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This strategy-learning case traces the growth of AlphaTech, a publicly traded company in Brazil that is a management software company. The purpose of this paper is to debate whether or not the firm should give more emphasis to internationalization, given its high market share in Brazil, where further gains may be very expensive and difficult. The case is intended to serve as a vehicle to discuss the internationalization process of a software firm from an emerging economy.

The case was built using several sources of information, including interviews with two executives in charge of the firm's internationalization process, articles in business newspapers and magazines, a book written by the firm co-founders, reports, and information gathered in the internet.

The main issues posed by this case study are: first, the difficulties faced by an emerging market firm to get a sustainable position in international markets; second, the challenges of competing with powerful global multinational corporations (such as SAP and Oracle) in the international marketplace; and third, the need to adapt the firm's international strategy to new threats and opportunities.

The Brazilian context differs from other BRICS, since Brazilian software firms do not have access to low-cost labor and therefore cannot adopt a low price strategy to compete effectively in international markets, but rather need to build unique capabilities to overcome liabilities of foreignness.

This paper aims to examine the association of corporate social responsibility (CSR), family ownership and earnings management.

The authors specifically examine mining companies listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange during 2012-2014. Total observations are 105 firm-years. Research data are collected from sustainability reports, annual reports and annual financial statements. Data are analysed using panel data regression.

The evidence suggests a negative association between corporate social responsibility disclosures (CSRDs) and earnings management. The authors also examine the direct and moderating role of family ownership. The authors find a positive association between family ownership and earnings management. In addition, family ownership strengthens the negative association between CSR and earnings management.

This research only examines mining companies listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange, which limit the generalisation of the results.

The results should useful for: investors wishing to use the level of CSRD as an indicator of firm ethics, especially in relation to family-owned firms; capital-market regulators wishing to improve market transparency by introducing requirements to encourage more CSRD; and other users of financial statements, especially financial analysts to consider ownership structure, specifically family ownership.

Previous studies have mainly focussed on companies in the USA. This paper adds to the body of knowledge regarding whether the positive relationship between family ownership and CSR is also present outside the USA, especially in emerging countries. Further, this study examines the effect of family ownership on the association of CSR and earnings management, which rarely examined in previous studies.

Diversity in the boardroom is a social factor that spurs public debate in academic and practical arenas. In a two-tier governance system, the question lingers on the impact of board of commissioners and board of directors’ diversity on a company’s performance. This study aims to investigate this issue based on a comprehensive set of diversity variables, namely, age, tenure, gender, education level, culture, functional expertise, industry experience, school of origin and “busyness.”

The authors constructed diversity indices for board of directors and board of commissioners and used multiple linear regressions to test the hypotheses using samples of companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange from 2014 to 2018.

Board of director (commissioner) diversity has no significant (a positive) impact on corporate performance. However, the latter does not moderate the relationship between board of director diversity and company performance.

Although the theories of human capital and upper echelons are applied here, the results more likely support a contingency argument, as the effect of diversity may vary by company and period, hence leading to offsetting effects. Thus, the impact of diversity on corporate performance might be better observed through in-depth case studies.

The positive impact of the board of commissioners’ diversity on firm performance might indicate the importance of close monitoring by this board. The results further suggest that appointment decisions of directors and commissioners from diverse backgrounds should be based on criteria other than financial performance.

No study has constructed comprehensive diversity indices of the board of commissioners and directors in a two-tier governance context. The study fills this gap.

This paper aims to demonstrate how consumer clickstream data from a leading hotel search engine can be used to validate two hidden information processing stages – first eliminate alternatives, then choose – proposed by the revered information processing theory of consumer choice.

This study models the two hidden information processing stages as hidden states in a hidden Markov model, estimated on consumer search behavior, product attributes and diversity of alternatives in the consideration set.

First, the stage of information processing can be statistically characterized in terms of consumer search covariates, including trip characteristics, use of search tools and the diversity of the consideration set, operationalized in terms of: number of brands, dispersion of price and dispersion of quality. Second, users are more sensitive to price and quality in the first rather than the second stage, which is closer to purchase.

The results suggest practical implications for how search engine managers can target consumers with appropriate marketing-mix actions, based on which information processing stage consumers might be in.

Most previous studies on validating the information processing theory of consumer choice have used laboratory experiments, subjects and information display boards comprising hypothetical product alternatives and attributes. Only a few studies use observational data. In contrast, this study uniquely uses point-of-purchase clickstream data on actual visitors at a leading hotel search engine and tests the theory based on real products, attributes and diversity of the consideration set.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of financial derivatives usage and country’s tax environment characteristics on the relationship between financial derivatives and tax avoidance.

This study uses a cross-country analysis with the scope of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries which consists of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.

The level of financial derivatives usage positively affects the level of tax avoidance. This finding indicates that financial derivatives can be used as tax avoidance tool. Furthermore, the positive effect of the level of financial derivatives usage on the level of tax avoidance is lower in countries with a competitive tax environment than in countries with an uncompetitive tax environment. This finding indicates that in country with a competitive tax environment, the use of financial derivatives as a tax avoidance tool can be replaced by the tax facilities provided by that country.

This study uses four countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations region and does not test the sample based on the financial derivative types.

Tax authorities need to establish a clear tax regulation in regard to the tax treatment of financial derivatives transactions, e.g. define the definition of financial derivatives for hedging purposes and financial derivatives for speculative purposes; and define specific criteria to separate financial derivatives for hedging purposes from financial derivatives for speculative purposes. It is necessary to determine whether losses arising from derivative transactions are classified as deductible expenses or non-deductible expenses.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is also the first that provide empirical evidence that the relationship between financial derivatives and tax avoidance activities depends on a country’s tax environment.

Our purpose in this chapter is to present a model of coaching used in a preservice elementary teacher preparation program that relies on video as a mentoring tool. We call this tool RCA, or Retrospective Coaching Analysis, and it is based on Goodman’s (1996) work on Retrospective Miscue Analysis. We also provide examples of how cooperating teachers used videos to identify important moments of practice to elicit reflection with their preservice teachers.

We collected video recordings of cooperating teacher/preservice teacher pairs engaging in mentoring conversations using videos of preservice teachers’ practice.

In this chapter, we focus on the cooperating teachers’ choices about when to stop the video to engage in reflection with their preservice teachers. In selecting a focus point for the RCA Event, the CTs chose moments that met some of these four criteria: appreciative, learner-focused, disruptive, and/or generative. We also found the challenges in selecting focus points and in staying with moments of video long enough to generate reflection, which made the model of mentoring challenging to implement.

The analysis of this reflective mentoring tool has led to revisions in our theoretical model of coaching, as described in this chapter. The research suggests the importance of closely examining reflective talk between cooperating teachers and preservice teachers. Our work also illustrates a shift in the use of video in preservice teaching from a video-case based perspectives to reflection embedded in practice.

Our study suggests the importance of selecting moments of practice as the basis for mentoring and coaching, but the research helped us to understand that RCA has affordances and constraints, and therefore, should be a tool for teachers to use flexibly within our theoretical model of Coaching with CARE.

Teacher educators will find the RCA model to be a new way of approaching collaborative work with teachers in the field within a practice-based teacher education program.

THE topics of the Library Association Conference and the election of the Council of the Association naturally absorb a great deal of attention this month. To deal with the second first: there were few novelties in the nominations, and most of the suggested new Councillors are good people; so that a fairly good Council should result. The unique thing, as we imagine, about the Library Association is the number of vice‐presidents, all of whom have Council privileges. These are not elected by the members but by the Council, and by the retiring Council; they occupy a position analagous to aldermen in town councils, and are not amenable to the choice or desires of the members at large. There are enough of them, too, if they care to be active, to dominate the Council. Fortunately, good men are usually elected, but recently there has been a tendency to elect comparatively young men to what are virtually perpetual seats on the Council, simply, if one may judge from the names, because these men occupy certain library positions. It, therefore; is all the more necessary that the electors see that men who really represent the profession get the seats that remain.

This study analyzes earnings management among Brazilian public firms during the 2016 Presidential Impeachment.

The sample comprises, as a treatment group, 721 firm-quarter observations relating to Brazilian listed firms. It also considers a control group of listed firms from Mexico, which were not affected by the exogenous shock analyzed (i.e. the 2016 Presidential Impeachment in Brazil). The firms' quarterly financial data cover the period between 2013 and 2018.

Considering several proxies related to earnings management by accruals, the main findings suggest a negative relationship between the 2016 impeachment event and the level of discretionary accruals, suggesting that Brazilian firms tended to reduce their earnings management levels during the impeachment process. The results are robust whether the control group is considered or not.

This study brings new empirical evidence to the literature on accounting information quality about the role of the economic and political environment in earnings management, especially in weak institution countries characterized by institutional voids and higher levels of corruption.

In this study the authors show how discursive spaces both enable and constrain the inclusion of first-generation refugees. For this purpose the authors analyzed a triptych of narratives from first-generation refugees, employers, and mediators (mediating between organizations and job-seeking refugees). The authors adopted a critical studies approach, paying particular attention to the ways in which meanings are embedded within the normalizing discursive processes. The purpose of this paper is to show the maneuvering capacities of three different groups concerning the inclusion of first-generation refugees.

The data consist of a selected number of narratives from three groups of actors (refugees, mediators and employers) with the ambition of contrasting their discursive positionings. By including multiple positionings in the process, the authors aimed to reveal “the power effects of particular discursive formations,” which Alvesson et al. (2008) refer to as “positioning practices.” To investigate these patterns, the authors used in-depth interviews and employed an interpretive approach with the focus on the narrations of inclusion and exclusion.

The major constraint the authors discovered was that, in spite of the “good will” of all parties involved, the normalizing impact of the dominant discourses on migrants and refugees (discourse of lack) often works against other approaches (added value). This creates contradictory expectations toward refugees, limiting the possibilities of inclusion within organizations. The findings of this research show that diversity and inclusion can only be successful in conjunction with critical reflection that questions the taken-for-granted position of privileged groups as a norm reproduced by dominant societal discourses.

In the light of growing urgency for the inclusion of refugees in the European context, it is crucial to rethink the notions of inclusion and exclusion from a critical perspective. The authors believe that the findings of the study could have implications which goes beyond the particular experiences presented in this study.

The authors conclude that diversity talk and practice which does not include reflection on the normalizing power of discourses of otherness does not have a chance of making a long-term impact on inclusion. Although there is a growing body of literature on this topic within critical organization studies, there has been no attention so far for the position of refugees in organizations which makes this paper both unique and urgent.

This paper draws from more than 25 years of research with aspiring and practicing educational leaders to present six strategies for building a culture of feedback in schools, teams, districts, professional learning opportunities, and other educational settings. These strategies reflect key elements of the authors’ new, developmental approach to feedback. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Through the lens of adult developmental theory, the authors highlight foundational learnings from open-ended survey research with 14 educational leaders about their experiences giving and receiving feedback, and prior qualitative, mixed-method, and longitudinal research with principals, assistant principals, teachers, superintendents, and other educational leaders.

The authors share six developmentally oriented strategies for establishing trust and building conditions for authentic, generative feedback: finding value in mistakes, modeling vulnerability, caring for the (inter)personal, clarifying expectations, sharing developmental ideas, and building an infrastructure for collaboration.

This work has implications for leadership and leadership preparation, especially given contemporary emphases on collaboration and high-stakes evaluations as tools for ongoing improvement, enhancing professional capital, and internal, individual, and system-wide capacity building.

Because a developmental perspective has been noticeably missing from the wider feedback literature and leadership preparation curricula, this work extends and enhances tenets from different fields (e.g. business, developmental psychology, educational leadership and educational leadership preparation), while also addressing urgent calls for educational reform; leadership preparation, development, and practice; and professional capital building.