Search results

The turbulent decade of the 1980s completely restructured the financial system of the 1990s. Deregulation and rising competition led to record numbers of failures among depository institutions in the U.S., especially savings and loan associations. These failures have caused tremendous taxpayer losses, which are estimated at around $200 billion in present value terms. Financial markets became increasingly volatile, with increased price movements in bond, stock, and currency markets. These events triggered both public and private sector responses, including increased regulatory standards for safety and soundness and financial innovation. Additionally, the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, now known as the New Independent States (NIS), as well as the trend toward trading blocks, including the continuing process of European unification and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, have greatly increased the demand for growth capital in a global sense.

Introduction: In the modern period, environmental degradation has had negative effects on people’s health as well as the regular business environment. As a result, embracing a ‘Go Green’ philosophy has gained widespread acceptance among individuals and corporations worldwide. Going green is referred to as promoting eco-friendly ways and banks are essential in protecting the environment to improve our quality of life.

Purpose: This study will focus on the correlation between green banking practices (GBP), employee green behaviour (EGB), and banks’ sustainability performance and how this relationship will give a competitive edge in terms of sustainability to the banks adopting these GBP.

Methodology: EGB between GBP and bank sustainability occurrence is clarified by this study. The current study is descriptive and finds the relationship through previous literature reviews.

Findings: Employees are expected to be crucial in this transformation as the modern banking system adopts green banking initiatives and updates traditional banking processes. Employees help banks perform more sustainably by encouraging environmentally friendly banking practices.

Practical Implications: By understanding the mechanism, between GBP and bank sustainability, banks can adopt more effective strategies to enhance their sustainability performance while promoting environmentally friendly practices.

Takes a random sample of 156 respondents from municipal and rural police forces in Canada to examine the relationship between various factors concerning their careers. Finds that a significant number of officers perceive their career orientation to have changed over time. Presents findings on social activists, enforcers, careerists, specialists and self investors. Differs from previous research linking career orientation to personality type by seeing career orientation as changing with time, stages of career and circumstances. Remarks that policing needs to be technically sophisticated, cost‐effective, community‐based and sensitive to the realities of a multicultural society. Recommends that police departments consider the career orientation of recruits and establish a reward structure suited to the varied career types

The purpose of this paper is to examine investors’ propensity to litigate when harmful events occur subsequent to accounting choices. Consistent with Culpable Control Theory, the authors find that investors are more likely to pursue litigation against management when managers are perceived to have more financial reporting flexibility, such as when they apply imprecise, principles-based accounting guidance. Investors are more likely to pursue litigation when they find management more responsible for harmful events, and they find management more responsible for those events when they perceive management to have more reporting flexibility. To provide additional insight, the authors investigate how the relationship between reporting flexibility and assessed manager responsibility is mediated by investors’ perceptions of management’s self-interested behavior. The authors consider monetary and non-monetary motivations for litigation against management such as recouping financial losses and punishing management. The results suggest that recouping financial losses is not the sole motivation for litigation. The authors provide evidence that punishing management is an important non-monetary component of the litigation decision. The results contribute to the limited literature on investor litigation decisions and inform the debate surrounding the potential effects of more principles-based accounting standards.

The authors test the hypotheses using an experiment with a 2×1 between-subjects design in which the authors manipulate reporting flexibility at two levels by varying the precision of accounting guidance and measure all other variables of interest. Participants are 82 part-time executive MBA program students at a major public university in the USA. Most participants work full-time (94 percent), own or have owned stocks either directly or through retirement plans (84 percent), indicate general investment knowledge (97 percent), and report high levels of familiarity with corporate financial statements, including balance sheets and income statements (92 percent). Thus, the authors conclude that these executive MBA students are reasonable surrogates for investors.

Consistent with the predictions, perceived management reporting flexibility affects investors’ propensity to pursue litigation against management. The authors find that the assignment of responsibility to management for harmful events such as investor losses, employee job losses, and economic losses suffered by a community mediates the relationship between reporting flexibility and investors’ intention to litigate. The authors also find that the relationship between reporting flexibility and assignment of responsibility to management for harmful events is not direct but instead works through the effect of reporting flexibility on perceived management self-interested behavior. As predicted, assessed management responsibility for the harmful event is positively related to investors’ propensity to litigate against management, and this relation is only partially mediated by investors’ perceptions that the litigation will be successful. This result suggests that the litigation decision is driven at least in part by corporate governance goals such as the desire for retribution or punishment of management. The second experiment provides additional support for the theory that the desire to punish management is an important component of investors’ litigation decisions.

The research makes important contributions to the literature on investor litigation and to the ongoing debate regarding principles- vs rules-based accounting standards. While some archival research addresses the conditions under which securities litigation occurs, little empirical research has directly addressed the investor decision to litigate. The paper provides additional evidence to address the question of why investors litigate. By doing so, the authors add to the debate on the desirability of shifting from more rules-based to more principles-based accounting standards.

The theory tested in this study could be used to design mechanisms to mitigate the differential propensity for investors to litigate under differing accounting regimes. As standard setters discuss a move to more principles-based standards in the USA, some observers have expressed concern that investor litigation will increase. The theory suggests that if the standard-setting body can control perceptions of management reporting flexibility such that investors believe principles-based standards provide no more flexibility than rules-based standards, they can limit an increase in the amount of investor litigation.

The authors contribute to theory by providing evidence regarding why investors desire to pursue litigation against management. The authors find that the assignment of responsibility to management for harmful events mediates the relationship between reporting flexibility and investors’ intention to litigate. The authors also find that the relationship between reporting flexibility and assignment of responsibility to management for harmful events is not direct but instead works through the effect of reporting flexibility on perceived management self-interested behavior. Furthermore, assessed management responsibility for the harmful event is positively related to investors’ propensity to litigate against management, and this relation is only partially mediated by investors’ perceptions that the litigation will be successful. Those findings provide theoretical contributions to the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether affective factors such as goal desires, positive anticipated emotions, anticipated regret and non-volitional actions like habits influence retail mutual fund investing.

Using the model of goal-directed behavior (MGB), the impact of affective factors and habits was compared against a cognitively driven model. Data were collected through a survey of 321 mutual fund investors across India and analyzed using the partial least squares method.

Goal-based desires were a significant driver of investing intentions while actual investing was driven by habits. Anticipated regret strongly influenced desires. The overall explanation of variance in intentions and investing behaviors was improved by 27 and 28% respectively by the new model.

The current investments in mutual funds is used as a proxy for future investing behaviors so results need to be interpreted accordingly. Future research directions could include the effects of mood, impact of language, religion and culture.

For “emotionally complex” cultures, impact of emotive drivers and habits play a significant part in investing and fund houses need to orient their marketing accordingly.

Awareness programs on how emotive issues and habits can hinder as well as enhance investment performance in markets would benefit retail investors.

The study is unique in analyzing affective and non-volitional factors and in showing that intentions are not sufficient to explain behaviors. It analyzes not just intentions as most studies do, but end behaviors of investors as well. It uses the MGB theoretical framework from behavioral psychology that has not been applied to financial behaviors before.

This study aims to identify the factors that influence the willingness of Bangladeshi retail investors to invest in ṣukūk.

The authors surveyed Bangladeshi retail investors using a structured questionnaire to understand their perspectives on potential investment in ṣukūk. The authors considered the behavioral aspects of retail investors and the desired ṣukūk features to analyze the demand side. Factors and regression analyses were performed to identify the persuading factors.

The results indicate that investor awareness is a fundamental factor in potential investments in ṣukūk. Investors perceive the security represented by government and third-party guarantees as a persuasive feature of ṣukūk. The tradability and tenor of ṣukūk also affect the investment intention. Sharīʿah consciousness of the investors also plays a significant role in their investment decisions.

One limitation of this study is that it incorporates potential individual investors only, and precludes institutional investors. In the future, there is scope for research to explore the demand factors impacting institutional investors of ṣukūk in Bangladesh.

The authors expect that the study will aid policymakers and ṣukūk issuers in crafting strategies to cater to the needs of Bangladeshi retail investors.

This study is the earliest research conducted in Bangladesh to determine the factors impacting the willingness of individual investors to make their potential investments in ṣukūk. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no study has analyzed the desired ṣukūk features from the perspective of Bangladeshi retail investors.

This paper seeks to examine the differences between executives and investors in the perception of determinant factors in executive compensation.

From a survey instrument comprised of archival executive compensation determinant items, a factor analysis is performed to examine the construct determinant perceptions unique to executives and non‐executive investors.

The authors find differences in factors between executives and non‐executive investors in a manner expected by agency theory. Non‐executive investors place greater weight on factors related to performance and less weight on human capital factors, while executive investors place greater weight on human capital factors in determining executive compensation.

This study is limited in that the sample may not be representative of the population of chief executive officers or shareholders in the USA.

Differing factors suggest that there is a misalignment of measures desired to be the foundation of executive compensation. The differing measures used to potentially motivate agents (executives) by principals (investors) results in an agency cost.

The authors have documented a difference between executives and investors in factors desired to determine executive compensation.

This paper aims to help explain the rapid growth in aggregate hedge fund assets under management until June 2008 followed by their subsequent dramatic collapse in terms of the conflicting emotions such investment vehicles evoke, and, from this, to consider the implications of the excitement‐generating potential underlying all financial innovations.

Within the framework of critical discourse analysis, this paper explores how hedge funds were represented in the financial press, manager interviews, investor comments, and Congress hearings, before and after the burst of the hedge fund “bubble”. The authors then draw on the psychodynamic literature, and frame the human unconscious need for excitement in this discourse.

The paper finds evidence demonstrating how hedge funds were transformed in the minds of investors into objects of fascination and desire with their unconscious representation dominating their original investment purpose. Based on a psychoanalytic interpretation of financial markets, and dot.com mania in particular, the authors show how hedge fund investors' search for “phantastic objects” and the associated excitement of being invested in them can become dominant, resulting in risk being ignored.

The authors take an interdisciplinary perspective drawing on the insights of the psychoanalytic understanding of unconscious fantasies, needs and drives as these relate to investment activity.

Public policy implications are that stricter ethical guidelines for the hedge fund industry need to be introduced, and suitability regulations that go beyond mandatory transparent disclosure of investment risks are required.

The paper is one of very few studies concerning investors' emotional attachment to financial innovations, and builds on the emerging field of emotional finance. The conclusions and implications discussed in the paper go beyond any single financial market or product.

The authors evaluate the preferences of retail investors with regard to the investment in structured financial products. The purpose of the paper is an analysis of the relative importance of key product attributes namely the issuing bank, the product structure, the associated costs and the disclosed risk.

The authors conduct a choice-based conjoint analysis, based on an online experiment. Participants judge their preferences for products which are presented by shortened key information documents according to the requirements of EU regulation.

Investors consider the costs and the product structure to be most important, whereas the issuer and information on risk are of less interest. Their preferences depend on their (self-evaluated) expertise: while inexperienced retail investors concentrate on costs, experienced investors pay more attention to the product structure.

The study is limited to a subsegment of the market, the discount certificates. For these products, issuing banks gain insight into the attractiveness of their products. Furthermore, the study carries implications for regulators: since investors emphasize the costs in their decisions, an unbiased disclosure of costs should be enforced.

While the recent literature has studied preferences for the investment in mutual funds, this is the first paper which directly analyzes the drivers of an investment in structured retail products.