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The purpose of this paper is to examine how publicly available accounting risk metrics influence the aggressiveness of managers’ discretionary accounting decisions by making those decisions more transparent to the public.

The experiment used a 2 × 3 between-participants design, randomly assigning 122 financial reporting managers among conditions in which we manipulated whether the company was currently beating or missing analysts’ consensus earnings forecast and whether an accounting risk metric was indicative of low risk, high risk or a control. Participants chose whether to manage company earnings by deciding whether to report an amount of discretionary accruals that was consistent with the “best estimate” (i.e. no earnings management) or an amount above or below the best estimate.

Aggressive (income-increasing) earnings management is deterred when managers believe such behavior will cause their firm to be flagged as aggressive (i.e. high risk) by an accounting risk metric. Some managers attempt to “manage” the risk metric into an acceptable range through conservative (income-decreasing) earnings management. These results suggest that by making the aggressiveness of accounting choices more transparent, public risk metrics may reduce one type of earnings management (income-increasing), while simultaneously increasing another (income-decreasing).

The operationalization of the manipulated variables of interest may limit the study’s generalizability.

Users of accounting risk metrics (e.g. investors, auditors, regulators) should be cautious when relying on such risk metrics that may be of limited reliability and usefulness due to managers’ incentives to manipulate their companies’ risk scores by being overly conservative in an effort to prevent being labeled “aggressive”.

By increasing the transparency of the aggressiveness of accounting choices, public risk metrics may reduce one type of earnings management (income-increasing), while simultaneously increasing another (income-decreasing).

This paper demonstrates an approach to address the unique control and security concerns in database environments by using audit modules embedded into application programs. Embedded audit modules (EAM) are sections of code built into application programs that capture information of audit significance on a continuous basis. The implementation of EAMs is presented using INGRESS a relational database management system. An interface which enables the auditor to access audit-related information stored in the database is also presented. The use of EAMs as an audit tool for compliance and substantive testing is discussed. Advantages and disadvantages of employing EAMs in database environments and future directions in this line of research are discussed.

As industrial products are becoming more advanced and complex, the role of supporting services needed to exploit a product's function to an agreeable performance is becoming increasingly important. To achieve the best performance, industrial customers are entering into service contracts with the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) or independent service providers. This, in turn essentially involves service contract negotiation between OEM/service provider and the client. If such contracts are not negotiated carefully, it may lead to conflict and poor system performance. To achieve a win‐win situation for both parties, aspects such as what services to deliver, who is to deliver them, how they are to be delivered and received, and at which performance level, need to be considered in the negotiation process and agreed upon by both the provider and the client. A conceptual framework has been developed for service delivery negotiation process based on review of literature and analysis of results from a survey conducted to study the existing approaches being practiced by the industrial organizations to negotiate a service contract.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of research and development in the measurement of maintenance performance. It considers the problems of various measuring parameters and comments on the lack of structure in and references for the measurement of maintenance performance. The main focus is to determine how value can be created for organizations by measuring maintenance performance, examining such maintenance strategies as condition‐based maintenance, reliability‐centred maintenance, e‐maintenance, etc. In other words, the objectives are to find frameworks or models that can be used to evaluate different maintenance strategies and determine the value of these frameworks for an organization.

A state‐of‐the‐art literature review has been carried out to answer the following two research questions. First, what approaches and techniques are used for maintenance performance measurement (MPM) and which MPM techniques are optimal for evaluating maintenance strategies? Second, in general, how can MPM create value for organizations and, more specifically, which system of measurement is best for which maintenance strategy?

The body of knowledge on maintenance performance is both quantitatively and qualitatively based. Quantitative approaches include economic and technical ratios, value‐based and balanced scorecards, system audits, composite formulations, and statistical and partial maintenance productivity indices. Qualitative approaches include human factors, amongst other aspects. Qualitatively based approaches are adopted because of the inherent limitations of effectively measuring a complex function such as maintenance through quantitative models. Maintenance decision makers often come to the best conclusion using heuristics, backed up by qualitative assessment, supported by quantitative measures. Both maintenance performance perspectives are included in this overview.

A comprehensive review of maintenance performance metrics is offered, aiming to give, in a condensed form, an extensive introduction to MPM and a presentation of the state of the art in this field.

The purpose of this paper is to create a cost model at the general equipment level for industrial maintenance services.

The study is divided into two main sections. In the first phase the idea is to create a framework for a cost model with a literature review. The second, empirical part of the study is based on costing information from interviews and information given by network companies: a pulp mill, a maintenance company and an equipment provider. The maintenance of three different equipment processes is examined in the network through a case study, to get more specific information from real world situations to develop the model.

The findings concern the cost items that should be considered in the model, the structure of the model, and how the general cost model is constructed. During the research the model has been extended, and new cost categories included.

The cost model can be used in various performance measurement and decision‐making situations, such as maintenance service pricing, contract negotiations, outsourcing decisions, and life cycle cost management.

The cost model differs from traditional cost models. Earlier models have focused on the perspective of either the service provider or the customer, but not on both perspectives at the same time. However, in order to achieve a win‐win situation in a business network, open books practice is expected from each member of the network.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how performance of linear assets can be analysed and displayed, considering both the technical asset and the user context, to simplify cognitive tasks of planning and decision making.

Linear, or continuous assets, such as roads, railways, electrical grids and pipelines, are large, geographically spread out technical systems. Linear assets are comprised of system, subsystem and component levels. Thus, asset managers are involved with each level of the linear asset; asset management has strategic, tactical and operational levels. A methodology is developed to link together the technical and organisational levels and to measure asset performance considering their spatial extension. Geographical location and time are used as independent variables.

For performance measurement of linear assets, it is found that the spatial extension is an equally generic dimension as time is for technical assets in general. Furthermore, as linear assets actually are combinations of linear and point assets; separate analysis of these assets is a prerequisite. Asset performance has been studied in a case study in terms failures and cost; the results indicate that the methodology visualise poor, as well as good, performance in an easy to interpret manner. Besides, the results indicate that other parameters related to dependability can be presented in a similar way.

This study highlights the importance of including the spatial or geographical extension of linear assets in infrastructure managers’ performance measurement. It is believed that the methodology can make planning and decision making more effective by pointing out improvement areas in technical assets, in a way that is appealing to both technicians and managers.

As infrastructure managers are improving their analysis and visualisation of performance, the public's interest of following the information increases, which in turn contributes to the connection between infrastructure managers and the public.

The presented methodology and case study analysed performance in function of both the technical and organisational levels, including the spatial component. It is believed that the methodology for analysing and visualising performance of linear assets is distinctive.

The purpose of this study is to identify various issues and challenges associated with development and implementation of a maintenance performance measurement (MPM) system.

An analytical approach is adopted to identify the issues and challenges associated with MPM.

The study finds that for successful implementation of MPM all employees should be involved and all relevant issues need to be considered. Furthermore, the traditional overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) used by the companies is inadequate, as it only measures the internal effectiveness. For measuring the total maintenance effectiveness both internal and external effectiveness should be considered.

What cannot be measured cannot be managed effectively. To manage maintenance process operating managers and asset owners need to measure the contribution of maintenance towards their business goals. This paper discusses issues and challenges associated with MPM system, there by helping the managers to take care of the pitfalls of the MPM system and advocates that managers should focus on measuring the total effectiveness of maintenance process.

The paper presents a concept of total maintenance effectiveness with focus on both internal and external effectiveness, and integration of the hierarchical levels and multi‐criteria maintenance performance indicators of MPM system.

The purpose of this study is to construct a comprehensive Indian corporate governance index in light of the recently introduced Companies Act, 2013, which is further validated by analyzing its impact on the cost of equity of a firm.

Based on the hand-collected data from firms listed on S&P BSE 500 from 2001 to 2016, this index comprises seven equally weighted sub-indices, comprising a total of 43 corporate governance attributes. This index and the sub-indices have further been regressed with the cost of equity of a firm.

The results suggest a negative significant relationship between the overall corporate governance and the cost of equity. The study also suggests that among all the sub-indices, board composition predicts the cost of equity to a greater extent. Other than this, the audit committee sub-index has a negative significant association with the cost of equity. The findings imply that a well-governed firm enjoys ease of access to equity finance from the market.

The corporate governance index is based on the recent regulatory reforms introduced in India. The index, with certain changes suitable to the local context, can be applied to similar emerging economies as well. The causal relationship tested using this method is the first one done in India. This study adds to the domain of corporate governance literature with special focus on the construction of an index for an emerging economy.

Longwall mining is a special mining method with high productivity and smooth operation and the drum shearer is known as the most important component in longwall mines due to its direct role in the coal cutting and production process. Therefore, its reliability is important in keeping the mine production at a desired level. Hence, reliability analysis is essential in identifying and removing existing problems of this machine in order to achieve a better production condition. This paper seeks to learn about the reliability of the shearer machine in order to locate critical subsystems. The improvement of the reliability of the critical subsystems, to enhance the optimum operation of the shearer machine, is the main objective of this research.

A basic methodology was used in this paper for the reliability modeling of the shearer machine. First, failure and performance data from a two‐year period at the Tabas Coal Mine‐Iran was classified and sorted. The tests for validating the assumption of independent and identical distribution (iid) of TBF data are done and the best modeling method for each subsystem was selected among the renewal process, homogeneous Poisson process and non‐homogeneous Poisson process. Finally, the reliability of subsystems and the machine were assessed.

The study revealed that six important subsystems of the shearer machine are; water system, haulage, electrical system, hydraulic system, cutting arms, and cable system. Pareto analysis shows that the 30 percent of failures and stoppages of the shearer were related to the water system and this system is the most critical subsystem of the machine. The failure rate analysis shows that the failure rates of the hydraulic, haulage and electrical systems were decreasing, meanwhile, the failure rates of the water system, cutting arms and cable system were increasing. The reliability of drum shearer reaches the zero value after 100 hours.

This paper, for the first time, defines a practical set of subsystems for the coal shearer based on field data and machine design.