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In recent years, Egypt has been developing rapidly from a socialist to a fully developed market‐based economy. One may expect that this economic transition towards a more capitalist orientation will influence the country’s cultural and socio‐economic environment, and consequently the behaviour of its corporate managers. The increasing separation of ownership and control of capital could be expected to increase agency problems associated with managerial decisions. In these circumstances, it should be interesting to identify whether ‘positive accounting’ hypotheses would apply in such an environment. Therefore, this paper examines the relevance to financial reporting in Egypt of some established positive accounting theory hypotheses in addition to a new hypothesis related to taxation. The evidence of the study is consistent with the validity of the conventional ‘bonus’ and ‘debt’ hypotheses and the new ‘taxation’ hypothesis. These conclusions are also consistent with recent empirical studies of cultural and socio‐economic change in Egypt.

This paper examines the determinants of corporate dividend policy in Jordan. The study uses a firm‐level panel data set of all publicly traded firms on the Amman Stock Exchange between 1989 and 2000. The study develops eight research hypotheses, which are used to represent the main theories of corporate dividends. A general‐to‐specific modeling approach is used to choose between the competing hypotheses. The study examines the determinants of the amount of dividends using Tobit specifications. The results suggest that the proportion of stocks held by insiders and state ownership significantly affect the amount of dividends paid. Size, age, and profitability of the firm seem to be determinant factors of corporate dividend policy in Jordan. The findings provide strong support for the agency costs hypothesis and are broadly consistent with the pecking order hypothesis. The results provide no support for the signaling hypothesis.

Poses the question whether, on an academic level, human resource management (HRM) is a scientific discipline of management. To arrive at an answer, brings together findings of a survey concerning the foundations of HRM then links them by four central hypotheses. The first (rather speculative) hypothesis claims that, in Germany at least, the discussion of HRM problems over the last 30 years has been selective and influenced by different and changing paradigms of HRM. The second hypothesis is that nearly all formulations of HRM concepts have to be embedded in a national context. The third hypothesis states that even given the restricting effect of hypotheses one and two, a theory pitfall exists preventing any theoretical foundation of effective HRM and forcing us to construct intelligent, but untested, HRM hypotheses. The fourth hypothesis links the problems of these untested hypotheses with the problem of ethical norms for HRM in theory and practice. The final judgement is that the high theoretical requirements of HRM as an academic discipline cannot be fulfilled.

The paper uses annual and pooled data on Australian banks for the years 1994 to 1996 to test the two competing hypotheses of market structure and performance; namely, the structure‐conduct‐performance hypothesis (in concentrated markets firms derive higher profits due to collusion) and the efficiency hypothesis (firms derive higher profits because they are efficient). We test these two and other two intervening hypothesis in the context of the Australian banking market. The results reject the efficiency hypothesis and also the two intermediate hypotheses but there is a lack of strong evidence to reject the structure‐conduct‐performance hypothesis. The results are important because such an empirical investigation has not been conducted in Australia to date. The results suggest that it may be hard to defend abolishing the Four‐pillar Policy (which was a major recommendation of Wallis Report 1997) on efficiency grounds.

Two competing hypotheses have been developed in the public economics literature to explain the growth of government spending. The first, termed the fiscal illusion hypothesis, holds that governments have incentives to induce a misperception in the population about the cost of government. By constructing complex systems of taxation that obscure the true cost of government services, governments can lead the taxpayer to demand a larger quantity of services. The other hypothesis, the fiscal stress hypothesis, holds that tax complexity diversifies revenues, leading to less revenue variability and, hence, lower costs. Taxpayers, then, demand more government services. The two hypotheses make very different assumptions about the incentives of governments in regard to an informed electorate. The fiscal illusion hypothesis suggests incentives to obscure information, while the fiscal stress hypothesis suggests incentives to reveal true costs.

Accounting and financial reporting can play a role in revealing fiscal information to taxpayers, directly or indirectly, through information intermediaries. If the fiscal illusion hypothesis describes the behavior of governments, we would expect that such governments would attempt to protect the information advantage that is conveyed by a complex tax structure by minimizing accounting disclosures. On the other hand, the fiscal illusion hypothesis suggests that a government with a complex tax structure has no reason to minimize disclosure, and may have incentives publicize lower service costs.

This study examines the association of tax complexity and financial disclosure. We find that there is more disclosure in cities with more complex tax systems, a result that supports the fiscal stress hypothesis.

This paper deals with concept of total productive maintenance (TPM) and its implementation approach. It also presents the identification of critical factors for effective implementation of TPM. The reliability analysis identified potential areas where more concentration is required. The application of hypothesis testing in productivity maintenance should be promoted by parametric test and significantly instrumental in explanation of phenomena. It is also indispensable to better understand quality data and provide guidance to production control.

The various critical success factors of TPM implementation has organised into set of eight performance measure and thirty three sub-factors for getting the in-depth details of each indicator. The paper identifies the reliability of these factors and understands the problem with greater clarity and its ramification. Researcher collected responses from forty one manufacturing organisations through structured designed questionnaire. The reliability analysis was carriedout by calculating the value of Cronbach's alpha method. To draw the meaningful conclusions supported by relevant empirical data, provisional formulation is required, and it was carried by hypothesis testing. In this test, samples are taken from a population with known distribution (normal distribution), and a test of population parameters is executed. It determines the relevancy of facts directs the researcher's efforts into productive channels. The statements were hypothetically tested by calculating the arithmetic value of Chi-Square (χ²) and MINITAB-19 software was used for identification of p-value.

This study identified that main factors and sub-factors of TPM which are critical for implementation of TPM. The study also avoids the complexities involved in implementing TPM by reliability analysis. It is found that all identified CSFs are reliable as Cronbach's alpha is above 0.6. The hypothesis testing shows that all alternative hypothesis statements are acceptable as Chi-Square (χ²) value has satisfied the conditions and null hypothesis are true as calculated p-value is less than the 0.05 for eight identified TPM critical factor.

In this paper researcher provides a comprehensive typology of TPM-CSFs, and its ranking and importance in manufacturing sector. The preparedness of such study related to TPM implementation is becoming a major sourcing base for the world and there is a paucity of such studies. Such studies are equally important in a global context.

The purpose of this paper is to show that necessary condition hypotheses are important in operations management (OM), and to present a consistent methodology for building and testing them. Necessary condition hypotheses (“X is necessary for Y”) express conditions that must be present in order to have a desired outcome (e.g. “success”), and to prevent guaranteed failure. These hypotheses differ fundamentally from the common co‐variational hypotheses (“more X results in more Y”) and require another methodology for building and testing them.

The paper reviews OM literature for versions of necessary condition hypotheses and combines previous theoretical and methodological work into a comprehensive and consistent methodology for building and testing such hypotheses.

Necessary condition statements are common in OM, but current formulations are not precise, and methods used for building and testing them are not always adequate. The paper outlines the methodology of necessary condition analysis consisting of two stepwise methodological approaches, one for building and one for testing necessary conditions.

Because necessary condition statements are common in OM, using methodologies that can build and test such hypotheses contributes to the advancement of OM research and theory.

Prior research on the structure‐performance relationship has not investigated all of the relevant relationships among market structure, profits, prices, and explicitly calculated measures of firm efficiency. This paper replicates the four approaches in the literature, adds several innovations, and applies the analysis to banking data. We find more support for the structure‐conduct‐performance hypothesis than for the relative‐market‐power and efficient‐structure hypotheses, although the data are not fully consistent with any of these theories. We also find support for Hick's quiet‐life hypothesis, which implies that firms with market power adhere less rigorously to efficiency maximization. J.E.L. Classification Numbers G21, G28, L41, L89 The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Board of Governors or its staff. The authors thank Dean Amel, Jim Berkovec, Myron Kwast, Nellie Liang, LenNakamura, Steve Rhoades, and participants in the meeting of the Federal Reserve System Committee on Financial Structure and Regulation for helpful comments, and Ken Cavalluzzo, Jalal Akhavein, John Leusner, and Seth Bonime for outstanding research assistance.

This study investigated a series of hypotheses stemming from Ibarra's (1993) proposed conceptual framework for understanding differences between women's and men's interpersonal networks. Using a sample of 112 managers, we examined differences between women's and men's network structural characteristics, and the relationships between these characteristics and support benefits obtained. Consistent with Ibarra, we found that certain network characteristics varied considerably between women and men managers. Women and men tended to belong to different networks in their organizations. Although both groups obtained similar amounts of support from their networks, women managers received their support from substantially different networks, characterized by lower levels of status and power in their organizations. Results are interpreted with respect to Ibarra's theoretical propositions concerning differences between women's and men's networks in organizations.

Inspired by the debates among economists about the role of beliefs and informal institutions in economic development, the purpose of this paper is to derive and test different hypotheses about the ways beliefs about the market economy, institutions and policies, and productive entrepreneurship are intertwined.

The paper derives from the literature three hypotheses unified around the idea of (political, cultural, and market) entrepreneurship. The paper then tests these hypotheses by running various country-level regressions intended to check the relationships between formal institutions and policies (measured by World Governance Indicators and by the Economic Freedom of the World index), productive entrepreneurship (measured by total factor productivity form the Penn World Table), and different kinds of market beliefs from the World Values Survey (WVS).

The sociological hypothesis says that more pro-market beliefs provide incentives for innovation by recognizing entrepreneurship as a dignifying activity. The political hypothesis says that people with more pro-market beliefs will demand, and therefore live with, more pro-market institutions and policies. The “Schumpeterian” hypothesis says that it is market institutions that make it possible for entrepreneurs to run against anti-market beliefs, and innovate. The results support the Schumpeterian hypothesis, mainly because market beliefs predict institutions and policies as well as productivity very poorly, while formal institutions and policies make a much better job of this.

The paper contrasts three different hypotheses concerned with the broader consequences of political, cultural, and market entrepreneurship and tests them by making use of the time structure of the observations found in the WVS.