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Worker classification continues to be a highly litigated area of taxation. That is, the status of a worker as an employee or independent contractor remains a topic closely scrutinized by the Internal Revenue Service. This study examines factors that the judiciary deems relevant in ruling whether a worker is an employee or independent contractor. A backward stepwise logistic regression model is implemented to categorize the factors that best predict the court’s decision on whether a worker is either an employee or independent contractor pursuant to the factors in Revenue Ruling 87-41 (1987-1 CB 296), judge gender, and political affiliation. The results indicate three factors (supervision/instructions, continuing relationship, and the right to discharge) are capable of accurately predicting 93 percent of the decisions made by the US Tax Court. Other findings support notable statistical differences between male and female judges rendering decisions and reaching conclusions. Also, there is a statistically significant difference based on the type of industry. Political affiliation appears to have no significant impact on judicial rulings.

To examine the influence of direction of related and unrelated diversification on business groups' performance in emerging markets.

The paper empirically examines a hypothesis based on the theoretical perspective of the resource‐based view. The paper builds a regression model with the dependent variable Tobin's q as a proxy for group/firm value and various other performance measures (derived from financial data) that theory suggests influences firm value. It examines the differences in firm value measure across three classes, namely related‐diversified business groups, unrelated‐diversified business groups and standalone firms.

The results confirm the findings of prior research which suggests that group affiliation is beneficial in emerging markets. However, as a departure, the main finding is that the benefits of group affiliation are not equally available to related‐diversified and unrelated diversified groups.

This research needs to be tested in other emerging markets for generalizability. The results hold under certain assumptions that the paper makes (and mentions) while subjecting data to aggregation and empirical analysis.

While diversified business groups are valued in emerging markets, this work clearly establishes that related‐diversification strategy is better and more profitable in the context of emerging market. Thus, managers of business groups are better off pursuing related‐diversified strategy over unrelated‐diversified strategy.

Prior work has examined the benefits of group affiliation and the extent of diversification question separately. This paper examines the direction of diversification question which is built based on the resource‐based perspective for the first time. This contribution extends the understanding of business groups and performance linkages in an emerging market context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which economically significant Caribbean and African firms provide human resources disclosures (HRD), and the factors related to their disclosure practices. It is motivated by the dearth of studies of HRD among firms in developing countries.

All companies with common shares listed on the main tier of the major stock exchanges in each country examined on December 31, 2013 as well as selected state enterprises were included in the study if their annual report, sustainability report or integrated report was available online. HRD was measured using an unweighted 174-item disclosure index. The research hypotheses were examined using multiple-regression analysis.

The level of HRD in the Caribbean and Southern Africa was relatively low (M=33.7 percent, SD=25.3 percent). The amount of HRD was related to organizational culture, firm size, industry affiliation, national governance environment and foreign influence. Geographical region, gender diversity and director independence were not statistically related to the amount of HRD.

Caribbean and African governments may need to implement incentives for economically significant companies to participate in targeted human resources (HR) development initiatives, to provide more comprehensive HR disclosures and incorporate HR consideration in their strategic decision making.

This is one of the first studies to compare the amount and determinants of HRD by economically significant Caribbean and African companies.

This study aims to provide a precise understanding of how corporate sustainability information is used in socially responsible investing (SRI). The study is motivated by the lack of a recognised body of knowledge on this issue. This study, therefore, collates and reviews relevant studies (67 studies) to provide guidance to investors interested in SRI and identify a research agenda for academics desiring to contribute to this area.

This study conducts a systemic literature review employing recognised key words and searching the Web of Science. HistCite is utilised to ensure important cited studies are not missed from the collection. The review was conducted from two perspectives: (1) sources of sustainability information and (2) how the information is used in SRI.

The review identifies five major sources of sustainability information, including corporate reports, ESG ratings, industry affiliation, news and private communication with firms. These sources of information play different roles in the cross section of SRI strategies (i.e. negative and positive screening, active ownership and integration). This study provides guidance on how to use this information in SRI and provides recommendations for future research on how analysts interact with the information, how different informational characteristics impact implementation, ways to improve data quality, improvements to analysis methods and where data use needs to be extended into new strategies.

This review contributes to the SRI literature by inventorying studies of an important, yet omitted aspect, namely, sustainability information. This work also enriches the literature on corporate sustainability information by investigating how this information can be used for a specific purpose, namely, SRI. Given the increasing interest in SRI, this review will provide much-needed guidance for a range of practitioners, including investors and regulators.

This paper aims to study the corporate governance practices followed by the listed companies in India to find out if industry and business group affiliation of firms influence their corporate governance practices.

The authors have created a corporate governance index for India using 15 of the variables used in past research. Hierarchical regression has been used in the study to control for possible inter-firm correlation in governance scores.

Using principal component analysis, the authors derive five factors for the corporate governance index – board composition, shareholder responsibility, ownership, responsible board behavior and fair executive compensation. Using the random intercept mixed-effects model, the authors find that corporate governance behaviors of firms affiliated to business groups are more similar within business groups than within industries.

Regulatory authorities generally target individual firms to enforce good corporate governance practices. As companies affiliated with the same business group exhibit similar governance practices, regulators can also set norms for business groups in addition to individual firms.

Scant research has studied the corporate governance behavior of firms affiliated with business groups. By making business groups (and industries) the unit of analysis, the authors have studied the corporate governance behavior of firms as a cluster in the context of an emerging country, India.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of whether emerging economies benefit or suffer more because of value-chain activities than advanced economies do. Specifically, it focuses on the consequences in terms of individual wages.

Panel data techniques are used to estimate an expanded Mincerian wage equation over the period 1995-2007. The analysis is performed using micro-level data for two countries that represent two different experiences of value-chain activities in Central Europe: Germany and Slovenia.

Increasing value-chain activities reduce wages for low-skilled workers in high-skill-intensive industries in Germany, hence driving up the skill wage premium. Conversely, evidence is found of a decreasing skill wage premium as a consequence of increasing value-chain activities in Slovenia. Finally, increasing value-chain activities reduces the wages of workers in low-skill-intensive industries in both Germany and Slovenia.

This paper analyses the effect of value-chain activities on wages. It is the first empirical assessment that brings individual wage data directly into the picture for an international comparison focussed on two Central European countries that represent “two faces” of value chains. This paper shows that the effects of increasing value-chain activities on wages differ by country, by industry and by individual skills.

This paper provides a review of research on financial derivatives, with an emphasis on and comprehensive coverage of research published in 15 top accounting journals from 1996 to 2017. We begin with some brief institutional details about derivatives and then summarize studies explaining when and why firms use derivatives. We then discuss the evolution of the accounting rules related to derivatives (and associated disclosure requirements) and studies that examine changes in these requirements over the years. Next, we review the literature that examines the consequences of firms’ derivative use to various capital market participants (i.e., managers, analysts, investors, boards of directors, etc.), with an emphasis on the role that the accounting and disclosure rules play in such consequences. Finally, we discuss the importance of industry affiliation on firms’ derivative use and the role that industry affiliation plays in derivatives research. Overall, our review suggests that, perhaps due to their inherent complexity and data limitations, derivatives are relatively understudied in accounting, and we highlight several areas where future research is needed.

Although photographs in sustainability reports are useful in conveying complex messages, they may also be used to manipulate the presentation of disclosures to exploit the limited cognitive processing capacity of humans. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the features of photographs aimed at capturing individuals’ attention through visual structures and evoking specific emotions through carefully chosen content. Furthermore, it examines whether such framing practice is explained by incentives for legitimizing behaviours and influencing reputation.

The authors conduct a content analysis of photographs in 154 sustainability reports published by US companies. The authors captured the nature of photographs, the context in which they are being used, their themes and emotional content and layout and interaction features to understand how photographs are used for attribute framing to influence information processing. Furthermore, the authors statistically examine the framing practice between companies with different characteristics to identify any patterns for the impression management use of photographs in sustainability reports.

Photographs are often large with a horizontal orientation to capture attention and show content viewed at eye level and in either medium or close-up shots to engage viewers. Furthermore, photographs are emotionally loaded with different themes such as depictions of people, technology and nature. These themes are used to predominately evoke positive emotions of awe, nurturance, pride, amusement and attachment. This practice is often used by companies in environmentally sensitive areas that have close consumer relationships or are covered controversially in the media.

The authors reveal reporting practices and identify photographic features that attract attention and convey emotions that go beyond aesthetic qualities. This is important because emotions conveyed through photographs can be potentially misleading and influence judgements subconsciously.

This paper aims to examine how organisational values affect diversity in terms of different competencies in rural family Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Recruiting a diverse workforce in rural family SMEs can be particularly difficult due to the prevalence of internal family values and the lack of available local specialised competencies. A deficiency of diversity in employment and competence acquisition and development can create problems, as it often prevents rural family SMEs from recruiting employees with a wide variety of qualifications and skills.

The study takes on a multi-case method of Swedish rural family SMEs, applying a qualitative content analysis approach. In total, 20 in-depth structured interviews are conducted with rural family SME owners and 2 industries were investigated and compared – the tourism and the manufacturing industries.

Rural family SMEs lack long-term employment strategies, and competence diversity does not appear to be a priority for rural family SMEs, as they often have prematurely decided who they will hire rather than what competencies are needed for their long-term business development. It is more important to keep the team of employees tight and the family spirit present than to include competence diversity and mixed qualifications in the employment acquisition and development.

Contrary to prior research, our findings indicate that rural family SMEs apply short-term competence diversity strategies rather than long-term prospects regarding competence acquisition and management, due to their family values and rural setting, which strictly narrows the selection of employees and competencies. Also, a general reluctance towards competence diversity is identified, which originates from the very same family values and rural context.

The purpose of this study is to identify motivations for the uptake of crowdfunding by micro-entrepreneurs in an emerging economy and the extent to which these vary by entrepreneur characteristics, sector and crowdfunding model.

The authors conduct qualitative analyses of data collected in interviews with 57 micro-entrepreneurs in Morocco, all of whom used crowdfunding in fundraising.

The authors identify six key motives for crowdfunding adoption by micro-entrepreneurs including financing needs, legitimacy seeking, sense of achievement, network-building, entrepreneurial and marketing competence enhancements. They also find evidence for moderation effects of fundraiser characteristics on likelihood of adoption, including gender, age, education, training experience and sectoral affiliation. Furthermore, the authors show that the relative importance of different motives varies by the type of crowdfunding model used.

The original aspects of the study include the examination of adoption motives in an emerging market context and the distinguishing between entrepreneurs’ adoption motives based on different gender, age, education, training experience, sectoral affiliation and crowdfunding model used. Moreover, the authors show that enhancement of competencies is a more dominant motive in the emerging market context than mentioned in earlier studies in developed contexts.