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The purpose of this study is to examine the individual and combined effect of managerial ownership and external audit quality, as two control mechanisms, on earnings management.

This study applies ordinary least squares estimates on fixed-time effects panel regression model to test the impact of the investigated variables on earnings management for the whole population of banks and insurance companies listed at Damascus Securities Exchange (DSE) during the period from 2011 to 2018.

The empirical evidence suggests a negative non-linear relationship between managerial ownership (as proxied by board of directors’ ownership) on earnings management. However, neither audit quality nor the simultaneous effect of the managerial ownership and audit quality (Big 4) affects earnings management.

DSE is dominated by the financial sector and the number of observations is constrained by the recent establishment of DSE and the small number of firms listed at DSE. In addition, the non-availability of data on executive directors’ and foreign ownerships restrict our ability to uncover the impact of different dimensions of ownership structure on earnings management.

First, it stimulates investors to purchase stocks in financial firms that enjoy both high managerial ownership, as they seem enjoying higher earnings quality. Second, the findings encourage external auditors to consider the ownership structure when choosing their clients as the financial statements’ quality is affected by this structure. Third, researchers may need to consider the role of managerial ownership when analyzing the determinants of earnings management.

It fills the gap in the literature, as it investigates the impact of both managerial ownership and audit quality on earnings management in a special conflict context and in an unexplored emerging market of DSE. It suggests that managerial ownership exerts a significant role in controlling earnings management practices when loose regulatory environment combines conflict conditions. However, external audit quality fails to counter earnings management practices when conditions are fierce.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the effect of psychosocial safety climate (PSC – a climate for psychological health) on managerial quality and the mediating processes explaining that association. It is posited that the alignment between what is said (espoused PSC) and what is done (enacted PSC via managerial quality) is important for successful organizational interventions. Managers’ own psychosocial work factors act as resources to facilitate the enactment of managerial quality.

Two waves of survey were administered over a three-month period (n at Time 1=144, n at Time 2=166, overall n=115) in a study of four organizations involved in implementing the Quebec Healthy Enterprise Standard (QHES). A cross-lagged panel analysis was used to determine the temporal direction of the PSC–managerial quality relationship. A longitudinal mediation model of PSC as a determinant of managerial quality was tested using job demands, job control, social support and quality of relationships with subordinates as mediators.

The cross-lagged panel analysis showed that PSC is temporally prior to managerial quality in that the relationship between PSC at T1 and managerial quality at T2 was stronger than the relationship between managerial quality at T1 and PSC at T2. A two-wave mediation analysis showed that PSC was positively associated with managerial quality, and that job control partially mediated this relationship. Contrary to expectations, managers’ workload, their social support and the quality of their relationships with subordinates did not mediate the PSC–managerial quality relationship.

Despite the small sample size and short timeframe of this study, it contributes to knowledge on the resources facilitating managerial quality, which is important for employees’ psychological health. Little is known regarding the mediating processes that explain how managers’ own context and psychosocial work factors affect their management practices during organizational health interventions.

From a practical view point, this study contributes to the literature showing that managers need to be supported during the implementation of health interventions, and need the leeway to pursue the organization’s prevention objectives.

Whereas previous studies have focused on describing the impact of leadership behaviors on employee health outcomes, the study offers insights into the resources that help managers translate PSC into action in the implementation of a national standard, the QHES.

This paper is concerned with two questions: 1 What are the kinds of skills and other qualities in managers that contribute to managerial success and performance in various forms? 2 To what extent are these acquired by learning, and what are the sources of such learning? The aim is to propose and test a general framework or taxonomy describing what managers might need to learn, and to understand from where existing managers have acquired the skills and qualities they currently use. This further allows us to draw some conclusions about the part played by deliberate training and education activities, in comparison with ‘natural’ ones, in the development of managers. The paper considers and reports in turn on existing theories and research relevant to managerial qualities, a hypothetical model of such qualities, an empirical test of the models, and the results of a study of the sources involved in the acquisition of specific qualities contributing to successful management actions in a sample of managers.

The aim of this study is to study the relationships among: two types of managerial practices (“reward” and “support”), two types of emotional satisfaction (“positive” and “negative”), and employee‐perceived service quality.

The study presents a conceptual model of the aforementioned relationships. It proposed hypotheses regarding these relationships and collected data with a survey study of 1,076 frontline employees in service organizations. An analysis of the testing of the hypotheses follows.

The study has found that managerial reward and managerial support are both directly related to positive and negative emotions and to employee‐perceived service quality. In particular, positive and negative emotions appear directly related to employee‐perceived service quality. Moreover, it was found that emotional satisfaction partially mediates the relationship between managerial (reward and support) practices and employee‐perceived service quality.

The study takes place within a broad context of frontline employees in service organizations.

The study has demonstrated the importance for managers to consider how their practices influence the service quality their employees provide to customers. In particular, managers should take account of employees' emotions, whether positive or negative, because of their role in explaining employee‐perceived service quality. Consequently, one general and key implication from this study is the importance of measuring employees' emotions. Measuring these mental states (described as stable tendencies of feelings) which arise from cognitive appraisals of managerial practices can be a good predictor for employee‐perceived service quality. The study shows that employees are not isolated “emotional islands” and, consequently, it is important for managers to understand how emotions and the quality of service delivery are linked.

The paper enhances knowledge of how emotions are linked to the quality of service delivery and the role of emotional satisfaction in service‐quality management.

Enhancing competitiveness through quality has become an increasingly important challenge of learning in organizations. This paper discusses that challenge by presenting conceptual and empirical implications from a research project on quality implementation strategies and learning. Links managerial perceptions of quality, commitment to quality, and learning as a mechanism of quality implementation. Examines quality implementation from a managerial ideological perspective. Case study data gathered from four Finnish manufacturing companies show that the advantageous learning in quality implementation is based on developing solid conceptual skills for managers in the first place, managerial commitment to quality and the sharing of quality thinking in the entire organization. Discusses these factors and describes how positive and negative learning cycles develop and lead organizations to promote and avoid learning accordingly. Proposes that implementing quality through learning is basically an ideological phenomenon. Ideological thinking may develop into a managerial skill that is a source of organizational strength. Implications are made for managers on the role of conceptual skills and ideological thinking in effective quality implementation.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

The aim of this paper is to undertake an empirical examination of some of the antecedents and effects of positive emotions from an employee perspective. More specifically, this study investigates the relationships between one extreme point of discrete types of positive emotions (joy), two types of employee perception (managerial relationship quality and benefit of one's work role), and employees' innovative behaviour in service delivery.

The study presents a conceptual model of the aforementioned relationships. The model of the proposed relationships is tested in a survey study in which 279 frontline employees in the hospitality industry participated.

It was found that both employee perception of managerial and work role benefit are directly related to employees' feelings of joy and employees' innovative behaviour. Employees' feelings of joy were found to have a direct effect on employees' innovative behaviour. Moreover, it was found that employees' feelings of joy mediate the relationship between the two antecedent variables (managerial relationship quality and work role benefit) and employees' innovative behaviour.

The research is limited to study two antecedents to employees' feelings of joy. Moreover, only one effect of employees' feelings of joy is included in the model.

This paper emphasizes the importance of managers knowing how employees feel about their work role. Therefore, employees' emotions should be taken seriously in service‐quality management. Consequently, one general and key implication from this study is the importance of measuring employees' emotions since it is linked to employees' innovative behaviour when they offer a service to customers.

The paper contributes by enhancing the knowledge on the role of emotions in service‐quality management.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the need for consensus on a model that encapsulates the relationship between the manager and the effective operational performance of leisure facilities. This is particularly relevant for Australian local government sports and leisure centres.

On‐site and postal questionnaires from 140 managers, 71 peers, and 277 staff were collected and analysed to develop an empirical model of the relationship between Australian sports and leisure centre managers and the performance of their operations.

This study proposes an initial path model of eight predictive variables, including the managerial qualities of the manager and their relationship with the operational performance of their centre.

The proposed model provides a new basis for reviews and changes to current practice in the development of managers, and of professional practice in this context.

Unlike copious studies of managers, this study includes empirical testing of a model that links the relationship between the manager and an organisation's performance; this is relatively rare in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the quality of management can mitigate the positive association between corporate tax avoidance and firm-specific stock price crash risk (SPCR).

The study is based on data from the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP), Compustat and ExecuComp and focuses on US-listed firms from 1980 to 2016. The authors employ ordinary least squares (OLS) regression as the baseline methodology and use five measures of tax avoidance and three measures of SPCR. Propensity score matching (PSM) and two-stage least squares methodologies are employed to address endogeneity concerns.

The authors find that more able managers weaken the positive relationship between tax avoidance and SPCR. The results suggest that the benefits of efficient tax management are more likely in firms with a more able management team as the likelihood of SPCR due to tax avoidance practices is reduced in such firms.

This study has important practical implications for investors who are concerned about firms that engage in tax planning activities that can reduce corporate taxes, but at the same time increase the SPCR. Considering the compelling arguments and the “dark” side of more able managers who may engage in opportunistic behaviour, the study provides useful evidence in support of more able managers.

This paper contributes to the SPCR literature by examining the effect of managerial ability on the likelihood of tax avoidance causing SPCR. Able managers are likely to lower the risk faced by investors and are less likely to extract rent and manipulate information. Therefore, the findings of this study have implications for investors by informing them of the negative value implications of tax avoidance and how they can be mitigated by hiring more able managers.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt a contingency perspective and examine the impact of managerial political connections on access to a specific external resource – government subsidies – in China.

This study proposes that managerial political connections help firms gain access to government subsidies; in addition, firms must signal their managerial quality through managerial reputation and/or past firm performance to address government officials' concerns with job safety and future career development. These cues, in turn, ensure and increase confidence on government officials' resource allocation decisions in favor of the firm. The authors test the contingency hypothesis by using archival data collected from 212 Chinese firms that went public between 2002 and 2004.

This study finds that managerial political connections play a significant positive impact on obtaining government subsidies only when managerial reputation is high, and/or when firm past performance is superior vis‐à‐vis others.

This study contributes to the existing literature in two ways. First, it enlarges the research scope of political connections by examining their impact on government subsidies instead of financial performance. Second, and more importantly, it posits that the role of political connections is contingent on other moderating factors such as managerial reputation and past firm performance.