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This paper aims to investigate the effect that ownership structure (public vs private) has on the demand for high-quality auditors, specifically in the US banking industry.

The authors predict that public banks are more likely to hire a high-quality auditor than private banks and pay a higher audit fee premium for that high-quality auditor (due to higher agency costs, more demand for financial information and higher litigation risk). The authors analyze 2008–2014 banking data from the Federal Reserve using probit and OLS regression analysis to examine if there is a higher probability that public banks choose higher quality auditors and pay higher audit fees when they do so.

The results show that private banks are less likely to hire Big 4 auditors and industry-expert auditors than public banks. The authors also find that both private and public banks pay higher audit fees for Big 4 and industry-expert auditors, and that public banks pay a higher premium for Big 4 auditors and industry experts than private banks.

The findings may not be fully generalizable to other types of firms, as banking is a heavily regulated and complex industry. However, inferences from this study may be generalizable to other similar industries such as insurance or health care.

The results of this paper imply that public and private banks have differing priorities when hiring their financial statement auditor. This may be of interest to investors and auditing regulators.

The findings of this paper underscore the value of hiring an industry-expert auditor in an industry that is highly complex and regulated. This may be of interest to managers and policymakers.

Due to data restrictions, the emphasis of prior literature on the banking industry has been on public banks. This study is the first to analyze the differences between public and private banks’ demand for audit services.

The purpose of this paper is to explore conceptual issues arising in an empirical study of the emergence of a distinctive new form of expertise – of industry analysts and in particular the leading firm Gartner Group that exercises enormous influence over the Information Technology (IT) market.

The paper critically reviews existing analytical frameworks and especially work from the Sociology of Professions. This has largely focused upon groups which have already succeeded in gaining wide acceptance of the effectiveness of their methods and knowledge. For emerging expert groups a key challenge is to create an audience for whom they are expert (Turner, 2001). The study contributes to a “third wave” of studies that shift the focus of enquiry from the operation of professional institutions to the conduct of expert work – and how knowledge is produced, validated and consumed. The paper draws upon an extended ethnographic study of Gartner Inc., and other industry analysts to characterise some key features of their expertise. Data sources include over 100 hours of participant observation of industry analysts and their interactions with vendors and technology adopters at IT industry conferences; interviews with over 20 industry analysts from Gartner (including a telephone interview with its founder Gideon Gartner) and other analyst organisations; a substantial body of interviews with technology vendors and clients (particularly in relation to the Customer Relationship Management technology sector); together with a review of Gartner documentation and reports.

The paper compares the empirical findings of industry analysts with accounts from current literature on management consultants and other groups such as journalists and financial analysts. Industry analysts, like consultants, have not sought to follow a classical professional model. Thus the brand reputation of big (industry analyst or consultancy) firms provides an alternative warrant of the quality of expertise to professional institutions. However, Gartner analysts identify differences as well as similarities between their work and management consultants. Gartner’s ability to rank the offerings of IT vendors requires them to adopt formal methodologies and internal review procedures to produce defensible knowledge and demonstrate their independence. Industry analysts need to establish cognitive authority over rapidly changing technological fields. This imparts some “public good” elements to their knowledge.

The paper suggests ways forward for analysing new forms of knowledge intermediary in business and accounting, applying perspectives from the “third wave” of studies, and involving detailed study of the “epistemic systems” through which such knowledge is produced, consumed and validated (Knorr Cetina, 2010).

In 1978, the once powerful US apparel industry was on the cusp of change, and the consulting firm KSA conducted a Delphi survey of apparel executives’ predictions into the 2000s. The purpose of this paper is to compare actual changes over the subsequent decades with these 1978 expert predictions and explore the accuracy/inaccuracy of these “educated guesses” (KSA, 1978, p. 1).

The chorographic method was used to analyze the report and document historical data. Chorography is “concerned with significance of place, regional characterization, [and] local history […]” (Rohl, 2012, p.1) and includes contextual settings and researcher input. Primary data were examined during each decade and included: industry literature, government documents and labor data. The researchers used content analysis to reduce and organize data.

Findings cover three decades of Southeast US apparel industry data including imports, employment, number of plants, size of plants and productivity. Predictions were inaccurate about imports, predicted to be minor in comparison with domestic production, which they actually surpassed. Predicted decrease in employment was similar to actual decrease but reasons were inaccurate. Change in number and size of plants were over-predicted and under-predicted. Reasons given by experts were automation and government intervention; in actuality, limited automation occurred with insignificant impact in contrast to outsourcing, which decimated employment in US plants. Steady increase in productivity was predicted when productivity often decreased.

Previous studies focus on the textile sector; studies of the apparel sector tend to be regional or topical. This study is more expansive and provides insight into predictions and changes made in the US apparel industry at a critical time in its near demise. With the current climate of global change and increased market uncertainty, insights from this study may provide direction for rethinking of the domestic apparel industry for the USA and other developed countries.

The global resolution of embracing dynamic and intertwined production systems has made it necessary to adopt viable systems like circular economy (CE) to ensure excellency in the business. However, in emerging countries, it is challenging to implement the CE practices due to the existing problems in the supply chain network, as well as due to the vulnerable financial condition of the business after the deadly hit of COVID-19. The main aim of this research is to determine the barriers to implementing CE considering the recent pandemic and suggest strategies to organizations to ensure CE for a cleaner environment and greener economy.

After an extensive literature review and validation from experts, 24 sub-barriers under the class of 6 main barriers are finalized by Pareto analysis, which is further analyzed via the best-worst method to determine the weight and rank of the barriers Further, fuzzy-Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method is used to rank the proposed startegies to overcome the analysed barriers.

The results identified “unavailability of initial funding capital”, “need long time investment”, “lack of integrating production system using advance technology” and “lack of strategic planning” as the most acute sub-barriers to CE implementation. Further, fuzzy TOPSIS method is used to suggest the best strategy to mitigate the ranked barriers. The results indicated “integrated design facility to CE”, “ensuring large scale funding for CE facility” as the best strategy.

This study will motivate managers to implement CE practices to enjoy proper utilization of the resources, sustainable benefits in business, and gain competitive advantage.

Periodically, a lot of work is done on CE practices but none of them highlighted the issues in the domain of the leather products industry (LPI) and COVID-19 toward achieving sustainability in production and consumption. Thus, some significant barriers and strategies to implement CE for achieving sustainability in LPI are highlighted in this study, which is a unique contribution to the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and understand the obstacles and drivers of financial investors while deciding upon investment opportunities in emerging markets.

Relevant factors for financial investors in emerging markets were identified through a literature review and a series of expert interviews. Identified factors were broadly grouped into three categories, namely, microeconomic aspects, macroeconomic aspects, and aspects of the functionality of the local banking system. Finally, an expert panel (Delphi) technique is used to validate the findings in cocoa industry in Ivory Coast.

A decision-making framework that enables the evaluation of the attractiveness of an industry in emerging market from a financial investor perspective is developed and its application is demonstrated on the cocoa industry in Ivory Coast. Probability and consensus of the projections for the individual decision elements are tabulated along with the insights into both encouraging and discouraging aspects.

Current study is a timely contribution to the call for papers in the research literature to develop frameworks that are contextualized in emerging markets. Similar to any other qualitative study, this study lacks the generalizability of results. But, the framework developed can act as a starting point toward the generalizability of the findings in future.

Decision elements identified in this study can act as a checklist for financial investors and top management to choose the elements that are relevant to the investment problem being dealt by them. Also, the study can act as a handy demonstration to practitioners for applying the framework using expert panel.

A major challenge of the investment environment in emerging market is the non-availability of quality information on the potential investment opportunities. In this study, the authors suggest a framework to overcome this information asymmetry challenge and expect it to promote financial investments in emerging economies which in turn will improve the quality of life of people in these economies.

First study to present an approach to help financial investors to conduct profound evaluation and gain more in-depth insights into the future investment opportunity attractiveness of a particular industry in an emerging market.

The purpose of the present work is identification and prioritization of barriers to Lean Six Sigma (LSS) implementation in Indian manufacturing industries in the context of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) to surmount the impediments in the path of successful implementation.

In total, 27 barriers identified through critical review of literature and expert's opinion are evaluated with Cronbach's alpha values including item-total correlations or corrected item-total correlations (CITC) using statistical tool. Finally, 20 barriers were analyzed and ranked employing Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP).

The study depicts that “Lack of leadership, advisory and monitoring,” “Lack of clarity about economic benefits” and “Lack of integration of LSS with smart tools/I4.0” are potential barriers to drive the path for proper implementation of LSS in Industry 4.0 with due consideration of its technologies in Indian manufacturing industries.

The study provides better knowledge platform for academicians and researchers about hidden aspects of LSS implementation barriers in view of advanced manufacturing technologies. This research will help the practitioners to design their business plans in implementing new quality improvement tools to get advantage in current competitive environment.

The barriers are selected based on literature and opinion from industry and academic experts. Five major criteria are decided after incorporating inputs. The ranking of the barriers is attained by well standard mathematical technique. This will enable the practitioners to design strategies to eliminate the hindrances in order to shape the right path for effective implementation of LSS approach in view of advanced manufacturing technologies.

Manufacturing industries are facing dynamic challenges in today’s highly competitive world. In the recent past, integrating Industry 4.0 with the lean six sigma improvement methodologies has emerged as a popular approach for organizational excellence. The research aims to explore and analyze critical success factors of lean six sigma integrated Industry 4.0 (LSSI).

This research study explores and analyzes the critical success factors (CSFs) of LSSI. A three-phase study framework is employed. At first, the CSFs are identified through an extensive literature review and validated through experts’ feedback. Then, in the second phase, the initial list of CSFs is finalized using the fuzzy DELPHI technique. In the third phase, the cause-effect relationship among CFSs is established using the fuzzy DEMATEL technique.

A dyadic relationship among cause-and-effect category CSFs is established. Under the cause category, top management commitment toward integrating LSSI, systematic methodology for LSSI and organizational culture for adopting changes while adopting LSSI are found to be topmost CSFs. Also, under the effect category, organizational readiness toward LSSI and adaptability and agility are found to be the uppermost CSFs.

The study offers a framework to understand the significant CSFs for LSSI implementation. Insights from the study will help industry managers and practitioners to implement LSSI and achieve organizational excellence.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, CSFs of LSSI are not much explored in the past by researchers. Findings will be of great value for professionals in developing long-term operations strategies.

This study aims to examine whether national industry expertise in Italy is more dominant than local expertise. Prior studies from Australia, USA and UK show that audit fees for industry experts are priced at a higher premium at the local level than the national level. These countries have voluntary audit firm rotation, while Italy has mandatory audit firm rotation (MAFR). The authors predict that Italy has a stronger national than local level of industry expertise, to better retain and transfer industry expertise.

The authors compare audit fee premiums of national industry experts to local levels, using quantitative (multivariate tests) and qualitative (interviews) methodology.

Using hand-collected audit fees, the authors find that the audit fee premium for industry expertise is greater at the national level than the local level. The authors find corroborating results with audit hours. To provide further support, the authors conduct analysis for a neighboring country that does not have audit firm rotation. Using hand-collected data from Germany, the authors find that audit fee premiums from national industry expertise are no different from local industry expertise.

The present study study has theoretical and practical implications, for European Union countries, which recently adopted MAFR and for countries considering adoption in the future.

The role of industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies for organizations to achieve a competitive advantage and mitigate disruptive emergency situations are well exhibited in literature. However, more light needs to be thrown into implementing I4.0 technologies to digitally transform organizations. This paper introduces a novel framework for formulating manufacturing strategy 4.0 (MS 4.0) that guides organizations to implement I4.0 successfully.

The experts working in I4.0 and technology management domains were interviewed to determine the definition, role and process for formulating MS 4.0. Text mining using VOSViewer© is performed on the experts' opinions to determine the key terms from the opinions through keyword analysis. The identified key terms are mapped together using the existing traditional manufacturing strategy formulation framework to develop the MS 4.0 framework. Finally, the proposed MS 4.0 framework is validated through a triangulation approach.

This study captured the role, definition and process to formulate MS 4.0 and proposed a framework to help practitioners implement I4.0 at manufacturing organizations to achieve competitiveness during normal and emergency situations.

The proposed MS 4.0 framework can assist industry practitioners in formulating the strategy for implementing the I4.0 technology/gies to digitally transform their manufacturing firm to retain the maximum manufacturing output and become market competent in normal and emergency situations.

This study is the first of its kind in the body of knowledge to formulate a digital transformation strategy, i.e. MS 4.0, to implement I4.0 technologies through a manufacturing strategic lens.

There is consensus among experts that the design of future supply chains will have to focus more strongly on environmental concerns. Sustainability will play a major role within the business and has an impact especially on the distant future. Thus, supply chain executives are challenged in designing sustainable supply chains for the future. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors develop expert-based scenarios, which describe how future supply chains could evolve by 2030. The authors focus on the transportation and logistics industry’s perspective to provide an industry-internal view. The data collection is based on an internet-based Delphi survey. Overall, 48 top executives from 20 countries, representing academic, governmental, and industrial perspectives, participated in the survey.

The authors operationalized the research question into five concrete sub-topics relevant for investigation: energy and emissions, consumer behaviour, future transport modes, design of future supply chains, and innovation. The authors derive five Delphi-based scenarios defined by clusters of their impact and expected probability: measurement and control of CO₂-emissions; integrated low energy logistics systems; business-as-usual logistics; no-frills logistics and alternative fuels. Each cluster contributes differently to supply chain strategy.

The authors address the major issues and challenges experts expect regarding future supply chains in an energy-constrained, low-carbon world. Five scenario clusters evolved for supply chain strategy development. Finally, the authors make recommendations towards strategic planning in the transportation and logistics industry.