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Financial shenanigans are the omissions or actions undertaken with the purpose of misrepresenting an organisation's financial statements. Many examples now exist of such behaviour emerging in the context of a desire to deceive the users of financial reports. In this context, research has illustrated how investors can find themselves impacted by such behaviour, with incorrect decision-making around investment decisions being a major issue. However, auditors' perspectives, of obvious importance in such scenarios, given these individuals' role in attesting to the veracity of financial disclosures, have not been investigated. The aim of this study is to address this gap by seeking the experiences of auditors in the developing nation of Pakistan, an environment in which the significant impact of financial improprieties is well-documented.

Interviews with 50 Pakistani-based auditors were conducted to gather perceptions about the nature and prevalence of financial shenanigans. The questions posed were structured to address issues relating to both the drivers of and methods used to operationalise financial malfeasance.

The views expressed by the participants suggest that this type of malpractice is common, with a variety of forms employed and a level of audacity and shamelessness is striking. The results indicate the absence of the three institutional pillars conventionally associated with motivating organisational attempts to legitimise behaviour and maintain social contracts. When considered alongside recent findings that the audit profession in Pakistan may not always play an effective monitoring role, we argue that the evidence suggests the existence of motivations for legitimising strategies are not yet fully understood.

This contention helps address recent calls for investigation of issues around legitimising tendencies where theoretical understanding is incomplete. A full understanding of the embedded practices will provide capital providers with the opportunity to make more informed decisions regarding their investments in Pakistani firms by highlighting the financial shenanigans involved, including the sheer audacity apparently associated with the observed behaviour.

Earnings management and auditing have not been studied widely in Pakistan despite the abundant and persistent nature of corporate scandals across the nation for many decades. Whilst implementation (and enforcement) of some accounting and auditing standards have taken place recently, the financial collapses continue, and understanding regarding the on-going fraud is urgently needed. The extent and shameless nature of the perceived behaviour are striking, suggesting that those closest to financial reporting in Pakistan see fraudulent financial reporting as being close to, if not yet fully representative of, normal practice.

The bankruptcy of Enron in December 2001 marked the beginning of broad awareness that American corporations had left behind the strategy of expanding through diversification that was the hallmark of the 1950s through the early 1980s. CEOs now made it job one to meet the earnings projections of securities analysts, such that by the year 2000 they were, in record numbers, “restating earnings” – admitting that they had cooked the books. Accounting shenanigans were the tip of the iceberg, and what lay under the water was a new approach to running the corporation to produce numbers that analysts and institutional investors would like. Three groups that stood to benefit from the new strategy spun it to investors as in the interest of all. Managers of hostile takeover firms defined their business as setting firms on the path to performing for shareholders. Institutional investors defined earnings management, rather than acquisitions management, as increasing shareholder value and focused management attention on earnings by popularizing stock options. Securities analysts hawked their own profit projections as the reigning metric of corporate performance, and favored easy-to-analyze single-industry firms through “buy” recommendations. These three groups changed the incentives executives faced, making accounting shenanigans in the pursuit of earnings management widely popular and enriching institutional investors, analysts, and executives in the process. Regulatory changes to end malfeasance have made it marginally more difficult to perform illegal accounting practices, but they have not changed the core corporate strategy that has emerged since the early 1980s. The changes illuminate the rise of groups of business professionals in the power structure, for it was not investors but different groups of business professionals who won the day. The changes illuminate, as well, the role of the social construction of interest in power relations among groups – it was by convincing executives and shareholders that a new corporate strategy was in their own interest, which these business professionals succeeded.

In this chapter, the author explores the principles of responsible management education through the lens of Taoism. This chapter begins by introducing the concepts of knowledge-inquiry and wisdom-inquiry and highlights the differences between the two in the context of management education. The author emphasizes the importance of wisdom-inquiry in management education, arguing that it allows individuals to not only understand and analyze information but also to apply ethical considerations when making decisions. This chapter delves into how to synthesize knowledge and wisdom in education, highlighting the need for a balance between technical skills and ethical awareness in management education. This chapter concludes with an examination of the principles of managing talent by balancing competence and character. The author discusses how to hire for character and train for competence in human resources management and development. This approach involves focusing on developing individuals' character traits, such as integrity, compassion and empathy, in addition to their technical skills. This chapter demonstrates the value of incorporating Taoist principles into management education. When the importance of wisdom-inquiry, balancing competence and character, and developing ethical leaders is emphasized, management education can prepare individuals to navigate the complexities of the modern business landscape while promoting responsible business practices.

The pandemic was unpredictable, causing a crisis in teaching for university professors. In this chapter, the author describes problems that he faced and how he muddled through. The author summarizes his teaching activities, changes made after March 2020, and the outcomes. The intention is to document responses to Covid-19 so that we can better prepare for future shocks.

Two good decisions were made during this crisis: one was to keep things ­practical, the other was to lean heavily on a learning designer who could help me understand better the world of remote teaching and its tools. The author was, however, overly conservative in not having online debates similar to what had before Covid-19.

The flipped classroom model has become appealing, and it will be adopted in the future. Coping with the pandemic forced the author to make videos, but now they can work well in traditional in-person classes. He hopes to use the videos for the more mundane issues and save class time for discussions and active learning projects.

The purpose of this study is threefold: first, to detect trends in financial statement manipulation; second, to measure the level of manipulation and to measure the variation in manipulation between countries; and, third, to identify widely used techniques in financial statements manipulation.

This study uses financial data of listed companies from Asia, namely, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong and China. The study adopts financial ratios, financial forensic tool, dichotomous approach and statistical tools to analyze the data (84,000 observations) over a period of four years from 2010 to 2013.

The results show that 34 per cent of sample companies in selected Asian countries are involved in the manipulation of financial statements; the average level of manipulation (overall manipulation index) is 72 per cent; and there is a significant difference between countries at 5 per cent level. The study also identifies four most commonly used techniques, namely: days’ sales in receivable (DSRI), depreciation (DEPI), assets quality (AQI) and total accruals to total assets (TATA).

Although this study found a significant national difference between countries in terms of practicing manipulation in financial statements, it did not address the issue of why some countries have higher level of manipulation and greater fluctuations in manipulation than others. Further study could be conducted to look for the reasons on these issues.

Investors and other stakeholders are advised to judge the manipulation in financial statements before fixing up for investment. At least they should examine Sales, Accounts Receivable, Depreciation, Value of Fixed Assets and Accruals data before accepting the financial statement in good faith.

The trend of manipulation in financial statements is increasing day by day and that is why it needs to prevent to protect our society from white collar crime. The cost of white collar crime is much higher and key executives are making money at the expense of investors and other stakeholders. This kind of study creates awareness among stakeholders about the manipulation as well as provides techniques to examine the faithfulness of financial statements. Then, managers will not overstate or understate either revenues or expenses easily, as it can damage the goodwill.

This is the first study of its kind addressing measurement of manipulation score, overall manipulation index (OMI) and identification of widely used variables of manipulation in financial statements are new contributions towards existing literature of earnings manipulation.

The challenges confronting the Nigerian construction industry which led to the adoption of supply chain management (SCM) practice were evaluated in this chapter. It was discovered that the Nigerian construction industry is confronted with fragmentation and poor information management. The stakeholders within the Nigerian construction industry proposed the adoption of SCM to overcome the fragmentation and other shenanigans facing the industry. This chapter revealed that construction supply chain (CSC) practices within the Nigerian construction industry focus on waste elimination by adopting the lean concept. The focus on the lean concept could be attributed to the numerous research related to lean or the enormous waste emanating from the Nigerian construction industry. Regardless of the emphasis on lean, the Nigerian CSC is still confronted with fragmentation and heavy waste generation. Thus, this chapter proposed the adoption of principles and technologies driven by the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) is a paradigm shift for the management of CSC in the country. It was discovered in this chapter that Nigerian construction supply stakeholders had not embraced the technologies and principles of the 4IR. The failure to adopt the technologies driven by the 4IR is attributed to the absence of a CSC model that depicts the management of CSC in alignment with the 4IR. This chapter called for developing a SCM model for the Nigerian construction industry in tandem with the principles and technologies of the 4IR.

Corporate crimes in Malaysia are increasing each year. These issues are bothersome to the investors, creditors and the public as a whole because of the huge impact on all of them. Employees lose their jobs, investors do not get optimal return on their investments and creditors are unable to get their payments, and as a result, the public lose their faith on the legislation. The purpose of this study is to analyze the cases charged under Securities Commission and Bank Negara Malaysia.

This study analyzes the cases in Securities Commission and Bank Negara under four criteria which are the corporate profiles, details on crime committed, perpetrators profile and, finally, the offence.

The findings show that top-level management, especially the directors, usually commit such crime and many of them are male.

This study looks into the criteria of the cases charged under both institutions, Securities Commission and Bank Negara, which can be used to create awareness among the organizations in Malaysia.

This chapter focuses on “healthy-sick” organizations. We define them as those organizations that appear to be healthy to the outside world but are sick at their core. We identify and discuss, in detail, singular attributes of healthy-sick organizations and their path to failure. As senior organizational leaders are responsible for creating and maintaining the set of interactions that creates the healthy-sick phenomenon, our elaboration will necessarily focus on these leader(s). We conclude with a set of recommendations to mitigate the probability of organizations falling into the healthy-sick trap.

In an April 2018 webinar, the Freedom to Read Foundation asked the question: Do information consumers have the right to be misinformed? Fake news is nuanced, prolific, sometimes malicious, often automated, and has the added complications of emotion, privacy, and ethics. And unfortunately, fake news and its foundational components of misinformation and disinformation (mis/dis), aren’t quickly fixed by learning a few information literacy strategies or media literacy concepts. People are inclined to believe what they want to believe despite training, awareness of critical thinking, and acknowledgement of widely held “objective facts.” Are they less intelligent or information poor because they choose to exist in their own information worlds and privilege their own confirmation biases?

Individuals have the right to seek, avoid, and use information for themselves as they see fit, regardless of whether or not others deem their information deficient, insufficient, or even false. However, this is a very black and white perspective on a much more complex and nuanced moral issue. Even if it is to their detriment, people ultimately do have the right to be misinformed, choosing the information they will and won’t accept. But information professionals should still be compelled to instruct patrons on the importance of seeking, finding, and using quality information and sources.