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The traditional view of quality treats it as an economic good which can be developed by incurring costs. Proponents of total quality management have rejected the traditional view and stress the complementary nature of cost and quality. Reconciles these two views as different manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon within the same strategic framework. This requires precise definitions of quality concepts such as conformance and performance quality. The organization first examines its current position within this framework. The definitions of quality help sharpen the formulation of strategic objectives and the framework helps in mapping out a policy for moving the firm from the current position to the desired position. In addition, also determines the operating systems of quality management by how quality is defined in the organization. In conjunction with the strategic direction, the operational management procedures facilitate the process of cost management.

Notes that to be effectively implemented, quality management has to be aligned with strategy and properly co‐ordinated. Develops a systems framework entitled congruence management business architecture. Notes that under this architecture an activity is the core entity for change and that every quality or related initiative will change, eliminate or create activities. Considers various quality management mechanisms under this architecture and considers various barriers. Suggests that the congruence management framework can help make quality management more effective.

There is extensive literature on the benefits of manufacturing control arising from minimal inventory policies of just in time (JIT). Operations management literature has focused on controlling set‐up, lead and changeover times to streamline the operations and achieve low optimal inventory levels. Our paper first expands these models to include information and incentive effects. We then develop a model in which JIT focuses attention on process imbalances and derive the compensation contract that induces managers to be more creative in managing the process. We show that the loss of controllability decreases the benefits of JIT and increase the benefits of traditional buffer inventory. If, as on 11 September 2001, the loss or gain of controllability occurs quickly and unexpectedly, organizations need to develop the agility to switch between minimal inventory and buffer inventory systems.

The purpose of this paper is to try to identify the critical success factors and problems in ISO 9000 maintenance during the post‐certification period. Much of the published work on issues associated with ISO 9000 certification in the quality management journals focuses on how to obtain certification and the impact of certification on ISO‐certified organisations. Thus, studies do not generally address what happens after the organisations have obtained their certification.

In total, 14 face‐to‐face interviews were conducted over a period of seven weeks with top management, middle management, lower management in charge of operations and quality, and the management representative responsible for the implementation of ISO 9000 in the case study organisation (XYZ). Each interview lasted between 1.5 and 2 hours. ISO documents were also reviewed as part of the data gathering process.

The results showed that people who comprise top management, other employees, the reward system, teamwork, continuous improvement, understanding of ISO itself, measurement of performance and communication are all critical success factors for ISO 9000 maintenance of XYZ. Apart from continuous improvement, other factors also seemed to be consistent with the findings from other studies. In contrast to the other studies, the current study found continuous improvement of process, people, and system as several of the critical success factors for the sustainable quality management system at XYZ.

This paper makes a contribution to the body of knowledge in the field of quality management systems during the post‐certification period where such work is limited, especially in the service sector.

This study aims to holistically explore the academic literature on female leaders to identify the key topics and dynamics of the field.

The authors systematically review 532 papers to explore the research on female leaders; based on objective and replicable criteria, the authors identify relevant papers and thus ensure the quality of the analysis. The bibliometric analysis and visualization support us in recognizing trends in this topic.

This study outlines the state of the art over the past decade by synthesizing theoretical contexts and critically discussing the main streams of research on sustainability, firm outcomes and barriers preventing women from reaching the upper echelons. The authors also explore empirical issues and highlight areas that entail new paths for future scholars.

The research provides novel evidence of the attempt internationally to increase female participation at the top of the firm hierarchy by analyzing firm outcomes, sustainability and the constraints faced by women in achieving these careers.

The results show that the participation of women in leadership roles is not (only) a matter of compliance with current regulations. Through their ability to monitor key social and environmental issues from a long-term perspective and their attention to the internal control systems, companies more effectively pursue their financial and nonfinancial aims.

Using bibliographic and narrative analyses, this study reviews the literature on women at the top of the firm hierarchy with a focus on business research. The authors extend prior studies by investigating a larger pool of firm roles to provide a comprehensive understanding of this widely discussed topic.

Recent public policy initiatives seek greater transparency in financial reporting through an honest, balanced and thorough management discussion of company performance in the annual report. Management’s discussion invariably includes key performance indicators, such as financial ratios, relevant to external stakeholders. We model the impact of accounting estimates, assumptions, choices and errors on the risk of misleading financial ratios. This framework is illustrated through good and bad examples of financial reporting practices and by simulation of financial data of public companies. We provide a structured approach to inform policymakers, auditors and other stakeholders of the incremental financial reporting risk that accompanies current regulatory efforts.

This paper aims to investigate whether the revised Malaysian Code on Corporate Governance in 2007 enhances earnings conservatism. In addition, the authors examine the relationship between board of directors’ expertise and conservatism. The third objective is to investigate the relationship between audit committee characteristics and earnings conservatism.

The sample of this study is based on 3,183 firm-year observations for a period of 2004-2009. The authors hand collected the corporate governance variables, whereas the remaining data were extracted from Compustat Global. The authors used two measures of conservatism. The first is the market-based model by Basu’s (1997), and the second measure is the accrual-based measure by Ball and Shivakumar (2005).

The authors find that the revision of Malaysian Code on Corporate Governance 2007 results in improving earnings conservatism. The authors find two audit committee characteristics, namely, audit committee financial expertise and independence increase earnings conservatism, after 2007. However, the authors could not find support whether board financial expertise mix affect conservatism.

This study did not consider other possible corporate governance variables that could influence earnings conservatism, as it would be a difficult task to gather them.

The authors provide evidence on the role of corporate governance and earnings conservatism in Malaysia.

For most companies, growth measures such as asset growth are positively correlated with accrual measures. Just like investment in fixed assets, current accrual represents one form of investment and is an integral part of a firm’s business growth. This makes it difficult to distinguish between the growth-based and earnings quality-based interpretations of the accrual effects, because high accruals can represent both high growth and inflated earnings. The purpose of this paper is to add to the literature by examining an issue that has not received much attention: the correlation between asset growth and accruals and its implication on stock return predictability. The authors address the issue using Fama and Macbeth’s (1973) cross-sectional regressions that are conditional on the correlations between the two variables.

The authors partition firms based on whether the correlation between current accrual and asset growth in the past five years is positive (ρ+) or negative (ρ−). The authors refer to these two types of firms such as “positive correlation” and “negative correlation” groups. For both groups, the authors examine whether firms with higher asset growth and higher accruals are associated with lower future stock returns. The authors implement Fama and MacBeth’s cross-sectional regressions incorporating the effect of correlations between growth and accrual measures. In addition, the authors regress hedge portfolio returns on Fama and French (1993) three-factor and Fama and French (2015) five-factor models to see if the intercepts (a’s) from these regressions are significantly different from 0.

For each year, the authors partition firms based on whether the correlation between asset growth and current accrual is positive or negative. For both the “positive correlation” and “negative correlation” firms, the authors examine the association between accruals and future stock returns. The authors find that accruals remain strong in predicting future stock returns for both groups. The accrual effects from the “negative correlation” group cannot be attributed to the growth-based hypothesis because for these firms, when accruals are high, growth measures tend to be relatively low and vice versa. The effects are most likely driven by the alternative hypothesis that investors overvalue the accrual part of earnings.

There exist a few issues when investors actually implement these strategies. These include liquidity costs, institutional holdings and short sale constraints. Lesmond (2008) concludes that the bulk of the trading profits is derived from the short side of the trade, but that this position suffers from high liquidity costs that reduces institutional holdings with consequent short sale constraints. The net gains after taking into account these issues remain an open question be addressed in the future.

The empirical results indicate that investors can do an implementable portfolio strategy of going long for a year on an initially equally weighted lowest asset growth (accrual) decile portfolio and going short for a year on an initially equally weighted highest asset growth (accrual) decile portfolio, which produces significant abnormal returns. The results further show that these abnormal returns can be improved if investors classify stocks into “the positive correlation” and “negative correlation” groups and implement trading similar trading strategies.

The empirical evidence finds that firm-year observations that exhibit a negative correlation between growth and accrual measures represents a significant 30 percent of the total firm-year observations during the sample period from July 1974 to June 2017. This highlights the necessity to undertake a detailed analysis on the issue. The authors continue to find accrual effects among these groups of firms. Therefore, the accrual effect cannot be attributed to the diminishing marginal return hypothesis. This is the main contribution of the paper.

This study aims to determine the impact of information-sharing disseminated through the firms’ board connections on the readability of the management discussion and analysis (MD&A).

The investigation conducted in this study is performed by using a regression analysis. The readability of the MD&A is measured by the Flesch reading ease. The level of information-sharing is determined by the degree centrality index. The sample is composed of 83 Italian-listed firms that comprise over 4,000 directors for the period 2008-2012.

The main results of this study show a significant relationship between the degree centrality and MD&A readability, suggesting that board connections play a crucial role in improving the quality of external reporting.

This study uses a limited sample size. Further, we do not isolate the possible effect of other reporting incentives that may affect the readability of external reporting.

This study argues that for a non-English-speaking country such as Italy, information-sharing is a vehicle for improving the quality of external reporting and the competitiveness of firms in international capital markets.

This research offers an original contribution to the existent literature by highlighting the role of the firms’ board connections in determining the level of the corporate disclosure readability. This implies the opportunity for future research to take into account the firms’ board connections when they analyze related phenomena.

This study aims to explore the role of board gender diversity in mitigating chief executive officer (CEO) luck. CEOs are “lucky” when they receive stock option grants on days when the stock price is the lowest in the month of the grant, implying opportunistic timing.

This study uses a logistic regression analysis and an instrumental-variable analysis. The sample consists of 3,249 firm-year observations from 2010 through 2015.

The results show that female directors significantly deter the opportunistic timing of option grants. This study finds that gender diversity – as measured by the percentage of women on the board, the percentage of female independent directors and the percentage of female directors on the compensation committee are likely to reduce the odds that CEOs receive opportunistically timed lucky grants. The results are consistent with those in prior research that documents the benefits of board gender diversity.

The research findings are beneficial to policymakers and regulators, as it allows them to assess the importance of diversity on boards in the monitoring of the managers, particularly as it pertains to the design of CEO compensation packages. Furthermore, these findings have implications for Ibero-American countries as they shed light on the importance to undertake measures and reforms to promote board effectiveness by the introduction of gender diversity.

While prior research has examined the effect of board gender diversity on firm performance, the study is the first to investigate the effect of female directors on the opportunistic timing of option grants, using a rigorous empirical framework that explicitly accounts for endogeneity.

Este estudio busca explorar el papel de la diversidad de género en la junta directiva para mitigar la suerte del CEO. Los directores ejecutivos tienen “suerte” cuando reciben subvenciones de opciones sobre acciones en los días en que el precio de las acciones es el más bajo en el mes de la subvención, lo que implica un momento oportunista.

Empleamos un análisis de regresión logística, así como un análisis de variables instrumentales (IV). La muestra consta de 3249 observaciones de las firmas desde 2010 hasta 2015.

Nuestros resultados muestran que las directoras disuaden significativamente el momento oportunista de la concesión de opciones. Descubrimos que la diversidad de género, medida por el porcentaje de mujeres en la junta directiva, el porcentaje de directoras independientes y el porcentaje de directoras en el comité de compensación probablemente reduzcan las probabilidades de que los directores ejecutivos reciban subvenciones afortunadas en el momento oportuno. Nuestros resultados son consistentes con los de investigaciones anteriores que documentan los beneficios de la diversidad de género en la junta.

Los resultados de la investigación son relevantes para los responsables de la formulación de políticas y los reguladores, ya que les permite evaluar la importancia de la diversidad en los directorios en el seguimiento de los gerentes, particularmente en lo que respecta al diseño de paquetes de compensación de los directores ejecutivos. Además, estos hallazgos tienen implicaciones para los países iberoamericanos, ya que arrojan luz sobre la importancia de emprender medidas y reformas para promover la efectividad de los directorios mediante la introducción de la diversidad de género.

Si bien investigaciones anteriores han examinado el efecto de la diversidad de género de la junta en el desempeño de la empresa, nuestro estudio es el primero en investigar el efecto de las directoras en el momento oportunista de las concesiones de opciones, utilizando un marco empírico riguroso que explica explícitamente la endogeneidad.

Este estudo busca explorar o papel da diversidade de gênero no conselho de administração para mitigar o destino do CEO. Os CEOs têm “sorte” de receber opções de compra de ações nos dias em que o preço das ações é mais baixo no mês de concessão, o que é um momento oportunista.

Foi utilizada uma análise de regressão logística, bem como uma análise de variáveis instrumentais (IV). A amostra é composta por 3.249 observações de empresas de 2010 a 2015.

Nossos resultados mostram que as diretoras inibem significativamente o momento oportunista de outorga de opções. Descobrimos que a diversidade de gênero, medida pela porcentagem de mulheres no conselho de administração, a porcentagem de conselheiros independentes e a porcentagem de diretoras no comitê de remuneração, provavelmente reduz as chances de CEOs receberem subsídios da sorte em tempo hábil. Nossos resultados são consistentes com pesquisas anteriores que documentam os benefícios da diversidade de gênero no conselho.

Os resultados da pesquisa são relevantes para os formuladores de políticas e reguladores, pois permitem que avaliem a importância da diversidade nos conselhos na gestão de gerentes, especialmente no que se refere ao desenho de políticas. Além disso, esses achados têm implicações para os países ibero-americanos, uma vez que lançam luz sobre a importância de empreender medidas e reformas para promover a eficácia dos conselhos por meio da introdução da diversidade de gênero.

embora a evidência científica prévia tenha examinado o efeito da diversidade de gênero do conselho no desempenho da empresa, nosso estudo é o primeiro a investigar o efeito das diretoras no momento oportunista de concessões de opções, usando uma estrutura empírica rigorosa que explica explicitamente a endogeneidade.