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When incorporating differences in household characteristics, the choice of equivalence scale can affect the ranking of income distributions. An alternative approach was pioneered by A. B. Atkinson and F. Bourguignon (G. R. Feiwel (Ed.), Arrow and the Foundation of the Theory of Economic Policy, Macmillan, New York, 1987), who derive a sequential Lorenz dominance criterion for comparing zistributions with an identical population structure. In order to make their approach applicable to international comparisons, we extend their criterion to the case of different marginal distributions of household types, and derive a sequential stochastic dominance criterion that highlights the importance of first order dominance of the marginal distribution of household characteristics for obtaining consistent rankings of income distributions. Comparisons of distributions are made using the Luxembourg Income Study database for a number of countries.

This chapter aims to discuss methods for promoting student engagement to counteract declining academic motivation and achievement in the contemporary setting.

In this chapter, two studies are presented that describe ways to promote student engagement in and out of the classroom. The in-class study was conducted with psychology students at the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK). The Student Course Engagement Questionnaire (SCEQ) developed by Handelsman, Briggs, Sullivan, and Towler (2005) was used to measure student engagement. Study 2 examined the extent to which four high-impact educational practices promoted student engagement. Undergraduate UNK students who had participated in undergraduate research, learning communities, service learning, or internships were surveyed.

The results of the first study indicated that instructors can promote engagement by how the structure of the classroom (discussion classes), individuation (knowing student names and keeping class sizes small), and teacher support in the form of being responsive to student questions, encouraging students to seek assistance, and assigning effective aids to learning. The second study indicated that undergraduate research and internships were more engaging than service learning or learning communities.

These results suggest practical methods for meeting a variety of student needs, including their need for relatedness — by encouraging them to seek assistance and knowing their names, competence — by assigning effective learning aids and autonomy — by encouraging intrinsically motivating activities.

Board diversity has been an important topic in corporate governance. Extant literature examines the overall diversity in the boardroom and its impact. However, since important decisions are usually taken by the committees, it is important to also examine diversity in committees. We use the Coca-Cola Company as the case study and examine its diversity in both audit and finance committees. Our goal is to raise the awareness of researchers, board nominating committees, and diverse directors themselves, as to whether diverse directors are placed in the right positions to allow them to contribute their diverse views and experiences.

We conducted a case study of the Coca-Cola Company using its proxy statement in both 2016 and 2018.

While Coca-Cola’s self-reported board diversity stood at 27% in 2016, and increased to 31% by 2018, the critical audit and finance committees showed a distinct lack of diversity. Focusing on gender diversity for the purposes of this chapter, we investigated two possibilities: (1) that the lack of committee diversity is due to the lack of finance and leadership skills of those board members who were from underrepresented groups, but this possibility does not seem likely, (2) that the presence of a female CFO removed the urgency to place board members from underrepresented groups on the audit and finance committees.

We provide a cautionary perspective on the implementation of diversity policies at the highest levels of an organization. The pursuit of diversity, like other admirable corporate goals, can degenerate into a check-the-box mentality. When this happens, diversity can become viewed as a substitute for real competency rather than a complement to existing competencies.

It is suggested that boards revise the recruiting and selecting process to include more female candidates, and be sensitive how and where those diverse directors can best contribute their perspectives and experiences.

This paper describes ways to improve the effectiveness of a code of ethics where the goal is to affect the alternative chosen by a decision maker. These avenues for improvement are divided into those related to the content of the code and those related to enforcement provisions associated with a code. Improvements related to the content of the code are designed to change decision makers’ perceptions as to whether an action is ethical in such a way that they change the action chosen. Improvements related to enforcement provisions are designed to change how decision makers value the outcomes associated with selecting specific actions.

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the relationship between law and ethics in accounting. The primary arguments of the chapter are that law and ethics have between intertwined historically, that concepts of morality and ethics have permeated law and that laws are based on ethical and religious principles. As a result, it is important for accounting students and practicing accountants to understand the close relationship between law and ethics. The chapter defines the meaning of “legal” and “ethical,” and draws distinctions between these concepts. It also discusses historical relationships between law, morality and ethics in major religious traditions. The concepts of ethics expressed in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and how these concepts influenced the development of law and ethics in Western philosophy are then discussed. In particular, the ethical principles of independence, integrity and objectivity as embodied in the Code of Conduct of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) are recognizable in Aristotle’s premise, that moral virtue is situated at the mean between deficiency and excess and that ethics is oriented toward practical implementation of the good life through human rationality. The final section of the chapter discusses the application of law and ethics to accounting and in particular to the detection of management fraud.

As a typical creative behavior, creative process engagement (CPE) has received increased attention in recent years. Leadership behaviors such as leader–member exchange (LMX) and leader creativity expectations (LCE) have been found as two key predictive factors of CPE. However, the mechanism underlying this relationship is not well understood. This study aims to clarify how LMX influences follower CPE by considering the interplay among LCE, decision autonomy and task interdependence from an interactionist perspective.

Using a sample of 371 leader–employee dyads from eight enterprises in mainland China, this study conducts a hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses for the proposed model.

Results reveal that the significant two- and three-way interactions where LCE, decision autonomy and task interdependence moderate the relationship between LMX and follower CPE. The relationship between LMX and follower CPE is not significant as expected, but the moderating role of LCE is positive and significant, and the relationship is strongest when conducted with either low task interdependence or high decision autonomy.

Different from previous research that only investigated one certain leadership factor’ effect on employees' innovative behaviors, this study comprehensively considered the combined influence of two related but significantly different connotation leadership factors on follower CPE and found the contingency effect of LCE on the relationship between LMX and follower CPE. Furthermore, the authors found the regional effectiveness of the leadership factor. The effect of leadership factors on follower CPE varies under the influence of different job characteristics, and is conducive to enrich the interactionist view on follower CPE.

The objective of this chapter is to lay the foundation for the edited collection of contemporary research contributions contained in this book. Specifically, the chapter is concerned with defining and conceptualising rural entrepreneurship.

The chapter seeks to explore why and how a rural enterprise can be defined, and determines whether rural entrepreneurship is a distinctive category of entrepreneurship theory and practice. Building on descriptive rural enterprise taxonomies proposed in previous studies, the chapter considers the drivers and barriers impacting on firm start-up, growth and decline in rural environments.

The authors argue that there is little difference between a rural and non-rural enterprise in terms of structure, that is how the business is organised or managed, or how the characteristics of the individual entrepreneur are exhibited. Thus, it would appear that there is no specific category for, nor definition of a rural entrepreneur beyond that of ‘an individual who manages a venture in a rural setting’.

The chapter is based mainly on a review of extant literatures.

The chapter concludes that it is the exogenous factors that differentiate rural from non-rural ventures, and it is these factors that will have a significant impact on start-up, growth and failure rates.