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Purpose – This study examines whether or not holding a greater percentage of real assets significantly impacts the risk and risk‐adjusted return of U.S. based multinational companies. Design/methodology/approach – A series of rolling Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS) regression models are used to analyse the relationships among corporate real assets, systematic risk (beta), and risk‐adjusted return. Findings – The results of this study show that U.S. based multinational companies do have lower betas. However, U.S. based multinational companies’ cross border real asset holdings do not affect diversification and do not provide significantly higher risk‐adjusted returns to stockholders. Originality/value – This study builds upon the prior work of Seiler, Chatrath and Webb to consider multinational firms. This had never been done previously.

Given the paucity of good international unsecuritized real estate data and the growing interest in diversifying real estate only and mixed‐asset portfolios beyond national borders, this study introduces an unsecuritized Japanese total return index for office real estate dating back to 1970. Moreover, this study analyses risk and return characteristics and compares them with the risk and return characteristics of US domestic unsecuritized office real estate. The results indicate that first, National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) and the Mitsubishi Trust and Banking Corporation and IKOMA Data Service System Co. Ltd (MTB‐IKOMA) geographic region returns are generally from a normal distribution, although neither is without exception; second, all ten sub‐indices suffer from autocorrelation at two or three lags even after lower‐order effects have been removed; third, returns in Japan are historically higher, although so too are the risks; and most importantly fourth, while returns within Japan and the USA, separately, are highly correlated, correlation between Japan and the USA is quite low. In sum, given the results of this study, it is likely that Japanese unsecuritized real estate could be used to diversify international real estate only, and mixed‐asset portfolios.

The burnout condition of employees – characterized by three interrelated symptoms of emotional exhaustion, reduced personal accomplishment and depersonalization – is a well-known phenomenon in psychology and several applied business disciplines. Following persistent recognition in the practice community, academic recognition of this topic has begun to appear in the accounting literature. Using a measure of burnout developed for boundary-spanning positions, this paper shows that burnout among internal auditors is a serious concern. Results offer evidence that the burnout condition is directly related to several of the important behavioral and attitudinal outcomes in internal accounting practice. In order to provide greater clarity for future research, this study offers a separate treatment of the three dimensions of burnout, two very different organizational commitment constructs and two turnover directions. Implications for the management of human resources in this area are included.

The Albert R. Mann Library at Cornell University has created a working electronic library and has made significant changes in services and staff responsibilities to address users' evolving needs. This article presents an overview of these changes, after discussing the development of electronic libraries at Mann and elsewhere. The increased usage that Mann's collections have received as the electronic library has been developed is also described.