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This paper aims to investigate whether the managers’ emphasis on audit in the management’s discussion and analysis (MD&A) section of the 10-K filing, as part of the firm’s “tone at the top,” is linked to audit quality.

Adopting a computational linguistics approach, the authors measure the manager’s audit emphasis as the frequency of audit-related words in the MD&A. The authors then assess the relationship between audit emphasis and audit quality with ordinary least squares and probit regression models.

This study finds that the manager’s audit emphasis, proxied by the count of audit-related words, is positively associated with audit fees, audit delay, the appointment and retention of Big 4 and industry-specialist auditors, and the probability of switching to Big 4 auditors, while negatively linked to abnormal accruals and the possibility of financial misstatements.

The audit emphasis measure suffers from limitations. The computer program determining audit emphasis may misinterpret words in the MD&A. Researchers need to consider procedures to minimize misinterpretations.

Frequency of audit words in the MD&A reflects the firm’s aspiration for audit quality. Auditors, regulators and investors could ascertain such aspiration from past and current MD&As.

This study associates the manager’s emphasis on audit, measured with computational linguistics from the MD&A, with realized audit quality.

This study aims to investigate the relationships among budget emphasis, budget planning models, and performance, to determine whether an emphasis on the budget has indirect effects on performance, in the presence of other budget planning characteristics as mediators.

A questionnaire survey was conducted and structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed models among the constructs and related hypotheses.

The results indicate that while budget planning models entirely mediate the influence of budget emphasis on the performance of management and the organization, they partially mediate the influence of budget emphasis on budget satisfaction. In addition, it is determined that differentiation strategies have a significantly positive influence on budget emphasis, budget planning models and performance.

The results of this study provide a reference for organizations in the design of budgeting systems. During the design process, budget planning models should consider the degree of emphasis an organization places on the budget.

Numerous management commentators have suggested that the 1980s have witnessed considerable change in employee relations at establishment level in Irish organizations. However, much of this analysis has been quite vague on the precise nature of such change. Employee relations management in Ireland has traditionally been associated with a strong collectivist, industrial relations emphasis. Attempts to evaluate the extent of change in management approaches to employee relations in the 1980s. In particular looks at issues such as developments in employment structure, flexibility and changing patterns of industrial conflict. Also considers the emergence of Human Resource Management (HRM) approaches in the Irish context.

Studies of entrepreneurial orientation tend to merge its three components‐proactiveness, risk-taking, and innovativeness‐into a monolithic construct and analyze its relationship with firm outcomes at one point in time. This has resulted in knowledge voids related to the relative importance of the different components, their specific effect on value created by the firm, and their evolution over time. The present study links each component of entrepreneurial orientation to economic value creation using a longitudinal dataset. Results provide support for hypothesized relationships. Implications and avenues for future research are discussed.

Over the past thirty years or so, a body, albeit a somewhat disarticulated body, of evidence on the work of managers has accumulated. The field of study which has given rise to this evidence is, from time to time, subject to ‘internal’ criticisms by some of its own practitioners (Luthans and Davis 1980, Marples 1967, Mintzberg 1973, Stewart 1983) whose main contention, predictably, is that the studies do not, methodologically or analytically, always live up to their self‐imposed project. The studies in short are upbraided for what they have imperfectly done. In an earlier paper (Hales 1986) I sought to extend and add to these criticisms of studies of managers' work. I argued that the studies fail to distinguish, within the vague term ‘managerial work’, between: first, ‘management’ as a process and ‘managers’ as a particular category of agents; second, managerial work as a totality and managerial jobs as clusters of that (and other) work; third, what managers are required to do (role definition) and what they actually do (role performance) and fourth, the outputs and purpose of managerial work (managerial tasks and responsibilities) versus the inputs and practice of managerial work (managers' behaviour and activities). These ambiguities are, I suggested, symptomatic of a rather narrow empiricist approach and failure adequately to theorise the ‘management’ which managers are, apparently, doing. In this way, I wanted to arrive at, rather than merely assert, the proposition that the activities of managers cannot be adequately understood without setting them, empirically and theoretically, in a wider context.

The purpose of this research is to examine how firms can build collective organisational citizenship behaviour towards the environment (OCBE) from green human resource management (GHRM) practices. The study tests how the three main aspects of GHRM, namely green abilities, green motivation and green opportunities, give rise to the enablers of green culture (EGC). The study further tests how each of the EGC (leadership emphasis, message credibility, peer involvement and employee empowerment) leads to the development of OCBE at the organisational level of analysis.

Data were collected from Taiwanese manufacturing companies with a target of departmental heads. The authors managed to get 284 valid responses and analysed the data using path analysis on Stata12.

The study findings suggest that GHRM practices that include developing green abilities, green motivation and green opportunities support the development of the EGC. The EGC include leadership emphasis, message credibility, peer involvement and employee empowerment. It was, however, found that green abilities do not support the development of message credibility. It was further found the EGC lead to the development of collective OCBE except for peer involvement.

The authors propose an original concept of EGC in the context of Taiwanese manufacturing firms. This paper is amongst the pioneer papers to test the OCBE at organisational level. The authors also develop an integrated conceptual framework upon which firms can use in order to build OCBE at organisational level. Previous studies have examined OCBEs at employee/individual level.

Many literature reviews on project management (PM) research are limited to studies published only in PM journals but some reviews do expand their analysis on PM research published also in journals belonging to the management studies field. However, the authors found no previous literature reviews comparing the PM content in different sectors outside the management studies field. Therefore, the analysis and findings of PM content derived from the sector-specific engineering and technology-focused journals are new. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors analyze PM content in nine different sectors, where each sector and its inherent research is connected to specific engineering, technological, or industry-related disciplines. The authors conduct an evidence-informed literature review on PM knowledge in the distinct literatures of these nine sectors. The period of analysis is 24 years from 1986-2009. The authors discuss potential consequences of the findings’ sector-specificity for future PM domain development.

The perspective on different origins of PM leads to a meta-level PM concept covering several different PM domains, each with its own sector specific and separated development path.

The literature analysis purposefully excluded PM journals and management studies, and the authors focused only on sector-specific engineering and technology-focused journals that represent knowledge and wisdom of different PM contents in nine sectors.

The findings have significant potential to contribute to scholarly discussion on the development of a universal PM theory. For applicability across sectors, the authors suggest a modular PM theory with different sector-specific modules for knowledge, concepts, and underlying assumptions.

Currently, this discussion has been mainly focused on theorizing concepts and approaches in management studies only. This study expands the understanding to engineering and technology-focused journals across nine industry sectors/domains.

There is growing acknowledgement that companies are engaging in both transaction‐ and relationship‐marketing activity. However, apart from a small body of work, little consideration has been paid to the management and implementation challenges involved in conducting both types of marketing concurrently. In particular, there have been few studies that consider, from a holistic organisational perspective, how transaction‐ and relationship‐marketing management‐decision making impact on each other in reality and the extent to which organisations are investing appropriate resources in simultaneously implementing the two approaches. This article reports on a longitudinal, in‐depth study of a high‐street retail bank. The findings indicate that, in practice, resource investment in transaction‐ and relationship‐marketing management was unbalanced with an over‐emphasis on some managerial dimensions and an under‐investment in others. In other words the bank under investigation did not engage in effective transaction or relationship planning or implementation but rather the managerial and organisational focus was on sales and promotion.

Notes the increasing interest in management accounting research in service organizations, even though it can still be said to be in an embryonic phase. Reviews the accounting and control implications of specific characteristics perceived to distinguish service organizations which have been observed in previous research in management accounting and service management. States that a review of previous research reveals an undue over‐emphasis on structural accounting implications at the expense of the behavioural side of accounting and control. Includes a case study in a public sector dental practice, with particular reference to the coexistence of formal and informal controls and formalization of control processes. Develops a framework consisting of a number of related research propositions and outlines future directions for research.

Starting with 1997 applications, both the US Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards and the Canada Awards for Excellence have undergone changes to the evaluation categories as well as to the point systems in order to increase the emphasis on business results. Over the past several years there has been an increasingly perceived need to emphasize organizational successes owing to an overall quality management approach as opposed to celebrating specific quality improvement initiatives within establishments. The enthusiasm of management to highlight gains made in certain portions of their organization in the name of quality requires tempering by due consideration within the general context of the impact on business results. The emphasis has been shifted to ensure further that an overall balance in applying TQM throughout the organization will be required to achieve national award status.