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We examine how auditors' use of limited liability agreements (LLAs) impact perceptions of private company creditworthiness in a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment. Ninety-three United States-based bank loan officers evaluate whether LLA clauses and the size of the company's external auditor impact lending decisions. We use signaling theory to predict, and we find that LLAs decrease perceived creditworthiness, mainly when the company engages a Non-Big4 auditor. We find no difference in perceived creditworthiness when the company employs a Big4 firm, irrespective of including an LLA clause. Supplemental analyses show that lenders perceive that LLA clauses signal higher credit risk and, in turn, decrease perceived creditworthiness. We offer insights into how lenders integrate information about privately held companies into their decisions, which could impact the cost of capital for private companies. Our study should be of interest to preparers and the varied users of financial statements and regulators.

This paper aims to explore the nature of the emerging discourse of private climate change reporting, which takes place in one‐on‐one meetings between institutional investors and their investee companies.

Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with representatives from 20 UK investment institutions to derive data which was then coded and analysed, in order to derive a picture of the emerging discourse of private climate change reporting, using an interpretive methodological approach, in addition to explorative analysis using NVivo software.

The authors find that private climate change reporting is dominated by a discourse of risk and risk management. This emerging risk discourse derives from institutional investors' belief that climate change represents a material risk, that it is the most salient sustainability issue, and that their clients require them to manage climate change‐related risk within their portfolio investment. It is found that institutional investors are using the private reporting process to compensate for the acknowledged inadequacies of public climate change reporting. Contrary to evidence indicating corporate capture of public sustainability reporting, these findings suggest that the emerging private climate change reporting discourse is being captured by the institutional investment community. There is also evidence of an emerging discourse of opportunity in private climate change reporting as the institutional investors are increasingly aware of a range of ways in which climate change presents material opportunities for their investee companies to exploit. Lastly, the authors find an absence of any ethical discourse, such that private climate change reporting reinforces rather than challenges the “business case” status quo.

Although there is a wealth of sustainability reporting research, there is no academic research on private climate change reporting. This paper attempts to fill this gap by providing rich interview evidence regarding the nature of the emerging private climate change reporting discourse.

Online knowledge sharing is a critical process for maintaining organisational competitive advantage. This paper aims to develop a new conceptual framework that investigates the moderating impacts of innovation on self-efficacy, extrinsic and intrinsic rewards on employees’ online knowledge sharing behaviour in public and private sector companies.

This research analysed 200 responses to test the moderating effects of organisational innovation on the relationship between self-efficacy and rewards and online knowledge sharing behviours. The analysis was carried out using component-based partial least squares (PLS) approach and SmartPLS 3 software.

The results reveal that self-efficacy significantly affects online knowledge sharing behaviour in firms, regardless of the organisation type. Extrinsic rewards encourage employees in private companies to share knowledge online, whereas intrinsic rewards work effectively in public companies. Additionally, the study found the moderating role of organisational innovation in examining the relationship between rewards and online knowledge sharing behaviour.

Future research may consider different dimensions such as knowledge donating and collecting behaviours as well as motives, such as self-enjoyment, reciprocity or social interaction ties, which may be investigated to get a deeper understanding of online knowledge sharing behaviour.

Firms must tailor training and rewards to suit employees’ abilities and needs so as to align with organisation type and innovation.

The study’s distinctive contribution is the under-researched context of Vietnamese public and private sector banks for investigating the moderating effects of organisational innovation on micro and meso factors on online knowledge sharing behaviour.

Since the UK Companies Act 1981, different reporting standards have developed for different classes of company to reduce the reporting burden on non-listed companies. There are now different regimes for listed, large private, medium-sized, small and micro companies. This strategy raises the issue of whether earnings quality across the different classes of company is comparable. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The paper uses the smoothness of earnings to measure reporting quality across the different types of companies from 2006 to 2013, based on 514,000 observations. Smoothness is an indicator of poor quality.

The authors find that listed companies have the highest earnings quality, closely followed by small and micro companies. In contrast, large private and medium-sized companies have much lower earnings quality. Overall, the authors find companies which switch between reporting regimes have lower earnings quality. The authors also find that earnings quality is not affected by the small company exemption from audit.

Companies filing abbreviated accounts are excluded since they do not file an income statement. The recent revisions to UK GAAP (FRS 102 and FRS 105) are not examined due to insufficient data.

The Financial Reporting Council’s (FRC) strategy of reducing the financial reporting and auditing obligations for small companies seems not to have significantly affected earnings quality. However, the FRC may need to review the reporting requirements of large private and medium-sized companies and also the option of companies to switch between reporting regimes; in these settings earnings quality appears to be weaker.

The paper studies the effect of earnings quality across the different reporting regimes in the UK. Novel and important features of the study are that the sample covers a wide variety of small and micro companies which have not been analyzed previously; the results are disaggregated by year, for assurance that the results are not driven by a single rogue year; and the authors also address the small company exemption from audit, and the flexibility of non-listed companies to switch between regimes.

The paper discusses the balance between values and economic efficiency in the public sector in comparison with the private sector. The argument is that the public sector, hence the public welfare service institutions, can learn much from the private service sector, hence the private service firms with regard to the relation to values, ethics, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and efficiency in order to improve the balance between values and efficiency in the public sector.

The paper discusses the concept of balance in relation to the development of the management of private service companies as a useful alternative to new public management (NPM). It discusses this with regard to three issues: the evolution of the management of private companies; what can the public sector, hence the public welfare institutions, learn from the evolution of management of private companies? How would it be possible for governments to work for an alternative to NPM, on the basis of the experiences of management of private companies, improving the balance between values and economic efficiency in the public sector?

It is argued that a deadlock in the development of efficiency management in the public sector, hence in the public welfare service institutions, is created. It is argued, furthermore, that this deadlock to a great extent, paradoxically, is created because of the focusing on NPM for almost two decades as the most important tool to develop efficiency management in the public sector. Finally, it is argued that the experiences in private companies regarding how to find a proper balance between values, ethics, CSR and economic efficiency can be very helpful in developing a strategy within the public sector to unlock the deadlock regarding the development of efficiency management. That is why the experiences of management of the private services companies can become a constructive alternative to the experiences of NPM in the public sector at the level of welfare institutions.

There would be potential for more research on CSR, business ethics and values‐driven management in relation to the public sector.

The paper offers new insight into the relation between values, CSR and management models in the private and in the public sector.

This paper aims to deal with the issue of shareholder activism of private equity investors in public companies. The study identifies characteristics of target firms and investors related to the likelihood of private equity activism. The research also examines whether shareholder activism strategy of private equity investors is associated with the better performance in future and value creation of target firms.

The paper applies econometric modeling to hand-collected data on private equity investments in listed companies, in the form of private investment in public equity and open-market share purchases, from eight Continental Europe’s countries for the period 2005–2014.

The findings indicate that the probability of shareholder activism is higher if the target firm’s industry corresponds to the private equity investor’s industry specialization, if the private equity firm is older, if the target is larger and the average ownership share purchased by the investor is higher. Conversely, the probability of shareholder activism is lower where a private equity firm invests in the target for the first time. A target firm with an activist investor has poorer operational performance results one year following the investment compared to a target firm with a passive private equity investor.

Results from the analysis of transactions in Continental Europe countries with French and German legal origin may be not generalizable to other markets with the different legal tradition and institutional environment.

This research provides new empirical evidence on private equity activism in listed companies of Continental Europe. By distinguishing between active and passive investments, testing rarely considered characteristics to provide valuable insights and analyzing the effect of activism on the target firm’s performance, the study contributes variously to the still-limited body of literature on private equity activism in public companies with a governance structure based on concentrated ownership. The findings emphasize the relationship between shareholder activism and both target and investor’s characteristics from perspective of mitigating agency problem and value creation in target firms. By simultaneously investigating investments in public companies from several European markets, the study complements empirical evidence mostly obtained from studies of a single national market.

In the realm of innovation systems and technology transfer (TT), the emergence of open innovation and complex market dynamics has amplified innovation intermediaries’ prominence of their role and involvement in TT projects. This study delves into private consultants’ involvement in TT projects, namely in what got them involved by the project’s key stakeholders.

An iterative two-phased research approach was followed, including exploratory interviews and a quantitative case study of a consultancy firm engaged in 219 TT projects.

Five main key motivators were found to lead TT stakeholders to involve private consultants in their TT projects, being the most relevant, the proactivity of private consultants.

The case study and results provide an alternative perspective of TT endeavours, emphasising the importance given by TT stakeholders (mostly recipient companies) to private consultants’ involvement as innovation intermediaries.

Discusses the issue of privatization and its relationship with the government. Answers the question of who should perform certain governmental services and why they should be performed by that particular organization. Compares the privatization process in the United States and European countries. Finally explains why politicians do not resort to more private services.

This paper analyses the differences between private and public sector organisations in Denmark in relation to the penetration of holistic management models, how companies achieve excellent results and the empirical weight structure of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) excellence model. The results show that the penetration of holistic management models is greater among public organisations. Furthermore private and public organisations do not achieve excellent results in the same way. Private companies put higher emphasis on the systems dimension whereas public organisations put higher emphasis on the people dimension. In relation to the empirical weight structure of the EFQM excellence model two significant differences were found. Private companies put higher emphasis on the criteria “leadership” and “policy and strategy” than public organisations.

Rethinking development along the lines of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a new and exciting area of research and development practice. Newly emerging forms of global governance are now relying on private actors (business, non governmental organizations (NGOs)) rather than states. Therefore, CSR policy and programmes are necessary steps in securing responsible corporate behaviour in support of development. The objectives of this paper are to identify the areas of interventions for CSR activities and examine the rationale behind the CSR activities in Mauritius. It aims to analyse the relation between business and poverty reduction and also the successes and failures of CSR initiatives and how the programmes are delivering to the company's business objectives. In short, how is CSR redefining development?

Both primary and secondary data have been collected for this study. Qualitative methods of data collection were privileged to address complex issues such as the relationship between CSR and development. In‐depth interviews were carried out and seen as an appropriate research technique in order to explore and capture the perspectives of the stakeholders, namely private sector and the NGOs on CSR. Secondary sources in the form of company publications, annual reports, press cuttings, web sites of companies and survey reports were consulted.

Although CSR initiatives go quite a long way back in Mauritius, it is still believed that CSR is not embedded in its corporate culture. However, in some cases, CSR is merely being used as window‐dressing, for the gallery as a sideshow since it is a trendy issue and that everyone is doing it alongside with the wide media coverage. For CSR to become the national development tool, it is important that coordinated and concerted efforts be undertaken at the private sector level, in the civil society and at government level in achieving equitable, inclusive and sustainable development.

This work contributes to the scarce literature on CSR in Mauritius as well as in the African continent, investigating the relationship between CSR and development in the Mauritian context. It also provides an extensive and critical literature review on CSR and CSR activities in Mauritius.