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The literature suggests that improvements in nurses' work environments may improve the quality of patient care. Furthermore, monitoring the work environment through staff surveys may be a feasible method of identifying opportunities for quality improvement. This study aimed to confirm five proposed sub‐scales from the Nursing Work Index – Revised (NWI‐R) to assess the nursing work environment and the performance of these sub‐scales across different units in a hospital. Data were derived from a cross‐sectional survey of 243 nurses from 13 units of a 300‐bed university‐affiliated hospital in Quebec, Canada, during 2001. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the five sub‐scales were confirmed; three of the sub‐scales had greater ability to discriminate between units. Using hierarchical regression models, “resource adequacy” was the sub‐scale most strongly associated with the perceived quality of care at the last shift. The NWI‐R sub‐scales are potentially useful for comparison of work environments of different nursing units at the same hospital.

Using a meta-regression analysis, we quantitatively review the empirical literature on the relation between effective tax rate (ETR) and firm size. Accounting literature offers two competing theories on this relation: The political cost theory, suggesting a positive size-ETR relation, and the political power theory, suggesting a negative size-ETR relation. Using a unique data set of 56 studies that do not show a clear tendency towards either of the two theories, we contribute to the discussion on the size-ETR relation in three ways: First, applying meta-regression analysis on a US meta-data set, we provide evidence supporting the political cost theory. Second, our analysis reveals factors that are possible sources of variation and bias in previous empirical studies; these findings can improve future empirical and analytical models. Third, we extend our analysis to a cross-country meta-data set; this extension enables us to investigate explanations for the two competing theories in more detail. We find that Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory, a transparency index and a corruption index explain variation in the size-ETR relation. Independent of the two theories, we also find that tax planning aspects potentially affect the size-ETR relation. To our knowledge, these explanations have not yet been investigated in our research context.