Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether country (Australia or Japan) and client type (public sector or private sector) impact the auditor's client risk assessments, subsequent audit planning decisions (planned audit hours) and audit planning responsiveness to client risk assessments.

The study is based on previously developed audit planning models and uses working paper‐sourced data of planned auditor effort and nine client risk assessments. The study samples are taken from public and private sector audit engagements of two major audit firms in Australia and Japan, respectively.

Evidence is found that country and client type do have an impact on the auditor's client risk assessments and planned total audit hours, but they do not moderate audit planning responsiveness to client risk assessments.

The test variable is confounded by the country and client type characteristics inherent in the study's samples. If the differences are caused by country, this suggests that audit planning decisions vary across countries, even when the same auditing standards are adopted. However, if they are caused by client type, this suggests that the same audit approach (i.e. the audit risk model) is applied differently depending on client characteristics.

These findings are useful to international standard setters, audit practice quality control and training, and audit research.

No prior study has examined the role of country and client type on the auditor's client risk assessments and audit planning decisions. Further, no prior study has examined whether the relationship between the auditor's client risk assessments and audit planning decisions is moderated by country and client type.

This paper aims to investigate the role of corporate governance and information technology in fraud prevention and detection within the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

This study uses a survey of financial accountants and internal and external auditors to assess their perceptions of the effectiveness of IT and corporate governance as measured in terms of the audit committee’s effectiveness, internal audit functions, external audit functions, culture of honesty and employee training programmes in preventing and detecting fraud in the UAE.

The results indicate that corporate governance has a moderate role in preventing and detecting fraud in the UAE and that IT has the same role as traditional fraud prevention and detection techniques. The results also show no significant difference between internal and external auditors in their use of technological and traditional techniques during the course of audits.

The findings suggest that the senior management and boards of directors must better understand the importance of their oversight function. The finding that a culture of honesty has a low positive impact on fraud prevention and detection in the UAE indicates that chief executive officers and boards of directors must make more efforts to set the “tone at the top” to improve the corporate environment in terms of integrity and ethics, among other factors. Furthermore, as IT and traditional techniques provide the same function, senior management and boards of directors must be alerted to the importance of developing systematic approaches to fraud investigation that involve greater reliance on technological approaches.

The moderate role of corporate governance suggests that senior management and boards of directors must better understand the importance of their oversight function to meet their obligations and fiduciary responsibilities to stakeholders. Furthermore, greater adoption of IT to detect and prevent fraud contributes to developing a systematic approach to fraud investigation, capable of identifying unusual activity using effective software.

This study contributes to the literature on the role of corporate governance and IT in preventing and detecting fraud, particularly for Middle Eastern countries and other emerging nations. The study may provide insights to academics and practitioners in the UAE and their international counterparts.

Given the significant role played by valuers and the evidence of a lack of independence in some property valuation industries, particularly in emerging markets, this study analyses the issue of client influence in property valuation by providing a valuer-client perspective and measuring the interrelationships between the clients' influence factors to identify causal factors of prominence, which can assist in developing solutions to address the clients' influence issue.

The study used a mixed-method approach. Firstly, interviews were conducted with ten property valuers and five financial institution staff in Nigeria, and the data were subject to thematic analysis using Nvivo 12 software. A matrix questionnaire survey was administered to the valuers, and the responses were analysed using the fuzzy Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method.

The results indicate that institutional clients, loan-seeking customers, property valuers and the perception of corruption within the Nigerian environment fuelled the issue of clients' influence. Based on the measurement of the interrelationship between the 14 identified client influence factors, the type of company, perception the public has of the industry, size of the firm, relationship with the client, type of client and regulatory framework were the factors of prominence.

The findings of this study bear huge implications for Nigeria and other similar structured property markets facing the issue of clients' influence in property valuation. With the prominent factors bearing root in a mix of client, valuer and environmental factors such as the valuation structure, process and public perception, there is a need for solutions that level the playing field between institutional clients and valuers, reinforce transparency and establish excellent regulatory standards to address the issue of clients' influence.

This study is the first to measure the interrelationships between the clients' influence factors to identify the prominent causal factors. Accordingly, considering the multi-factors, the research is novel as it focusses on those factors that would likely lead to other factors, thereby providing opportunities to develop solutions that focus on those factors of prominence. Secondly, the study deviates from the narrative on clients' influence in property valuation, which pits it as solely a client or valuer factor, by showing how the interplay of the stakeholders' interests and the environment promotes the issue in a non-transparent property market.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the present structure of the Korean disaster-safety industry and propose ways to promote it.

The background of the emergence of the disaster and safety industry in Korea is reviewed, and business networks of 91 companies belonging to the disaster and safety industry in Korea are identified and analysed through a network analysis.

Korean Government is struggling to nurture the disaster and safety industry as it has been on last few decades. This paper finds that the current industry has an ambiguous market structure, and the industry tends to depend highly on the demand of public institutions.

The concept of the disaster and safety industry is not well established in other countries except for Korea. If Korea successfully fosters its disaster and safety industry through its proper understanding, it would bring both disaster risk reduction and economic benefits.

This paper analyses the market structure of the disaster and safety industry, which is uniquely emerging in Korea and rarely designated as an industry in other countries.

There has been a substantial growth in training programmes in the UK over the past decade and particularly in the 1980s, aimed at supporting the business start‐up process. In the 1970s, small business training, channelled mainly through the Industry Training Boards, concentrated almost exclusively on the existing small business. That there has been such substantial growth reflects the priorities and influence of the Manpower Services Commission (MSC). Its pioneering work on the New Enterprise Programmes in the late 70s led on to a hierarchy of start‐up programmes in the 80s covering a wide variety of client types. Behind this, in turn, lay the political commitment to support of self‐help progammes aimed at increasing the rate of starts of small business as a counter to unemployment, and increasing their viability, thus lowering the failure rate. Start‐up training has gone much farther in the UK than in the rest of Europe, and several European countries have followed British practice in recent years[1]. The growth in provision can partly be monitored by the Manpower Services Commission's own figures which show 64 starters being helped through training in 1978/79 and 31,000 in 1986/87. The MSC is planning to revise its programme portfolio in this area, in the light of its evaluation, and in an endeavour substantially to increase the through‐put of participants with targets of over 45,000 in 1987/88.

Big 4 professional services firms increasingly lay claim to recruiting and including staff of diverse genders, cultures, ages and sexualities. Drawing on Foucauldian insights, this study explores how LGBTIQ+ staff navigated shifting technologies of client power, at the time marriage equality was legislated in Australia.

This article explores changing experiences of LGBTIQ+ staff and allies, through 56 semi-structured interviews undertaken through 2018–2019.

Technologies of client power were central to shaping workplace experiences for LGBTIQ+ staff. However, each firm was also keen to carve unique and bold responses to changing societal attitudes regarding sexuality and gender. These progressive moves did not sit comfortably with all clients, and so this article provides insight into the limitations of client privilege within professional services firms. For staff, this increasing complexity of sometimes opaque, contradictory and shifting technologies of client and firm power, enabled agency to explore a sense of self for some, but continued to exclude others.

Little attention has been directed to exploring challenges for staff of sexual and gendered diversity within professional services firms, or to exploring how staff navigate changing perceptions of client power.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of various service quality dimensions, namely reliability, responsiveness, visibility, employee commitment and access to service on customer satisfaction in the private banking sector of Bangladesh. The research also investigates the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty and effect of demographic variables on customer satisfaction.

The researchers distributed 320 self-administered survey questionnaires among private banks' customers in Bangladesh and obtained 200 useable responses with a 62.5% valid response rate. The research data were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM) approaches. Analysis of variance and logistic regression have also been used to obtain the supplementary findings.

The research findings indicate that visibility, responsiveness and employee commitment have positive and significant effect on customer satisfaction, whereas reliability and access to service are found to have insignificant influence on customer satisfaction of private banking services. The findings of this study also revealed that customer satisfaction has positive and significant relationship with customer loyalty. But except respondents' occupation type, all other demographic variables have no statistically significant relation with customer satisfaction.

The research focused solely on the private banking sector of Bangladesh, and thus the results may not be applicable to other service sectors.

This study conducted on customers' perception of private banking services is based on extended service quality dimensions and its relationship with customer satisfaction towards loyalty. The present research findings are anticipated to offer the guidelines for improving the customer satisfaction and loyalty of private banking services in Bangladesh as well as other countries.

Collaboration is thought to offer significant benefits over traditional contracts, however there is little existing research concerning how these benefits can be optimized. To address this gap, a survey investigated the impact of client characteristics on the time and cost efficiency of collaborative infrastructure projects. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The survey of experienced senior practitioners of Australian collaborative infrastructure projects yielded 320 valid responses. Cluster analysis, one-way between group ANOVA tests and independent sample t-tests were used to confirm that three client characteristics are critical to time and cost performance: client sector (public/private); client experience with asset procurement; and client approach to price competition.

Projects procured by experienced private sector clients were found to meet targeted levels of performance, regardless of their approach to team selection. Among projects procured by experienced public sector clients, groups of relatively low and high performing projects could be distinguished, regardless of their approach to team selection. Projects run by teams selected competitively on non-price criteria prior to the pricing stage exhibited significantly better performance than those run by teams that competed on the price of the project to win the work.

This study focussed only on analysis of three client characteristics. Future research may consider a broader range of contextual variables. Results are based on perceptual data rather than objective data.

The findings show collaborative infrastructure clients in the construction sector should be less concerned about inexperience than they might have been, and more interested in single-team selection approaches than they might have been.

The results indicate significant performance differences between client types. In particular, experienced public sector clients had more polarized performance outcomes, compared to the private sector.

This work draws on important issues that are related to all socio‐economic agents. We refer to Sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Socially Responsible Investments (SRIs), arguing on the clear benefits they provide to companies and financial institutions. The main empirical objective of this work is to show a theoretical framework for the existence and supply of non‐financial information on financial products by financial institutions in the Portuguese Investment Market (comprising of Banks and Fund and Investment Companies – FIMCs).

Overall, 55 Banks and 41 FIMCs, were analysed, totalling 96 observations for analysis. The paper studies the supply of non‐financial information (i.e. social and environmental information) regarding the financial products in the Portuguese investment market (comprising of Banks and Fund and Investment Management Companies). Through surveys’ analysis, which were sent to 96 of these financial institutions, we conclude that the supply of these informations’ sets is practically inexistent.

Overall, the conclusions point to the fact that financial institutions surveyed are very much behind in this new framework and related tools, when considering similar financial institutions outside Portugal. There are some institutions that do provide, but when compared to other European and non‐European countries, the discrepancy is huge. It is concluded that much needs to be done in this field, starting with a clear definition of the benefits and costs of providing non‐financial information.

At the academic level, the authors have not found any good study neither on CSR nor on SRIs done by Portuguese researchers nor on its Market. A priori the authors felt that the Portuguese Banks and The Fund and Investment Management Companies were not committed to Sustainability issues, because they believe that for these business agents, Sustainable Development still means, Environmentalism. Through this study the authors seek to provide an image of how the Investment Market is to regards to Sustainable issues, in Portugal, and thus help financial institutions and economic agents (e.g. bank managers, portfolio managers, among others) to know more about these issues that are important to any company.