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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the strength of corporate governance and the value of firm-level investment policies following the passage of the Sarbanes–Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002 and the associated changes to the listing requirements of major stock exchanges. In particular the authors seek to examine potential changes in the market’s assessed value of capital expenditures after the passage of the SOX Act relative to before.

The authors employ a difference-in-difference methodology, centred on the year of the passage of the SOX Act to test for the role of governance on the marginal value of capital expenditures. Excess stock returns are calculated by subtracting Fama and French (1993) size and book-to-market portfolio value-weighted returns from the firms’ annual stock returns. Each firm is grouped into one of 25 size and book-to-market portfolios for each year in the sample, with size and the book-to-market ratio proxying for sensitivity to common risk factors in stock returns (Fama and French, 1993).

The authors find that markets responded to the change in governance brought about by the new regulation by altering the value of firm-level capital expenditures in a way that is generally consistent with predictions of agency theory. While the overall findings imply a reduction in agency conflicts post-SOX, there is some evidence that certain firms may have suffered excessive costs of compliance, while still others saw managers become excessively risk averse.

The study has implications related to the efficacy of legislation. Cross-sectional variation in the effect of SOX on the marginal value of capital expenditures suggests that one-size-fits-all legislative approach can have both expected as well as unintended consequences. The study limits its analysis to examining the impact of three significant provisions of the Act. While, the value implications of the Act are largely captured by the selected three, a more comprehensive study could expand on the set of provisions studies to obtain a more granular level impact.

This research should add to the growing body of the literature examining the effect of SOX on firms’ real activities and decisions, as well as contribute to the debate on whether the Act was beneficial or costly to firms. With particular reference to the impact of capital expenditure on firm value, the research contributes to the sparse literature examining the contribution of capital expenditures to firm value and the role that agency conflicts play in this relationship. Additionally, this research adds to the growing body of the literature that examines the costs and benefits of the sweeping new regulations brought on by the adoption of SOX.

Given the importance of investment policy for economic productivity and growth, the insights provided by findings in this research should benefit lawmakers both within the USA as well as in countries where corporate misconduct and fraud is a concern.

This is the first study that examines the impact of the SOX Act on the way capital markets value firm-level investment in capital expenditures. Since use of corporate resources by managers is fraught with agency conflicts, the role of SOX in potentially alleviating this conflict as revealed by the tests in this study are very valuable.

In total, 90,000 of the 1.26 million people applying for asylum in the EU in 2015 were unaccompanied children. The Dublin III Regulations provided a unique legal situation where unaccompanied young people in the Calais Jungle potentially had the right to be reunited with family in the UK. The purpose of this paper is to explore the substantial challenges presented by carrying out medico-legal assessment of this group in the Calais Jungle.

The authors consider the refugee crisis from a mental health and legal perspective. The authors provide two case examples to contextualise and describe the work. The authors draw from the observations and the literature to discuss the impact of living in the Calais Jungle on young people, the challenges the authors overcame to carry out the assessments and the needs of refugees following settling in the UK.

The authors conclude that the Calais Jungle was a toxic environment not suitable for young refugees’ continued emotional development or recovery from trauma. The current legal process to relocate a young person to the UK is time consuming and labour intensive. The authors note that these concerns are not unique to the Jungle, nor have they ended with its demolition. The difficulties young refugees face with mental illness continues following their arrival to the UK.

This was the first successful attempt since the Dublin III Regulations to seek a legal route to bring unaccompanied refugee minors from France to the UK. This paper was co-written by both the legal and mental health professionals involved in the cases providing a broad opinion across both disciplines.

This paper applies Bhabha’s concept of the third space to frame an understanding of Prem Sikka’s use of digital media to bridge the academic–activist binary. In doing this, the paper makes two contributions. First, it conceptualises Sikka’s engagement, and second, through the lens of the third space, it analyses it to establish whether, in the era of the neoliberal corporatised university, public intervention has the potential to generate new perspectives and new knowledge.

Sikka’s articles and blogs for the period 20 February 2002 to 15 April 2020 were analysed using Leximancer, a textual analysis software programme that displays the output visually. A discriminant analysis was used to identify where each year of the study is situated in the overall semantic analysis. Netnography, the examination of archived published texts, was then used to analyse the responses by members of the public, academics, accountants and auditors, tax experts, policy makers and regulators to Sikka’s digital media engagement.

As a third space practitioner, Sikka has overcome some of the shortcomings associated with academic research to challenge the activities of professional accounting firms, regulatory bodies and multinational corporations. Through extending the boundaries of accounting and accountability, he has facilitated new radical alliances aiming to create a just and equitable society. The paper also finds that by opening up a third space of engagement, academic activists’ work can play an essential part in social transformation and emancipatory change framed in terms of social justice and equity.

This is one of the few papers to provide an in-depth examination of the activities of an accounting activist over twenty years.

With increasingly precarious work contracts, more remote work, and additional flexibility in the timing of the workday, the new world of work is creating both relational opportunities and relational challenges for modern workers. In this chapter, we pair recent research on human thriving with trends we observe in organizations' efforts to create and maintain a sense of community. Key in these efforts is a new kind of built environment – the coworking space – which brings together remote and independent workers and, increasingly, traditional employees as well. We show that in curating community, or perhaps even the possibility of community, coworking spaces may support the interpersonal learning and vitality that help workers to thrive.

Intercollegiate athletics is a tremendous part of today’s society and encompasses numerous American lives. Its wide spectrum attracts various people from gender, race, ethnicity, cultures, religion, and sexuality. Black male student-athletes, a target of higher education institutions, are affected by sociological, institutional, and athletic factors. This population is highly sought after by college coaches due to their athletic abilities and ability skills in their specific sport in order to elevate their respective sports team, athletics’ department, and university into the national limelight. Current institutional and intercollegiate athletics’ trends that are incorporated to recruit Black male student-athletes are explored. Specific recruiting techniques utilized by college coaches to persuade this population are examined. The sociological issues in current intercollegiate athletics are analyzed with their direct effect on the college selection choice of Black male student-athletes.

The paper adopts an organizational perspective to explore the conditions of possibility of the recent re-emergence of overt class-based discourse on one hand, epitomized by the ‘We are the 99%’ movement, and the rise on the other hand of a populist, nativist and sometimes overtly fascist right. It is argued that these phenomena, reflecting the increasingly crisis-prone character of global capitalism, the growing gap between rich and poor and a generalized sense of insecurity, are rooted in the dismantling of socially embedded organizations through processes often described as ‘financialization’, driven by the taken-for-granted dominance of neoliberal ideology. The paper explores the rise to dominance of the neoliberal ‘thought style’ and its inherent logic in underpinning the dismantling and restructuring of capitalist organization. Its focus is upon transnational value chain capitalism which has rebalanced power relations in favour of a small elite that is able to operate and realize wealth in ways that defy and often succeed in escaping the regulation of nation states.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on intellectual capital (IC) in light of the emerging paradigm of Big Data. Through a literature review, this paper provides momentum for researchers and scholars to explore the emerging trends and implications of the Big Data movement in the field of IC.

A literature review highlights novel and emerging issues in IC and Big Data research, focussing on: IC for organisational value, the staged evolution of IC research, and Big Data research from the technological to the managerial paradigm. It is expected that identifying these contributions will help establish future research directions.

A conceptual multi-level framework demonstrates how Big Data validates the need to shift the focus of IC research from organisations to ecosystems. The framework is organised into four sections: “why” – the managerial reasons for incorporating Big Data into IC; “what” – the Big Data typologies that enhance IC practice; “who” – the stakeholders involved in and impacted by Big Data IC value creation; and “how” – the Big Data processes suitable for IC management.

The paper provides many avenues for future research in this emerging area of investigation. The key research questions posed aim to advance the contribution of Big Data to research on IC approaches.

The paper outlines the socio-economic value of Big Data generated by and about organisational ecosystems. It identifies opportunities for existing companies to renew their value propositions through Big Data, and discusses new tools for managing Big Data to support disclosing IC value drivers and creating new intangible assets.

This paper investigates the effects and implications Big Data offers for IC management, in support of the fourth stage of IC research. Additionally, it provides an original interpretation of IC research through the lens of Big Data.

Sorghum is quite comparable to wheat, rich source of nutrients with various health benefits, and therefore considered as a grain of future. The purpose of this paper is to review the bioactive active compounds, health benefits and processing of the sorghum. Sorghum is utilized for animal feeding rather than the human food usage. Therefore, this paper focuses on the emerging new health foods with benefits of the sorghum.

Major well-known bibliometric information sources searched were the Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus and PubMed. Several keywords like nutritional value of sorghum, bioactive compounds present in sorghum, health benefits of sorghum and processing of sorghum were chosen to obtain a large range of papers to be analyzed. A final inventory of 91 scientific sources was made after sorting and classifying them according to different criteria based on topic, academic field country of origin and year of publication.

From the literature reviewed, sorghum processing through various methods, including milling, malting, fermentation and blanching, bioactive compounds, as well as health benefits of sorghum were found and discussed.

Through this paper, possible processing methods and health benefits of sorghum are discussed after detailed studies of literature from journal articles.