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This paper surveys corporate officers responsible for greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting and assurance to determine the attributes that influence their choice between an accounting and a non-accounting GHG assurance provider. Differences in the relative importance of these attributes between those selecting accounting and non-accounting assurers are also explored.

A survey questionnaire was completed by 25 corporate officers responsible for reporting and voluntarily assurance of GHG emissions in Australia. The questionnaire asked the respondents to indicate the relative importance of 41 company and assurer attributes in influencing their assurance provider choice.

Results indicate that attributes related to the assurance provider, such as team and team leader assurance knowledge, reputation, objectivity and independence, are more influential than attributes related to the nature of the company or the nature of the GHG emissions. Attributes such as geographical dispersion of operations were found to be differently important to this decision between companies purchasing assurance from accounting and non-accounting firms.

The study’s main limitation is the small number of participants. Future research may extend this study by exploring the conditions under which companies voluntarily assure GHG emissions as well the motivations of responsible officers in their assurer choice.

This paper provides valuable insights to GHG assurers to assist their understanding of the attributes that are important to potential GHG assurance clients.

The study makes unique contributions to the assurer choice literature by not only addressing this issue in the context of the dichotomous GHG assurance market but also by addressing it from the perspective of the assurance purchaser.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between earnings management and media reports, assess the roles played by the media in determining the reputation mechanism and examine whether the media has an influence on executives’ behavior in the case of earnings management.

This paper uses Chinese A-share listed firms from the period 2008 to 2012 to test the research questions using regression analyses.

Although the Chinese Stock Markets are still immature compared to those of developed countries, the media seems to play a role in affecting executives’ decisions about dabbling in earnings management. Specifically, firms receiving more media attention are more likely to undertake earnings management. Furthermore, negative media reports result in even higher levels of earnings management activities, indicating that managers tend to use earnings management to achieve earnings goals to reduce or relieve the pressure they feel from the media and to remedy any reputation loss. Moreover, the authors have found that firms whose CEOs have higher reputations are more likely to manage earnings and they are more likely to be affected by negative media reports. Similar results were found for state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

This study analyzes how the level and tone of media coverage affect earnings management rather than just assessing the overall effect of media coverage on earnings management. This paper verifies that the reputation mechanism of the media works in China, but it leads to different results than those experienced in developed countries. Reputational benefits have been introduced into the equation for measuring the governance effect of the media to derive a more in-depth analysis of the reputation mechanism. This paper is among the first to link news coverage and state ownership with earnings management.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of leaders’ attachment orientation and social self-efficacy on the enactment of abusive supervision.

Data were obtained from a sample of leader-subordinate dyads (n=114), and were collected using a Panel Service.

The results show that a Close/Depend attachment orientation was negatively associated with abusive supervision, while an Anxious attachment orientation was positively associated with abusive supervision. Social self-efficacy mediated these relationships.

The results generate a deeper understanding of the etiology of destructive leadership. Applying attachment theory to the study of abusive supervision also offers a new theoretical perspective on potential precursors of this behavior.

The findings suggest organizations might benefit from attempts to alter leaders’ destructive attachment orientations, and by extension, reduce their abusive behavior. It may also be possible to reduce the occurrence of abusive supervision by implementing leadership development initiatives aimed at enhancing leaders’ confidence in their social skills.

By identifying several potential precursors to abusive supervision, this study highlights possible points of intervention to combat a form of leadership that is linked with employee suffering. Thus, the findings can be used to help improve the working lives of those who are affected by this destructive workplace behavior.

Until now, research has not considered leaders’ attachment orientation as an antecedent to abusive supervision, nor has it explored the meditational role of social self-efficacy. The use of leader-follower dyads in this study also helps reduce issues related to social desirability biases and common method variance.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive literature review of empirical studies that have examined perceptions and attitudes of the police across various racial and ethnic groups. The specific focus aimed to highlight if minorities perceive the police differently compared to their white counterparts.

A systematic literature search of various academic databases (Criminal Justice Abstracts, EBSCO Host, Web of Science, etc.) was conducted. Searches on Google Scholar were also conducted to locate empirical articles that are presently forthcoming in academic journals.

The meta-review identified 92 studies that matched the selection criteria. The majority of the studies focussed on black/white, non-white/white, and black/Hispanic/white comparisons. Overall, individuals who identified themselves as black, non-white, or minority were more likely to hold negative perceptions and attitudes toward the police compared to whites. This finding held regardless of the measures used to operationalize attitudes and various dependent variables surrounding the police. Hispanics tended to have more positive views of the police compared to blacks, yet more negative views than whites.

The present study provided a systematic literature search of studies that were included in two prior reviews (i.e. Decker, 1985; Brown and Benedict, 2002), but also updated the literature based on research that was conducted after 2002. Different exclusion restrictions were also used in the current study compared to earlier research. These restrictions add to the originality/value of the present meta-review in light of current events in the media which have focussed on minority perceptions of the police.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that motivate Korean baseball fans to support Korean Major League Baseball (MLB) players and to identify the effects of the motivations on identification and behavioral loyalty.

Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire at three Korean universities. A model was designed to see which three motivations (commitment to Korean baseball, interests in MLB and ethnic identity) affect loyalty behaviors to support Korean MLB players. In the model, the mediating effect of player identification is set to the relation between the three motivations and behavioral loyalty. The moderating effect of team identification is also set to the relation between player identification and behavioral loyalty. Collected data (n=294) were first analyzed via confirmatory factor analysis to ascertain the factor structure of the study model. Then, the study performed a structural equation modeling which finds the magnitude and significance of each causal path among designed factors.

All the effects were found to be significantly positive except team identification whose moderating effect was not significant. Interests in MLB had the greatest impact on the fan’s player identification followed by commitment to the Korean baseball league and their ethnic identity. It was also found that the influence of player identification was positive on behavioral loyalty.

This work can help MLB expand their fan base internationally, especially in Asian countries.

As program managers seek to improve the quality, speed and financial benefits of the programs they manage, many are turning to process improvement methodologies, such as Lean Six Sigma (LSS). However, although existing literature includes multiple studies that apply the methodology to non-manufacturing environments, there is no specific framework for applying LSS within program management (PM). Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between LSS tools, project scope, program phase and functional area and project outputs, in PM organizations.

The study uses archival data from 511 LSS projects completed from 2006 to 2015 by a large government agency in the USA composed of 13 PM organizations. The study focuses on four types of input factors: LSS tools, project scope, program phase and functional area; and two output variables: LSS project average financial benefits and percentage of improvement. Multiple regressions are applied to determine what relationships exist between the input and output variables, as well as the nature of such relationships.

The results of this study show LSS is beneficial to PM and also indicate which tools and organizational contexts have positive and negative associations with project outcomes, serving as guide for future applications. In addition, this study can provide clarity and confidence to program managers who are currently skeptical of LSS, by showing that it can provide cost, schedule and performance improvements beneficial to their programs.

Limitations of this research include the use of a single government agency in the USA, the non-experimental design of the study and limitations associated with the nature and data collection process of the archival data. Future studies should include additional PM organizations, input variables and research designs.

There is no specific framework formalizing the concept of LSS application within PM. The literature includes several studies that apply the methodology to non-manufacturing environments, but not to PM specifically. Furthermore, the existing literature on PM does not explicitly cite any continuous improvement methodology as a critical success factor or provide any detailed guidelines for the application of LSS in PM. This paper contributes by studying the relationships between LSS tools, project scope, program phase and functional area, and project outputs, in a PM environment.

The objective of this research is to assess whether two events, the 9‐21 Earthquake in 1999 and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak in 2003, had a temporary or long‐term impact on the inbound tourism demand from Japan. Furthermore, a comparative study is conducted to assess whether intervention analysis produces better forecasts compared with forecasts without intervention analysis.

The data adopted in this study consist of monthly visitor arrivals from Japan to Taiwan for the period January 1979‐September 2006. The first 321 observations ( January 1979‐September 2005) are used to develop two tentative models, with and without intervention analyses, and then compare with the known values (October 2005‐September 2006) for accuracy testing.

Experimental results show that the effect of both disasters on Japanese inbound tourism presented only temporarily, and the forecasting efficiency of ARIMA with intervention is superior to that of a model without intervention.

The study had difficulty accurately delineating the rebound in Japanese tourist based on monthly data. There are other factors that might influence a rebound, such as people' fading memories or the purpose of visitation. The geographic proximity of Taiwan to Japan could also account for perceived risk factors.

The results indicate that the Japanese inbound arrivals sharply dropped following both of the two disastrous occurrences, suggesting that the Japanese tourists are likely to be responsive to prompt marketing strategies and messages. The practical implication for tourism operators include the usefulness of reinforcing the package holiday by establishing an attractively priced travel package or offering a package with a variety of highly desirable or unique features to increase competition.

This study is a first attempt in the tourism literature to model Japanese demand for travel to Taiwan after these two traumatic crises.

Most offender narrative being studied has been in oral forms, produced in the reciprocal process of researcher-(ex) offender interviews. This chapter offers an introduction to a variation of offender narrative study within the prison and rehabilitation context: the narrative of written autobiography. Since the early 1940s, Chinese reform institutions have required written autobiographies from new admitters, provided with clear presubscripted guidelines of instructions as well as postcensorship. For this chapter, we trace back and analyse this model based on 28 prisoners' autobiographies in mainland China between 2007 and 2009, as well as archive documents in different historical periods. We have found that the mandatory offender autobiographies are highly functional writings with clear requirements that embody the existing power structure. We have also found considerable commonality with findings in Western contexts on the presence and problems of narrative compliance in rehabilitation. We argue that narrative criminology should further engage in understanding the practice of narrative censorship and co-authorship in criminal justice processes, as it takes on different forms in different historical–social contexts.

Prior to Brown v. Board of Education 1954, Black female educators played a significant and vital role in segregated schools. Despite Black female teachers’ historic presence in the field of education, presently Black female teachers are disproportionately under-represented in the US teacher workforce. Acknowledging the shortage of Black female teachers in K-12 classrooms, the purpose of this qualitative study is to explore why Black female educators teach in under-resourced, urban schools. By examining Black female educators’ initial draw to urban schools in what we conceptualized as the urban factor, we hope to reframe the implicit biases surrounding under-resourced, urban schools as less desirable workplaces and unearth reasons why those Black female teachers who enter teaching gravitate more toward urban schools. Three themes emerged about Black female teachers’ thoughts on and preference for urban schools with an unexpected finding about Black female teachers’ perceptions of student behavior. Concluding, recommendations are offered for policy and practice.

In today’s complex society, there is an increasing demand to include a wider set of skills in engineering curricula, especially skills related to policy, society and sustainable development. Role-playing and gaming are active learning tools, which are useful for learning relationships between technology and society, problem solving in complex situations and communication. However, use of these learning methods in higher education, and in engineering particularly, is limited. The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of a role-playing game for learning about complexities related to sustainable water and sanitation management within a civil engineering curriculum.

The game has been used during three consecutive years in a Masters’ level course. Surveys and course evaluations were used to evaluate the effectiveness of this method from both teacher and student perspectives.

The results show that students gained knowledge on complex subjects, and both teachers and students had positive experiences. Better integration of the game within the rest of the course could strengthen its effectiveness.

The experiences gained from this study should assist others in the development and use of such active learning techniques in higher education.