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This paper aims to examine the capital market effects and predominance of unregulated embedded value (EV) financial reporting in the life insurance industry in foreign domestic markets, and US markets for foreign firms that cross-list in the USA.

Recent empirical archival data are analyzed and evaluated to determine the incremental and relative value relevance of an unregulated valuation metric that is disclosed by life insurers.

The findings support the proposition that EV is valuable supplemental information in foreign domestic markets, and in US markets for foreign life insurers that cross-list in the USA. Given that International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) are engaged in projects to improve accounting standard for insurance companies, and have faced criticism with the existing drafts on this issue, the two institutions ought to consider the valuation relevance of EV disclosures. Moreover, this analysis strongly suggests that financial analysts in the USA should consider EV in valuing life insurers’ stocks.

The findings discussed in this paper are of special interest to financial reporting policy makers, financial analysts, firm compensation committees and managers, and academics.

This paper contributes to the extant literature by providing recent evidence that suggests that EV, an unregulated fair value market-driven metric, is more value-relevant than traditional earnings metrics such as earnings and book value. It is the only study that we are cognizant of that critically examines the recent empirical literature on this evolving issue.

This paper aims to examine the characteristics of firms that voluntary disclose generally accepted accounting principals (GAAP)-compliant statements of income, statement of cash flows (SCF) and balance sheet (BS) concurrently with quarterly earnings releases. Cardinal motivation of the paper stems from the increasing demand over the past decade by professional analysts and the Securities and Exchange Commission for concurrent disclosure of GAAP-compliant financial statements with earnings’ announcements.

Using hand-collected archival data, a random sample was identified as disclosing GAAP-compliant SCF and BS with their quarterly earnings releases compared to a control sample identified as non-GAAP-compliant disclosing firms during the 36-month period of 2009-2011, and several hypotheses are tested to determine managements’ incentives to disclose GAAP-compliant versus non-GAAP financials with their earnings releases.

The results in this paper suggest that debt financing, corporate governance, operating performance, earnings volatility, industry membership (such as technology and more research and development-intensive) and complexity of operations (number of segments) are significant characteristics of firms electing to concurrently disclose GAAP-compliant SCF and BS with earnings releases.

The findings discussed in this paper are of special interest to financial reporting policymakers, financial analysts, firm managers and stakeholders and academics.

The voluntary disclosure literature on quarterly earnings releases is extended by differentiating between GAAP-compliant and non-GAAP-compliant voluntary disclosers. The specific findings of this study may provide valuable input to policymakers as they study prevailing voluntary disclosure rules and practices.

The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform recently released a preliminary report with recommendations on cutting costs in the federal government, and one of its recommendations included the elimination of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, formerly known as the Malcolm Baldrige Nationality Quality Award Program. Established by an act of Congress in 1987, during the Reagan Administration, the goal of the Malcolm Baldrige Nationality Quality Award Program was to stimulate and reward product quality excellence. Since the inception of the award, however, there has been a long‐standing controversy among industry leaders and academics on whether winning this award does enhance future financial performance and ultimately shareholders' wealth. This debate has again been recently fueled by the possible elimination of the program by the US government. This study, aims to shed further light on this subject by examining the academic research on the financial performance of the Baldrige Award winners.

The paper examines academic and professional research on whether the Award adds value to firms and their investors.

The conclusion, perhaps not surprisingly, is somewhat mixed; although there is parsimonious evidence to suggest that Award winners do witness an increase in market value. By and large, the authors feel that when all the benefits of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program are considered and given the short‐term focus of studies in this area, the elimination of the program would be a terrible mistake.

The paper offers an original review and synthesis.

In this article, we discuss the role of the internet in cultural changes and transformation. The traditional view is that inherent cultures affect business operations so corporations must be cognizant of the prevalent cultures in their operating environments. Frequently, failures of multinational corporations in new environments are often blamed on corporate lack of knowledge and understanding of these prevalent cultures. While this may still be true in today’s environment, the influence of technology, particularly the internet in the 21st century, has been so significant that the world may be approaching a “unification of cultures”. Thus, this paper argues that the internet will lead to a global cultural transformation that will enhance global business operations by removing cultural barriers that lead to sub‐optimal business operations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accelerated deadline on foreign firms, and the 20-F filing practices and factors relating to the filing lags.

The authors identified 338 firms that file 20-F reports with the SEC during the period of 2010 and 2011. The authors then used multivariate regressions to examine the effects of the shortened deadline on foreign firms’ filing practices and the factors associated with these practices. In the regression models, the authors also control for other firm characteristics that have shown to affect the filing lags of US firms such as firm performance, size, mergers and restructures, audit firm, compliance with internal control requirements under Sarbanes Oxley Act, internal control weaknesses, going concern audit opinion and operating complexity.

Based on a sample of 338 US-listed foreign firms, the results indicate that there is a significant reduction in the filing lags and a change in their distribution for fiscal year 2011, as compared to the preceding year, and as intended by the SEC. The authors also find that 20-F filing lags are negatively related to the use of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) or US-GAAP in 20-F reports and use of the English language in foreign firms’ home countries.

The findings of this paper are of interest to accounting regulatory bodies including the SEC, US Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board by showing that registrants respond positively to regulations intending to promote timeliness of accounting disclosures and reporting, although many firms may oppose them in the due process stage.

The authors contribute to the extant literature by providing new evidence that 20-F filing lags are negatively related to the use of IFRS or US-GAAP in 20-F reports, and the use of English language in foreign firms’ home countries.

The purpose of this study is to examine the change in audit fees for US‐listed foreign firms in their first year of providing Section 404 auditor attestation reports for fiscal years ending between July 15, 2006 and July 14, 2007.

During the sampling time period, foreign large accelerated filers had to provide both auditor and management Section 404 reports while the foreign accelerated filers only had to provide management Section 404 reports without the auditor attestation reports. Foreign non‐accelerated filers did not have to provide any Section 404 report. This research design and sample allows the authors to control for the general market‐wide increases in audit fees. The paper examines the annual change in audit fees from the preceding year to the first year of Section 404 compliance.

It is found that foreign large accelerated filers have an average increase of 74 percent in audit fees in this first year of Section 404 compliance, while the foreign accelerated filers and non‐accelerated filers only have increases in audit fees of 33 percent and 42 percent, respectively. Since this research design and sample allow the authors to control for the general market‐wide increases in audit fees, the authors are able to conclude that foreign large accelerated filers incurred, on average, a 30 percent increase in audit fees just to comply with Section 404. It is also found that the increase in audit fees among foreign large accelerated filers is negatively associated with the strength of their home countries' legal environment.

Arguably, Section 404 is perhaps the most controversial aspect of Sarbanes‐Oxley Act due to its high audit fees. The results of this study would provide interesting findings to regulators and researchers.

In this chapter, how the occupational stress process changes over the life course and how this may intersect with observed generational differences are examined. This is done by jointly reviewing studies on occupational well-being that adopted the theoretical lens of generational or lifespan developmental perspectives; the two perspectives are closely related and have the potential to better inform one another because both consider chronological age to be a pivotal factor driving individual differences in work values, attitudes and well-being. However, these perspectives have yet to be simultaneously considered in a review of occupational well-being research, leaving scholars wondering whether they overlap, and if so, in which area. It is hoped that juxtaposition of the two disparate bodies of literature can better inform the convergence and divergence of findings on worker well-being scattered across the two literatures. In this chapter, (a) generational differences in job satisfaction, (b) how work characteristics may differentially affect job satisfaction in workers across generations, (c) how work contexts may differentially impact job satisfaction across generations, (d) generational differences in work-family interface, and lastly, (e) recent developments in the field are discussed. Although extant research on the first topic, generational differences in job satisfaction, has shown some consistent evidence, research findings in the subsequent topics remain relatively inconsistent. Based on our review, it is concluded that additional research is needed to expand our understanding of the role of generation and chronological age in workers’ occupational well-being.

The purpose of this research is to describe organization members' attributions for managerial responses to obviously externally caused crises. The authors draw from attribution theory research and the actor-observer bias to argue that organization members' proximity to managerial crisis response is a key determinant of organization members' affective and behavioral outcomes following a crisis.

The authors develop a conceptual dual-process model of attributions that explains why organization members' judgments of managerial responsibility and associated outcomes differ depending on organization members' proximity to crisis response action.

The authors focus on organization members' attributions for the failure of managerial crisis responses to obviously externally caused crisis events. The authors present propositions regarding the impact of organization members' potential biases on their attributions for managerial crisis response. Then, the authors delineate how action proximity can assuage negative outcomes of managerial crisis response failure by encouraging an attitude of understanding and awareness of situational challenges.

The authors diverge from prior applications of attribution theory to crisis management by focusing on organization members' attributions of managerial crisis response failure, rather than attributions for the initial cause of the crisis itself. The authors also extend prior work that primarily focuses on crisis response strategies by instead elaborating on how organization members' attributions operate in the wake of their management's failure to effectively respond to an obviously externally caused crisis.

This chapter focuses on the development of concordance theory with respect to India's civil–military relations and Pakistan's early yet significant state of discordance, which led to subsequent domestic military interventions. On a regional level, discordance is far more prevalent, and India operates in a South Asian environment where domestic military interventions are not uncommon – Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka being clear examples.

Moreover, the influence of China in the region cannot be overlooked, since India's defense policy is often a reaction to the role of China and the presence of conventional and nuclear forces. The proliferation of nuclear weapons, in particular, threatens a delicate balance in a highly volatile region where China exerts enormous influence on neighboring states including Pakistan. An argument can be made that India's domestic concordance between the military, the political elites, and the citizenry contributes to the preservation of regional stability, because India has chosen to maintain its regional strength vis-à-vis China and Pakistan, while continuing to search for a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue with allies such as the United States. India's most recent and ongoing nuclear deal with the United States originally struck in 2005 is an example of the delicate synergies taking place to offset potential threats from China, Pakistan, and Iran, while maintaining domestic military and technological strength.

Although India's successful domestic course encourages partnerships among international political and corporate allies, Pakistan's continuous domestic discordance has resulted in recent difficult relations with the United States, India, and Afghanistan. Pakistan's inability to quell al-Quaeda extremism has contributed to a lack of domestic confidence in General Musharraf's political agenda. Musharraf has continued the discordant political and social relationship begun by his predecessor Ayub Khan. As a result of Khan's initial and dramatic alienation of the East Bengali community, Pakistan's military and political elites have never recovered the domestic credibility needed to partner with other political groups and the citizenry – a credibility so vital to domestic concordance and international foreign policy.I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.– Mahatma Gandhi

Post-apartheid South Africa has some of the highest educational and economic disparities in the world. Taylor Salisbury’s (2016) analysis of the National Income Dynamics Study reveals that South Africa’s unequal distributions of income and wealth by race are likely to worsen over time, with Africans the most disenfranchised by low-quality education and low monthly earnings. What is missing from Salisbury’s discussion is that definitions of quality education are analogous to Western democracy, epistemologies, and curriculum. Township schools where most African children and youth attend do not draw upon African epistemologies, values, and languages to support the development of Africans’ productive capacities. Increasingly, capacities are only considered “productive” if they align with modernity and values of the labor market. In this chapter, I argue that South Africa is schooling inequality through the exclusion of African epistemological traditions and the inclusion of mainly Western liberal principles. The notion of divided (epistemological) space – separate, distinct, and apportioned – is examined from the research data I collected with African (in this case Xhosa) primary and secondary students, teachers, and principals in South Africa’s longest-standing township. The intent is to orient the field of comparative and international education to critically problematize discourse that identifies equality as central to social change but that ignores indigenous constructions of democracy informed by different epistemological traditions. This work builds on the growing argument about the need for comparative educators to learn from indigenous perspectives (Freeman, 2004), indigenous knowledge systems (Kubow, 2007), and different educational traditions for comparative study (Assié-Lumumba, 2017).