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Financial analysts act as crucial conduits of information between firms and stakeholders. However, comparatively little is known about how these information intermediaries evaluate the believability and importance of corporate disclosures. We argue that a firm’s level of managerial discretion, or latitude of executive action, acts as a cue for financial analysts, which helps them interpret and respond to voluntary management earnings forecasts. Our study provides strong, robust evidence that financial analysts find management forecasts significantly less believable in low-discretion than in high-discretion environments, and therefore tend to be much less responsive to these forecasts. We also show that managerial discretion is especially impactful on analysts’ responses in those circumstances where analysts are typically most uncertain about how to interpret management forecasts.

This paper provides empirical support for the introduction of cash flow disclosure regulation issued by Australasian accounting bodies, AASB and NZICA (formerly NZSA), between 1987 and 1992.

The empirical analysis uses a long window event study format on a panel of 5,368 firm‐year observations between 1996 and 2005.

The cash flow disclosures required in the regulation are associated with significant abnormal return responses. These effects are robust to the inclusion of other factors linked to abnormal returns such as movements in profitability, size and leverage. We also find support for the proposition that the cash flow effects are conditioned on the quality of the firm, as proxied by q. The market is better and more easily informed with the information required under the revised reporting regime.

The analysis would have been improved with better access to pre‐reform period data.

There is no other study on Australasian markets which looks at the value impacts of cash flow information in relation to this regulatory change. Such a study has also never been done on New Zealand companies.

Purpose – Investor activism is the attempt by a dissident shareholder to alter firm behavior by filing a shareholder resolution with the firm. Faced with a shareholder resolution, management can either oppose it or attempt to negotiate a settlement. This study examines the factors that would cause a firm to adopt a compromise position with a dissent investor.

Methodology – A logistic regression is run in which the result of the shareholder resolution (whether or not a compromise has been researched) is a function of the topic of the resolution, the proposer of the resolution, and the firm’s history of compromising on previous shareholder resolutions. The model is tested using a sample of 762 shareholder resolutions filed in Canada over an eleven-year period from 2000 to 2010.

Results – The results indicate that compromise is more likely to occur when the shareholder resolution addresses an environmental or social responsibility issue, and when the dissident shareholder is an investment or mutual fund.

Practical implications – Institutional and mutual funds control the financial resources necessary for the firm’s survival. As such, firms are more likely to compromise when these powerful investors put forward shareholder resolutions. Furthermore, firms are more likely to compromise when the resolution does not address the core activities of the firm.

Originality – This study examines the factors that encourage Canadian firms to adopt a compromising strategy when confronted by dissident shareholders.

The purpose of this paper is to study filer identities and voting outcomes of Canadian shareholder proposals and their impact on shareholders' wealth during the period from 2001 to 2008.

In total, 762 Canadian shareholder proposals and related information on targeted firms were collected from the Shareholder Association for Research and Education (SHARE) and the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) databases. Statistical analyses are carried out on the features of shareholder proposals. Regression analyses are performed on voting outcomes, and an event study is conducted to test the impact of shareholder proposals on stock prices.

The authors' analyses show that proposals submitted by institutions or coordinated shareholder groups receive stronger support than those submitted by individuals and religious groups. Targeted firms are more willing and more likely to reach agreements with institutional investors, which in turn prompts activists to withdraw their proposals. The voting behavior of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP) has a significant impact on voting outcomes. The targeted firms' stock prices respond substantially to news on proposals submitted by institutional and coordinated investors and proposals on social and environmental issues.

In addition to in‐depth analyses (issues, filers, voting outcomes, and impacts on stock price) of Canadian shareholder proposals, this paper explores the voting behaviour and impact of a large institutional shareholder that has been passive in filing shareholder proposals. Special attention is paid to Canadian features of shareholder activism, and differences between Canadian and US shareholder proposals are highlighted and discussed. The paper thus extends shareholder activism studies from focusing on open shareholder activists to investigating passive institutional shareholders.

This chapter presents the case study of Origin Green, the Irish food industry’s national program that committed the entire supply chain to meet sustainability targets and simultaneously branded the efforts and outcomes to increase demand for Irish food products. The brand creation is discussed under headings of building predictability, creating innovative capacity, and facilitating an intimate relationship.

The chapter describes supply chain risk mitigation, brand development, and the relationship between the two, proposing that they should be regarded as simultaneous rather than separate processes. This is followed by the case history of Origin Green.

The literatures on risk mitigation and brand equity development are extended by suggesting that the development of each should be regarded as simultaneous rather than consecutive activities.

The chapter outlines a program for national branding and sustainability and an insight on risk mitigation and branding that should be of interest to policymakers designing such programs and senior leaders considering involvement.

This chapter will be useful to policymakers considering national or industry-wide initiatives. Further, the chapter demonstrates the opportunity and challenges of systemic approaches to sustainability. The opportunity to brand nations and systems and the need to simultaneously build supply chain and brand for such is an original insight that is of value to strategy and planning. Similarly, at firm level, removing risk from the supply chain and building a brand would be of value.

This paper aims to outline the process of supporting frontline inpatient mental health staff in developing ways of coping with COVID-19.

A whole system approach was used in formulating and developing support structures with particular focus on relationship-focused coping.

Interventions were developed to support staff in coping with problem-focused (e.g. systemic changes) and emotion-focused challenges (e.g. deaths of colleagues). These included psychoeducation, mindfulness-based meditation and rituals to mark the deaths of colleagues. Staff SPACE (Stopping to Process and Consider Events) sessions were used to support staff in managing the many emotions they were experiencing. Positive psychology-based interventions were used to keep morale up and help people to stay motivated. The process of seeking feedback and making changes was introduced to support staff in feeling heard and having a voice. The maternal or master intervention within each of the above was the relational component.

This work aimed to boost the emotional and psychological literacy of the system. This will be important in the aftermath of the pandemic and could have many benefits thereafter.

The post-COVID-19 health-care workforce will experience significant challenges in terms of readjustment and recovery. It is important that appropriate measures are put in place to ameliorate this.

An innovative systemic formulation of the impact of COVID-19 on frontline staff, and a coordinated way of dealing with this, is outlined.

This systematic literature review analyses the determinants and consequences of executive compensation-related shareholder activism and say-on-pay (SOP) votes. The review covers 71 empirical articles published between January 1995 and September 2017. The studies are reviewed within an empirical research framework that separates the reasons for shareholder activism and SOP voting dissent as input factor on the one hand and the consequences of shareholder pressure as output factor on the other. This procedure identifies the five most important groups of factors in the literature: the level and structure of executive compensation, firm characteristics, corporate governance mechanisms, shareholder structure and stakeholders. Of these, executive compensation and firm characteristics are the most frequently examined. Further examination reveals that the key assumptions of neoclassical principal agent theory for both managers and shareholders are not always consistent with recent empirical evidence. First, behavioral aspects (such as the perception of fairness) influence compensation activism and SOP votes. Second, non-financial interests significantly moderate shareholder activism. Insofar, we recommend integrating behavioral and non-financial aspects into the existing research. The implications are analyzed, and new directions for further research are discussed by proposing 19 different research questions.

In this concluding chapter, the editors reflect on the value-added contributions of the papers in this volume toward a better understanding of global leadership effectiveness. After highlighting some of those contributions, the editors then discuss relevant directions for future research in global leadership effectiveness and organize their discussion around (1) antecedents, (2) conditions, and (3) dimensions of global leadership effectiveness. They conclude by listing some of the paramount research questions they believe should be addressed for the field to move forward in mapping the dimensions and dynamics of global leadership effectiveness.

This study aims to examine the influence of audit committee existence and internal audit function on the earnings management of companies.

This paper uses generalised least squares regression to investigate the influence of audit committee existence, internal audit function and the interaction of these two mechanisms on earnings management for a sample of 86 industrial companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange over a four-year period from 2007 to 2010. The paper uses the extent of discretionary accruals as the proxy for earnings management.

This paper finds that audit committee existence and the internal audit function reduce the level of earnings management. The number of meetings between the audit committee and internal audit function also reduces discretionary accruals. Overall, this study finds that audit committee existence and internal audit function decrease earnings management and improve the financial reporting quality.

The main contribution of this study is that it investigates the combined effects of audit committee existence and internal auditors on earnings management. Furthermore, this study is the initial paper to examine the impact of audit committee and internal audit on earnings management in Jordan.

This chapter investigated how pre-existing ideas (i.e., prototypes and antiprototypes) and what the eyes fixate on (i.e., eye fixations) influence followers' identification with leaders from another race. A sample of 55 Southeast Asian female participants assessed their ideal leader in terms of prototypes and antiprototype and then viewed a 27-second video of an engaging Caucasian female leader as their eye fixations were tracked. Participants evaluated the videoed leader using the Identity Leadership Inventory, in terms of four leader identities (i.e., prototypicality, advancement, entrepreneurship, and impresarioship). A series of multiregression models identified participants' age as a negative predictor for all the leader identities. At the same time, the antiprototype of masculinity, the prototypes of sensitivity and dynamism, and the duration of fixations on the right eye predicted at least one leader identity. Such findings build on aspects of intercultural communication relating to the evaluation of global leaders.