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This study investigates the influence of ownership composition on market-based and accounting-based financial performance in the European frontier markets (EFMs), a target region for global investors.

Ownership composition is defined as shareholders' concentration and structure (i.e. foreign, domestic, state and free-float), whereas financial performance is measured as Tobin's Q and return on assets. The system generalised method of moments panel data estimation technique is employed on a sample of 241 companies.

Findings reveal that companies from European Union (EU) frontier markets are controlled, on average, by one to five large shareholders. Being a signal of expropriation rationale of majority shareholders regardless of the capital structure, this highly concentrated ownership and decision-making model negatively affects the market-based and accounting-based financial performance of the companies and thereby supports the agency theory in the frontier markets.

The findings provide empirical evidence for authorities, investors, analysts and corporations regarding the effect of ownership percentage and structure in the Eastern European region, assisting also other frontier and emerging markets in corporate governance and other regulatory decisions.

The ownership–performance relationship varies from developed to emerging markets with conflicting results. This study provides evidence on monitoring and expropriation effects of majority shareholders in the context of different categories of shareholders. In doing so, it combines the analysis of both ownership concentration and structure in the EFMs.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of company characteristics such as the level of financial distress, client size and type of auditor on the propensity to issue modified audit opinions and to assess comparative differences in audit opinions during two significant economic crises in Turkey.

Logistic regression model is used to test the incremental contribution of each company characteristic on issuing the type of audit opinion for crisis periods. Additionally, to understand the reasons for differences in audit opinions between two types of crisis periods, the authors adopt Francis and Krishnan’s (2002) approach in which an auditor’s propensity to issue modified opinion may be jointly based on changes in client characteristics and auditor reporting strategies in that period.

The results indicate that there is a positive relationship between financial distress and the likelihood of receiving modified opinions in both crisis periods. Additionally, client size affects audit opinions negatively in both periods significantly. Auditors show higher propensity to issue a modified opinion during the domestic than the global financial crisis period, which could be explained by the changes in client characteristics more than their reporting strategy.

This study provides supportive evidence that the company characteristics including the financial distress can be very useful predictors for the auditors’ decisions while issuing their opinions.

The findings of different auditor behaviors during crises periods and possible reasons are the main contributions of this study for international and domestic regulators, investors, audit firms, academics and standard setters in emerging economies.

This study investigates how investors perceive the impact of U.S.‐based MNCs geographic and business segment diversification upon their earnings performance. Pooled cross‐sectional annual earnings response regressions for the years 1993 through 1997 are used for this investigation. Our results show that geographic segment diversification is valued by investors more than the business segment diversification especially in two cases: 1) when the business segmentation is low; and 2) when geographic segmentation is high. These results imply that business segment diversification is only valued when it takes place in international markets where it is relatively more difficult for individual investors to replicate industry diversified portfolio for themselves. Our research illuminates the contextual aspects of investors' perceptions of geographic and business segment diversification for multinational corporations by explicitly controlling for one dimension of corporate diversification while examining the earning‐returns impact of the other type of corporate diversification.

The globalisation of markets, emerging concepts of sustainable development, and circular economy have defined the boundaries within which organisations must compete and address the needs of key stakeholders. As circumstances change, boundaries are often replaced by the relationships between companies and the communities they serve. Consequently, strategy has become a central aspect of sustainable leadership and the foundation for implementing strategic management in a dynamic system of relationships. Every company is born and grows within social and economic ecosystems. Drawing on the metaphor of biology, ecosystems are described as dynamic interconnections among various elements that influence and foster entrepreneurship. Interconnections between players (such as marketplaces, organisations, governments, and universities) create a flow of expertise, abilities, knowledge, experience, and tangible resources. Economic and social ecosystems involve various actors and components that continuously coexist and interact, leading to the creation of numerous mutual relationships. Consequently, it is crucial for managers to gain a comprehensive understanding of the internal and external environments. Various decision-making tools and strategies can be used to achieve this goal. These tools were developed to assist managers, researchers, and consultants in making informed decisions under complex scenarios. This chapter presents several decision-making strategies and tools, including the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix, General Electric (GE) matrix, Balanced Scorecard (BSC), PEST, PESTEL analysis, and SWOT analysis.

This chapter focuses on the influence of the home government on the internationalization of Russian multinational enterprises (MNEs). It views government involvement and political connectedness as a form of informal connections and networks that seriously impact operations in general and internationalization, in particular in the case of Russian multinationals. Using the literature on MNEs from emerging markets and our familiarity with Russian business and political specificities, we develop a set of five propositions devoted to the subject. We further discuss the research and management implications of our analysis.

Some scholars argue that ethical awareness increases alongside work experience,whereas others agree that ethics education shapes ethical awareness and that cheating in college predicts unethical behaviour in subsequent professional environment. The purpose of this paper is therefore to investigate the level and antecedents of ethical sensitivity of future procurement professionals.

An exploratory descriptive survey of a sample of 303 final year procurement students from the two largest public Universities in Uganda was conducted. Using Statistical Package for (SPSS) and Amos Version 27, data were analysed by using means, standard deviations, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and correlation analysis.

The study revealed that future procurement professionals exhibit low levels of ethical sensitivity. However, contrary to the general observations from the extant literature, gender and family background of students do not determine both ethical sensitivity and cynicism. Moreover, this study establishes that cynicism is positively associated with instances that depict low ethical sensitivity.

This paper contributes to providing an empirical understanding of the derivation of unethical behaviour in procurement practice. Grounded in Aristotle’s organic theory of state and moral habituation, this argues that future procurement professionals posses natural proclivities that trigger their social instincts and membership to multiple associations in actualising their innate potential for ethical behaviour. This supports the notion that humans are potentially virtuous, whereby morality is learned, imitated, emerges and perfects through repetitive actions and is therefore incremental.

The findings mirror what prevails in practice in Uganda, where procurement practitioners have been implicated in unethical practices regardless of their gender and family background. This signals that managers should not recruit or deploy procurement personnel based on gender or family background.

While research on ethical sensitivity of students has been focussed on other disciplines such as accounting, nursing and other business studies, this paper focusses on ethical sensitivity of procurement students aspiring to join a professional environment that is severely marred with unethical practices. Further, Aristotle’s moral habituation and organic theory of state invoked in this study underline the synergies of both nature and nurturing in inculcating ethicality in procurement professionals.

This chapter provides an innovative way to introduce a series of managerial assignments that will allow students to take an example of a real company that interests them and answer questions designated by the instructor. The assignments are individualized to let students choose their area of interest and apply accounting concepts. At the same time, the instructor formulates questions for students to answer based on the materials covered. This chapter also provides an implementation process and student feedback.

The purpose of this study is to identify the influence of environmental and institutional factors on the adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standard for small and medium-sized entities (IFRS for SMEs). This study used the neo-institutional theory and the economic theory of networks to explain why countries choose to adopt IFRS for SMEs.

This study is based on logistic regression analysis to investigate 177 countries, including 77 jurisdictions that adopted IFRS for SMEs between 2009 and 2015.

The findings confirm that the adoption of IFRS for SMEs is significantly related to law enforcement quality, culture, trading networks and economic growth. At the institutional level, coercive and normative isomorphism was found to be positively associated with IFRS for SMEs adoption. The results show also that the quality of the audit has no significant effect on the adoption of IFRS for SMEs. However, the joint effect of the quality of audit and quality of law enforcement is significantly related to the adoption of IFRS for SMEs.

The study contributes to a better understanding of the factors influencing the implementation of IFRS for SMEs standard across the globe and could be used to predict a country’s decision to adopt this standard.

This study contributes to the literature on international accounting harmonization by examining both environmental and institutional factors that influence the adoption of IFRS for unlisted private companies.

The purpose of this study is to explore the underlying assumption that macroeconomic factors (legal, cultural, social, financial and/or economic) might support or constrain countries’ decisions to timely and fully transpose the Directive 2014/95/EU (EUD) on non-financial information disclosure.

The research design relies mainly on exploratory factors analysis, regression techniques (linear, logistic and multinomial) and additional robustness and sensitivity tests, all performed to ensure the reliability and trustworthiness of the results.

The results reveal that the directive’s transposition process is driven more by regulatory and social legitimisation forces than by economic and financial pressures. Stronger governance and weaker interests’ protection ensure appropriate compliance with new regulations, while highly educated countries express openness towards developing accounting systems that enhance information transparency.

The results are useful for practitioners currently engaged in the directive’s implementation process, academics interested in challenging debates concerning this topic and regulatory bodies to better support its full enactment.

This paper approaches the newsworthy topic of non-financial information disclosure settled by the EUD and marks an essential step towards harmonising non-financial reporting across Europe. It enriches the scientific literature through the first empirical analysis that sheds light on its explanatory drivers.

Though market orientation has been studied extensively, in the context of goods and services, little is known of its practical application in professional services specifically. This study, therefore, aims to develop and validate a market orientation scale relevant to accountancy firms.

A conceptual framework was built from first principles and the literature, and a research questionnaire adapted from the widely used standard pattern. Data collected from 1,042 usable questionnaires completed by managers of accounting firms in Turkey were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis was employed, to test the model and analyze approaches and applications in practice.

Results suggest that Turkish accounting firms believe customer orientation to be the most significant construct within market orientation. The market environment is also considered important, but there is no strong support for competitor orientation, conventionally the third plank of market orientation, mainly because of the unique characteristics of the profession.

Because the study focused only on accounting firms and the measurement scale was adapted accordingly, valid conclusions can be drawn for that particular sector of the professional service industry, and with due caution for service providers in general. The Turkish setting limits international applicability, but contains potentially transferable insights.

Market orientation has an important role in competition. The study reported here applies the concept in a practitioner context so far ignored by researchers, in a developing country interestingly positioned between the first and third worlds.