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Recent accounting literature claims that private firms’ heterogeneity influences the quality of earnings. Along with certain drivers of heterogeneity, private firms get involved in specific programs aimed at fostering their access to capital, competencies and networks (CCN programs). Such programs can enhance private firms’ exposure to stakeholders that demand higher reporting quality, affecting their financial reporting choices. Therefore, this study investigated whether membership in CCN programs affects private firms’ earnings quality.

Focusing on the ELITE program, an international platform that since 2012 aims to support the growth of the most promising SMEs, and employing different econometric specifications facing endogeneity concerns, this paper carries out a quantitative empirical analysis to test the effect of CCN programs on private firms’ earnings quality.

Employing different earnings quality measures, empirical evidence reveals that firms belonging to CCN programs experienced an improvement in their earnings quality.

Even though endogeneity concerns have been addressed, we are nevertheless aware that they might, at least partially, have affected our results.

Although the contributions of the study are mostly academic, the empirical evidence obtained also carries practical implications. CCN programs not only act, as one might assume, as catalysts for economic and dimensional growth but also contribute to better earnings quality, mitigating the information asymmetries between firms and their stakeholders.

By adding new evidence to the literature concerning the impact of private firms’ heterogeneity on earnings quality, this is the first study to analyze the impact of specific programs aimed at supporting the affiliated SMEs to foster their access to capital, competencies and networks.

Along with the national government's expectation transformation, administrative system reform, economic transition, social demand structure's upgrading and population change, these negative effects are turning increasingly obvious and thus become huge powers that push the reform of traditional elite sports development mode forward. Against this background, in order to make this reform better adapted to China's reality and future development, the chapter suggests that Chinese traditional elite sports development mode should shift its driving forces of development from single to multiple, change its administrative system from government-oriented to society-oriented, develop its training concepts from instrumentalism to humanism, improve its construction of development from unbalanced to balanced and alter its effectiveness of development from extensive to intensive so as to achieve sustainable development.

This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.

This study explores the motives and objectives of sports sponsorship in China, taking into account the sports, social and cultural contexts. It also adopts a comparative approach to examine the sponsorship of elite and grassroots sports events in China.

This study adopts a qualitative approach, employing semi-structured interviews with representatives of nine companies sponsoring elite and/or grassroots sports events in Western China. The data were analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis.

In China, sponsors are frequently driven to sponsor elite sport events by a sense of obligation and responsibility to the country, whereas their motives to sponsor grassroots sport events is primarily influenced by sincerity and goodwill. Chinese companies consider brand awareness, exposure and the relationship with the government and authorities as key factors for sponsorship, and use sponsorship to achieve market-related objectives.

Companies’ sponsorship motives and objectives have received significant attention in the literature, but mainly in Western countries. In the context of China, this study identifies how sponsors utilize social networks to shape their motives and objectives. It also reveals certain patterns common with the current literature, as well as specificities such as how the roles of the government and authorities are linked to the contingent economic and social context of the country. Furthermore, the differences between elite and grassroots sports events sponsorship are explained.

This paper seeks to understand how a new elite, known as the cork aristocracy, emerged in the Bordeaux wine field, France, between 1850 and 1929 as wine merchants replaced aristocrats. Classic class and status perspectives, and their distinctive social closure dynamics, are mobilized to illuminate the individual and organizational transformations that affected elite wineries grouped in an emerging classification of the Bordeaux best wines. We build on a wealth of archives and historical ethnography techniques to surface complex status and organizational dynamics that reveal how financiers and industrialists intermediated this transition and how organizations are deeply interwoven into social change.

This article discusses the methodological implications of a recent study on Luxembourg's offshore financial center. Insight from actor-network theory was essential in undertaking its ethnographic research with elites from the country's state and financial institutions. My intention in documenting this approach is to provide a template for ethnographers studying other localized contexts of global politico-economic significance, in which elite actors usually seek to curtail the enquiries of investigators. With this actor-network from Luxembourg as an example, I demonstrate how elite and difficult-to-access milieus can be entered via “networking” coupled with outreach via interviews and email correspondence. As I show, by initiating various modalities of entry into the context in question, ethnographers can establish themselves within an actor-network for the purposes of conducting interviews and participant observation with elite interlocutors.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the position of religion for the three constitutions of Egypt.

In this study, by tracing religious identity-related studies and seeing whether their existence is attributed to the ruling elites’ attitudes, it examines how factors such as new elites and new in ideology affect change of articles of religion.

The results demonstrate that the most significant factor was the existence of a new elite having a different ideology, which was obvious in the three constitutions: 1971, 2012 and 2014.

The manner in which studies of religion are written is the basis for legislation and the source of public policies that affect the discourse of political systems or results in economic and social rights that affect public policies. Therefore, if people are engaged in the process of drafting identity articles, they would participate in the reformation of their traditions and systems and there would be more integration in the society.

Few studies have attempted to work on the sociology of constitutions and religion in the Egyptian context.

Historically, most CEOs were promoted from within the organization. The internal candidates offer continuity, are well known to the Board, and have deep institutional knowledge. However, if the Board is seeking changes to the firm’s strategy, operations, or culture, they turn to outside candidates with proven track records. Shareholders react positively to the announcement of an external successor but the longer-term evidence on the performance front is mixed. Most empirical studies have tended to focus on a narrow aspect of the hiring choice, whereas we undertake a more holistic examination involving various elements.

We consider the salience of the CEO hiring choice from several perspectives: educational background, gender, compensation, and firm performance. We use a propensity score matching approach to ensure comparability between internally promoted and externally hired CEOs. The observed covariates for the matching algorithm include firm size, CEO tenure, and industry sector.

We find that external CEOs are significantly more likely to have received their undergraduate degree from an elite institution, majored in a STEM discipline, and earned an MBA credential. They earn higher total compensation (with a higher proportion of equity-linked performance pay) but do not outperform in terms of the ROA or Tobin’s Q metrics. Gender does not appear to play a distinguishing role in the internal versus external hiring choice. We also do not detect significant differences in firm performance outcomes associated with educational pedigree, a STEM education, or an MBA credential, whether the CEO is internally promoted or hired externally.

Our paper contributes by providing novel evidence on the impact of educational background on external CEO hiring decisions. Our findings carry implications for testing hypotheses stemming from signaling theory and exploring the significant role of social networks associated with elite educational institutions. Also, the finding that externally appointed CEOs do not outperform their internally promoted counterparts may be noteworthy for corporate boards' hiring committees, especially when reviewing candidates who are edge cases.

The aim of this paper is to shed more light on the foreign direct investment (FDI) - income inequality nexus in the post-communist EU countries. Special attention is paid to the emergence of a new meritocratic elite related to foreign capital that tends to replace the old elite inherited from the transition period at the top end of the income distribution.

The macroeconomic model of the relationship between income inequality and FDI is estimated by using the generalized method of moments (GMM) technique. The sample includes 10 post-communist EU member states during the period 1993 to 2020.

The results suggest that the concentration of the highest level of human capital in foreign-owned enterprises, in the institutional environment under which foreign-owned enterprises are less numerous and pay a higher wage than domestic ones, contributes to the change of the effect of FDI and human capital on income distribution from an initial decrease to a later increase in income inequality.

This paper adds to the existing literature by exploring the distributive impacts of sectoral reallocation of FDI inflows from manufacturing to service sectors from the perspective of heterodox economics. It specifically examines how this shift has facilitated the emergence of a new meritocratic elite associated with foreign capital, which in turn diminishes the overall anti-inequality effect of FDI in the post-communist new EU countries.

The article aims to identify the main mechanisms for promoting more Kazakhstani women participation in the legislative authorities based on a study of the competition of political parties in 2023.

Utilizing the structural-biographical method, the article investigates the ways of increasing women’s participation in the political life of Kazakhstan. This empirical study comprises a total of 18 biographies of women deputies / candidates on party lists who were elected to the legislative body. Content analysis was also conducted to investigate the pre-election programs of the political parties.

This study has identified that political party is the main resource for promoting gender equality and involving women in the decision-making process. All 18 women deputies of the Mazhilis, the lower house of parliament, are members of political parties. The findings show that women candidates without party affiliation were unable to get into representative body. The results of the election campaign of 2023 provided evidence for determining the gender order in the Kazakhstani political space. The party has become an effective channel for promoting women participations in the parliament of the country. By comparison, in single-mandate constituencies no woman was able to pass to the elected body.

This study contributes to the literature of gender equality and women’s political participation in Kazakhstan and may be relevant for other countries. It also has practical significance and policy implications for the government and political parties.