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This study addresses the debate regarding employee discretion and neo-normative forms of control within interactive service work. Discretion is central to core and long-standing debates within the sociology of work and organizations such as skill, control and job quality. Yet, despite this, the concept of discretion remains underdeveloped. We contend that changes in the nature of work, specifically in the context of interactive service work, require us to revisit classical theorizations of discretion. The paper elaborates the concept of value discretion; defined as the scope for employees to interpret the meaning of the espoused values of their organization. We illustrate how value discretion provides a foundational basis for further forms of task discretion within a customized service call-centre. The study explores the link between neo-normative forms of control and the labour process by elaborating the concept of value discretion to provide new insights into the relationship between managerial control and employee agency within contemporary service labour processes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine cross-cultural differences in managerial discretion and the extent to which variations and interaction of cultural practices and values affect the degree of freedom in decision making that is accorded to executives. This paper offers a holistic approach to investigating culture in addition to acknowledging its paradoxical nature.

Using a panel of prominent management consultants to rate discretion across 18 countries, the authors further develop the national-level construct of managerial discretion by empirically investigating the influence of cultural practices and values on CEOs’ discretion.

The study reveals that cultural values moderate the relationship between cultural practices and managerial discretion for three cultural dimensions: individualism, uncertainty tolerance and power distance (PD). By adopting the logic of marginal utility, the authors also show that the more a society values individualism, uncertainty tolerance and PD, the weaker the effect of their practices on managerial discretion.

Few research has attempted to assess both cultural values and practices in relation to managerial discretion. By showing the mechanism in which culture affects the level of managerial discretion, the authors offer new theoretical insights and practical implications, overall contributing to the field of cross-cultural and strategic management. Finally, this will offer CEO’s a new perspective of leveraging culture as a tool, enhancing their decision-making capabilities in the aim of improving organizational performance.

This paper aims to test the effects that different compensation policies have on managerial discretion with regard to stock options.

Hand-collected data from Securities and Exchange Commission registration statements are used to analyze the effects of chief executive officer (CEO) compensation policies on managerial discretion used in valuing stock options.

This paper provides evidence that during the height of the initial public offering (IPO) bubble, CEO pay was associated with the undervaluation of stock options by IPO firms. The discretion varies with the relative mix of cash vs stock-based compensation. Firms with higher cash compensation tend to undervalue the unobservable market price of pre-IPO shares, leading to lower option values and a lower likelihood of reporting in-the-money options. Firms with greater stock-based compensation understate stock volatility, resulting in lower measures of the time-value component of options.

The results provide evidence that firms attempted to disguise the true value of CEO pay when making IPOs. By disguising the value of options granted to the CEO, outsiders were not aware of the actual cost incurred and the true value of the company.

This paper is the first to document that IPO firms understate the non-observable market price of pre-IPO shares to manipulate the value of stock options. It also documents the effect of discretion in estimates of volatility on stock options and the link between this discretion and CEO compensation.

Previous studies repeatedly claim that social media challenge and even disrupt organizational boundaries conditioning discretionary work. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how police officers, drawing on institutionalized value logics, actively shape their awareness of how to use social media with discretion.

Drawing on semi-structured interviews with police officers from Sweden, the analysis explores similarities and variations in how they assess their discretionary awareness of how to manage social media potentials across different police practices. Supporting documents have been analyzed to put interviews into context.

The analysis shows how police officers justify their awareness of how to manage two social media potentials providing communicative efficiency and networking opportunities, by applying two justificatory modalities of momentary reconciliation. Contributing to previous research, findings show how these modalities accommodate tensions between different value logics urging officers to engage in situated problem solving or moderation of the intensity in different connections. By drawing on discretionary awareness about enduring value tensions, police officers maintain legitimate claims on social media discretion. The study also complements previous research depicting digital communication and discretion as mutually exclusive. Findings suggest that web-based digitalization like social media raises new demands of awareness of a connected discretion.

Previous research rarely analyses officers’ awareness of how to manage idiosyncratic social media challenges. By introducing the concept discretionary awareness, this study illuminates how arrangements of institutionalized value logics guide police officers in applying “good judgment” in day-to-day use of social media.

The theory of managerial discretion and the direct insights it provides in the understanding of the varying impact strategic and operational actions have on organizational change and business fortunes is an area of research potential underexplored in the UK. This study aims to establish whether the measurement of managerial discretion is constant between the two similar societal corporate frameworks of the UK and the USA listed markets.

The extant managerial discretion ranking model, established in the USA, is empirically assessed for its validity and effectiveness across a sample of high- and low-discretion companies from the FTSE 350.

Using accounting measures, a clear and significant difference is established between UK high and low managerial discretion entities. The results prove to be significant in enabling the differential comparative analysis of the institutional characteristics of corporates.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study of this nature has been conducted previously in the UK context. While the original model developed in the USA is now several decades old, the UK results reflect similar industry rankings as found originally in the USA, subject to some differences considered to be a result of the changing nature of global business since the 1990s. This study opens a new seam of novel research, which has the potential to uncover, at a granular level, the differential mores and character of management ethics, styles and practices in such issues as organizational change, corporate culture, governance and social responsibility.

The purpose of this paper is to draw from regulatory focus theory, to examine the effects of the “gain/no gain” nature of stock options and retirement pay on the decision to engage in cross-border acquisitions. The moderating effects of managerial discretion arising from the external industry context and internal organizational leadership structure are also examined.

The authors employ random effects negative binomial regression analysis with a longitudinal (2006–2016) data set of US public companies operating in four industries with differing levels of industry discretion: the oil and gas, paper and packaging, aerospace and defense, and telecommunications.

The findings indicate that both CEO in-the-money stock options and retirement pay are positively related to cross-border acquisition activity. The results also demonstrate that managerial discretion, arising from the firm’s external industry context, accentuates the positive relationship between both the value of CEO in-the-money stock options and retirement pay with cross-border acquisition activity.

The findings provide implication for practice as understanding how retirement pay and stock options, both of which make up a substantial portion of overall CEO pay in the USA, motivate cross-border acquisition activity, may improve decisions by executives. The evidence also provides guidance to boards of directors who are charged with the responsibility of creating CEO compensation contracts.

The paper fills important gaps in the existing research on the influence of compensation elements on firm outcomes, by offering a novel explanation for how in-the-money stock options and retirement pay affect CEOs’ motivations to engage in cross-border acquisitions.

The purpose of this paper is to address the concern about the impact of accounting regulatory change pertaining to employee share options (ESOs) on earnings management. Following Australia's adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in 2005, companies are required to recognise the fair value of ESOs as expenses. Due to inherent imprecision in the estimate of ESO's fair value, the regulatory change from disclosure to recognition was widely claimed to potentially give rise to an alternative mechanism to manage earnings. This study provides empirical evidence on whether the regulatory change leads to earnings management problems.

This study uses the regulatory change in accounting for ESOs to provide a direct test of earnings management between disclosed versus recognised regimes for the same sample of firms. The sample consists of Australian firms from S&P/ASX300 for the period from 2003 to 2006.

The results show that, although the accounting regulatory change from disclosure to recognition may provide an alternative earnings management vehicle, there is no evidence of this occurring. There could be several reasons for this finding. First, the statistical tests lack power. Second, there are stricter audit tests on recognised amounts than on disclosed amounts. Third, given the concern of excessive pay and the close scrutiny of compensation, managers may have already understated ESO values in the disclosure regime. Finally, managers have limited time and resources and the effort involved in the adoption of IFRS in 2005 could have restricted the time available to manage earnings via the ESO reporting channel.

This study adds to the limited research on whether a change in accounting regulation for employee share options from disclosure to recognition gives rise to greater scope for earnings management. One reason for the lack of empirical evidence in the research is due to the problem of designing a test. Bernard and Schipper suggest that within‐firm studies have limitations for comparing the effects of recognition versus disclosure when the change is driven by an estimate becoming more reliable. A cross‐sectional study is also problematic due to self‐selection bias if firms can choose between disclosure versus recognition. This study circumvents potential design problems raised by Bernard and Schipper by setting a test using regulatory change which allows the test to be compared directly using the same company.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how chief executive officer values and ethics have been translated into what we now term corporate social responsibility in a stakeholder view of the firm.

To fulfill this purpose, the reflections of early business scholars on top management's impact on corporate social responsibility are examined and linked to more contemporary views.

In response to stakeholder expectations of corporate social responsibility it is the chief executive officer's values and ethics, moderated by managerial discretion, that frame the firm's actions and ethics.

The aspiring executive may evaluate the ethics of industries and firms against his or her own values to identify zones of greatest synergy, while the firm's executive search process can consider including an assessment of the fit of candidates' personal values.

This paper builds on the works of early management scholars to specifically link contemporary corporate social responsibility decision making with executive values.

The purpose of this paper is to understand whether managerial behavior in impairing goodwill arising from M & As has changed after the adoption of IAS/IFRS, searching for evidences of earnings management (EM) practices. Thus, our goal is to provide a response to the following research questions. Are goodwill impairments used by listed firms’ managers to manipulate earnings? If so, what kind of EM practice is mostly used?

In this paper the authors tested the following hypothesis: H1. In the year of the deal’s closure and in the following four years, the management detects impairment of goodwill in difformity with the previous Italian regulations and related accounting practices. Moreover, the authors tried to determine, for each considered firms, potential symptoms of typical DEM practices widely debated in the financial accounting literature (income smoothing, income minimization, income minimization, or big bath accounting).

Our analysis does not prove evidence of certain EM practices, but it highlights very clearly that, after the adoption of IAS/IFRS, managers’ behavior has deeply changed. Moreover, the analysis shows that there is no univocal choice in favor of a specific EM practice and that every firm pursues its own “strategy.”

Considering the importance of the topic from both the perspectives of managerial (with regard to M & As valuation processes) and financial accounting (with regard to intangibles valuation fulfilled by applying the impairment test instead of the amortization), this work aims to provide a multi-dimensional contribution to the current debate.

The purpose of this paper is to encourage accounting regulators to address diversity in practice in the reporting of environmental liabilities. When Canada changed to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in 2011, Canadian regulators asked the IFRS Interpretations Committee to interpret whether the discount rate to value environmental liabilities should be a risk-free discount rate. Old Canadian GAAP, and current US GAAP, allow for a higher discount rate, resulting in commensurately lower liabilities. International regulators refused to address this issue expecting no diversity in practice in Canada.

The focus is on a sample of Canadian oil and gas and mining firms. These domestic industries play a major role internationally and have significant environmental liabilities. The method is empirical archival, tracking firm characteristics and discount rate choice on transition to IFRS.

There is significant diversity in practice. About one-third of the sample firms choose a higher discount rate, avoiding a major increase in environmental liabilities on transition to IFRS. The evidence suggests that these firms have relatively larger environmental liabilities and that the discount rate decision is a strategic choice.

The sample is based on one country and may only be reflecting local anomalies that have no broader implications.

Diversity in practice in accounting for environmental liabilities is not acceptable. Accounting regulators should act to create consistent and comparable reporting practice.

Firms and managers facing larger environmental liabilities can choose to minimize environmental liabilities under IFRS, while it is the general public and society at large that bear the ultimate risk.

The paper pushes forward the debate on whether recognized environmental liabilities should reflect the interests of equity investors, or if other investors and stakeholders should be taken into account.