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The Fourth Industrial Revolution ( 4th IR) affects the mode of company management. This paper aims to present a revised social responsibility (SR) model as an evaluation tool for corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance for sustainable organizational growth in the era of the 4th IR.

To develop an SR model that can be used well in the era of the 4th IR, the key references are “ISO 26000: Guidance on Social Responsibility” and the “Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines.” For International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 26000 and the GRI guidelines, see the homepages in the References section. On the basis of these guidelines, a new SR model for sustainable development in the 4th IR is developed in this paper.

For a new SR model in the 4th IR, the concepts of management quality (MQ), quality responsibility (QR), creating shared value (CSV), social value and open data and open quality management are incorporated into the existing ISO 26000 evaluation criteria.

The 4th IR is changing the concepts of both quality management (QM) and SR. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the new concept of SR has yet to be discussed extensively. In this paper, a new SR model is suggested to reflect the characteristics of the 4th IR.

First of all, this paper deals with the past and the present situations of quality management (QM) in Korea to show where the Korean industry stands in terms of QM movements. Next, this paper describes what the future desirable directions are for good and sound QM movements.

The desirability function approach to multiple response optimization is a useful technique for the analysis of experiments in which several responses are optimized simultaneously. But the existing methods have some defects, and have to be modified to some extent. This paper proposes a new method to combine the individual desirabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and suggest a reference Kano model.

Existing Kano models have been classified into three types and, for each type, the curves, together with their corresponding evaluation tables, have been studied and a new type of the Kano model developed.

Findings imply that the existing types of the Kano model have weaknesses: starting points of the curves are not located in correct position; the sequence and slopes of the curves are not carefully illustrated; and the cells of Kano evaluation table are not coded correctly. Such problems have been resolved in the proposed Kano model.

Empirical research is needed to examine the proposed type of Kano model, and to investigate the differences between the results of the application of the new and other types of Kano model.

This study provides a valuable reference model for researchers and practitioners, to be utilized in future investigations.

Prior studies generally focus on income smoothing through discretionary accruals and document that managers have incentives to smooth earnings due to various reasons. This paper aims to focus on income smoothing through research and development (R&D) management and examine whether and how income smoothing through R&D management affects credit rating agencies’ perception of firm risk.

The authors use financial statement data from the CRSP/Compustat Merged data set universe for the period from 1992 to 2019 after excluding financial and utility industries. The authors follow the model for credit ratings used in previous literature to test the hypothesis. Specifically, the authors use an ordered probit model to express credit ratings as a function of income smoothing attributes.

The authors find that R&D-based income smoothing improves a firm’s credit rating. However, the positive effect of R&D-based income smoothing on credit ratings is less than that of accruals-based income smoothing. This study also shows that the positive effect of R&D-based income smoothing is more pronounced for firms less subject to opportunistic incentives, further strengthening the notion that managers smooth earnings through R&D management to provide more informative earnings.

This study contributes to the income smoothing literature in several ways. First, the authors contribute to the research by showing that managers’ income smoothing activity through R&D management positively affects firms’ credit rating. Second, the authors also document the relative benefits of the two different income smoothing techniques in terms of improving credit agencies’ perception of firms’ creditworthiness.

This study aims to examine the effect of state-level legal risk on audit fee pricing in the USA. This study hypothesizes that auditors are more likely to charge higher audit fees to clients headquartered in states with higher legal risk in terms of probability of being sued, expected size of damages allocated to the auditors and breadth of third parties able to claim damages.

This study hypothesizes that higher state-level legal risk leads to higher audit fees. To test this, this study estimates ordinary least squares regressions of audit fees for 56,576 company years from 2001 to 2018 with the three measures of state legal risk and other factors known to affect audit fees.

This study finds that state-level legal risk is positively associated with audit fee pricing for two of three measures. Interestingly, the third measure, breadth of third parties able to claim damages, is negatively associated with audit fees.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper fulfills an identified need and is the first study to comprehensively test the association between state-level differentials in legal risk and audit fees.

This paper aims to attempt to perform a test of the operating leverage-financial leverage tradeoff hypothesis that is more methodologically consistent with the logical framing of the hypothesis appearing in the Mandelker and Rhee (1984) paper.

The paper uses a sample of firms from the manufacturing industry to estimate their degree of operating leverage and degree of financial leverage coefficients. The switching regression methodology is then used to perform the empirical test of the tradeoff hypothesis.

The results suggest that firms tradeoff their operating and financial leverage during good economic times, but do not engage in the tradeoff behavior during recessionary times.

This paper refines the empirical testing of the tradeoff hypothesis using the innovative switching regression methodology. The paper also has important implications for the impact of firms’ risk on the capital markets as well as the economy as a whole, and for academic researchers in financial economics examining the relationships between operating and financial leverage and various firm-specific variables.

This paper aims to identify the more accurate method of estimating a firm’s degree of operating leverage (DOL) between two popular DOL estimation techniques: that proposed by Mandelker and Rhee (M&R), and that proposed by O’Brien and Vanderheiden (O&V).

O’Brien and Vanderheiden argue that M&R measure growth in operating earnings relative to the growth in sales rather than DOL. The authors estimate the relative growth estimate, RGE, from the O&V technique (operating earnings growth rate/sales growth rate) and compare this with the DOL estimates from the M&R technique to see if they are similar.

The authors find that the DOL estimates from the M&R method are indistinguishable from the relative growth estimates from the O&V method, providing the first direct evidence that O&V’s critique is correct. The M&R DOL estimates primarily measure the growth in operating earnings relative to the growth in sales, not DOL.

A firm’s DOL is a determinant of its common stock’s systematic risk, which determines a firm’s equity cost of capital. The equity cost of capital is a fundamental part of capital budgeting, capital structure and stock price analysis. Accurately estimating a firm’s DOL is important to researchers and corporate financial managers. Existing diversity in DOL estimation techniques raises questions about the validity of various techniques and limits comparability of existing studies. This paper demonstrates why the O&V technique should be used in place of the M&R method.

The aim of this paper is to present green information technology (GIT) initiatives of leading countries and to suggest strategies for environmental sustainability for the follower countries.

A comprehensive review of greening of IT and greening by IT programs for sustainable growth in leading countries, the growing GIT market, and possible GIT strategies for the follower countries is provided.

Green IT initiatives and practices in leading countries mirror each country's IT infrastructure and governmental efforts for green growth society. Some of the best practices of these countries should be benchmarked by the follower countries that have recently experienced dramatic increases in energy consumption and CO2 emission.

Each country has its own unique political, social, and economic conditions. Thus, a universal set of GIT initiatives is not suggested in this study.

GIT should be a critical national strategy for any country. The findings of this study provide guidance to government and corporate leaders, especially for the developing countries, on how to develop effective GIT programs for sustainable green society.

This study presents a comprehensive discussion of GIT initiatives and practices of leading countries and the exploding GIT market around the world. It also provides new insights for GIT for the follower countries.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated model for manpower forecasting for the information security (IS) industry, one of the fastest growing IT‐related industries. The proposed model incorporates three critical factors (feedback structure, time lags, and a flexible saturation point) in a system dynamics (SD) simulation frame.

A simulation model using SD is developed for a dynamic manpower forecasting by decomposing complex processes of manpower planning into a set of feedback loops with a causal‐loop diagram. Data gathered from a Korean Government agency were utilized in the simulation for forecasting the manpower demand and supply in the context of the IS industry.

The simulation results showed an overall IS manpower shortage in the IS industry. Policy alternatives were proposed based on the simulation results. The simulation model was rerun to reflect the various alternatives to achieve a stable manpower balance between demand and supply.

The research provides insights into the development of effective manpower planning at the industry level (macro level), and policies to increase its efficiency and effectiveness. The research model was developed and verified using SD.