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This study aims to investigate the busy season contagion effects on other clients of the Big 4 auditor’s local office associated with the non-timely (NT) filing(s) by large accelerated filer (LAF) client(s) of the office. Specifically, the authors examine the influence such events have on the audit quality and timeliness of other clients of that office.

Using panel data of annual NT filings of LAF clients between 2006 and 2019, the authors apply the ordinary least squares regression technique to model audit reporting lag (ARL) and the logistic regression technique to model the probability of restatements.

Controlling for audit firm, industry and year-fixed effects, the authors find that a LAF NT filing reduces audit quality and audit timeliness of other clients of the office, as measured by restatement risk and ARL. The impact on ARL is most pronounced on the medium and small clients within the office. The deteriorated audit quality is observed for medium clients.

The results of this study have practical implications for auditors and regulators. They reveal the contagion effect in the auditor’s local office with the NT LAF client. The main limitation of the study is the lack of staffing utilization data to allow for drawing conclusions on causality.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to document the contagion effect of NT filings of LAF clients conducted at the auditor’s local office level.

What if companies try to combine the IKEA and Trophy winner effects? The purpose of this study is to understand the similarities and differences between both effects. This is not only theoretically but also practically important for the way that companies interact with their customers.

Successful work – invested either to create or to obtain a product – increases the customers’ valuation of the product. This phenomenon known as the IKEA or Trophy winner effect. This study directly compares both effects using experiments with two different products (paper planes and 3D puzzles). Moreover, this study tests whether they reinforce each other.

The Trophy winner effect looms larger than the IKEA effect for inexpensive items. For slightly more expensive products, this study finds a Trophy loser effect. Positive emotions of trophy winners drive the results for inexpensive products, whereas negative emotions of trophy losers drive the results for slightly more expensive products.

The relevance of the IKEA and Trophy effects is influenced by the type of product. Customers’ labor invested in the product itself is of greater importance the more expensive the product is. As soon as customers interpret the interaction with other customers as competition, the effect on valuation can be substantial even for inexpensive products. Future studies could try to replicate our results with different product categories.

Although the IKEA and Trophy effects are no new phenomena in consumer psychology and behavioral economics, they have not been compared to each other or combined yet. The results are useful for researchers and practitioners alike. They yield implications for product customization and customer empowerment.

This chapter examines representations of gender in online modafinil markets. While gender has often been absent from scholarship on online drug markets, our analysis demonstrates the ubiquity of gender in representations of modafinil users and sellers. The analysis draws on visual images, blogs, and marketing emails relating to three websites selling modafinil, discussed pseudonymously. We describe the range of ways that notions of gender are represented in advertising. Although women represent around 40% of that buying modafinil online, websites and communications tended not to feature women. Although sexist stereotypes of women were rarely present (in contrast to direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising), the ways that modafinil was imagined tended to focus narrowly on corporate spheres of work and productivity. We contrast this narrow imaginary with female journalists’ own accounts of using modafinil to manage illness and enhance creativity. Thus, we conclude that the ways that modafinil has been imagined reflects working assumptions as to who is considered the ‘normal’ participant in online modafinil markets.

The purpose of this study is to provide an in-depth understanding of the B2B customers’ perspective regarding salespeople’s social media use.

The study adopts a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with 26 key informants performing their job in customer role in various industries.

The authors inductively identify five themes regarding the B2B customers’ perspective of social media use in B2B selling. These themes allow for valuable implications for social selling activities and expected outcomes.

Against a growing body of literature on drivers, best practices and outcomes of social media use by B2B salespeople, less attention has been paid to the customer’s side. The authors extend current research by providing a more complete picture of social selling activities and expected outcomes.

This study aims to investigate how the village government implements internal control, accountability, transparency and participation in the good governance practice for corruption prevention and detection in Indonesia.

This study is qualitative research by conducting a semi-structured interview with village staff, village consultative council members and auditors.

The findings highlight three major issues contributing to poor governance and the failure to prevent and detect corruption.

The regulator should urgently provide accounting standards, audit standards and internal control regulations for the village to create good governance for eradicating corruption.

This paper is a ground-breaking study that investigates the governance practice in the village as an anchor to solve the chronic corruption problem and offers a new direction of research in the village government.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of short sellers in foreign direct investment (FDI) decisions. Drawing on threat rigidity theory, the authors argue that short sellers pose a threat to chief executive officers (CEOs) by exerting downward pressure to target firms’ stock prices. That threat will evoke rigid managerial responses that hinder new FDI activities. The authors also posit that CEOs will be less reactive to short sellers’ threats when they are generalist CEOs who have extensive general work experience or when they serve as the board chair.

The authors collect data from S&P 1,500 firms, and the final sample consists of 717 firms and 6,930 firm-year observations from 1998 to 2016. The authors use an Arellano and Bond generalized method of moments static linear probability panel data model and an instrumental panel count data model to test the hypotheses.

The findings support the hypotheses and suggest that CEOs who are under more pressure from short sellers engage in fewer new FDI activities. The negative impact of short sellers on FDI decisions is less salient when CEOs have general work experience or are the chairperson of the board.

This study contributes to the international business research by stressing the need to consider the role of short sellers in firm internationalization decisions.

The purpose of this study is to determine the factors that impact the trust of microenterprises in online selling platforms and cargo carriers and examine the consequences of a lack of trust.

This study adopts a qualitative exploratory approach and uses grounded theory to generate insights based on interviews with 27 microenterprise owners selling internationally on an online selling platform.

The results show that a lack of competence, an absence of an integrated claim system and a lack of transparency are the main factors affecting sellers’ trust in online selling platforms. The relationship between the sellers’ intention to continue to use the online selling platform and their trust in the platform was found to be moderated by switching costs.

This study is limited in that the results were mainly based on the sellers’ perspectives although the phenomenon of interest involves various actors. To mitigate this limitation and cross-check the data, the customer reviews and some of the sellers’ account statistics were also analyzed.

This study introduces the sellers’ perspectives on the dynamics of supply chain management in international micro trade. These dynamics provide a guideline for how to build and manage an online selling platform targeting microenterprises.

Unlike previous studies, this study examines online transaction behaviors from the standpoint of sellers, not buyers. Moreover, it is the first study examining the damaged or lost shipments within the context of online transactions in international micro trade.

Drawing on the wisdom of ancient Chinese philosopher Xunzi, this paper aims to present a novel mechanism for governing opportunism, referred to as “cultivational governance.” By examining the role of artificial intelligence (AI) resources possessed by e-commerce platforms, the authors explore how these resources contribute to mitigating seller opportunism. The central hypothesis of this study posits that two distinct types of AI resources, namely, AI technology resources and AI human resources, serve as crucial factors in curbing seller opportunism. Furthermore, the authors propose that platform digital empowerment and value cocreation act as mediating variables linking AI resources to opportunism.

Based on the resource-based view and resource orchestration theory, the authors developed a framework and tested it using survey data from sellers. This framework encompasses five key variables: e-commerce platform’s AI technology resources, AI human resources, platform digital empowerment, value cocreation and seller opportunism. Regression analysis was used for data analysis.

The empirical results validate the effectiveness of cultivational governance mechanisms, as both AI resources effectively suppress seller opportunism through digital empowerment and value cocreation. Specifically, e-commerce platforms’ AI technology resources significantly promote value cocreation and platform digital empowerment, while AI human resources primarily contribute to platform digital empowerment. Although platform digital empowerment encourages value cocreation, its direct impact on reducing seller opportunism was not supported. Notably, value cocreation negatively affects seller opportunism.

The present research mainly contributes to the marketing channel governance literature by introducing a new approach to inhibit opportunism, namely, the cultivational governance mechanism.

Entrepreneurs and individual sellers heavily leverage their social ties embedded in social media, expressive or instrumental, to penetrate the market and achieve business success. However, the extant social commerce literature offers limited understanding on how different forms of buyer−seller social ties embedded in social media affect buyers' purchase behaviors. The study draws on the theoretical lens of social ties and proposes an integrative theoretical framework to understand the direct and indirect influences of expressive and instrumental ties (ExTSM and InTSM) between buyers and sellers on buyers' purchase intention (PI) in social commerce.

The authors first validated the measures of ExTSM and InTSM with survey data from 166 Weibo commerce buyers. They then tested their theoretical framework and hypotheses with survey data from 246 buyer−seller dyads in WeChat commerce.

With a buyer-centric view, (1) ExTSM and InTSM, respectively, had a direct negative and a positive influence on PI; (2) both trust and perceived product value displayed inconsistent mediation effects on the negative relationship between ExTSM and PI; and (3) only perceived product value mediated the positive influence of InTSM on PI. From sellers' viewpoint, (1) their ExTSM and InTSM with buyers were mixed up, and (2) the mingled social ties negatively impacted buyers' purchase intention.

The findings of the study advance the theoretical understanding of social commerce and offer practical guidance for small and medium-sized enterprises to effectively utilize social media for business purposes.

Drawing on social network and information diffusion theories, the authors study the impact of the structural characteristics of a seller’s local social network on her promotion effectiveness in social commerce.

The authors define a local social network as one formed by a focal seller, her directly connected users and all links among these users. Using data from a large social commerce website in China, the authors build econometric models to investigate how the density, grouping and centralization of local social networks affect the number of likes received by products posted by sellers.

Local social networks with low density, grouping and centralization are associated with more likes on sellers’ posted products. The negative effects of grouping and centralization are reduced when density is high.

The paper deepens the understanding of the determinants of social commerce success from a network structure perspective. In particular, it draws attention to the role of sellers’ local social networks, forming a foundation for future research on social commerce.