Search results

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the Wirecard scandal has highlighted the need for further reforms in Germany and Europe, exposing institutional and market oversight weaknesses, particularly in terms of market integrity and investor protection.

To provide a comprehensive picture of the situation, this paper is based only on relevant studies, which focus on the topic of interest, namely, the context of the Wirecard collapse in June 2020. It also examines how internal and external governance and monitoring mechanisms failed to uncover major fraud within the German payments group earlier.

This study shows that this is by no means an isolated or unpredictable incident, and the allegations of accounting fraud had been known for several years, thanks to warnings from the Financial Times. In addition, the paper reviews the serious shortcomings revealed in the Wambach report. The report provided private details of the Wirecard audit and documents on the relationship between Wirecard management and the auditor. All of this can serve as a reference point for institutional and market oversight architecture in Germany and Europe and pave the way for future research.

The paper contributes to the literature by highlighting the implications of the Wirecard scandal and the lessons that can be learned from what was one of Germany’s biggest corporate scandals especially at a time when many are already affected by the impact of COVID-19 on the entire financial services industry.

This study aims to investigate cases of fraudulent financial statements that have occurred in Indonesia and explore the similarities of cases that existed in the period before and after the establishment of the Financial Services Authority.

This paper provides a descriptive examination of financial misstatements issued by different regimes by listed companies of the capital market and financial institution supervisory agency and the introduction of new financial service authority; among 93 listed companies that were subject to an official investigation arising from the publication of financial misstatements, these assessments were facilitated by mean of content analysis of annual reports following the announcement of an investigation.

The findings indicate that each regime has a specific pattern of financial statement fraud. It is found that senior management is responsible for most fraud, and recording a fictitious sale is the most common method of falsifying financial statements. Under the new regime, the publication of cases is limited since the introduction of risk-based supervision. Financial Services Authority is likely to fine and prosecute the director of a company as a perpetrator rather than a corporation as a legal entity.

This study contributes to the literature on the incidence of financial statement fraud in public companies and provides a detailed descriptive comparison of cases scrutinized by securities exchange commission in an emerging country.

Forced labour is one of the most exploitative practices in supply chains, generating serious human right abuses. The authors seek to understand how relationships for reducing forced labour are influenced by institutional logics. The emerging supply chain efforts of social enterprises offer particularly intriguing approaches, as their social mission can spur creative new approaches and reshape widely adopted management practices.

The authors study supplier relationships in the smartphone industry and compare the evolving practices of two cases: the first, a growing novel social enterprise; and the second, a high-profile commercial firm that has adopted a progressive role in combating forced labour.

The underlying institutional logic influenced each firm's willingness to act beyond its direct suppliers and to collaborate in flexible ways that create systematic change. Moreover, while both focal firms had clear, well-documented procedures related to forced labour, the integration, rather than decoupling, of forced labour and general supply chain policies provided a more effective way to reduce the risks of forced labour in social enterprises.

As authors’ comparative case study approach may lack generalizability, future research is needed to broadly test their propositions.

The paper identifies preconditions in terms of institutional logics to successfully reduce the risk of forced labour in supply chains.

This paper discusses how social enterprises can provide a learning laboratory that enables commercial firms to identify options for supplier relationship improvement.

This study aims to use institutional and upper echelons theories to comprehensively investigate the intricate interplay between TMT legal expertise and firms' adaptive strategies in legal contexts, notably within emerging economies. It explores how upper echelons experiences shape opportunistic compliance strategies, impacting value and risk perceptions. Drawing on upper echelons theory, the research probes how TMT legal expertise molds firms’ involvement in significant lawsuits, accounting for influential roles. It scrutinizes TMT’s impact on legal strategies, positing that managerial discretion emerges from environmental factors, organizational attributes and executive traits. The study underscores TMT’s internal incentives and external factors’ interplay, molding strategic legal engagement.

To validate this framework, statistical analysis is performed on data from 2,584 Chinese-listed firms. The data set spans 2010–2015, with 5,713 material lawsuits. Chosen due to reliable institutional-level incentives data from the China Market Index Database, years 2016–2019 are excluded for methodological disparities. Moreover, 2007–2009 is omitted to mitigate the potential financial crisis impact. This study’s 11,272 observations ensure robust empirical exploration, offering insights into the interplay of TMT legal expertise, institutional factors and firms’ legal strategies.

The study reveals that firms led by executives with legal expertise are more prone to engage in significant lawsuits, indicating strategic use of legal skills. TMT age moderates this, with older teams less likely to engage. TMT tenure’s effect remains unclear due to tenure-risk preference complexity. Institutional factors matter; less legally mature regions reduce managers’ legal risk intention. Results confirm hypotheses and highlight executive human capital’s impact on firms’ legal strategies.

This study acknowledges contributions while highlighting limitations, including the need for detailed distinctions in lawsuit roles and exploration of heterogeneous TMT power dynamics. Further research is proposed for nuanced power dynamics and comprehensive TMT legal background data. The study advances upper echelons theory by introducing TMT legal expertise as a factor influencing strategic lawsuit behavior. It challenges institutional theory by showing the adaptable legal context, beyond fixed constraints. Moderating factors – group risk attitude and external knowledge – deepen understanding of upper echelons’ impact. Enhanced data collection is encouraged to address limitations and refine findings.

This study’s implications extend to managerial practices. Firms should acknowledge the dynamic legal system, using TMT legal expertise for strategic legal challenges. Executives should pragmatically approach regulations. While legal professionals enhance compliance, caution is needed in selecting TMT members with legal expertise due to the risk of misusing it for unnecessary litigation, potentially misaligned with financial performance goals.

This study combines institutional and upper echelons theories to explore TMT legal expertise’s impact on firms’ adaptive strategies in emerging economies. It challenges the idea of a universally constraining legal environment and highlights how TMT legal expertise enhances firms’ management of complex legal risks. The research introduces TMT legal expertise as an influencing factor in strategic lawsuits, revealing nuanced relationships between legal contexts and strategic decisions. The findings enrich upper echelons theory, challenge conventional institutional views and identify moderating factors that deepen the understanding of upper echelons’ influence in legal landscapes.

By inspecting the special connection between negligence and the causes of negligence, this study evaluates the reasonableness of negligence offenses elements from the perspectives of “modes” and “rules.” This study considers that in the core concept of negligent manslaughter in the Criminal Code of Taiwan, “business” comprises an outstretched legal element; thus, “application by analogy” or “customary laws” should be prohibited as a legal basis or when applying the criminal code because those are not allowed under nulla poena sine lege. Nulla poena sine lege must be respected to release construction professionals from material risks in their judicial rights and interests.

This study used data mining analysis with a database of 204 cases where construction professionals were involved in an accusation of gross negligence manslaughter (GNM) (N = 486) between 1995 and 2021 to explore the reasons and distribution of these cases in the construction industry in Taiwan.

The results showed that the main reasons behind lawful GNM accusations against construction professionals are as follows: (1) the violation of employers' duty of care to prevent hazards caused in workplaces where falling and collapsing are concerns during construction, thus resulting in death; (2) gross negligence during design, construction and supervision, causing damages after natural disasters such as earthquakes and typhoons.

This study discusses the whole life circle of construction, starting from planning, design, construction and completion. However, the involvement of other offenses such as providing false statements, forgery, embezzlement, unjust enrichment and fraudulent tax evasion or criminal responsibilities stipulated in the Building Act or administrative punishments are beyond the scope of this study. Future studies will focus on foreign “business GNM” cases from judicial precedents with similar backgrounds to Taiwan in the construction industry to verify whether similar conclusions can be drawn and to examine their differences.

This study applied data mining and data analysis to the data and explored potential causality and patterns of GNM cases in judicial cases. The results of the analyses can be used as evidence for potential causality and thus facilitate construction professionals' self-reflection and contribute to the sustainable development of working environments for construction.

This study agrees with the removal of GNM titled “business” in the Criminal Code of Taiwan to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the building industry. By doing so, national judicial and management systems will be in line with international standards, ensuring that everyone has equal access to justice.

Goal 16 of the SDGs by the United Nations aims to promote judicial equality, peace, justice and strong institutions. With this basis, this study collected and analyzed data in the field of criminal law and applied the theory of criminal offenses committed by negligence to real construction-related cases. This study especially discusses whether construction professionals were imposed with excessive responsibilities when a court enforced the “duty of care” that asked the professionals to bear the responsibility of results for events that should be and could be foreseen.

The purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between personal mastery orientation and employee creativity through internalized extrinsic motivation (identified regulation) and intrinsic motivation while testing job complexity as a boundary condition.

The authors tested this study model using a cross-sectional design with a sample of (N = 361). The study population was software developers from across different cities of Pakistan. Respondents were asked to rate themselves on creative behavior. Partial least square structural equation (PLS-SEM) and PROCESS macro were used for data analysis.

The results of the study confirm that personal mastery orientation positively affects employee creativity. Furthermore, both identified regulation and intrinsic motivation mediate the relationship between personal mastery and employee creativity. Job complexity was shown to moderate the direct relationship between personal mastery, identified regulation and intrinsic motivation such that for higher job complexity levels, the relationship between personal mastery and both types of motivation (identified and intrinsic) becomes stronger. The authors confirm that the indirect relationship between personal mastery and employee creativity through identified regulation was contingent upon job complexity level. In comparison, the indirect relationship between personal mastery and employee creativity through intrinsic motivation is not contingent upon the level of job complexity.

There are a few limitations to the authors' study. The current study is based on a cross-sectional design; therefore, this is of limited causal value. The authors suggest the studies examining similar relations to this study model use a longitudinal design. The incumbent of the job reports creative behavior; therefore, this is susceptible to common method bias (CMB). A peer-reported or supervisor-reported creative behavior should be used to eliminate the CMB in future studies.

The authors' study provides valuable input in identifying the complex mechanism through which creative behavior is induced involving individual personality disposition, job attributes and various types of motivations. In this study, the authors tried to reveal the mechanism through which personal mastery orientation predicts creative behavior. In the authors' endeavor of testing the motivational paths through which personal mastery orientation predicts creative behavior, the authors confirmed the efficacy of autonomous-complex motivation based on the self-determination framework. The authors' findings add to the evidence of the importance of intrinsic motivation in inducing creative behavior and recommend that the researcher should not ignore intrinsic motivation when exploring the effectiveness of extrinsic motivation.

The study's findings strengthen the argument of the continuum-like structure of the motivation types under self-determination theory(SDT). The authors argued that intrinsic motivation is a relatively stable type of motivation when creative behavior is involved and is not contingent upon the job attributes. These findings add to the evidence that intrinsic motivation is stable compared to extrinsic motivation. Another important contribution of this study is that the authors identified a boundary condition for the internalized extrinsic motivation when serving as creativity predicting mechanism and ruled the presence of a conditional effect when intrinsic motivation is involved.

This study aims to examine the effects of the entry of foreign direct investments (FDIs) on the audit markets in developing countries (i.e. Egypt). There is a long-standing debate on the impact of FDIs on developing markets, but little is still known about the effect of FDI on national suppliers, such as audit firms.

This paper reports the results of a study that used qualitative research methods. It involves interviews with senior management teams of the Big 4 audit firms, to find out how these firms deal simultaneously with conflicting global and local influences. The interviews were complemented by the publicly available data on the firms’ websites as well as published reports related to the Egyptian economy and current investment regulations.

Drawing on the institutional theory, the findings suggest that an increased litigious environment, compliance with developed markets’ regulations, auditor regulatory sanctions and improved local accounting and auditing standards are highly significant consequences of foreign investment inflows. The findings indicate that more emphasis has been given to the quality of audit and auditors’ independence when auditing FDIs. Both audit regulators and audit firms in the domestic market pay higher attention to improving the quality of financial reports when FDIs have entered the market. More inspections and reviews for audit firms have been conducted, and local auditing and accounting standards have been revised to be in compliance with international standards.

Our results have important implications for investors, regulatory authorities and governments in relation to the development, implementation and enforcement of international financial reporting and auditing standards.

Policymakers and regulators in Egypt have responded to international pressure by revitalizing their local accounting and auditing standards and adopting international financial reporting and auditing standards. The authors identify strategies that have been adopted by audit firms to face the FDIs’ challenges.