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This paper aims to investigate the joint effect of product market competition (PMC) and institutional environment on accrual quality.

The sample covers a large data set of 52,138 firm-year observations from 35 countries over the period of 2011-2015. Using the weighted least square regression, the study estimates PMC and institutional environment on accrual quality. The study measures PMC based on Herfindahl-Hirschman index, anti-director rights index (ADRI) based on the revised and updated La Porta et al.'s (1998) and accrual quality using the modified Dechow and Dichev (2002) model proposed by McNichols (2002). The study also uses a series of specification tests using alternative measures for each variable.

The study finds that highly intensified PMC relates to a lower quality of accruals. The results also show that accrual quality is better in countries with stronger institutional environment, specifically countries with higher ADRI, investor protection, judicial independence, protection of minority shareholders’ interests, protection of property rights, strength of the auditing and reporting standards, efficacy of corporate boards and corporate ethics. The findings suggest that institutional factors weaken the negative impact of PMC intensity on accrual quality, hence suggesting that institutional environment has a significant role to enhance accrual quality among firms in highly intensified industries.

The findings provide additional insights to policymakers and regulators on the importance of strong institutional and industry environment that can provide incentives and extra governance mechanisms besides the conventional firm-level corporate governance.

This study contributes in understanding the impact of intensity of PMC on accrual quality internationally and subsequently highlights the role of institutional environment as significant country-level governance in determining financial reporting quality, particularly accrual quality.

Since the turn of the 21st century, various institutions of higher education have been established in the Gulf Cooperation Council region, several of which are branches of universities from North America, Europe, Australia, and other regions. Quality education is currently a required component in the models of collaboration between Universities; yet the literature suggests that challenges remain in how the quality education will be practiced in a region that lacked for long time private universities. In this paper, we present an exploratory investigation to determine what could be learned by studying the practicalities of collaboration and accreditation of a newly established institution in Oman, namely, Dhofar University. The case study focuses on the practicalities of DU’s external collaboration, national accreditation, and good practices University-wide and within the College of Engineering in particular. The paper aims to present and analyze challenges, good practices, faculty and staff experiences, and solutions that could be a useful pattern for similar institutions. The investigation builds on an internal University-wide self-study and an external review by an accreditation council.

The study aims to fill a gap in the literature on the economic impact of industrial and international diversification on firm performance in the energy sector. Li et al. (2016) investigate firms listed in China, and this study analyzes firms listed in (Western) Europe.

A sample of 129 energy firms is extracted from Datastream and covers the period from January 2009 to December 2015. Univariate and multivariate regression analyses are used to determine a plausible relation of diversification on corporate performance. Also, the difference between renewable energy firms and conventional energy firms is explored.

A univariate analysis using both return on assets and Tobin's Q as a variable shows that renewable energy firms have a higher profitability than conventional energy firms. However, a multivariate analysis does not confirm this result. The authors also document a negative relation between diversification strategies and firm performance.

The study uses main industry codes. Yet, one might make a distinction between renewable energy and conventional energy amounts with corporations. Also, the authors cover financial crisis years. Researchers might take into account more recent years.

The findings of the study highlight the importance of short-term and long-term considerations for practitioners related to demand, the energy mix, oil prices and firm strategies.

The authors contribute to the debate and the literature when identifying similarities and differences between conventional energy firms and renewable energy firms in their application of diversification strategies and their (relation to) firm performance.

Considering corporate governance (CG hereinafter) practices' variety across Anglo-American and European countries, this study relies on contingency and complexity theories to investigate the effect of environmental sustainability performance (ESP hereinafter) on shareholder value under various configurations of board of directors (BoD hereinafter), firm and country characteristics.

The author used the Thomson Reuters Environment Pillar Score (ASSET4) and the Total Shareholder Return to assess ESP and shareholder value respectively. The author applied a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA hereinafter) to an unbalanced panel of 2,284 observations from 486 European and Anglo-American non-financial listed firms over the period 2016–2020.

The author found a positive association between ESP and shareholder value and he displayed notable differences between Anglo-American and European economies regarding causal predictors of this positive association. Within European firms operating under civil law code where investor protection is low and family ownership is widespread, ESP creates shareholder value under configurations of causal predictors that significantly differ from those of their Anglo-American peers. The author's findings are robust to different identification strategies.

This study assists researchers, practitioners, shareholders and policymakers the significant roles that BoD diversity, organisational and institutional traits are jointly playing as determinants of the ESP-shareholder value relationship.

The author's study offers a more encompassing, complete and theoretically richer picture of the key drivers and outcomes of ESP.

Purpose – This chapter discusses the role that indices of corporate governance have had in comparative corporate governance research.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The authors begin with a short discussion of what corporate governance is and its main debates. Then, the authors review the main indices (which are also summarized in Table 1), highlighting their strengths and limitations as well as describing some of the findings that emanate from them. Then, the authors discuss the methodological and conceptual assumptions of corporate governance indices that may compromise their construct validity. The authors conclude with some encouraging suggestions for key methodological and research design issues to take into account in future comparative corporate governance.

Findings – Many methodological issues in the measuring and analysis of (comparative) corporate governance remain to be solved. First, although corporate governance practices have a direct effect on some of the firms’ strategic decisions, they may only have an indirect effect on firm performance. Second, it is possible that, after all, causality goes the other way around, i.e., the firm performance explains the adoption of certain governance practices. Third, there are also important challenges in measuring firm financial performance as well as measuring and comparing corporate governance effectiveness between firms from different governance settings.

Originality/Value – This is one of the first chapter to give an overview of the most current corporate governance indices, both academic and commercial, to discuss their underlying assumptions and limitations, and, finally, to provide specific directions for future research regarding comparative corporate governance.

Kerala is one of India's most advanced states in human development and other social indices. This study aims to look at the management education scenario in Kerala from a macro-perspective and examines the existing trends, major issues and present challenges facing the sector.

The study is driven by previously unexplored secondary data published by India's apex technical education regulator–All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). Qualitative and quantitative assessments are assimilated from the organization, dissection and categorization of unit-level data.

Business schools (B-schools) in the state are facing acute distress in enrolments. There are intra-regional variations in institution count and occupancy rates. The vast majority of the institutions have no accreditation at all. The entire sector is facing a protracted decline.

The study has relied primarily on descriptive statistics considering a single discipline within the higher education sector in Kerala. Future studies should look at other disciplines (engineering, medicine) simultaneously. Use of statistical methods like panel data regression would be beneficial to find hidden trends in cross-sectional and longitudinal time-series data.

Management education in Kerala is facing an existential crisis. This has implications for the state's economic development. The paper creates strong imperatives for government policymaking to forestall the complete decline of the sector.

A highly literate state with advanced human development indices need not be a suitable location for building a knowledge-based economy. Government policy has strong implications for the development and sustenance of higher education. The relationship between government and business schools are symbiotic.

The paper maps the progression of B-schools from local to global. A typology of privately funded B-schools is proposed. The conceptual framework advanced in this study can contribute to further literature development. The suggested policy initiatives are applicable not only to Kerala but also to other tightly regulated markets.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether socio-economic factors influence portfolio composition of individual investors investing in stocks for the first time and how these factors relate to stock portfolio performance.

The study uses cross-sectional time-series analysis to examine a unique and detailed data set of Swedish stockholdings.

The results show that first-time investors do not hold diversified portfolios. They experience high market risk and, on average, underperform more experienced investors. Males have higher unsystematic risk in their portfolios than females and older investors have more diversified portfolios compared to younger investors.

The results show that individual investors should improve their insights by incorporating risk when investing in stocks.

Given the results of this paper, the movement from defined benefit to defined contribution pension schemes in many countries raises the issue of the need to better understand and monitor the risks in stock portfolios.

This study provides insights into whether socio-economic factors influence portfolio composition, the extent to which socio-economic factors and portfolio characteristics relate to portfolio returns, and whether portfolio performance between first-time and more experienced investors differs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the contours of the police code of silence, a critical component of the ability to control misconduct and enhance integrity within any police agency. Unlike the extant research, dominated by single-country studies, this paper provides an in-depth exploration of the code across five countries and tests the relation between the code of science and societal characteristics.

A police integrity survey was used to measure the contours of the code of silence among police officers in Australia (n=856), Croatia (n=966), South Africa (n=871), South Korea (n=379) and the USA (n=664). The respondents evaluated 11 hypothetical scenarios describing various forms of police misconduct.

Bivariate analyses reveal considerable divergence in the code of silence across the five countries. Multivariate models of the code of silence show that, next to organizational factors (i.e. the respondents’ assessment of peers’ willingness to report, evaluations of misconduct seriousness and expected discipline) and individual factors (i.e. supervisory status), societal factors (i.e. the Corruption Perceptions Index score and the percent of irreligious citizens) are significant predictors of the respondents’ willingness to report.

While the same questionnaire was used in all five countries, the nature of the data collection differed somewhat across the countries (e.g. online survey vs paper-and-pencil survey), as did the nature of the samples (e.g. representative sample vs convenience sample).

Perceived peer pressure, measured as the perceptions of whether other police officers would adhere to the code of silence, is the key variable explaining the police officers’ expressed willingness to adhere to the code of silence. Changing the police officers’ perceptions of peer culture and potentially changing the peer culture itself should be critical elements in the toolbox of any administrator willing to curtail the code of silence.

Whereas the study of the code of silence has started several decades ago, no prior study has tested the effects of organizational and societal variables on the code of silence in a comparative perspective.

This paper aims to examine the association between sustainable development goals (SDGs) at the micro level and firms’ inclination to sustainability reporting and assurance (SRA).

The authors use global data from 44 countries in the 2016–2021 period and perform the probit and logistic models in testing the hypotheses.

The results show that socially responsible firms adopting SDGs are more likely to issue sustainability reports and obtain assurance statements. The authors find that the link between firms’ compliance with SDGs and SRA is stronger for firms domiciled in stakeholder-oriented countries.

SRA issues are gaining the attention of regulators, investors, businesses and academics worldwide. Results pertaining to the relationship between SDGs and SRA are robust to alternative measures and several sensitivity tests and, thus, provide policy, practice and research implications.