Manon Deslandes, Anne Fortin and Suzanne Landry
This study aims to analyze the relationship between a company’s use of aggressive tax planning and several audit committee members’ characteristics, namely, independence…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to analyze the relationship between a company’s use of aggressive tax planning and several audit committee members’ characteristics, namely, independence, expertise, diligence and gender diversity.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is an empirical research using archival data from 289 Canadian listed companies for the 2011-2015 period.
Findings
The authors find that measures of expertise and diligence are significantly related to tax aggressiveness. Financial expertise and tenure on the audit committee play an important role in constraining tax aggressiveness, as does having a larger audit committee.
Research limitations/implications
One limitation – and an area for future research – is that the effects of the audit committee members’ relationships with managers of the firms were not investigated.
Practical implications
Knowledge of audit committee characteristics may send a signal to shareholders, investors and tax agencies regarding the company’s potential risk with respect to aggressive tax planning. The analysis provides useful insights for board governance committees when determining the profile of persons to nominate for board positions and committees. In discussing tax-risk management, the study may heighten audit committee members’ awareness of their role in this respect.
Originality/value
This study’s results indicate that even in a setting where incentives for firms to be tax-aggressive is low compared to high-tax rate countries, there is variability in firms’ tax aggressiveness. This situation allows us to find audit committee characteristics that are effective in decreasing tax aggressiveness.
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Manon Deslandes, Anne Fortin and Suzanne Landry
The objective of this study is to explain family firm payout decisions based on socioemotional wealth (SEW) considerations.
Abstract
Purpose
The objective of this study is to explain family firm payout decisions based on socioemotional wealth (SEW) considerations.
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of publicly listed Canadian companies is examined for the period from 2003 to 2008. Distinguishing family firms from nonfamily firms, a Probit regression is used to analyze the likelihood of making a payout. For payout firms, regressions are used to analyze the relationship between payout level (dividends and share repurchases) and payout mix and family firms.
Findings
Results indicate that family firms are more likely to make a payout than nonfamily firms. Among payout firms, the level of payout among payout firms is lower for family firms than for nonfamily firms and their portion of payout in the form of dividends is higher. Lone founder family firms have a lower likelihood of making payouts than other family firms. However, among payout firms, they pay out more than other family firms and have a smaller percentage of their total payout in dividends than other family firms.
Research limitations/implications
Results are impacted by the definition of what constitutes a family firm. Family ownership was used as a proxy for the underlying SEW considerations. Future research could involve interviews with family firm representatives to investigate the relative importance of SEW considerations in their payout decisions.
Originality/value
In providing an alternative theoretical framing of family firms’ payout policies, the study suggests that payout differences between family and nonfamily firms may be driven in part by SEW considerations.
Antonello Callimaci, Anne Fortin and Suzanne Landry
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between a firm's propensity to lease and several firm characteristics: tax position, financial constraint, ownership…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between a firm's propensity to lease and several firm characteristics: tax position, financial constraint, ownership structure, growth, and size.
Design/methodology/approach
Controlling for industry, total lease share, operating and capital lease share ratios, obtained using an income statement approach, are regressed on a trichotomous tax variable, a dichotomous cash flow coverage ratio variable, debt over fixed assets, ownership concentration, market to book value of shares and the natural log of sales.
Findings
Total lease share increases with leverage, tax position and growth; it decreases with cash flow coverage, ownership concentration and firm size. Results for operating lease share are similar to those for total lease share. In contrast, capital lease share decreases with tax position and increases with ownership concentration and size.
Research limitations/implications
The results suggest that leasing offers added debt capacity and increases in financially constrained firms. Firms that pay high taxes seem to place more value on the constant stream of tax deductions from the rental payments than on deductions from decreasing interest costs and amortization. Finally, highly concentrated Canadian firms may use less leasing because they are more family‐controlled.
Originality/value
The literature offers mixed reasons for firms' decisions to lease or purchase assets. This study provides further evidence in a rich setting. In 2001, the Canadian tax authorities changed the tax treatment of leases, thus providing an opportunity to validate prior results on the impact of taxes on leasing. By including two different measures of financial constraint, this study disentangles the substitution and the added debt capacity hypotheses.
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Manon Deslandes, Suzanne Landry and Anne Fortin
– The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the significant dividend tax rate reduction for individual investors in Canada in 2006 affected firms’ payout policies.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the significant dividend tax rate reduction for individual investors in Canada in 2006 affected firms’ payout policies.
Design/methodology/approach
Using regression models, the authors examine the impact of the 2006 dividend tax cut on dividends and share repurchases in Canadian listed firms from 2003 to 2008. The authors also ran a multinomial logit regression to examine choices between payout policies.
Findings
Following the tax cut, firms increased their dividend payouts, with larger increases for firms in which shareholders benefited from the reduced tax rate. However, the 2006 tax cut appears to have had no negative effect on distributions through share repurchases. After the 2006 dividend tax cut, firms owned by shareholders subject to dividend taxes were more likely to use a combination of distribution mechanisms than share repurchases only, dividends only, or no payouts.
Practical implications
Shareholders’ tax preferences are an important factor for firms to consider when designing payout distribution policies. Following the 2006 dividend tax cut, firms increased their dividend payouts.
Social implications
The findings provide tax regulators with insight into how firms react to tax reform. They suggest that firms adapt their payout policy in the face of: a noteworthy dividend tax cut (6.2 per cent); a dividend tax cut that does not encourage tax arbitrage; and a dividend tax cut that does not economically favour dividend payment over share repurchases.
Originality/value
The paper considers the 2006 dividend tax rate cut in Canada, which presents a number of significant features that allow capturing the effect of a tax cut on payout policies.
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Engages in debate regarding immigrants and ethnicity in the USA. Research, based on second‐generation West Indian immigrants, shows ethnicity has very real implications for…
Abstract
Engages in debate regarding immigrants and ethnicity in the USA. Research, based on second‐generation West Indian immigrants, shows ethnicity has very real implications for immigrants’ life experience. Suggests that black immigrants complicate the slight understanding of blackness in general, but also the understanding of identity development.
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Syeda Ikrama and Syeda Maseeha Qumer
Social implications are as follows: social activism; girls education; collaboration; collective action; and change agent.
Abstract
Social implications
Social implications are as follows: social activism; girls education; collaboration; collective action; and change agent.
Learning outcomes
Learning outcomes are as follows: evaluate the role of a change agent in a nonprofit organization; understand collaborative partnerships in a nonprofit organization; examine how a nonprofit organization is promoting education in conflict-affected countries; understand the importance of education for girls as a basic human right; understand and discuss the threats to girls’ education in conflict-affected countries; analyze the role of Malala Yousafzai in supporting girls’ education globally; identify the challenges unique to educating girls; and explore steps that Yousafzai needs to take to ensure girls have equal access to the knowledge and skills they need to learn and lead in a world affected by the pandemic and climate change.
Case overview/synopsis
The case discusses social activist Malala Yousafzai’s (She) diligent efforts to promote girls’ education in conflict-affected regions globally through her not-for-profit organization Malala Fund. Co-founded in 2013, Malala Fund worked to ensure every girl globally could access 12 years of free, safe, quality education. The fund worked towards this goal by building creative partnerships and investing in its global network of education activists and advocates fighting for girls’ education in communities where most girls missed out. Malala Fund supported girls’ education programs in countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, India, Brazil, Ethiopia, Turkey and Lebanon. The Fund’s projects were aimed at addressing gender norms, promoting the empowerment of girls through education, imparting gender-sensitive training for teachers and raising awareness about the need for girls’ education. In 2016, the fund created the Education Champion Network to support the work of local educators and advocates to advance.
Complexity academic level
Post-graduate level students.
Supplementary materials
Teaching notes are available for educators only.
Subject code
CCS 11: Strategy.
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Tillmann Böhme, Sharon Williams, Paul Childerhouse, Eric Deakins and Denis Towill
– The purpose of this paper is to use a systems lens to assess the comparative performance of healthcare supply chains and provide guidance for their improvement.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to use a systems lens to assess the comparative performance of healthcare supply chains and provide guidance for their improvement.
Design/methodology/approach
A well-established and rigorous multi-method audit methodology, based on the uncertainty circle model, yields an objective assessment of value stream performance in eight Australasian public sector hospitals. Cause-effect analysis identifies the major barriers to achieving smooth, seamless flows. Potentially high-leverage remedial actions identified using systems thinking are examined with the aid of an exemplar case.
Findings
The majority of the healthcare value streams studied are underperforming compared with those in the European automotive industry. Every public hospital appears to be caught in the grip of vicious circles of system uncertainty, in large part being caused by problems of their own making. The single exception is making good progress towards seamless functional integration, which has been achieved by elevating supply chain management to a core competence; having a clearly articulated supply chain vision; adopting a systems approach; and, managing supplies with accurate information.
Research limitations/implications
The small number of cases limits the generalisability of the findings at this time.
Practical implications
Hospital supply chain managers endeavouring to achieve smooth and seamless supply flows should attempt to elevate the status of supplies management within their organisation to that of a core competence, and should use accurate information to manage their value streams holistically as a set of interwoven processes. A four-level prism model is proposed as a useful framework for thus improving healthcare supply delivery systems.
Originality/value
Material flow concepts originally developed to provide objective assessments of value stream performance in commercial settings are adapted for use in a healthcare setting. The ability to identify exemplar organisations via a context-free uncertainty measure, and to use systems thinking to identify high-leverage solutions, supports the transfer of appropriate best practices even between organisations in dissimilar business and economic settings.
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While the issue of “Blackness” has long pervaded American society, it has rarely been problematized in social science literature and treated as a taken-for-granted. This article…
Abstract
While the issue of “Blackness” has long pervaded American society, it has rarely been problematized in social science literature and treated as a taken-for-granted. This article utilizes in-depth interviews with second generation West Indian adults in New York City to examine the ways in which they conceive of their Blackness, both racially and ethnically. New York City is viewed as an important urban context that in many ways facilitates the formation of identity for this population. The assimilation process, or not, of second generation West Indians is also considered in terms of socioeconomic status and gender. The results indicate that second generation West Indians strongly identify with both their racial and ethnic identities, which in turn calls for a reconceptualization of “Blackness”. There is also evidence that points to New York City as a space of cross-cultural integration where identity formation is significantly impacted by the presence of other immigrants (and their children) that leads to a pan-immigrant or pan-ethnic identity among young New Yorkers.
Sara Ghanbarzadeh Ghomi, Gayan Wedawatta, Kanchana Ginige and Bingunath Ingirige
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of post-disaster housing reconstruction projects, propose the conceptual living-transforming disaster relief shelter…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of post-disaster housing reconstruction projects, propose the conceptual living-transforming disaster relief shelter (LTFDR-shelter) approach where temporary shelter is incrementally transformed into a more permanent dwelling by using living technologies and investigate its applicability to provide sustainable post-disaster housing following natural-hazard-induced disasters.
Design/methodology/approach
A questionnaire survey with 120 household recipients of three Sri Lankan post-disaster housing projects was employed to explore how the post-disaster housing projects have performed against the occupants' expectations. Furthermore, the new proposed LTFDR-shelter conceptual approach's applicability to address the existing issues found in the study was investigated.
Findings
The paper evaluates and identifies the physical and technical, and socio-economic performance issues of post-disaster housing and discusses the applicability of the proposed LTFDR-shelter conceptual approach as an efficient tool to adequately improve the identified factors integrating three phases of relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction employing living technology.
Research limitations/implications
Although the study's scope was limited to the occupant view of the performance of post-disaster housing in Sri Lanka, the findings and conceptual LTFDR-shelter approach could be of particular relevance to other developing countries affected by similar disasters. Further research is recommended to investigate and develop this concept in depth.
Originality/value
This study lays the conceptual foundation for a new theoretical approach in post-disaster housing, which encourages more interdisciplinary collaborations and empirical investigations that potentially enhance post-disaster housing performance and facilitates the application of living technology in the built environment.
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Robert Hurst and Jerome Carson
The purpose of this paper is to review the 20 remarkable lives of student accounts published in this journal. These recovery narratives (RNs) are examined first in terms of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review the 20 remarkable lives of student accounts published in this journal. These recovery narratives (RNs) are examined first in terms of whether they meet the five elements of the connectedness, hope, identity, meaning and empowerment (CHIME) model of recovery and then in terms of what makes each account remarkable.
Design/methodology/approach
Two Excel spreadsheets were created. One had each author’s name and the five elements of the CHIME model, the other the features of a remarkable life.
Findings
All 20 accounts fulfilled the criteria for the CHIME model, independently validating this model of recovery. Hence, each account showed evidence of connectedness, hope, identity, meaning and empowerment. A number of additional characteristics stood out from the accounts such as the importance of motherhood and of education.
Research limitations/implications
All 20 accounts were only reviewed by the two authors, who may be subject to bias. To reduce this, the first author did the bulk of the ratings. This paper shows the importance of education for recovery.
Practical implications
Some 15/20 accounts reported problems with mental health services, mainly around waiting lists. Must mental health always remain a Cinderella service?
Originality/value
This is the first attempt to synthesise this particular set of recovery narratives, entitled remarkable lives. These accounts show the richness of the recovery journeys embarked on by many sufferers and these are just drawn from one University. Like the authors of these stories, we too as recovery specialists have much to learn from their inspiring accounts.