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Companies that adopt lean operations and lean accounting ultimately should achieve better profitability and cash flows than similarly situated companies that do not adopt lean operations and lean accounting.

Archival data is analyzed through Wilcoxon signed-ranks, matched-pairs tests.

Lean companies had greater returns on net operating assets (RNOA), returns on total assets (ROA), operating cash flows, and cash-adequacy ratios than Non-Lean companies. These results were driven by the larger Lean companies. The profit margins and financing-assets ratios also were marginally better for the Lean companies than the Non-Lean companies.

Lean companies have achieved benefits proposed by the proponents of lean operations. The present study provides a starting point for further research on the financial performance of Lean companies using archival data.

There is limited research on the financial performance of Lean companies that is based on archival data. The present study fills a void in the academic literature. This study measures RNOA, which does not confound operating and financing activities. Additionally, this study utilized a methodology that provides reasonable assurance of the identification of both Lean companies and Non-Lean companies from publicly available data.

This paper aims to examine whether Andersen’s audit quality in the five years preceding its collapse lagged that of other Big-Five auditors.

This paper compares Andersen’s audit quality and the other Big-Five auditors using five methodologies, namely, earnings response coefficients, magnitudes of abnormal accruals, propensities to issue going-concern opinions, usefulness of going-concern opinions in predicting bankruptcy and the frequency of Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases. The comparisons are based on both pooled samples of all observations and propensity-score-based matched-pairs.

The preponderance of evidence shows that Andersen’s audit quality did not differ materially in audit quality from other Big-Five auditors prior to its failure. However, it was found that Andersen’s independence was compromised in the year leading to its collapse (2000), as indicated by the lower likelihood to issue going-concern opinions.

This paper complements and improves on Cahan et al. (2011) by using more measures of audit quality, as no one measure is perfect, showing that their results using discretionary accruals are sensitive to the model used and showing that there is a more powerful direct measure of audit quality, namely, going-concern opinions.

Makes a contribution to the debate surrounding the characteristics of “non‐exporting” (n = 203 firms) and “exporting” (n = 64 firms) new manufacturing and “producer services” small firms in Great Britain. It was appreciated that sample differences may overwhelm the exploratory analysis. Consequently, in order to overcome this potentially distorting influence a “matched pairs” methodology was also utilized. Forty‐two matched pairs of non‐exporting and exporting firms were identified (by age of the business, industry and location type). In total, data were collected on 146 variables covering the firm, the founder and the environment. Dichotomizing between the two types of firms the univariate analysis of the “matched samples” identified statistically significant differences with regard to only 14 variables (10 per cent). Additional multivariate analysis was conducted. Results from a logit regression model of the “matched samples” suggests new firms are “pushed” into “exporting” their sales abroad due to perceived shortages of local resources as well as intense local competition. Discusses the policy implications of the survey findings.

The purpose of this study is to explore the exogenous and endogenous drivers of the high-growth of Unicorn start-ups along their life cycle, with a particular focus on Unicorns in the fintech industry.

The study employs an explorative longitudinal analysis with a matched-pair of two cases of Unicorns start-ups with similar antecedent features to understand holistically drivers over the longer term.

High-growth patterns over the longer term are the result of a combined industry- and company-life cycle perspective. Drivers and growth patterns vary significantly according to the time of entry in the industry and its development status. The findings are systematised within a set of propositions to be tested in future research.

The limitations lie in empirical evidence, as the analysis is limited to one-matched-pair. The revealed Unicorns' drivers for long-term growth might encourage future research to further investigate these drivers on a larger scale.

The study offers practical recommendations for start-ups with high-growth ambitions and advice to policy makers regarding the development of tailor-made support programs.

The study significantly extends extant work on growth and high-growth by examining endogenous and exogenous triggers over time and by linking the Unicorn-life cycle to the industry life cycle, an approach which has, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, not yet been applied.

This study examines companies that separated or integrated the tax and audit functions subsequent to the passage of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SARBOX). While the provision of tax services is not currently prohibited by SARBOX, some companies have separated these two functions. An examination of the relationship between tax function separation (integration) and proxies for audit quality, tax advocacy and audit fee is performed for a matched sample of companies that made the decision to separate or integrate during the period following the passage of SARBOX. In addition, we survey CFOs of both types of companies to determine the motivations behind the separation/integration decision. Our results indicate separation firm CFOs perceive benefits associated with auditor independence as their main reason for separating, while integration firm CFOs perceive cost savings and knowledge spillover as benefits of integration. The matched‐pair analysis suggests that both cost‐savings and tax‐savings are present in the year the tax and audit function is integrated, a benefit not enjoyed by their separation firm peers.

The aim in this paper is to describe and explain the flexibility offered by different business models adopted by different firms as they strive to achieve higher levels of business performance.

Cross‐sectional research is used to investigate a matched pair sample of 20 high‐performing and 20 low‐performing firms in the UK. The relationship between business model architectures and focus are examined and their implications for flexibility are illustrated and discussed.

The flexibility offered by different business models is explored through the way organisations select and integrate three inter‐related elements to devise flexible business models, i.e. network influence, transactional relationships, and corporate ownership. Affected by situated practices in each business network and the market position or business size, companies select and integrate various configurations of these elements to respond to the constantly evolving demands of end‐customers.

Although based upon a cross‐sectional analysis of a matched pair sample, the concept of “flexible business models” has far wider managerial implications. The efficiency of the proposed approach is achieved through the reduction into three inter‐related elements that allow flexible configuration and re‐adjustment.

Companies can use the flexible business model approach to examine their own selection and integration of network influence, transactional relationships and corporate ownership and scrutinise their flexibility and performance in the marketplace.

The contribution of this paper is the development of the flexible business models concept, based on an empirical investigation of firms in the UK.

The study is positioned at the crossroads of transformative social marketing and social innovation literature through the lens of participatory design (PD). This exploratory study aims to explore how social enterprises in India engage economically marginalized people in transformative social marketing and innovation for sustainable development through PD.

The study includes a case study with a matched pairs analysis approach. The data analysis reports three themes depicting the role of PD in different stages of the social innovation process (codiscovery, codesign and scaling-up), the challenges faced in the process and the outcomes of the PD process.

The authors propose that social enterprises can act as sustainable development catalysts for more inclusive sustainable development through their proactive and creative uses of PD. Still, PD also has limitations for addressing the challenges stemming from marginalized contexts, which requires effective social marketing strategies to overcome.

The study contributes to the emerging dialogue on PD with marginalized users and widens the scope of studies on transformative social marketing and innovation. The findings also provide practical insights for PD practitioners on how designers can learn from diverse PD practices in the context of economically marginalized people.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the risk-adjusted performance of Brazilian SRI stock funds.

Risk-adjusted performance of 11 Brazilian socially responsible investment (SRI) funds relative to local index funds and matched pairs of funds.

SRI funds performed as well as portfolios representing the broad market on a risk-adjusted basis, both before and during the global financial crisis. Independent investment houses are not interested in SRI funds. Large financial conglomerates may see these funds as part of their corporate social responsibility image strategy.

Brazilian SRI funds are a very small niche in the stock mutual fund universe of the country, thus, the small sample (universe) of SRI funds, as far as the author's knew. One cannot say that independent asset managers do not include SRI screening in their stock selection criteria. The use of SRI screening by the most prominent independent asset managers is a potential topic for future research.

Brazilian SRI funds did not represent an extra screening filter cost to their investors. The majority of asset managers do not consider this strategy important enough to deserve an exclusive vehicle.

As SRI funds did not posit an extra screening cost, they may deserve a greater share of the mutual fund market, stimulating more SRI.

The performance of Brazilian SRI stock funds had not been examined in the international literature. Brazil has vast natural resources, a very large economy and the fourth largest mutual fund industry in the world, but was overlooked.

Researchers have investigated the distinctions between founder and nonfounder chief executive officers (CEOs) for different performance variables. Researchers have also investigated the use of media as supplemental information that investors review to make decisions about initial public offering (IPO) firms. Research that investigates founders and nonfounder CEOs of IPO firms in the media is limited but growing. This paper aims to explore how founder and nonfounder CEOs' narratives are portrayed differently in business media following an IPO.

Using insights from the narrative paradigm, 1,057 news paragraphs about CEOs from 19 matched pairs (38 firms) were content analyzed using a contrasting coding strategy.

Founders and nonfounders' narratives differ in three ways. Specifically, founder CEOs are more likely to (1) have their personal background detailed in the media, (2) translate technical business information to easy-to-understand general language and (3) be quoted talking about positive information than nonfounder CEOs.

The results of this study show the media's role in creating narratives about management and how the experiences of founders and nonfounders are represented differently in the media. The study is limited by only investigating media articles about CEOs and not investigating the entire organizational narrative.

This study adds to the growing literature that investigates the role the media plays in portraying management in the media at time of IPO.