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The objective of the study is to provide empirical evidence of the impact of non‐audit services (NAS) as well as other auditor characteristics on auditor independence by testing the relationship of NAS fees to the occurrence of financial statement restatements.

The authors tested whether firms that restate their financial statements have higher levels of total service fees or higher levels of NAS fees than non‐restatement firms. The testing also includes an examination of the relationship between the audit firm size and the audit firm industry specialization to financial statement restatements.

The study found only limited evidence to support the concept that firms with higher NAS fees are more likely to restate earnings, thereby casting doubt on the public perception that NAS impairs auditor independence and the legislative approval of Section 201 of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act prohibiting external auditors from providing certain NAS to audit clients as necessary to preserve auditor independence. The study did find stronger evidence that the level of total fees paid to the audit firm is significant in the predictability of a restatement. In addition, the study also found stronger and more conclusive evidence of a negative association to audit firm industry specialization and a strong positive association to Big 5 audit firms.

Results demonstrate the necessity of regulations concerning NAS and conflict of interest.

This paper is an original contribution that demonstrates the importance of auditor characteristics over audit fees in predicting earnings management.

The purpose of this paper is to longitudinally analyse the evolution of multiple narrative textual characteristics in the chairman’s statements of Guinness from 1948 to 1996, with the aim of studying impression management influences. It attempts to contribute insights on impression management over time.

The paper attempts to contribute to external accounting communication literature, by building on the socio-psychological tradition within the functionalist-behavioural transmission perspective. The paper analyses multiple textual characteristics (positive, negative, tentative, future and external references, length, numeric references and first person pronouns) over 49 years and their potential relationship to profitability. Other possible disclosure drivers are also controlled.

The findings show that Guinness consistently used qualitative textual characteristics with a self-serving bias, but did not use those with a more quantitative character. Continual profits achieved by the company, and the high corporate/personal reputation of the company/chairpersons, inter alia, may well explain limited evidence of impression management associated with quantitative textual characteristics. The context appears related to the evolution of the broad communication pattern.

Impression management is likely to be present in some form in corporate disclosures of most companies, not only those companies with losses. If successful, financial reporting quality may be undermined and capital misallocations may result. Companies with a high public exposure such as those with a high reputation or profitability may use impression management in a different way.

Studies analysing multiple textual characteristics in corporate narratives tend to focus on different companies in a single year, or in two consecutive years. This study analyses multiple textual characteristics over many consecutive years. It also gives an original historical perspective, by studying how impression management relates to its context, as demonstrated by a unique data set. In addition, by using the same company, the possibility that different corporate characteristics between companies will affect results is removed. Moreover, Guinness, a well-known international company, was somewhat unique as it achieved continual profits.

Many older people are discovering the Internet, and some are also making good use of electronic commerce and all that goes with it. Others, however, are not adopting these technologies. This paper questions why some older people adopt Internet technologies while others do not, and offers a research framework, based on actor‐network theory, for investigating adoption of Internet technologies by older people. In this paper, innovation translation is used to illustrate how specific cases of adoption have occurred. Innovation translation presents a different view of innovation than the better‐known theory of innovation diffusion, but one that the authors argue is better suited for research in socio‐technical situations like this.

Introduction In the last decade the problem of product liability has become one of the major concerns affecting industry, consumers and government. Product liability, which relates to the responsibility of a manufacturer to compensate a user who suffers injury from using his product, is not a new concept. King Hammurabi of Babylon instituted these two laws over 4,000 years ago:

The purpose of this paper is to analyze empirically the fundamental role that information asymmetry plays in the functioning of an efficient capital market as mediator in the relation between corporate disclosures and cost of capital.

By using a sample of 1,260 international non-financial listed companies in the period 2007-2014.

The findings suggest that high-quality financial and social disclosures quality reduce the cost of capital, by decreasing information asymmetry. In other words, the authors find evidence of the mediator role of information asymmetry in the relation between corporate disclosures and the cost of capital. These results are also controlled for differences on accounting standards and other institutional factors.

The central assumption is that the demand for corporate disclosures that reduces the information advantages of some investors (who are more informed) arises from agency conflicts and these information differences in turn, determine the cost of capital. This paper is the first attempt to study, jointly, the effects of decreasing information asymmetries by corporate disclosures on the cost of capital in an international setting. In addition, the authors focussed on both financial and social disclosures, creating empirical proxies whose validity for the analysis has been evidenced.

A key characteristic of small business service firms is their capacity to draw on similar businesses or self‐employed professionals in order to compete with large organisations. This paper presents a qualitative account of the ways in which three small firms from the business services sector managed the critical relationship with associates. The rationale, recruitment and management of associates is explored. It is argued that “matching” approaches that suggest an easy alignment between the firms’ competitive strategy and use of associates fail to appreciate tensions inherent in the relationship. Rather, relations between such enterprises and associates have to be managed in a manner that recognises the particular expectations of the parties, the dynamics of “in‐house” work relations, and the often conflicting pressures occasioned by having to operate in a dynamic and unpredictable market environment.

We highlight two mechanisms of limited attention for expert information intermediaries, i.e., analysts, and the effects of such limited attention on the market price discovery process. We approach analysts' limited attention from the perspective of day-to-day arrival of information and processing of tasks. We examine the attention-limiting role of competing tasks (number of earnings announcements and forecasts for portfolio firms) and distracting events (number of earnings announcements for non-portfolio firms) in analysts' forecast accuracy and the effects of such, on the subsequent price discovery process. Our results show that competing tasks worsen analysts' forecast accuracy, and competing task induced limited attention delays the market price adjustment process. On the other hand, distracting events can improve analysts' forecast accuracy and accelerate market price adjustments when such events relate to analysts' portfolio firms through industry memberships.

The introduction of roller‐milling rendered it possible to utilise any variety of wheat, since the grain in this process is not subjected to severe attrition, and pulverisation of the bran is avoided as far as possible. In roller‐milling the wheat grain is reduced to flour in gradual stages (gradual reduction process), during which the offal is continually removed by sifting and by the use of air currents. In this way a more complete removal of branny and other undesired particles can be effected, and a greater yield of highly refined flour can be obtained than in stone‐milling.

The Milk (Special Designations) Order, 1936, which with its associated circular letter No. 1533, both dated April of this year, are the two latest issues by the Ministry of Health in relation to the purity of the milk supplies of this country. The whole tendency of modern legislation, so far as it relates to the production and the sale of milk, is to bring the trade in milk in all its branches within the compass of legislation based on scientific principles; and these principles in their turn have been derived from extensive experiment and observation in the regions of chemistry, physics, bacteriology, veterinary practice, and medicine, all of which have vastly extended their scope during the present century. The Ministry of Health, as the central authority, acting through the county councils and sanitary authorities in England and Wales, seeks to control in the interest of consumers and producer alike every detail of the production of milk from cow byre to shop counter. The bovines themselves, premises, plant, vessels, methods of transport, nothing is foreign to its purpose. These and similar regulations point to a general tightening up of the conditions under which milk may be sold. The control of a trade that is in some respects the most important in the country. The Ministries of Health and of Agriculture have tried to do not only much but many things, and the measure of control that they exercise at present has only been obtained by overcoming the inertia of ignorance and prejudice, and in many cases the active opposition of vested interests.

Contends that path‐dependency provides an accurate, but under‐theorised description of organisational behaviour. By incorporating insights from actor‐network theory, we can better understand the processes by which organisations become “locked‐in” to behaviour patterns, but also how we might begin to break free from them. It seems that we must pay greater attention to the role of durable materials in networks, and to the strategies of simplification employed within organisations to deal with the complexity that surrounds them. In order to understand path‐dependency we must also look wider than traditional management theory towards a more semiotic understanding of organisational communication. All of these findings point to managers having to reconsider their role, especially with regard to the power that they may or may not hold, and to move towards an approach based more on the governance of their organisations than attempting to control every aspect under their jurisdiction. Concludes by providing some appropriate strategies through which this might be achieved.