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The primary roles of external examiners at the University of Mauritius (UoM) are to assist the university in ensuring that degrees awarded meet international standards, that assessment is valid, and that procedures and arrangements for assessment, examinations, and determination of awards are sound and conducted rigorously, fairly, reliably, and consistently. External examiners come from a wide range of highly reputed institutions across the globe and the UoM has a set of external examining policies that act as a guide to external examiners. At the end of their visit, the external examiners submit their signed reports to the Vice-Chancellor. The reports, which include their concerns, are circulated to all administrators and academic staff for their review and analysis. Analysis of the external examiners’ reports (UoM, 2016–2019) reveal that 28% of the UoM external examiners come from the UK, 39% were from South Africa, and the remaining 33% from Australia, India, and other European countries. Overall, 98% of external examiners have rated the UoM programs as average and above compared to institutions where they had experience of external examining. The contributions of external examiners are highly valued in the continued growth of the new vision of the institution aspiring to be a research-engaged and entrepreneurial institution.

External examining imparts one of the pivotal means for ensuring the monitoring of the guidelines and standards within private autonomous universities and institutes. External examiners are considered independent individuals who can provide unbiased, objective evaluation, and informed comment on the student’s quality of the project as compared to the standards. Hence, the role of the external examiner is vital and has a strong influence on institutional quality assurance. The qualitative research has primarily aimed to study the external examining practices involving a private university in India. Interviews were conducted mainly with the external appointed examiners; however, the internal faculty guides or supervisors were also made to participate in separate interviews. The results were coded following the content analysis framework. The research unraveled Pandora’s box of the system bottlenecks and challenges concerning the expected and actual practices. Limitations, recommendations, and future research implications were discussed.

The main purpose of this paper is to empirically examine how firm-specific (idiosyncratic) and macroeconomic risks affect the external financing decisions of UK manufacturing firms. The paper also explores the effect of both types of risk on firms' debt versus equity choices.

The paper uses a firm-level panel data covering the period 1981-2009 drawn from the Datastream. Multinomial logit and probit models are estimated to quantify the impact of risks on the likelihood of firms' decisions to issue and retire external capital and debt versus equity choices, respectively.

The results suggest that firms considerably take into account both firm-specific and economic risk when making external financing decisions and debt-equity choices. Specifically, the results from multinomial logit regressions indicate that firms are more (less) likely to do external financing when firm-specific (macroeconomic) risk is high. The results of probit model reveal that the propensity to debt versus equity issues substantially declines in uncertain times. However, firms are more likely to pay back their outstanding debt rather than to repurchase existing equity when they face either type of risk. Of the two types of risk, firm-specific risk appears to be more important economically for firms' external financing decisions.

The findings of the paper are equally useful for corporate firms in making value-maximizing financing decisions and authorities in designing effective fiscal and monetary policies to stabilize macroeconomic conditions. Specifically, the findings emphasize on the stability of the overall macroeconomic environment and firms' sales/earnings, which would result stability in firms' capital structure that help smooth firms' investments and production.

Unlike prior empirical studies that mainly focus on examining the impact of risk on target leverage, this paper attempts to examine the influence of firm-specific and macroeconomic risk on firms' external financing decisions and debt-equity choices.

This paper examines three issues. First, do multiple possible paths to high versus low new product performance (NPP) occur among European, high-tech, industrial manufacturing firms? Second, what are the upstream influences on high NPP? For example, what background factors affect the levels of the KSFs? Third, do consistent country-level differences occur among Austrian, German, and Swedish executives in their evaluations of antecedents and high-tech NPP? To probe these issues, a total of 771 chief operating officers and project managers participated in face-to-face long interviews (McCracken, 1988) covering 241 less and 264 more successful than average industrial NPD projects. The empirical findings support the propositions that: (1) multiple paths lead to high versus low NPP; (2) unique antecedent variables affect the KSFs for high NPP; and (3) for several upstream and direct influences, consistent national differences occur among executives’ assessments of NPP. A key implication of the study for NPD executives is to recognize the possibility of alternative paths leading to successful NPD.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of accounting information in new product development (NPD) using Strong Structuration Theory. NPD is a complex social action involving a wide range of different actors and clusters of actors. Strong Structuration Theory allows the authors to take a broad view of this social system in order to develop a complete picture of the clusters of actors involved, to comprehensively examine the relevant structures, both internal and external, and to understand how these are formed, reformed or modified through the actions of agents.

A field study of the manufacturing division of a large group was conducted which explored how managers use accounting information during NPD. Examining how these managers draw upon their conjuncturally specific structures of signification, legitimation and domination, and how these are affected by their external structural conditions and their general dispositional frames of meaning, allowed the authors to develop an in-depth understanding of the managers’ behaviour during NPD.

These findings suggest that the managers’ use of accounting information is determined as much by the subjective nature of the managers themselves as it is by the objective characteristics of the structures with which they interact. By using Stones’ composite research strategy, which encourages the authors to conceive of internal structures as always looking outwards and external structures as always looking inwards, the findings help the authors to understand the “connecting tissue” between the different elements of the quadripartite of structuration which has been lacking in previous research in the area. This understanding of the connecting tissue between structures was facilitated by the micro-analysis of six managers within a given conjuncture. Using the concept of the agent-in-focus as a tool with which to switch lenses from manager to manager acknowledged the web-like interdependencies between different processes of structuration. This allowed an exploration of the relationships between the various agents and structures.

This study contributes to the understanding of Stones’ Strong Structuration Theory at both an ontological and methodological level by operationalising Stones’ model in a case study setting.

The global electronic equipment industry has evolved into one of the most innovative technology-based business sectors to transpire in the last three decades. Much of its success has been attributed to effective supply chain management. The purpose of this paper is to provide an examination of external risk factors associated with the industry’s key suppliers through the creation of Bayesian networks which can be used to benchmark external risks among these suppliers.

The study sample consists of the suppliers to seven of the leading global electronic equipment companies. Bayesian networks are used as a methodology for examining the supplier external risk profiles of the study sample.

The results of this study show that Bayesian networks can be effectively used to assist managers in making decisions regarding current and prospective suppliers with respect to their potential impact on supply chains as illustrated through their corresponding external risk profiles.

A limitation to the use of Bayesian networks for modeling external risk profiles is the proper identification of risk events and risk categories that can impact a supply chain.

The methodology used in this study can be adopted by managers to assist them in making decisions regarding current or prospective suppliers vis-à-vis their corresponding external risk profiles.

As part of a comprehensive supplier risk management program, companies along with their suppliers can develop specific strategies and tactics to minimize the effects of supply chain external risk events.

This paper aims to investigate the differential moderating effects of two types (internal/external) of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the relationship between distributive injustice and organization-directed revenge through the mediating role of negative emotions.

This paper conducts two studies. Study 1 was a vignette study based on a sample of 501 part-time master of business administration students in China aimed at testing the moderating effects of different levels of internal (external) CSR. Study 2 involved a laboratory experiment in which 108 postgraduate students were recruited to scrutinize the contrasting moderating effects of different types of CSR (internal vs external) and test the underlying mechanisms of negative emotions. The latest facial expression analysis technology (FaceReader 5.0 software) was used to detect participants’ emotional state.

Study 1 demonstrates that internal CSR buffers the relationship between distributive injustice and organizational revenge behavior through negative emotions. However, the moderating effect of external CSR is not significant. Study 2 reveals that compared with external CSR, distributive injustice induces fewer negative emotions in the presence of internal CSR and the mediating role of negative emotions detected by the facial expression analysis software is also verified.

The authors hope that the findings of this paper can provide theoretical references for enterprise managers to enhance their employee governance, develop more effective intervention policies and formulate corresponding coping mechanisms to prevent and mitigate workplace revenge behaviors.

First, this paper enriches the literature on the relationship between injustice and organization revenge by introducing CSR as an employee governance tool. Second, this paper reconciles prior inconsistent findings about employee response to CSR in the occurrence of negative events by distinguishing between external and internal CSR and examining the differential moderating effects of two types of CSR. Such distinction is derived from the heterogeneous justice perceptions arising from different CSR actions. In addition, the authors measure participants’ negative emotions through a multi-method approach integrating the latest technology for facial expression analysis and the PANAS scale, which represents a method advancement and provides implications for measuring emotions.

Given the profound impact of social media on civic activism, as demonstrated by the #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo movements, the current study aimed to examine the factors that influence the public to engage in civic activism on social media platforms.

This study used the responses from 4,316 social media users who participated in the 2018 American Trends Survey (Wave 35) conducted by Pew Research Center. The dataset was analyzed using hierarchical regression.

The results suggest that respondents who were younger, female, White and liberal were more likely to participate in activism-related behaviors, such as using hashtags, changing profile pictures and participating in groups with shared interests in political and social issues. Respondents' engagement in online civic activism increased particularly when they had a strong motive for expressing and sharing their opinions. In contrast, external online political efficacy – the belief that social media influences policymaking and decision makers – was not significantly associated with activism engagement on social media.

This study identified key demographic characteristics of social media users who participate in online civic activism. In addition, the findings extend previous lines of inquiry by examining and assessing the impact of external online political efficacy and opinion expression motive. We conclude that individuals engage in civic activism on social media mainly because they find it important to express views on political and social issues and to find others who share these views, as opposed to thinking that social media can be used to exert influence on policy decisions.

Focuses on how brand managers in fast‐moving consumer goods industries view their contacts with the various interfaces, allocate their working time and perceive the significance and quality of these contacts. Based on the product management literature, several hypotheses are proposed and empirically examined using data collected from a sample of 161 product managers, working for 48 companies in five different sectors in Greece. The results show that brand managers working in various sectors differ in the perception of their contacts with the various interfaces.

The purpose of this paper is to examine external auditors' perceptions of the impact of audit committee financial expertise and industry expertise on the mediating role played by the committee in resolving auditor‐client disagreements.

The study is a 2×2 between subjects experimental design, using 61 Malaysian auditors as participants. The authors manipulate audit committee financial expertise and industry expertise at high and low levels.

It is found that external auditors perceive that audit committees play a greater mediating role and use mediating techniques to a greater extent when committee members' financial and industry expertise is high compared to when expertise is lower.

This is the first paper to examine the importance of audit committee expertise on the mediating role of the audit committee. The major contribution of the paper is the finding that auditors believe the audit committee's role as a mediator is strengthened not only by the committee members' accounting and auditing expertise but also by their industry expertise. The paper's findings have implications for practitioners and regulators who are concerned with the role of the audit committee in enhancing the integrity of the financial reporting and audit process.