpose of this study is to develop an integrated DEA-ANN model that can help in the continuous improvement and performance evaluations of the forest industry working under uncertain business environment.

This research study explores the adoption of integrated sustainable SCM practices in the textile industry in India and its impact on the firm's business performance.

The analysis was carried out using the partial least squares structural equation modeling using SmartPLS 3.3.2.

It was found that the demand-side sustainability initiatives of the large firms and the internal sustainability practices of the small firms directly impacted their business performance. It was also found that the suppliers' sustainability initiatives had a direct and positive impact on the internal sustainability of the firm, which in turn had a direct and positive impact on the demand-side sustainability in the Indian textile industry.

The findings emphasize the distinctive role of each dimension of the integrated sustainable SCM on the firm performance in the Indian textile industry.

The objective of the study is to analyze corporate governance practices of Canadian companies in the post‐Enron period. The attempt is to investigate whether the convergence phenomenon evidenced in prior studies is limited to the minimum mandatory requirements imposed by regulators or reflects a real behavioral transformation.

Changing governance structure might be slow except in times of financial crisis, increased public scrutiny and reforms. These conditions are met in the post‐Enron period (2002 to 2005) where major reforms have been launched including the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) in the USA and Bill 198 in Canada. The authors expect changes in corporate governance to be more important during this period, therefore, enhancing the robustness and reliability of their results. They measure corporate governance on a global scale, relying on the ROB index published by the Globe and Mail. The index distinguishes between four blocks of corporate governance, namely, board composition, compensation, shareholder rights, and disclosure.

The present results show signs of convergence. However, Canadian companies improved their corporate governance practices in the post‐Enron period mainly in areas mandated by regulation. This includes provisions related to the composition, attributes and working of the board of directors and board committees. No significant improvement is found in non‐regulated governance best practices.

Overall, the findings suggest a lack of real behavioral change in corporate leaders. Instead, convergence in corporate governance appears to be the result of a box‐checking exercise.

If corporate governance is about ethical conduct and stems from the culture and mindset of management, these results show that corporate governance cannot be regulated by legislation alone.

This study goes beyond the minimum mandatory requirements and looks into compliance of non‐regulated provisions as well. Examining the evolution of corporate governance practices on these two fronts helps to further investigate the extent and nature of convergence.

The objective of this study is to investigate further the interplay between corporate governance and firm performance with special focus on a situation expected to bring larger agency costs to the firm, that is, when voting rights of the dominant shareholder exceed his/her cash flow rights.

The research is conducted in Canada over a four‐year period from 2002 to 2005 and uses a balanced sample of 130 firms or 520 firm‐year observations. Corporate governance is measured based on the ROB corporate governance index published by The Globe and Mail.

The results clearly show a positive and significant relationship between the ROB governance scores and Tobin's Q, when there is a separation between voting and cash flow rights. In the absence of any excess voting rights, no significant relation is found between governance and performance.

The findings suggest that regulators need to exercise caution before deciding whether or not to recommend or impose corporate governance rules for all firms, since the benefits of these rules may vary among the firms.

The study contributes to explaining mixed international evidence on the governance‐performance relationship, while directing attention to the moderating effect of the deviation from the one share‐one vote principle. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no other study using corporate governance indices has taken into account the impact of excess voting rights despite the widespread use of that practice outside the USA.

This study was conducted as a result of the declining numbers of Diploma in Accountancy (DIA) students obtaining a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 2.75 and above in the Sarawak Campus of UiTM. The reason why CGPA 2.75 was identified as the cut‐off point was because this is the minimum entry requirement for students to enter the degree program in Accountancy. A questionnaire survey was carried out at UiTM Sarawak Campus with the hope of finding the root cause(s) of this problem by focusing on DIA students who were in their final semesters. A total of 65 questionnaires were distributed to selected respondents in Parts 6, 7 and 8 of the DIA program. In addition to that, these students were observed without much interference to their ordinary situation, so that a more reliable outcome could be obtained. From the survey, the researchers found that the factors that caused the decline in the numbers of students achieving a CGPA of 2.75 and above can be categorized into avoidable and unavoidable. The avoidable factors include students’ attitude, study skills and peer influence. These factors are considered avoidable because they are within the students’ control. Final exam paper difficulty is an unavoidable factor, because it is not under the students’ control. The findings show that the university, lecturers and students all have significant roles to play in helping these students obtain a CGPA of 2.75 and above. They should complement one another so that their joint effort can be optimized. Based on the above findings, the researchers conclude that the university, lecturers and students should work together to produce better results not only in terms of the CGPA outcomes but also to improve the students’ attitude.

The main aim of this study is to investigate empirically the effect of some internal and external corporate governance mechanisms on the UAE firm performance (i.e., Tobin’s q). Like many of the developing countries all over the world, the UAE has recently initiated the application of the international standards of corporate governance as a part of its merge with the global economy. This study utilizes a sample of 51 firms using the accounting and market data available for 2004. The sample firms are all listed in either the Dubai Financial Market or the Abu Dubai Securities Market. The cross‐sectional regression analysis is employed to test the hypotheses of the study. The results of this study show that the governmental ownership, the debt ratio (total debt/total assets), and the payout dividends ratio have a significant impact on the firm performance; whereas the institutional investors, the board size, the firm size (sales), and the audit type show a non‐significant impact. This study concludes that three of the corporate governance mechanisms in the UAE used in this study appear to be strong enough to affect the firm performance. However, the other four mechanisms are found to have a weak effect on the firm performance which could be a result of the significant absence of some aspects of corporate governance practices and lack of enforcement of rules.

Inconsistencies and contradictions in the US government's story of hijackers and their masterminds are examined to account for what happened on 9-11. A little-known initial FBI list of 19, scrutinized for four names not on its final list, calls into question the FBI naming process. We discovered 11 of the FBI-named finalists could not have been on those planes, with 10 still alive and another's identity improvised by a double. The Dulles videotape, essentially the government's case that hijackers boarded the 9-11 flights, is found to have serious problems including authentication, as does the so-called bin Laden “confession” video.

Were “hijackers” known to be in the US before intelligence alleges it knew? Evidence is examined which shows that they were closely monitored by agencies which denied this knowledge; in particular, an undercover FBI agent lived with them the prior year.

Noting government refusal to disclose evidence called for by investigators, we find some pieces altered or fabricated and others confiscated or destroyed. Other revelations point to hijackers with national security overrides, protection in their alternate roles as drug traffickers, and deep political connections with government elites. We investigate patterns, reminiscent of historical intelligence involvement, revealing the presence of a covert intelligence operation disguised as an outside enemy attack.

Organizations in many domains generate a considerable amount of heterogeneous data every day. Such data can be processed to enhance these organizations’ decisions in real time. However, storing and processing large and varied datasets (known as big data) is challenging to do in real time. In machine learning, streaming feature selection has always been considered a superior technique for selecting the relevant subset features from highly dimensional data and thus reducing learning complexity. In the relevant literature, streaming feature selection refers to the features that arrive consecutively over time; despite a lack of exact figure on the number of features, numbers of instances are well-established. Many scholars in the field have proposed streaming-feature-selection algorithms in attempts to find the proper solution to this problem. This paper presents an exhaustive and methodological introduction of these techniques. This study provides a review of the traditional feature-selection algorithms and then scrutinizes the current algorithms that use streaming feature selection to determine their strengths and weaknesses. The survey also sheds light on the ongoing challenges in big-data research.

Seeks to effect a comparison of the pricing strategies followed by hypermarkets, compared with those that discount stores carry out.

Data were collected from the direct observation of the supermarket shelves of nine frequent purchase product categories in several hypermarkets and discount stores. Diverse statistical analyses were applied to these picked up data, such as mean comparisons, ANOVA and correspondence analysis.

The article concludes that the hypermarkets tend to have higher mean prices, and use promotional tools more profusely than the discount stores.

For future research, it would be very important to examine consumer price evaluations based on a theoretical approach in the same formats, and in this way consumer reactions to price changes could be understood. Also, examining the cross‐country differences in retail stores may be quite interesting.

Relationships between hypermarkets and hi‐lo pricing, plus discount stores and EDLP pricing, have been found. Therefore, retail managers of both formats have to know all about these pricing strategies. In this way, the managers of these firms would know the kind of customers that can be attracted and the signals and image that can be projected in the market.

This paper directly compares the pricing and promotional activities of hypermarkets versus discount stores. Researching into whether price and promotional differences exist between the two format retailers will help consumers and managers to know the true price level of each format.