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Municipal financial decisions involve the interaction of political actors (including voters, elected officials, and bureaucrats) pursuing their own interests. Although voters should determine public choices through elected officials, bureaucrats have the incentives and may have the monopoly power to dominate the process. This study investigates the relationships among municipal spending, fiscal manipulation, and financial monitoring. Fiscal illusion (as measured by revenue complexity) is employed as an empirical surrogate for bureaucratic manipulation and it is hypothesized that financial audits are an effective monitoring technique for moderating possible bureaucratic manipulation. The results of the study suggest that expenditure levels are related to political power and that fiscal illusion is significant for explaining expenditure levels, especially for cities having qualified opinions. Weak support is provided for the hypothesis that the financial audit is a monitoring technique that may constrain bureaucratic overspending. These findings have important implications for both public administration and governmental accounting and suggest the need for further research on monitorig effectiveness.

This essay is offered in response to an invitation to share reflections on a topic of current concern. The concern is how to position the library profession to not just gain appreciation and support of academic libraries, but to develop librarians as leaders continuing the values of higher education as essential to maintain and improve a democratic society. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This is a viewpoint piece.

The paper speculates that assessment alone may be an inadequate objective of an organizational culture for academic libraries; assessment is not universally accepted throughout higher education as a primary focus, perhaps with the exception when meeting accreditation requirements.

An informed citizenry, freedom of information, open and equitable access to knowledge, and intellectual diversity are important values to preserve. This concern overlaps with the authors’ shared and independent work to engage in assessment efforts and developing a library culture of assessment.

Preparation of academic librarians may benefit from more strongly advancing the core mission of their institutions rather than their service relationship to its customers as an objective of the library culture.

This is the first work to examine why assessment is not enough for libraries to be valued.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if team personality composition has any effect on group work performance of undergraduate students in China.

Using a questionnaire based on the Big-Five framework to collect data on personality traits, this study investigated whether in the Chinese education setting overall effectiveness of university students working in groups was related to the different personalities of the group members. Students of two undergraduate business programs jointly run by an Australian university and a Chinese university in Shanghai participated in the research.

The findings reveal that aggregated personality traits have no effect on team effectiveness but homogeneity in emotional stability among group members does have a positive impact on group performance. Based on a comprehensive review of studies concerning the Chinese education approach, it is believed that the outcome of this study may reflect to a certain extent the influence of traditional learning method on how university students interact with team members in group work hence affecting group performance.

This study has surveyed 166 undergraduate students on their personality traits and performance in group work. A larger sample size can help improve the generalizability of the findings.

The findings of this study shed light on how group work can be used more effectively in learning through proper assessment task design and guidance from the facilitator.

The outcome of this research also provides insight on how group work in higher education can better prepare students for the Chinese workforce.

While studies on relationship between personality mix and team effectiveness in business setting are plenty, there is relatively little research on how team personality composition can impact on group performance in education especially in Asian countries. This study is one of the first attempts to supplement the inadequacy in this regard.

The history of the public enterprise sector in Nigeria is described in some detail, with an emphasis on the steps that have been taken to improve the running of the enterprises since civilian government of the country. In the face of extremely difficult circumstances, including massive devaluation, the country has fought its way back from a position of enormous problems to one of relative economic growth.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if the structure and design of CEO compensation has any effect on firm innovation. It further investigates the effectiveness of each component of portfolio of compensation incentives in encouraging innovation.

This study uses systems of simultaneous equations to model the interdependence between compensation incentives and measures of firm innovation.

Results indicate that the pay‐performance sensitivity of the CEO portfolio of compensation incentives is positively related to investment in R&D expenditures, number of patents and citations. Options in general are more effective than stocks. However, within the options portfolio, recently awarded and unvested options are more effective than previously awarded and vested options. Restricted stock is more effective than unrestricted stock.

Measuring innovation output is difficult as innovation could take different forms, including business model innovation, which does not appear in the patent data.

Stock options encourage investment in value‐increasing innovations and should remain a significant part of managerial compensation. If the firm awards stock, it should only award restricted stock.

This study uses comprehensive measures of compensation incentives and firm innovation. It views incentives as a portfolio of stock and options and uses incentives in their entirety. It examines the effectiveness of each component of the portfolio in encouraging innovation. It measures innovation as investment into the innovation process (R&D expenditures) and the resulting success of that investment (patents and citations).

In the mid‐1970s, there was an upsurge of interest in the notion of worker participation at board level. Several influences contributed to this development, including initiatives from the EEC, experience of worker directors at BSC, political commitment from the then Labour Government, culminating in the establishment of a Committee of Inquiry. It was at this time an unknown researcher with research experience of participation in joint consultative committees — amongst other things — began negotiations with the Department of Employment for monies to pursue her research interests. The outcome was the “worker director project” based at the University of Nottingham. The aim of the project was to examine the role of worker directors in private sector companies. Few companies fitting that description could be found, but of the seven which co‐operated in the research, all were different in many respects. The worker director schemes which they had fostered too were different. This monograph presents brief case descriptions of four of these firms. An attempt is made to highlight the salient features of each which were perceived to be influential in shaping the scheme. Thus various contextual factors are discussed, so too are role and role‐related issues; the extent of training and preparation of the worker director; the amount of information disclosed to and by her/him. Finally, a list of criteria are suggested as guides for assessing and evaluating such schemes, not so much by their own lights, but as a reasonably detached, independent observer.

This study aims to examine the impact of executive bonus compensation on a firm’s financial leverage policy and the extent to which this compensation–leverage relation is moderated by firm growth and executive ownership.

Using data from 213 non-financial and non-utility UK FTSE 350 firms for the period 2007–2015, generating a total of 1,784 firm-year observations, panel econometric methods are used to test the model.

Drawing insights from agency theoretic view, this paper uncovers that managerial cash bonus compensation is negatively and significantly related to financial leverage. However, stock bonus compensation has a positive and significant impact on leverage. This study also observes that compensation–leverage is moderated by both firm growth and executive ownership. The results remain robust to alternative econometric models.

While this paper builds on the risk-motivated argument of executive bonus compensation literature, it is the first – to the best of the knowledge – to explore the bonus compensation-corporate financial leverage and, particularly, examine the extent to which firm growth and corporate executive ownership matter in this relationship.

Political dissent threads through the history of the Olympic Games. Although the International Olympic Committee (IOC) openly prohibits athletes from injecting politics into the Games, Olympians have nevertheless staged protests, using the Olympics to challenge the predominant power structures and institutions. This chapter analyzes outbursts of athlete activism in the context of wider social movements that make these political paroxysms more viable. Social movements scythe political space for athletes, spark athletes' political imaginary, and provide support and cover. From the early days of the Games, Olympic athletes have expressed dissent, as when Irish track-and-field athlete Peter O'Connor rebelled against British colonialism at the 1906 Olympics in Athens. At the Mexico City 1968 Games, Czech gymnast Vera Čáslavská carried out a politically symbolic acts as did US sprinters John Carlos, Tommie Smith, and Wyomia Tyus. At the 1972 Munich Games, US track medalists Vincent Matthews and Wayne Collett protested in nonchalant fashion on the medal stand. At the 1980 Olympics, Polish Olympian Władysław Kozakiewicz issued politically provocative symbology on the pole vault mat that challenged Soviet hegemony. In the twenty-first century, numerous Olympians have made political statements, despite a rule in the Olympic Charter that forbids such activity. In each case, athlete activists were bolstered by vibrant political movements in their home country. In this chapter, I trace the relationship between political Olympians and social movements as well as the wider dialectic of resistance and restriction that encompasses the interplay between dissident Olympians and the IOC.

The present study examines the relation of individual differences in personality to one's preferences for approaching and managing conflict in work settings. This investigation offers a conceptual foundation for relating the Five‐Factor Model (FFM) of personality to strategy preference, tests strategy‐FFM dimension hypotheses, and explores strategy relations with narrower FFM midlevel traits. Managers and supervisors (N = 249) from public, governmental, and private sector organizations completed the Organizational Communication and Conflict Instrument and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. Preferences for conflict strategies were found to relate to distinct patterns of FFM dimensions, while narrower midlevel traits provided meaningful insights into the nature of the observed relations.