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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate issues of different scripts in the same record (in MARC21 and Chinese machine‐readable cataloguing (CMARC)) and Chinese internal codes (i.e. double‐byte character set) when implementing Koha. It also discusses successful efforts in promoting the adoption of Koha in Taiwan, particularly the contributions from Koha‐Taiwan.

A Koha CMARC/MARC21 testbed was set up to discuss issues of multi‐scripts and Chinese internal codes when implementing Koha, and to determine to what extent the various features of CMARC, which are not present in MARC21, such as linking fields, can be supported in Koha and what is required to implement them if they are not available.

In contrast to western characters, Chinese internal codes cause extra work, as special programming for character conversion is required when working with Koha. This situation is commonly seen in Asian countries such as China, Japan and Korea. This paper recommends implementing CMARC, MARC21 or even any other type of MARC format in Koha with strong commercial‐level support.

Koha‐Taiwan serves Koha Chinese users around the world. A successful Koha‐Taiwan could be a model around the world.

In recent years, the concept of implementing an open‐source library management system has been coming to the fore. In Taiwan, the local‐based commercial library system covers more than one quarter of the library system market in academic libraries because the company provides better tailor‐made support, mainly in scripts and multiple internal codes, than do western‐based commercial library systems. Evaluations and conclusions from this paper will be useful to countries where multi‐scripts and double‐byte character sets are issues.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of the length of the audit firm‐client relationship and the size of the audit firm on audit quality in Jordan.

To test their hypotheses, the authors use the quadratic form approach, similar to Chi and Huang, with some modifications. The population of this study encompasses all firms in which stock is publicly traded on the Amman Stock Exchange throughout the years (2002‐2006).

Statistical analysis of data shows that, audit firm tenure affects the audit quality adversely (negatively). Audit quality deteriorates, when audit firm tenure is extended as a result of the growth in the magnitude of discretionary accruals. Meanwhile, data analysis did not reveal that the audit firm size has any significant impact on the correlation between audit firm tenure and audit quality.

If auditor independence and audit quality are to be enhanced, the audit firm should be rotated in order to open the door for new auditors to investigate the client with greater scrutiny and due care. Moreover, the activities of big audit firms should be monitored in order to distinguish their role from small firms.

The paper provides evidence from a developing country about audit quality. It is expected to support and sustain improvement of audit quality, and therefore, financial reporting quality. The evidence provided by this paper adds to the literature internationally and this is important because auditing is a socially constructed phenomenon.

It is analyzed whether working from home improves or impairs the job satisfaction and the work–life balance and under which conditions.

Blocks of influences on job satisfaction and work–life balance – personal traits, job characteristics, skills and employment properties – are estimated separately and in combination. To select the variables, the least angle regression is applied. The entropy balancing approach is used to determine causal effects. The study investigates whether imbalances are determined by private or job influences, whether firm-specific regulations and the selected control group affect the results and whether it only takes place during leisure time.

No clear effects of remote work on job satisfaction are revealed, but the impact on work–life balance is generally negative. If the imbalance is conditioned by private interests, this is not corroborated in contrast to job conditioned features. Employees working from home are happier than those who want to work at home, job satisfaction is higher and work–life balance is not worse under a strict contractual agreement than under a nonbinding commitment.

A wide range of personality traits, skills, employment properties and job characteristics are incorporated as determinants. The problem of causality is investigated. It is analyzed whether the use of alternative control and treatment groups leads to different results. The empirical investigation is based on new German data with three waves.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of external and internal corporate governance mechanisms on agency costs.

The author uses data from German firms that were listed in the regulated market of the Frankfurt Stock exchange during 2006-2011. Agency costs were measured using stochastic frontier analysis, a relatively new approach to estimate agency costs. The regression analysis is applied to test the model.

The results indicate that an industry specialized audit firm, the presence of a large audit firm, abnormal audit fees, management ownership and variable management compensation are significantly negatively associated with the level of a firms’ agency costs. In contrast, this seems not to be true for the existence of an audit committee for which the results of the paper document a non-significant association.

The paper contributes to the existing literature in several ways. First, the research design is to the best of the authors’ knowledge the first that investigates the influence of different corporate governance mechanisms on the level of agency costs. Second, previous studies are mainly focused on the US audit market. This focus on the US audit market leaves uncertainties regarding the direction and magnitude of the empirical relationship in the European and German environmental context. Finally, the paper provides initial empirical evidence for a sample of German IFRS listed companies (IFRS – International Financial Reporting Standards).

In Hong Kong resource sharing for cooperative cataloguing for Chinese language materials started in the 1990s with an infrastructure of a Z29.50‐based distributed system under the auspices of JULAC of the University Grants Committee. The advantages and limitations of the distributed approach for resource sharing are considered. Problems such as variant MARC formats, romanisation, and codes for information exchange are examined. Unresolved practice issues specific to Chinese language materials are discussed. Resource descriptions for resource sharing, especially cataloguing, are introduced.

To date, only a limited number of studies have considered WhatsApp groups. The purpose of this paper is to focus on single WhatsApp groups and explore their special characteristics and dynamics. The present study used the social support perspective, Big Five model and narcissism paradigm to predict the level of participation in WhatsApp groups with these variables.

The research was conducted in Israel during the Spring semester of the 2017 academic year and encompassed 127 students. Researchers used eight questionnaires to gather data: a demographic questionnaire; a perceived social support questionnaire; three characteristics from the BIG5 questionnaire: extroversion, openness to experience and neuroticism; a narcissistic questionnaire; questions about WhatsApp usage; questions about one meaningful WhatsApp group; participation level in the meaningful group; and group importance.

The findings confirmed that psychological factors such as social support, extroversion and narcissism significantly predict the level of participation in WhatsApp groups. It was also found that age, the level of group importance, being the group’s manager, WhatsApp usage and group’s subject play an important role in the participation level.

These results affirmed the importance of psychological factors when exploring new technological platforms, as the paper proposes that individuals may behave differently in various technological environments due to their psychological characteristics. The study expanded current research about a popular communication tool, WhatsApp, by examining it within the special context of WhatsApp groups. This focus enables researchers to follow the special dynamics that take place in a new technological platform.

The purpose of this paper is to examine differences in underpricing for initial public offerings (IPOs) brought to market in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States. It intends to determine whether IPO pricing accuracy in Hong Kong is facilitated by the development and dissemination of pre‐deal research.

The study examines a broad sample of initial public offerings made between 2000 and 2004. The author conducts univariate and multivariate tests to assess the relationship between IPO underpricing and the dissemination of pre‐deal research.

The author finds that Hong Kong issues experience significantly less underpricing than issues listed in Singapore and the United States. The underpricing of Singapore IPOs, on average, is not significantly different from that of US new listings. Furthermore, the author finds underpricing experienced by Hong Kong issues after adoption of the 40‐day post‐IPO quiet period is significantly higher than underpricing in the pre‐regulation period.

The results may not be generalizable to different countries. They do, however, appear to be robust in the three markets throughout the five‐year sample period.

To the extent that pre‐deal research can enhance IPO pricing accuracy, the overall finding should be useful to regulators in Hong Kong and Singapore as they continue to evaluate the extent to which pre‐deal research should be allowed and other IPO related policy making.

The paper extends the IPO underpricing literature in a new direction and also documents a significant economic benefit to IPOs related to pre‐deal research.

Aims to investigate the extent of the effectiveness of monitoring functions of board of directors, audit committee and concentrated ownership in reducing earnings management among 97 firms listed on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia over the period 2002‐2003.

The current study employs the cross‐sectional modified version of Jones, where abnormal working capital accruals are used as proxy for earnings management.

The study reveals that earnings management is positively related to the size of the board of directors. This supports the view that larger boards appear to be ineffective in their oversight duties relative to smaller boards. A possible explanation for the insignificant relationship between other corporate governance mechanisms (independence of board and audit committee) and earnings management is that the board of directors is seen as ineffective in discharging their monitoring duties due to management dominance over board matters. The apparent reason for this phenomenon is attributed to the board of directors' relative lack of knowledge in company's affairs. The study also found that ethnicity (race) has no effect in mitigating earnings management, possibly due to the more individualistic behaviour of the Bumiputra directors. The modernisation of Malaysia and also the increase in Bumiputra ownership of national wealth may have caused the Malays to be more individualistic, similar to their Chinese counterpart.

Since, there are relatively few studies conducted in this area specifically among Malaysian firms, this study will broaden the scope by providing empirical evidence of the relationship between various corporate governance characteristics, cultural factors and earnings management.

The paper aims to examine the relation between fees paid to auditors and audit quality during the period of 2000‐2003.

The paper constructs a measure of auditor profitability that is used as a proxy for auditor independence. The methodology is grounded in the notion that auditor independence is influenced by effort and risk‐adjusted fees, rather than the level of fees received from clients. Since, risk and effort are unobservable, the paper uses proxies based on client size, complexity and risk to estimate abnormal fees. Abnormal fees are derived using a fee estimation model drawn from prior literature. The paper employs two metrics to assess audit quality – the standard deviation of residuals from regressions relating current accruals to cash flows and the absolute value of performance‐adjusted discretionary accruals.

The paper documents a statistically significant negative association between total fees and both audit quality proxies over all years. These findings are robust to a variety of additional tests and several alternative design specifications. The results (pre‐ and post‐SOX) are consistent with economic bonding being a determinant of auditor behavior rather than auditor reputational concerns.

The possibility that the empirical tests do not completely capture the impact of unobserved risk cannot be ruled out, though the paper attempts to do so by employing alternative specifications and sensitivity tests.

Policy makers should note that current restrictions on the provision of non‐audit services may not sufficiently resolve the issue of economic bonding and its impact on auditor independence.

In contrast to previous studies whose results are ambiguous, the paper finds a statistically significant positive association between several measures of total fees (it uses size‐adjusted and abnormal fees) and two metrics of accruals quality in all years (2000‐2003), consistent with economic bonding being a determinant of auditor behavior rather then auditor reputation concerns.

This study aims to examine auditor reporting behaviour in the presence of aggressive earnings management (EM) in the context of the Asian Economic Crisis as it affected Malaysia. In the vein of Bartov, Gul and Tsui, the interaction between discretionary or abnormal accruals and audit quality (AQ), as indicated by auditor size and auditor industry specialisation, is examined.

A logistic regression model adapted from various prior studies is utilised to test the hypotheses.

As per earlier findings using Western data, Big 5 auditors in Malaysia appear to qualify more frequently than their non‐Big 5 counterparts when high levels of abnormal accruals are present. However, the interaction between auditor industry specialisation and abnormal accruals is not significant in predicting the incidence of qualification.

This study extends the current literature on AQ differentiation and specifically it attempts to address the gaps in the literature with respect to auditor reporting behaviour in the presence of aggressive EM. In addition, this study provides additional evidence on Big 5/industry specialist quality differentiation in an emerging market (an under‐researched area), Malaysia, arguably with less transparent and weaker governance structures than the developed economies such as the USA, UK, and Australia.