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This paper explains the concepts of underhedging and overhedging in interest rate swaps and demonstrates how overhedged and underhedged swaps might be accounted for under Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 133 (FAS 133) and international Accounting Standard No. 39. To illustrate, we use an interest rate swap with receive‐fixed, pay‐fixed swap leg foreign currency to explain the un derlying differences between overhedging and underhedging on foreign exchange risk. We further clarify that when both legs of an interest rate swap are specified with the same currency as in the situation of FAS 133 ‐ Example 5 beginning in Paragraph 131, accounting for overhedging or underhedging will be no different because there is no foreign exchange overhedging or underhedging risk that impacts swap valuation.

Cooperative purchasing is beginning to receive renewed attention by scholars and practitioners alike in both the private and public sectors. Generally, cooperative purchasing arrangements have been reported to reduce costs, expedite transactions, and increase product knowledge. In the public sector, cooperative purchasing has been reported to reduce political risk, minimize “red-tape,” and, in some cases, avoid all reported social equity goals that are reported to increase costs. In this article, we contend that the lack of conceptual clarity has marred the literature on cooperative public sector purchasing, and as a result public sector purchasers have no theoretical guidelines to help them decide upon this purchasing mechanism. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to use agency theory to analyze, define, and establish a conceptual framework of cooperative public purchasing to help guide academics and practicing public sector purchasing professionals.

Means, medians and SD for available socio‐economic status (SES) black‐white differences are here substituted for those of IQ in a between‐groups model published by the author over a decade ago. The goodness of fit of the SES variables used is compared with that for the earlier IQ data. Even when SES variables are relatively successful this can be viewed as additional evidence of the importance of IQ differences to black‐white differences in delinquency.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between financial decisions and ownership structure by using the control contests on a sample of Italian listed companies.

The analysis adopts a balanced panel data set of 984 firm-year observations for the period of 2002-2013, with estimation using a generalized method of moments.

The results appear to confirm both the hypotheses of the alignment of interests and the entrenchment effect. The entrenchment and alignment effects are not found to be alternatives but rather are found to co-exist. The presence of a coalition of minority shareholders acts as a tool to control agency costs, particularly when the coalition is instrumental in the contestability of corporate control.

These findings suggest that minority shareholders may have a larger impact than previously identified by strategically aligning with other shareholders to form coalitions. This study provides several practical implications. First, dividend payout is not necessarily a good instrument to control and monitor agency costs. This is because the payout can be used to expropriate benefits from the minority shareholders. Second, high ownership concentration does not always reduce agency costs. Third, a non-collusive coalition can be more useful in the monitoring of agency costs than other tools, such as the debt level.

This study shows that there is considerable value to the firm when individual blockholders come together in a contestable environment and become instrumental in making business decisions. The results support the contention that contestability is an excellent deterrent to dampen the expropriation of benefits to minority shareholders. This study also provides evidence that cash holding can be a good substitute for dividends and debt in the effort to limit agency costs.

The empirical support for agency theory explanations for the great variance in CEO pay has been equivocal. Drawing from the performance appraisal literature, we hypothesize that boards of directors incorporate human judgment into the evaluation and reward of CEO performance in order to balance managerial risk with agency costs. We test Baysinger and Hoskisson’s (1990) proposition that insider‐dominated corporate boards rely on subjective performance evaluation to reward the CEO, and we argue that R&D intensity influences this relationship. Using a sample of Fortune firms, findings support our contention that human judgment is important in evaluating and rewarding CEO performance.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze security-market returns relative to the political party of the president, the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, the year of the president’s term, and the state of political gridlock. Contrary to prior studies, which evaluated the influences separately, the authors jointly evaluate these variables.

The analysis supports the notion that security returns are significantly related to shifts in Fed monetary policy, political gridlock, and the year of the presidential term; however, returns are generally invariant to the president’s political party affiliation. Overall, the findings suggest that investors should focus less attention on the party of the president and instead more closely monitor Fed actions.

It appears that political harmony should be welcomed by equity investors, but not debt investors. Finally, regardless of the political outcome, if the past serves as a guide, investors may have to wait until year three of the next presidential term to enjoy the fruits of the current political season.

The academic literature is rich with studies that consider the aforementioned political effects and the influence that monetary policy have on the markets. To date, however, these factors have not been jointly considered when examining returns. This paper considers several dimensions of the political landscape – the party of the president, the presence or absence of political gridlock, and the presidential term cycle effect – in conjunction with Fed monetary policy in examining long-term security returns. By examining the relationship between security returns and both political and monetary conditions, the authors provide robust evidence regarding the relationships.

This paper aims to examine the factors influencing the level of disclosures of sustainability (SR) and integrated report (IR) information in a developing country context, with particular reference to Kenya.

The study uses a panel data set of 419 firm-year observations of listed companies in Kenya covering the period 2010 through 2018. Data are collected from the annual reports and analysed using a generalized estimations equation model.

The results reveal that there is momentum towards newer reporting frameworks in Kenya with substantial IR and SR disclosures in their annual reports. The results also show that level of SR and IR disclosures is influenced by both agency-related factors (board gender diversity, audit committee independence, block ownership and the presence of foreign ownership). Additionally, institutional-related factors (regulatory pressure and promotional efforts of regulatory and professional bodies [reporting excellence awards]) influence the disclosures.

The results highlight that initiatives such as those led by the regulatory and professional bodies in Kenya are effective in motivating companies to enhance disclosures. Thus, regulators and professional bodies might need to continue and even intensify their efforts. These results have implications for further research as they show that SR and IR disclosures are influenced by similar factors.

The study has the potential to contribute to the ongoing initiatives and discussions on the adoption of IR by firms in Africa as spearheaded by the African Integrated Reporting Council.

To the best of the knowledge, the study is, perhaps, the first to examine both SR and IR disclosures at the same study allowing comparison of the extent and drivers of the two disclosures. Moreover, examining the institutional-related factors in a single country has not been done in prior literature, and so this is an innovation.

In this chapter, we assume the following: (1) the root cause of most organizational problems is culture and leadership, (2) executives seldom want to deal with these root causes, (3) because life is uncertain, organizational change is an emergent process, (4) most change processes unfold by reconstructing social reality, (5) the change process is inherently relational, (6) effective change efforts are enhanced by increasing the virtue of the actors, (7) change is embedded in the learning that flows from high-quality relationships, and (8) change agents may have to transcend conventional, economic exchange norms in order to demonstrate integrity and to build trust and openness. Drawing on the field of positive organizational scholarship, we focus on the change agent. We review the literature on self-change and offer several paths for becoming a positive leader.