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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of accounting conservatism (as a proxy for financial reporting quality) on the degree of financial leverage. In addition, this paper examines the impact of global diversification (as a proxy for operational complexity) on the relationship between conservatism and financial leverage.

A panel data regression analysis is conducted for the period 2000-2006. The authors utilized a two-way fixed-effects model to control for unobservable firm characteristics and time effects that may influence the firm’s decision to report conservatively.

This paper provides empirical evidence that conservatism is positively associated with the degree of financial leverage, and the influence of conservatism on financial leverage is enhanced by the degree of global diversification.

A major issue in corporate finance is the identification of variables that influence corporate capital structure choices. The evidence presented in this paper reveals that more conservative financial reporting is associated with a higher degree of financial leverage in the firm’s capital structure. This effect increases with the extent of global diversification, indicating that bondholders place a higher value on conservatism when there is more information asymmetry between stakeholders and managers caused by global diversification.

The purpose of this paper is to review the social capital treatment of Robert Putnam, the most influential conceptual theorist. The paper will detail how Putnam's treatment of social capital has evolved, examine the arguments of his critics and will also critique his socio‐economic analysis.

The approach taken is a literature review that investigates Putnam's social capital understanding and considers the reasons why this conceptual treatment “touched a nerve” and proved so influential and adaptable.

Putnam's social capital treatment belongs to a socio‐economic communitarian tradition that can be traced to de‐Tocqueville, which offers an alternative to both mainstream free market ideology and to leftwing socio‐economics.

The originality of this paper is to identify Putnam as a radical in a methodological sense, reinvigorating a Burkean, consensual interpretation of socio‐economics. The value of this paper is to offer a critique of Putnam's interpretation of social capital.

As demographic changes impact the workplace, governments, organizations, and workers are looking for ways to sustain optimal working lives at higher ages. Workplace flexibility has been introduced as a potential way workers can have more satisfying working lives until their retirement ages. This chapter presents a critical review of the literature on workplace flexibility across the lifespan. It discusses how flexibility has been conceptualized across different disciplines, and postulates a definition that captures the joint roles of employer and employee in negotiating workplace flexibility that contributes to both employee and organization benefits. Moreover, it reviews how flexibility has been theorized and investigated in relation to older workers. The chapter ends with a future research agenda for advancing understanding of how workplace flexibility may enhance working experiences of older workers, and in particular focuses on the critical investigation of uses of flexibility in relation to older workers.

Purpose – The chapter provides an exposition both of Hayek's causal theory of the mind (especially as applied to intentionality) and of Popper's critique of causal theories, argues that Hayek fails successfully to rebut Popper's critique, and shows how the dispute between Hayek and Popper is relevant to controversies in contemporary philosophy of mind.

Methodology/approach –The chapter elucidates Hayek's ideas and Popper's by situating them within the history of the mind/body problem and comparing them to the views of contemporary philosophers like Fred Dretske, Jerry Fodor, and Hilary Putnam.

Findings – Popper's critique has yet to be answered, either by Hayek or by contemporary causal theorists.

Originality/value of the chapter –The chapter calls attention to some important but neglected ideas of Hayek and Popper and examines some of their as-yet-unpublished writings.

Tocqueville's theory emerged from a social movement–infested society rather than from the rather bucolic and static American democracy that he sometimes portrays. And while Putnam (2001) and others try to resurrect this cooperative view of society using the concept of social capital, this approach is inadequate to explain major changes in society and, indeed, only repeats power resources theory with a different linguistic cloak.