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Bootstrapping is a practitioner-based term adopted in entrepreneurship to describe the techniques employed in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to minimise the need for external funding by securing resources at little or no cost and applying strategies to effectively use resources. Working capital management (WCM) is a term used in financial management to define a set of practices used to manage business resources, including cash management. This paper explores the overlap and divergence between these two disciplinary distinct concepts.

A dual methodology is employed. First, the usage of the two terms in prior literature is analysed and synthesised. Second, the study uses factor analysis to explore how bootstrapping practices described by owners of 167 established MSMEs relate to the components of WCM in financial management.

The factor analysis identifies two main bootstrapping practices employed by MSMEs: (1) delaying payments and owner-related bootstrapping and (2) customer-related bootstrapping. Delaying payments is an integral practice in trade payables management and customer-related bootstrapping includes practices that are integral to trade receivables management. Therefore, links between bootstrapping practices and WCM practices are firmly established.

The study is not without limitations. Based on cross-sectional evidence for established firms in Ireland only, future studies could explore cross-country longitudinal panel data to fully examine life cycle and sectoral effects, as well as other external shocks (for example, COVID-19) on bootstrapping and WCM practices. This study does not explain why some factors (for example, joint utilisation and inventory management) are present in some bootstrapping studies and not in others; further case study research might help explain this. Finally, changes in the business environment facing start-ups and established enterprise, including increased digitalisation, online trading, self-employment, remote hub working and sustainability, offer new avenues for bootstrapping research.

This is the first study to comprehensively explore the conceptual and empirical links between bootstrapping and WCM. This study will enable researchers and practitioners in these two distinct disciplines to learn from each other. Accounting researchers and practitioners can broaden their understanding of how WCM “works” in MSME settings. Similarly, entrepreneurship researchers and practitioners can deepen their understanding of how bootstrapping can be adopted by businesses to manage resources effectively.

This paper aims to contribute to the debate over the desirability of introducing an accrual-based accounting system in the public sector by examining whether accrual-based accounting information is superior to cash-based information in the context of public sector entities.

This paper applies a quantitative research method to assess the degree of smoothness and relevance of the accrual components of income recorded by 302 entities of the Italian National Health Service (INHS) over the period 2014–2020.

The analysis reveals that net income is smoother than cash flows as a summary measure of economic results and that accounting for accruals improves the predictability of future cash flows. However, the authors' novel disaggregation of accrual accounts reveals that those accounts that contribute the most to making income smoother than cash flows – noncurrent assets and liabilities – are also those that contribute the least to predicting future cash flows.

The disaggregation of accrual accounts allows to identify the sources of the informational benefits of accrual accounting, and to document the existence of an informational “trade-off” between smoothness and relevance in the context of public sector entities.

This paper aims to investigate the possible non-linear effect of net working capital (NWC) level on profitability for Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region listed companies. Furthermore, the study tests the possible interactive effect of cash levels on the relationship between NWC and profitability.

NWC level is the independent variable and profitability is the dependent variable using two proxies, return on assets (ROA) and returns on equity (ROE). Control variables are size, leverage, gross domestic product growth and sales revenue growth. The generalized method of moments was used to analyze the data of 134 consumer-goods listed firms in 12 MENA countries for the period 2013–2019.

The results demonstrate that NWC levels had a non-linear effect on profitability using ROA as a profitability proxy while results were insignificant using ROE as a profitability proxy. Furthermore, results show the absence of interactive effects between NWC, cash levels and both profitability proxies.

The study fills a gap in the working capital management (WCM) literature by providing new evidence on WCM’s non-linear effect of corporate performance in the MENA region emerging markets using the consumer-goods industry sample. The study contributes to the financial managers’ working capital optimization efforts in the MENA region by providing evidence on the usefulness of WC optimization efforts in the region from a financial performance point of view. According to the researchers’ knowledge, a few studies attempted to investigate this non-linear relationship for neither MENA region countries nor the consumer-goods industry.

The study aims to explain the relationship between accounting and finance through measuring the effect of rational working capital management on profitability.

Employing the methodology of semi-structured interviews with sixteen financial managers.

The findings pointed out the relationship between accounting and finance is complementary, since it supports the accountant by the critical skills and information, like project evaluation, managing the company funding resources and working capital management. These skills put the accountant up to the financial manager stage. The working capital investment and financing policies have the most significant impact on profitability. These policies related to risk and return theory; since the conservative policy will reduce both the risk and return and the aggressive one will have the opposite impact.

It recommends accountants to be in professional stage and increase the profitability of the company to grab both accounting and finance information and skills.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether religion or national culture can explain previously observed cross-country variation in trade credit.

Using the firm-level SME data from 35 European countries, religion and cultural factors of Hofstede and Schwartz, the authors provide new evidence on the determinants of the cross-country variation in trade credit.

The results indicate that religion and national culture are associated with trade credit. The authors find that the levels of trade credit are higher in Catholic countries than in Protestant ones and that peoples’ religiousness has an impact on trade credit only in Catholic countries. The authors also find that Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, such as power distance and uncertainty avoidance, are positively associated with trade credit.

Overall, authors’ findings indicate that religion and national culture are important determinants of trade credit management, and that the association between commonly used cultural values and trade credit depends on the religious, legal, and financial environment.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to research the relationship between national culture and trade credit.

This study aims to comparatively analyze the systematic, idiosyncratic and downside risk exposure of both Islamic and conventional funds in Pakistan to see which of the funds has higher risk exposure.

The study analyzes different types of risks involved in both Islamic and conventional funds for the period from 2009 to 2016 by using different risk measures. For systematic and idiosyncratic risk single factor CAPM and multifactor models such as Fama French three factors model and Carhart four factors model are used. For downside risk analysis different measures such as downside beta, relative beta, value at risk and expected short fall are used.

The study finds that Islamic funds have lower risk exposure (including total, systematic, idiosyncratic and downside risk) compared with their conventional counterparts in most of the sample years, and hence, making them appear more attractive for investment especially for Sharīʿah-compliant investors preferring low risk preferences.

As this study shows, Islamic mutual funds exhibit lower risk exposure than their conventional counterparts so investors with lower risk preferences can invest in these kinds of funds. In this way, this research provides the input to the individual investors (especially Sharīʿah-compliant investors who want to avoid interest based investment) to help them with their investment decisions as they can make a more diversified portfolio by considering Islamic funds as a mean for reducing the risk exposure.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first attempt at world level in looking at the comparative risk analysis of various types of the risks as follows: systematic, idiosyncratic and downside risk, for both Islamic and conventional funds, and thus, provides significant contribution in the literature of mutual funds.

According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, financial statement fraud represents the smallest amount of fraud cases but results in the greatest monetary loss. The researcher previously investigated the characteristics of financial statement fraud and determined the presence of 16 fraud indicators. The purpose of this study is to establish whether investors and other stakeholders can detect and identify financial statement fraud using these characteristics in an analysis of a company’s annual report.

This study analyses a financial statement fraud case, using the same techniques that were previously applied, including horizontal, vertical and ratio analysis. These are preferred because stakeholders have relatively easy access to them.

The findings show several fraud characteristics, with a few additional ones not previously found prevalent. Financial statement fraud thus tends to differ between cases. It is also easier to detect and identify fraud indicators ex post facto.

This study is a practical case showing that financial statement fraud can be detected and identified in the financial statements of companies that commit fraud.

This paper aims to replicate 148 anomalies and to examine whether the performance of the Korean market anomalies is statistically and economically significant. First, the authors observe that only 37.8% anomalies in the universe of the KOSPI and the KOSDAQ and value-weighted portfolios have t-statistics that exceed 1.96. When the authors impose a higher threshold (an absolute value of t-statistics of 2.78), only 27.7% of the 148 anomalies survive. Second, microcaps have large impacts. The results vary significantly depending on whether the sample included stocks in the KOSDAQ and whether value-weighted or equal-weighted portfolios are used. The results suggest that data mining explains large portion of abnormal returns. Any tactical asset allocation strategies based on market anomalies should be applied very cautiously.