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This strategy-learning case traces the growth of AlphaTech, a publicly traded company in Brazil that is a management software company. The purpose of this paper is to debate whether or not the firm should give more emphasis to internationalization, given its high market share in Brazil, where further gains may be very expensive and difficult. The case is intended to serve as a vehicle to discuss the internationalization process of a software firm from an emerging economy.

The case was built using several sources of information, including interviews with two executives in charge of the firm's internationalization process, articles in business newspapers and magazines, a book written by the firm co-founders, reports, and information gathered in the internet.

The main issues posed by this case study are: first, the difficulties faced by an emerging market firm to get a sustainable position in international markets; second, the challenges of competing with powerful global multinational corporations (such as SAP and Oracle) in the international marketplace; and third, the need to adapt the firm's international strategy to new threats and opportunities.

The Brazilian context differs from other BRICS, since Brazilian software firms do not have access to low-cost labor and therefore cannot adopt a low price strategy to compete effectively in international markets, but rather need to build unique capabilities to overcome liabilities of foreignness.

This chapter reflects on a media studies project exploring Sylvia Plath poetry on Tumblr. The project ultimately resulted in excess digital data, with no conventional publications or research outputs. Now writing 10 years after data collection, I take a storying approach to explore the original research concerns and the research process, thereby locating a reconfigured ‘research event’ that draws together various biographical, social, political and historical factors. I reflect on my evolving understanding of ‘research’, discussing early teaching experiences and postgraduate pathways that partly structured a particular relationship to research. This serves to bridge a discussion about the challenges of the initial process over a decade ago, including the uncomfortable pairing of inexperience among aspiring researchers and institutional pressures to publish. I then discuss the theoretical perspectives that inspire and, in retrospect, offer clarity for the project, given the amount of time passed since data collection and the synergistic relationship between the storying approach, poststructuralist thought and story-focused methodologies. I argue that Tumblr provides unique opportunities for identity negotiation, aesthetic appreciation, data extraction and commodification, which highlights both the creative agency of digital aesthetic curation and self-work, as well as the importance of algorithmic transparency. I also contend that engaging with excess data led to methodologically and theoretically useful insights, challenging assumptions about the temporality of usable data and the ever-changing relationship between art, technology and freedom.

This paper aims to examine the association of corporate social responsibility (CSR), family ownership and earnings management.

The authors specifically examine mining companies listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange during 2012-2014. Total observations are 105 firm-years. Research data are collected from sustainability reports, annual reports and annual financial statements. Data are analysed using panel data regression.

The evidence suggests a negative association between corporate social responsibility disclosures (CSRDs) and earnings management. The authors also examine the direct and moderating role of family ownership. The authors find a positive association between family ownership and earnings management. In addition, family ownership strengthens the negative association between CSR and earnings management.

This research only examines mining companies listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange, which limit the generalisation of the results.

The results should useful for: investors wishing to use the level of CSRD as an indicator of firm ethics, especially in relation to family-owned firms; capital-market regulators wishing to improve market transparency by introducing requirements to encourage more CSRD; and other users of financial statements, especially financial analysts to consider ownership structure, specifically family ownership.

Previous studies have mainly focussed on companies in the USA. This paper adds to the body of knowledge regarding whether the positive relationship between family ownership and CSR is also present outside the USA, especially in emerging countries. Further, this study examines the effect of family ownership on the association of CSR and earnings management, which rarely examined in previous studies.

Diversity in the boardroom is a social factor that spurs public debate in academic and practical arenas. In a two-tier governance system, the question lingers on the impact of board of commissioners and board of directors’ diversity on a company’s performance. This study aims to investigate this issue based on a comprehensive set of diversity variables, namely, age, tenure, gender, education level, culture, functional expertise, industry experience, school of origin and “busyness.”

The authors constructed diversity indices for board of directors and board of commissioners and used multiple linear regressions to test the hypotheses using samples of companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange from 2014 to 2018.

Board of director (commissioner) diversity has no significant (a positive) impact on corporate performance. However, the latter does not moderate the relationship between board of director diversity and company performance.

Although the theories of human capital and upper echelons are applied here, the results more likely support a contingency argument, as the effect of diversity may vary by company and period, hence leading to offsetting effects. Thus, the impact of diversity on corporate performance might be better observed through in-depth case studies.

The positive impact of the board of commissioners’ diversity on firm performance might indicate the importance of close monitoring by this board. The results further suggest that appointment decisions of directors and commissioners from diverse backgrounds should be based on criteria other than financial performance.

No study has constructed comprehensive diversity indices of the board of commissioners and directors in a two-tier governance context. The study fills this gap.

This paper aims to demonstrate how consumer clickstream data from a leading hotel search engine can be used to validate two hidden information processing stages – first eliminate alternatives, then choose – proposed by the revered information processing theory of consumer choice.

This study models the two hidden information processing stages as hidden states in a hidden Markov model, estimated on consumer search behavior, product attributes and diversity of alternatives in the consideration set.

First, the stage of information processing can be statistically characterized in terms of consumer search covariates, including trip characteristics, use of search tools and the diversity of the consideration set, operationalized in terms of: number of brands, dispersion of price and dispersion of quality. Second, users are more sensitive to price and quality in the first rather than the second stage, which is closer to purchase.

The results suggest practical implications for how search engine managers can target consumers with appropriate marketing-mix actions, based on which information processing stage consumers might be in.

Most previous studies on validating the information processing theory of consumer choice have used laboratory experiments, subjects and information display boards comprising hypothetical product alternatives and attributes. Only a few studies use observational data. In contrast, this study uniquely uses point-of-purchase clickstream data on actual visitors at a leading hotel search engine and tests the theory based on real products, attributes and diversity of the consideration set.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of financial derivatives usage and country’s tax environment characteristics on the relationship between financial derivatives and tax avoidance.

This study uses a cross-country analysis with the scope of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries which consists of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.

The level of financial derivatives usage positively affects the level of tax avoidance. This finding indicates that financial derivatives can be used as tax avoidance tool. Furthermore, the positive effect of the level of financial derivatives usage on the level of tax avoidance is lower in countries with a competitive tax environment than in countries with an uncompetitive tax environment. This finding indicates that in country with a competitive tax environment, the use of financial derivatives as a tax avoidance tool can be replaced by the tax facilities provided by that country.

This study uses four countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations region and does not test the sample based on the financial derivative types.

Tax authorities need to establish a clear tax regulation in regard to the tax treatment of financial derivatives transactions, e.g. define the definition of financial derivatives for hedging purposes and financial derivatives for speculative purposes; and define specific criteria to separate financial derivatives for hedging purposes from financial derivatives for speculative purposes. It is necessary to determine whether losses arising from derivative transactions are classified as deductible expenses or non-deductible expenses.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is also the first that provide empirical evidence that the relationship between financial derivatives and tax avoidance activities depends on a country’s tax environment.

THE topics of the Library Association Conference and the election of the Council of the Association naturally absorb a great deal of attention this month. To deal with the second first: there were few novelties in the nominations, and most of the suggested new Councillors are good people; so that a fairly good Council should result. The unique thing, as we imagine, about the Library Association is the number of vice‐presidents, all of whom have Council privileges. These are not elected by the members but by the Council, and by the retiring Council; they occupy a position analagous to aldermen in town councils, and are not amenable to the choice or desires of the members at large. There are enough of them, too, if they care to be active, to dominate the Council. Fortunately, good men are usually elected, but recently there has been a tendency to elect comparatively young men to what are virtually perpetual seats on the Council, simply, if one may judge from the names, because these men occupy certain library positions. It, therefore; is all the more necessary that the electors see that men who really represent the profession get the seats that remain.

Our purpose in this chapter is to present a model of coaching used in a preservice elementary teacher preparation program that relies on video as a mentoring tool. We call this tool RCA, or Retrospective Coaching Analysis, and it is based on Goodman’s (1996) work on Retrospective Miscue Analysis. We also provide examples of how cooperating teachers used videos to identify important moments of practice to elicit reflection with their preservice teachers.

We collected video recordings of cooperating teacher/preservice teacher pairs engaging in mentoring conversations using videos of preservice teachers’ practice.

In this chapter, we focus on the cooperating teachers’ choices about when to stop the video to engage in reflection with their preservice teachers. In selecting a focus point for the RCA Event, the CTs chose moments that met some of these four criteria: appreciative, learner-focused, disruptive, and/or generative. We also found the challenges in selecting focus points and in staying with moments of video long enough to generate reflection, which made the model of mentoring challenging to implement.

The analysis of this reflective mentoring tool has led to revisions in our theoretical model of coaching, as described in this chapter. The research suggests the importance of closely examining reflective talk between cooperating teachers and preservice teachers. Our work also illustrates a shift in the use of video in preservice teaching from a video-case based perspectives to reflection embedded in practice.

Our study suggests the importance of selecting moments of practice as the basis for mentoring and coaching, but the research helped us to understand that RCA has affordances and constraints, and therefore, should be a tool for teachers to use flexibly within our theoretical model of Coaching with CARE.

Teacher educators will find the RCA model to be a new way of approaching collaborative work with teachers in the field within a practice-based teacher education program.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between political connections and the narrative disclosure tone of management discussion and analysis (MD&A) reports in Indonesia during the normal economic (2018 to 2019) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020 to 2021) periods.

Data on political connections were collected manually from annual reports, government websites and online search engines. Meanwhile, the narrative disclosure tone was measured from the MD&A reports according to the wordlist by Loughran and McDonalds (2011) processed with Diction 7 software. Multiple linear regression was used to test 414 nonfinancial corporations listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange for the 2018–2021 period.

Under normal economic conditions, the results support impression management theory, where political connections are used to frame information with a more positive tone. Data obtained during the COVID-19 pandemic, on the other hand, confirm the incremental information theory. Furthermore, companies connected to actively serving state leaders consistently present MD&A reports with a more positive tone in both research periods. Proximity to legislative and government institutions allows politically connected companies (with members of the parliament or any political figures/party leaders/officials with strategic functions) to present MD&A reports with a negative tone and more information during the pandemic. The results are robust to alternative measures and endogeneity testing.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the association between political connections and narrative disclosure tone in Indonesia by considering the moderating role of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study analyzes earnings management among Brazilian public firms during the 2016 Presidential Impeachment.

The sample comprises, as a treatment group, 721 firm-quarter observations relating to Brazilian listed firms. It also considers a control group of listed firms from Mexico, which were not affected by the exogenous shock analyzed (i.e. the 2016 Presidential Impeachment in Brazil). The firms' quarterly financial data cover the period between 2013 and 2018.

Considering several proxies related to earnings management by accruals, the main findings suggest a negative relationship between the 2016 impeachment event and the level of discretionary accruals, suggesting that Brazilian firms tended to reduce their earnings management levels during the impeachment process. The results are robust whether the control group is considered or not.

This study brings new empirical evidence to the literature on accounting information quality about the role of the economic and political environment in earnings management, especially in weak institution countries characterized by institutional voids and higher levels of corruption.