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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how trustees of small English registered charities understand and own the reporting and accounting requirements with which their charities must comply.

The research described is a multi-pronged qualitative and inductive study of three small Yorkshire charities as they approve their annual accounts. The case studies are based on observations of trustee meetings and interviews with a range of trustees and their independent examiner or auditor. The use of a practice lens focuses on the behaviours of individuals to understand the sense that they make of their charity’s accounts.

Trustees' understanding of their financial statements is limited; they tend to rely on key individuals who have knowledge. Group responsibility creates a shared way of understanding the financial statements. Treasurers and independent examiners simplify information for the trustees even resorting to corner cutting and rule bending. Narrative reporting is given very little attention. Trustees read their financial statements as a report to them not by them; accountability notwithstanding, thus ownership of their financial statements is conferred not intrinsic.

The findings are drawn from three specific case studies and therefore cannot be generalised, but they offer rich qualitative insights into small charities’ accounting and reporting.

This research provides a unique multi-viewpoint analysis of charity practices, and through its use of a practice lens dives deeper into examining trustees’ understanding and behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the limitations and potential bias in securitized residential mortgage data and examine the importance of such data issues for typical studies of residential mortgage-backed security (RMBS) market and the financial crisis.

We use trustee data on mortgage characteristics provided by BlackBox Logic – the BBx data – to study the extent to which undisclosed mortgage characteristics distort the available data and impact risk analysis of RMBS collateral pools.

We illustrate that substantial amounts of loan characteristic data in crucial fields like occupancy, property type, loan purpose and FICO are missing from the trustee data. The frequency of missing values is staggering, ranging from just under 9 per cent for property type to 29 per cent for FICO, up to almost 85 per cent for originator name, all variables used in recent studies. The omissions are correlated to some degree with the securitization sponsor and even more dramatically with the identity of the deal trustee.

Analysis of RMBS collateral should be built not on the entirety of mortgage databases, but on stratified samples and should otherwise control for important sponsor and trustee fixed effects.

The revisions for Regulation AB which require loan-level disclosure should be adopted to standardize mortgage disclosure.

This is the first paper that examines selection bias in loan characteristics relied upon for a wide variety of mortgage market research that has substantially affected policy decisions in the post-crisis era.

This article aims to highlight the gap between the legal responsibilities and the practice of pension fund trustees in Ireland.

The paper relies on primary and secondary data analysis of trustee practice and enforcement cases to highlight the gap between law and practice.

The article finds that there is an inconsistency between legal requirement and practice in the calibre of trustee and trustee training across Irish occupational pension schemes. This has adverse consequences for pension governance and performance.

The findings raise the question as to whether there should be mandatory qualifications for trustees or mandatory standardised trustee training in a prescribed format, with which trustees should comply. It also questions whether there should be a governance code for trustees to ensure a minimum standard or target level of competence and good governance on the part of pension scheme trustees.

There is a distinct lack of emphasis in the literature and in practice on the inconsistency between the extent of the responsibilities which trustees ultimately carry, and the legal exposure this potentially creates for trustees who unduly rely on other trustees or third parties in the trustee decision making process.

Behavioral finance research has almost exclusively investigated the decision making of lay individuals, mostly ignoring more sophisticated institutional investors. The purpose of this paper is to better understand the relatively unexplored field of investment decisions made by pension fund trustees, an important subset of institutional investors, and identify future avenues of further exploration.

This paper starts by setting out the landscape in which pension fund trustees operate and make their decisions, followed by a literature review of the extant behavioral finance research applicable to similar situations.

Despite receiving training and accumulating experience in financial markets, these are limited and sparse; therefore, pension fund trustees are unlikely to be immune from behavioral biases. Trustees make decisions in groups, are heavily reliant on advice and make decisions on behalf of others. Research in those areas has uncovered many inefficiencies. It is still unknown how this specific context can affect the psychological effects on their decisions.

Given how much influence trustees’ decisions have on asset allocation and by extension in financial markets, this is a surprising state of affairs. Research in behavioral finance has had a marked influence on policy in the past and so we anticipate that exploring the decisions made within pension funds may have wide ramifications for the industry.

As far as the authors are aware, no behavioral research has empirically tested pension fund trustees’ decisions to investigate how the combination of group decisions, advice and surrogacy influence their decisions and, ultimately, the sustainability of our pensions.

The purpose of this paper is to outline a method developed for analysis of narrative reporting by charities concerning the carrying out of their aims for public benefit (as required by charity law). It seeks to assess the effectiveness of the method as a means of measuring performance of third sector organisations (TSOs).

The method presented was used for qualitative reviewing and scoring of 1,400 sets of charity reports and accounts from England and Wales on 22 variables, with most variables involving an assessment of narratives on a five-point quality score. Various methods of standardising the scoring between different reviewers and different types of charities are considered.

The method was found to be largely effective in discriminating between charities which had a clear focus on the public benefit requirement and those which did not. However, other factors, such as lack of awareness of the requirements and levels of concern regarding charitable status, appear to have had a substantial impact on reporting practice.

The limitations and uncertainties in converting a qualitative assessment of a narrative into a numerical score are discussed.

The method is likely to be of value for other studies of narrative reporting in financial statements, especially in relation to fulfilment by TSOs of the purposes for which they were established.

The paper contributes both to the understanding of narrative reporting by TSOs and to the development of methodological approaches for such analysis.

Public library management literature and public administration theory have been unduly influenced by economic thinking appropriate to the private sector but a poor fit to the public sector. In this chapter we attempt to explain that public sector interests are different and that decisions about their future should be made on a different basis. Specifically, this chapter addresses the problem of cutback management and compares decisions made by library managers in the Great Depression to those being made in current economic times. Questions are raised about the approach to cutbacks that typify current public management practices, and it is suggested that new models are needed to help public library managers and trustees deal equitably and efficiently with recurring economic fluctuations and the fundamental changes that these periods sometimes produce.

This paper aims to define a set of operating regulations for financial transparency, corporate governance and information disclosure for the entrepreneur that applies to bank to receive financial resources.

Corporate governance, financial transparency and information disclosure are among the most important solutions to attract public trust to financial operations. To reach this goal, a new set of regulations must be designed to solve the problem. In this regard, Rastin Banking regulations can provide a base to obtain a better circulation of information and a higher clarity.

A draft of regulations for financial transparency, corporate governance and information disclosure was compiled, and it is presented here briefly in this paper, which can be used as a basis for codification of the respective law.

As such kinds of regulations are novel, they are required to be discussed first, and after adaptation, adjustment and performing the necessary modifications, the text of the law can be codified.

Banks and companies managers, through granting various concessions to themselves and their own stakeholders, have violated the rights of the shareholders, depositors and other stakeholders. This issue, to a great extent is adjustable by applying the governance methods.

This procedure is a model and can be adopted in other countries, especially in countries that have large ambiguities in their banking and financial operations.

Clearly, lack of transparency in financial operations can gradually weaken the trust of depositors, shareholders and stakeholders, and result in probable abuses and damages to all parties of banking contracts. This paper fulfils an identified need and solves the practical problem in financial abuses, corruption and collusion and can provide positive and important effects toward creating public trust in financial operations.

There has been limited research on why football clubs contribute to charity. This paper examines how football clubs and their charitable conduits report information when discussing their connectedness. In addition, it explores reasons why, and the extent to which, football clubs support altruism via such charitable vehicles.

Case studies of four major football teams (Manchester City/Manchester United in England and AC Milan/Inter Milan in Italy) are discussed, with formal reports of the clubs and their associated charitable conduits being analysed.

Boundaries between the clubs and their charitable conduits are frequently blurred. Evidence suggests that acknowledging the co-existence of different factors may help to understand what is reported by these organisations and address some of the caveats in terms of autonomy and probity of their activities and reporting practices.

The research uses case studies of four major ‘powerhouses’ of the game and their associated charitable spinoffs. While this is innovative and novel, expanding the research to investigate more clubs and their charitable endeavours would allow greater generalisations.

The study provides material that can be used to reflect on the very topical subject of ‘sportswashing’. This has the potential to input to deliberations relating to the future governance of the game.

The paper explores relationships between businesses and charities/nonprofits in a sector so far little investigated from a charitable accountability perspective. It suggests that motives for engaging in charitable activity and highlighting such engagement may extend beyond normal altruism or warm-glow emotions.

This paper explores how INGOs communicate their activities and achievements. In doing so, the study seeks to increase our understanding of INGOs' accountability practices.

This paper uses thematic analysis to analyse 90 ‘leaders’ letters' (the letters that many charities include at the beginning of their Annual Reports and Accounts), published by 39 INGOs between 2015 and 2018.

This paper argues that within the Annual Report letters under consideration, INGOs' accountability practices focus on quantitative, process-driven, output reporting. In doing so, it is the actions and agency of INGOs that are primarily emphasised. INGO constituents are largely excluded from representation. Donors are presented only as contributors of financial capital. Drawing on field theory, the paper argues that this representational practice means INGO constituents are almost irrelevant to INGOs' representational and accountability communication practices.

This paper is indebted to previous important work and, building on such scholarship, seeks to contribute to the ongoing conversation about INGO accountability. While reinforcing some prior knowledge, the findings here also differ in the understanding of how donors are portrayed. The paper extends previous analyses by using field theory to show that the INGO field as considered here is a space in which representations of accountability are based on organisational and transactional factors, and does not value the humanity of INGOs' constituents. This connects to operations of power, between donors, INGOs, and constituents, and reinforces inequitable power within the development system.

This chapter is an exercise in speaking, letting individuals speak for themselves insofar as possible. As Marx famously put it, “they cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.” The “they” were peasants, potato farmers in 1840s France, and by extension peasants, workers, and other lower class groups, not to mention women and minorities who rarely made it into the historical record, and even more rarely in their own words. To give “voice to the voiceless,” as the now old new social historians of the 1960s and 1970s put it, I consciously include here numerous speakers, arranged in two sets of different voices: quotes in the text and endnotes to further document and amplify points. With this plethora of voices, the aim is not to complicate but to speak clearly, listen carefully, and engage respectfully. To multiply the speakers speaking is the single best way to make two primary points concerning what is most important about the Chief Illiniwek mascot controversy: that the sheer number of individuals speaking out is in itself significant, and that this community colloquy all comes down to identity – who we are, individual identity, communal identity.