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The question that this study addresses is whether the shareholders of New Zealand firms benefit from the process of gaining ISO registration. Three major questions with regard to ISO registration within the New Zealand business context are raised. First, how do New Zealand public firms’ stock prices react to the announcement of ISO registration? Secondly, do ISO registered firms perform any differently to the New Zealand market on average? And finally, does the choice of certifying authority (organisation that awards ISO registration) have an influence on the subsequent performance of the ISO registered firms’ performance? This study is conducted from a financial perspective. The New Zealand market is found to have no reaction to ISO registration announcements; supporting the existence of semi‐strong market efficiency. ISO registered firms are found to perform below average when compared to the New Zealand capital market and the choice of certifying authority does hold influence on subsequent firm performance.

Examines three important issues related to the ISO 9000 registration experiences of American, German and Japanese firms operating in the United States. The three issues are reasons for seeking registration, cost and effort to register and operational requirements for achieving registration. The case study method was used for this project. Indicates competitive pressures as the most common reason for seeking registration. Shows significant variation in costs and levels of effort needed to achieve registration, though none of the firms invested more than 1 per cent of their total available work hours. Suggests no commonality in operational strategy when pursuing registration.

This study examines the impact of initial informality years on subsequent firm performance and the moderating effect of institutional quality on this relationship.

The study draws on the World Bank Enterprises Survey (WBES) data covering 116 developing economies over the 2006–2018 period. The study also utilizes data from the Heritage Foundation, the World Bank World Development Indicators (WDI) and the Fraser Institute Economic Freedom Database.

The study demonstrates that firms that start operation without formal registration perform better than firms that start operation formally. However, contrary to prior studies that show a linear relationship between time spent unregistered and subsequent firm performance, this study finds a non-monotonic relationship between the two – taking an inverted–U shape form. The study further shows that institutional quality at country level moderates this relationship such that firms operating in countries marked by poorly functioning formal institutions benefit from remaining unregistered longer.

This study is the first to show a non-monotonic relationship between the time firms spend without registration and their subsequent performance. By doing so, it reconciles the contradicting findings in the extant literature regarding the relationship between the two variables. It also identifies one important boundary condition – institutional quality – that moderates this relationship.

Short‐term cash need plays a critical role in equity issuance decisions. Consequently, the ease with which a seasoned equity offer (SEO) is completed can have a direct effect on the cost of raising equity. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether liquidity is likely to affect the ease with which an offer is completed, as proxied by the length of the offer.

This study uses multiple regression analysis to establish the link between liquidity and the duration of the SEO completion cycle. To provide support to the findings, event study methodology is employed to study the abnormal volume turnover during the pre‐SEO announcement period for firms with shorter and longer registration periods.

The paper finds that firms with greater liquidity come to market sooner. The results indicate a small yet significant effect of liquidity on the duration of the SEO completion cycle. There is also evidence that lower pre‐announcement period volume turnover is associated with a longer registration period – which has some implications for issuance costs. The results are robust to the inclusion of industry or firm effects, use of different regression specifications, and application of alternative liquidity measures.

This paper belongs to the growing literature that examines the link between liquidity and the firm's equity issuance costs. It adds to the literature by: examining the determinants of the time it takes to complete an offering; providing the evidence that liquidity may affect the ease with which investment bankers place new shares; and presenting the evidence using newer measures of liquidity based on low‐frequency data.

Although there is a plethora of research articles that study ISO 9000 quality management systems and their association with business success, there is little empirical research that can attribute causality to certification. Contributes to the question of causality, through a comparison against a control group of the actual sales and profitability of 400 certified companies pre and post registration. Using a longitudinal methodology finds that, although the performance of certified companies is superior to that of 400 non‐certified firms, there is no evidence of improved performance after registration in the 400 certified firms studied. Concludes, from these findings, that the superior performance of certified firms is due to firms with superior performance having a greater propensity to pursue ISO 9000 registration. Illustrates the potential dangers in inferring that ISO 9000 certification leads to superior business performance. Additionally the findings should give pause for thought for decision‐makers. Certification is a major investment yet the findings show that inflated expectations of performance improvement after ISO 9000 accreditation may be unfounded.

For the past 10 years, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has operated as an independent overseer of public company audits. Over 70 percent of PCAOB studies have been published since 2010, evidencing the increasing relevance of PCAOB-related research in recent years. Our paper reviews the existing literature on the PCAOB’s four primary functions – registration, standard-setting, inspections, and enforcement. In particular, we examine PCAOB registration trends and evaluate the effects of PCAOB registration requirements on the issuer audit market, as well as discuss the relative costs and benefits (e.g., auditor behavior changes, improvements in audit quality, auditor perceptions) of the 16 auditing standards the PCAOB passed in its first 10 years of operation. Further, we summarize the literature’s findings on the effects of the PCAOB inspection process on various facets of audit quality. Finally, we analyze the research concerning the PCAOB’s enforcement actions to determine how markets have responded to sanctions against auditors and audit firms. We contend that understanding and reviewing the effects of the PCAOB’s activities are important to future audit research because of the PCAOB’s authority over and oversight of the issuer audit profession. We also identify PCAOB-related research areas that have not been fully explored and propose several research questions intended to address these research areas.

This study aims to investigate the factors that affect the likelihood of formalizing informal sector activities in 13 Sub-Saharan African countries, using World Bank enterprise survey data collected between the periods 2009 and 2018. Notwithstanding the great contribution of the informal economy in Africa, developing countries may stand to gain more if they make inroads in formalizing the informal sector.

Since the dependent variable is binary taking the value of one if the firm is willing to formalize and zero otherwise, the study will employ a discrete choice probit model.

Results inter alia show that firms that are more likely to formalize are young, owned by individuals with high levels of education and, have registered before. Governments should therefore target firms that are young and provide them with information about the benefits of registration, and if these firms are owned by experienced and educated individuals, the likelihood for them to register would be high.

The study uses cross sectional data and therefore cannot capture time variant factors affecting the probability to register and also cannot correct effectively for endogeneity.

Governments should therefore target firms that are young and provide them with as much information as possible about the benefits of registration, and if these firms are owned by experienced and educated individuals, the likelihood to convince them to register would be high. They should also reduce the cost of registration so as to improve net benefits in line with the rational exit view.

Formalizing informal activities will help improve the performance of these firms, reduce vulnerable employment as well as crime, poverty and inequality. Providing decent operating and working conditions to informal players will reduce social and political unrest.

The African continent is home to many informal firms accounting for roughly 55% of economic activity with 90% of workers eking out a living in a sector that does not respect worker rights, provide decent working conditions and where changes in growth have done little to reduce its size. Regulatory reforms have also been implemented resulting in the number of start-up registration procedures falling from 11 in 2003 to seven in 2019. The uniqueness of Sub Saharan Africa in terms of entrepreneurial culture, political, institutional and economic conditions as well as lack of consensus in the extant empirical literature make this study pertinent.

This chapter examines the role firm specific and institutional variables (such as regulation and trust) in firms’ decision to register their economic activities with authorities. Our empirical analysis is based on a large data set gathered from 40 African countries on more than 11,000 small, medium and large firms via the World Bank Enterprise Survey covering the period 2006–2014. This chapter is aimed at reinforcing the limited but a growing body of literature focussing on determinants of informal entrepreneurship using firm-level databases. The analysis of this study shows in institutional environments where there is trust in public institutions such as courts, firms are less likely to stay unregistered. Concerning firm specific variables young firms are found to be more likely to stay unregistered but there is a non-linear relationship between age and length of years spent unregistered. Firms with exporting strategy and in foreign ownership are less likely to stay longer unregistered. There are significant gains if policy-makers focus on building trust in institutions, fighting corruption, embarking on meaningful enforcement of rule of law principles, providing services without reliance on predatory tax policies, reducing firm transaction costs via improved licensing and technology-assisted registration systems.

There is a need to evaluate the ISO system in respect of the 1994 amendments for service industries. This paper examines the impact that ISO 9000 has had in the service sector by studying professional quantity surveyors, who form part of the design team for the building construction industry. A questionnaire, formatted from preliminary qualitative interviews explored the extent of registration to the standard, the perceptions held regarding the benefits of ISO 9000, the effect on staff and clients and the costs involved. The analysis shows that the majority of firms have not yet registered. Those that have registered have done so mainly for marketing reasons, but have also experienced internal improvements. The findings also indicate that the informal quality systems of the smaller firms, based on detailed customer knowledge, are not inferior to ISO 9000. Furthermore, it is concluded that, while providing some degree of increased rigour, ISO 9000 should be used in conjunction with more proactive business improvement approaches.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the results from a survey on ISO 9000 certified manufacturing companies in Saudi Arabia.

An empirical survey of 175 certified manufacturing firms in Saudi Arabia. This study is focused on the benefits achieved from ISO 9000 implementation, level of satisfaction with the standard, the anticipated steps after ISO 9000 implementation, factors influencing the choice of registration agencies and the associated problems with registration agencies.

Certified firms in Saudi Arabia have performed well in their registration process and have benefited from ISO implementation. This could be due to the high level of interest in the area of quality, as most customers request quality or a certificate to prove existence of quality products/services.

For effective implementation of the standard in other organizations, the study recommended that organizations should plan carefully, measuring internal as well as external aspects and performing cost‐effective analysis of the implementation process. Also they should use gap analysis to assess their actual abilities against ISO requirements. When this study was performed, the number of certified organizations was still small, constraining more in depth research in this area.

Adds to the body of knowledge concerning the ISO 9000 with particular interest on Saudi Arabia.