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The purpose of this study is to examine whether independent directors' financial expertise affects the use of private information in setting bank chief executive officer (CEO) bonuses.

The association between future firm performance and bank CEO bonuses is used to measure the incorporation of private information into bonuses. Both level and change specifications are employed to test the effect of independent directors' financial expertise on the use of private information in setting CEO bonuses.

It is found that future firm performance is more positively associated with bank CEO bonuses for banks with a higher proportion of financial experts among independent directors than for other banks. The findings suggest that independent directors with financial expertise can more effectively use private information in setting bank CEO bonuses.

Research on independent directors' role in the use of private information in setting compensation is valuable for understanding how corporate governance can enhance the efficiency of CEO compensation contracts. This study indicates that financial experts on the bank board play an important role in this regard.

The Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) mandated a variety of corporate governance mechanisms to improve the transparency of financial reporting quality. This paper's aim is to investigate whether SOX's recently mandated disclosure of corporate governance structures affects the market's perception of earnings informativeness and firms' earnings management.

Since the first compliant disclosure of the Act would be found in firms' 2002‐2003 financial reports, the authors retrieve the post‐SOX data (pre‐SOX data) from the 2002 to 2003 (2001‐2002) period. Further, the study adopts Anderson et al.'s model to test the relations between earnings informativeness, audit committee independence, and other corporate governance variables. A similar mode is used by Chang and Sun in their study of cross‐listed foreign firms. To measure the discretionary accruals, the authors adopt Kothari et al.'s model and use the two‐digit SIC code in the cross‐sectional regression.

It is found that the market valuation of earnings surprises is significantly higher for firms which disclose stronger corporate governance functions. It is also found that the effectiveness of corporate governance in monitoring earnings management is improved after the mandated disclosure.

The empirical evidence shows that the quality of accounting earnings is increased after the SOX's mandated disclosure, which strengthens the link between financial reporting and corporate governance functions.

Experts respond to the same incentives as people in other areas of human action, and in the same ways. This insight is a truism: Experts are ordinary people, not otherworld creatures. The disciplined pursuit of this common sense observation helps us to reach conclusions about experts that might be surprising or counterintuitive.

The article discusses the operation and impact of the law on equal pay for work of equal value in Britain. In particular, it analyses the role and method of operation of the independent expert who is charged with assessing whether or not two jobs are equal in value.

This article seeks to provide an insight into the work of an expert witness working in drug trials in Crown courts.

The approach is a case study of a single expert witness, drawing on experiences over several years.

The evidence produced in court is subject to the personal limitations and organisational constraints of the experts involved. Prosecution often relies on unreliable and secretive sources. It is important to increase transparency and for a robust challenge to be made to some claims. Many experts are former police officers who are rarely objective or neutral, hence the need for independent experts from within the field.

Personal experience cannot always be generalised so limits the information presented in this case study.

The role of expert witness is a career development opportunity for people working in the drugs and alcohol field.

It is important to understand the subjective way in which testimony and evidence is produced.

This paper gives a rare insight into a key aspect of the legal process.

This study aims to examine the impact of audit committee (AC) characteristics and enterprise risk management (ERM) on stock price synchronicity (SYNCH).

Based on a sample of 437 US-based firms over the period 2010 to 2017, the current study uses fixed-effect and ordinary least square to test the formulated hypotheses. Majority of the sample firms are based on the S&P 500 index. This study also performs a battery of robustness checks.

The authors find that overall female members and female financial experts and female chairpersons of the AC are negatively associated with SYNCH. Similarly, the study endorses the monitoring role of financial experts and the diligence of the AC (threshold of four annual meetings), as both are negatively associated with SYNCH. However, the authors find that the AC chaired by the financial expert is also negative but insignificantly associated with SYNCH. Finally, the study finds that ERM is also negatively linked with SYNCH.

The findings of the current study offer some important policy implications. For instance, the shareholders can benefit from the monitoring abilities of women and financial experts by increasing their ratio in the AC. The study also offers some useful insights regarding the financial experts and chair of the AC and ERM.

The current study examines the association of AC characteristics with SYNCH, while the prior literature only assesses the impact of various board characteristics (such as size, independence and gender diversity). The study also contributes to the literature of ERM by providing new insights on the influence of the presence of ERM framework/program on SYNCH.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of audit committee (AC) attributes on the performance of finance companies in Malaysia in both period before and after the Malaysian Code on Corporate Governance (MCCG) was issued in order to determine which of the AC attributes enhances performance of finance companies in Malaysia.

The population of the study comprises firms listed under finance sector of the main market of Bursa Malaysia. The number of firms listed on the main market of Bursa Malaysia as at the time of data collection (2012) was 822, out of which 37 were finance firms. Since the number of finance companies listed on the main market was only 37, all companies were used as sample for this study. This comprises companies involved in commercial, investment and Islamic banking, insurance, Takaful and other finance-related services. The sample for the period prior to MCCG varies over the period of observation. The number of finance companies in 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 and 1996 was 36, 40, 44, 47 and 54, respectively. The sample comprises companies in commercial banking, investment banking, Islamic banking, insurance, Takaful and other finance-related services. The sample comprises firms listed on the main board of Kuala Lumpur stock exchange as it was called before the name was changed to Bursa Malaysia. The companies listed under the Ace market are not included due to their small number and because they are subject to different listing requirements. The list of the finance companies for the period 2007-2011 is obtained from the web site of Bursa Malaysia while for the period 1992-1996, the list is obtained from Bursa Malaysia knowledge centre. The observation period for the study covers financial period from 2007 to 2011 which represents post MCCG period while period from 1992 to 1996 represents the period before MCCG.

The findings suggests a significant positive relationship between independent AC members and profitability while dual membership of directors on audit and nomination committee is significant and negatively related with profitability. The result supports agency theory which suggests that independent directors provide effective monitoring of the management thereby enhancing profitability and reducing possibility for opportunistic behavior by the management and ultimately enhancing performance. In addition, the result indicates that there was significant improvement in corporate governance in finance companies after the MCCG was issued compared to the period before it was issued.

The study focussed only on finance companies listed on Bursa Malaysia. The attributes examined include independence, expertise, experience, executive membership and interlock of directors, future studies could examine other attributes such as internal process of the committee and personal characteristics of the directors. Furthermore, the study used secondary data future studies could use primary data or a combination of primary and secondary data. The study only examined the period before MCCG and after the code was issued, future study could examine the impact of the first and second revision and compare it with period after the first and second revision.

The findings contribute to the literature and the understanding of the influence of AC attributes such as independence and experience of the directors on the committee by showing an association between director independence, expertise, experience and improved performance. Management and board of companies may use the findings to make appropriate choices about AC attributes and governance mechanisms to improve performance particularly with regards to independence, expertise, experience and interlock of the directors.

The study has provided policy makers with a better understanding of the various features a AC should have which could be incorporated in future policy formulation in order to safeguard investments of shareholders, protect the interest of various stakeholders and enhance the flow of capital and foreign direct investment into finance companies and the economy in general. Comparison of the result between the pre MCCG and post MCCG period shows an improvement in corporate governance in finance companies after the MCCG was issued. This implies that the initial issue of MCCG impacted positively on the governance of the finance companies.

To best of the authors knowledge the study is the first to examine the attributes of AC in finance sector as a whole and to examine the impact in the period before and after the MCCG was issued.

This paper aims to deal with expert judgment and its predictive ability in the context of investment funds. The judgmental ratings awarder with a large set of experts was compared to a sample of the dynamic investment funds operating in Central and Eastern Europe with their objective performance, both past and future, relatively to the time of the forecast.

Data on the survey sample enabled the authors to evaluate both ex post judgmental validity, i.e. how the experts reflected the previous performance of funds, and ex ante predictive accuracy, i.e. how well their judgments estimated the future performance of the fund. For this purpose, logistic regression for past values estimations and linear model for future values estimations was used.

It was found that the experts (independent academicians, senior bank specialists and senior financial advisors) were only able to successfully reflect past annual returns of a five-year period, failing to reflect costs and annual volatility and, mainly, failing to predict any of the indicators on the same five-year horizon.

The outcomes of this paper confirm that expert judgment should be used with caution in the context of financial markets and mainly in situations when domain knowledge is applicable. Procedures incorporating judgmental evaluations, such as individual investment advice, should be thoroughly reviewed in terms of client value-added, to eliminate potential anchoring bias.

This paper sheds new light on the quality and nature of individual judgment produced by financial experts. These are prevalent in many situations influencing clients’ decision-making, be it financial advice or multiple product contests. As such, our findings underline the need of scepticism when these judgments are taken into account.

Digital technologies, digitalised consumers and the torrent of customer data have been transforming marketing practice. In discussing such trends, existing research has either focussed on the skills marketers need or broad-based approaches such as agile methods but has given less consideration to just how such skills or approaches might be developed and used in marketers' day-to-day activities and in the organisation of marketing in the firm. This is what the authors address in this paper.

This paper adopts an in-depth case study approach to examine an exemplary digital enterprise in transformation of their digital marketing. The insights were gathered from 25 interviews, netnography and document analysis of the case organisation in addition to 10 interviews with independent experts.

Drawing on practice-oriented approach, the authors show how organisations respond to the emerging trends of digital consumers and big data by taking a ‘hacking marketing’ approach and developing novel marketing expertise at disciplinary boundaries. The authors put forward three sets of practices that enable and shape the hacking marketing approach. These include spanning the expertise boundary, making value measurable and experimenting through which their adaptive, iterative and multidisciplinary work occurs. This explains how managing digital consumers and big data is not within the realm of information technology (IT) functions but marketing and how marketing professionals are changing their practice and moving their disciplinary boundaries.

This study offers practical contributions for firms in terms of identifying new work practices and expertise that marketing specialists need in managing digital platforms, digitalised consumers and big data. This study’s results show that enterprises need to design and implement strong training programmes to prepare their marketing workforce in adopting experimentations of agile approach and data-driven decision making. In addition, Marketing education should be changed so that programmes consider a review of their courses and include the novel marketing models and approaches into their curriculum.

This study contributes to the nascent discussions by unpacking how enterprises can develop new marketing expertise and practices beyond skillsets and how such practices form new hacking marketing approach which addresses the problem of the inability of the conventional marketing approach to show its value within the firm.

Internal auditors are struggling to maintain their identity and purpose as the organizations they audit undergo drastic changes. Total quality management, business process reengineering, globalization, and self‐directed teams are dismantling hierarchical command and control structures. Advances in information technology continuously render control procedures obsolete. The ‘value’ of traditional internal audit is seriously questioned from the board room to the show room. CoActive audit is an internal audit model designed for team/technology based organization cultures, where the focus is on process enhancement rather than assessment and reporting. It provides synergistic solutions to real problems, rather than a quasi‐independent appraisal offering recommendations of potentially marginal value. Auditing has its origins in antiquity, apparently when rulers with wealth had the objective of maintaining their wealth by detecting fraud on the part of their servants. While external auditing was originally formulated with the same objective, through the years it changed its primary objective to emphasize the ‘professional review of financial statements by an independent expert, so that a professional opinion indicating that financial condition and results of operation have been fairly presented can be given.’ While internal auditing formulated its objective to ‘assist members of the organization in the effective discharge of their responsibilities,’ it continued the basic doctrine that auditing is an expert, independent, appraisal function. While many internal auditors today keep auditing as they have in the past, the organizations they are auditing are undergoing drastic changes. Total Quality Management, Self Directed Teams, and Business Process Reengineering are dismantling the old hierarchical command and control systems that depended on auditors to verify compliance. Advances in Information Technology have rendered manual control procedures obsolete. While most internal auditors have successfully made the transition from a reactive audit process that basically reported on history to a proactive approach based on risk assessment and focused on the present, the changes occurring within our organizations demand even more fundamental changes. Contemporary internal auditors openly acknowledge that they feel change must occur within the internal auditing community, and these leaders are venturing forward trying new philosophies and approaches. CoActive Audit is a combination of these new philosophies and methodologies, with its roots in the teachings of the primary management visionaries of the times. It is a vehicle to help internal audit grow, to re‐energize, to expand both its reach and grasp. It is about change, about recognizing the world has drastically changed, about realizing that some of our most basic assumptions are no longer valid, about understanding that some of our codified standards may hinder rather than help, and about replacing the old that is no longer appropriate with a new that is. It is time to focus on enhancing internal control, not merely reporting on it. It is time to build control into business processes, not simply assessing compliance with policies and procedures. It is time to recognize that the traditional internal audit methodology may be counterproductive to the goal of ensuring a reliable internal control system. It is time for CoActive Audit: the next critical step for internal audit. CoActive Audit enhances management control processes using today's management philosophies and methodologies. It represents a fundamental transformation of traditional internal audit philosophy, a 180 shift in mental models and paradigms. The essential components are an audit approach that is: Concurrent — rather than historical; Collaborative — rather than autonomous; Consultative — rather than judgmental; Client‐based — rather than standards‐based; A Catalyst — rather than an inhibitor.