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The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to highlight the heterogeneity of the organizational aims within the professional football teams in Ligue 1. Second, to understand why some teams swing from a win orientation towards a soft budget constraint from year to year, and vice versa.

Financial data from annual reports for the period 2005/2015 was collected for the 35 Ligue 1 clubs. To define the degree of compliance with the intended strategy for those clubs, an efficiency analysis was conducted thanks to the data envelopment analysis method. This measure of performance was supplemented with the identification of productivity and demand shocks to identify whether clubs suffered from such shock or changed their strategy. It enables to precise the nature of the evolution in the utility function, with regards to the gap between expectation and actual performance.

The paper suggests that a team can switch from one orientation to another from year to year due to the uncertain nature of the sports industry. The club director’s utility function could also be maximized under inter temporal budget function in order to adjust the weight between win and profit according to the opportunities in the environment.

The paper sheds new light on the win/profit maximization. The theoretical model provides an assessment of the weight between win and profit in Ligue 1 and then identifies a new explanation for persistent losses in the sports industry.

The study explores the use of professional investor relations (IR) practices in South African (SA) listed companies to understand which theories may be responsible for IR's adoption and growth in South Africa, an emerging economy. Therefore, this study evaluates shareholder value maximisation, stakeholder and legitimization theory and institutional isomorphism theory as possible theories to explain professional IR behaviour in SA listed companies.

The study design is qualitative and exploratory, based on a questionnaire developed and sent to all companies listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE).

The results indicate evidence of isomorphic spread to SA environments from practices observed in the UK and the USA, which we find are mostly performed to promote shareholder interests. The data suggest some evidence that the communication needs of black economic empowerment and environmental, social and governance (ESG) investors are given priority, suggesting the utility of professional IR to obtain legitimisation from society. Contrary to expectation is that social media communication channels are not extensively used.

The descriptive nature of this study may be valuable to IR practitioners to improve SA IR practises, while neglected legitimisation opportunities with regard to the needs of ESG and black economic empowerment shareholders may be fruitfully addressed by practitioners.

This study innovates in its use of legitimisation theory and isomorphism theory to develop the study's expectations. Social problems provide contextual elements unique to SA which provides a good opportunity to test the expectation of legitimisation theory's influence on professional IR practices.

The 2008 Crash (the Crash) has been attributed to the dominance of financialized corporate governance, particularly an increased shareholder value rhetoric. Following the Crash, this extreme narrative is understood to have become less financialized through increasingly favouring stakeholders. The purpose of this research is to investigate this often-accepted view using field theory, wherein managers' biases in the value-creating process result from an interconnected, dynamic, multi-actor discourse.

Various domains across the UK’s corporate governance environment, from the perspective of field theory, generate the complex discourse: corporate and regulatory domains, stakeholder organizations such as the press and think tanks. Domain-specific corpora, representative of this multi-actor field, were constructed, with financialization analysed by assessing managers’ altering biases concerning the relative importance of shareholders and stakeholders (amongst other factors like time horizon) to value creation.

Highlights of the multiple findings include the following: corporate narrative about value creation became less financialized following the Crash, yet favouring shareholders, while the multi-actor discourse for the UK economy as a whole became slightly more financialized.

Analysing a multi-actor discourse is complex. And this, to the best of the author’s knowledge, is the first study of its kind, and only made possible with the original methodology of narrative staining. The approach, while having particular relevance to field theory, is applicable to many other narrative-based research scenarios.

Global investors demand, regulators require, and companies disclose their sustainability performance information, and scholars have started to conduct research on sustainability performance, reporting and assurance. The goal of firm value creation can be achieved when management considers the interests of all stakeholders and integrates all five economic, governance, social, ethical, and environmental (EGSEE) dimensions of sustainability performance into managerial strategies, actions and reporting. This paper provides a synthesis of research on sustainability and presents a theoretical framework consisting of theories and standards relevant to all five EGSEE dimensions of sustainability performance and risks and their integration into corporate culture, business models and reporting in creating stakeholder value.

Nowadays, the so‐called management by objectives (MBO) is used as a management instrument of corporate real estate management (CREM), using cost targets as the yardstick of CREM success. In Switzerland, CREM success is increasingly linked to cost reductions, with the cross‐company corporate strategy often requiring CREM to deliver a significant reduction in the level of cost. The cost concept used is material for the agreement or stipulation of cost targets. As the presented analysis shows, CREM has, for the most part, only very limited potential impact on costs. In particular, the use of the occupancy cost concept (sum of all imputed costs as well as costs recognised in the profit and loss account) poses a problem. This comprehensive cost type is determined by the following factors, which are in many cases outside the control of CREM: Book value as per balance sheet; Depreciation period of the basic shell structure; Main objective of the owner; Maintenance strategies; Degree of outsourcing of infrastructure management. Therefore, where the corporate strategy centres around cost reduction, CREM must be given the opportunity to control these drivers. This would require the inclusion of CREM in the development of the cross‐company corporate strategy, as otherwise the cost targets would have to be restricted to individual cost types (costs recognised in the profit and loss account). This is the only way to utilise a management instrument, such as MBO, within CREM.

Customs risk management has been widely recognized as a powerful tool to balance between trade facilitation and revenue maximization. However, most customs administrations worldwide, particularly in developing countries, are suffering from a lack of experience and knowledge to assess their risk management systems for revenue protection (RP). Customs risk management has a very limited legacy in the literature. Academic research is quite scarce and very limited, although its relevance to customs administrations. This paper aims to identify the key risk profiles and indicators that contribute to the protection of customs revenue and investigate the role of these risk profiles and indicators on customs RP using the case of Jordan Customs.

This study adopts a panel data approach by using the case of Jordan Customs. Data were collected from the risk targeting and selectivity system at Jordan Customs for the year 2019, a total of 600 observations.

The findings show that all risk targeting criteria except random selectivity (RS) and HS code have a significant positive association with RP. The findings also revealed that RS is an effective tool to prevent traders with fraud and offenses history from a prediction of targeting patterns and to assess the traders’ compliance and make sure their declarations are free from fraud or offenses. Moreover, the findings of this study indicate that customs administrations should adopt alternative programs such as authorized economic operator and post clearance audit as an effective means to measure and improve compliance.

The main contribution of this study lies in proposing a model to assist customs administrations in assessing the performance of risk management systems to protect revenue. This model provides a comprehensive conceptualization and explanations necessary for numerous aspects of risk management projects and it assists to predict the outcomes based on formulated indicators.

This study provides guidelines for risk analysts on how to identify and assess the key risk profiles and indicators that effect on maximizing the detection of revenue leakage and to obtain interpretable and predictable results. In addition, the findings of this study will assist customs administrations in supporting revenue collection, minimizing uncertainty, allocating resources more effectively to target high-risk consignments, while simplifying the procedures for the safe consignments.

This paper is of significant value because it is one of the preliminary studies that empirically identify the risk indicators/profiles that contribute to the protection of revenue and investigate the predictive power of these risk indicators/profiles as a key predictor to protect customs revenue.

We investigate the relative roles of key components of earnings change in explaining the value relevance of earnings across different life‐cycle stages of the firm. We hypothesize that firms in different life‐cycle stages take different strategic actions: change in sales is emphasized in the growth and mature stages, while in later stages, profitability is emphasized. Because payoffs to such strategies vary across the life‐cycle, the stock market reaction to the success firms have in employing these strategic actions is likely to vary across the life‐cycle. To test our hypotheses, we disaggregate changes in earnings into three key components: earnings change from change in sales, earnings change from change in profitability, and an interaction term comprising both sales change and profitability change. Our findings are consistent with our hypotheses: when firms are in the growth stage, the value‐relevance of change in sales is relatively greater than that of change in profitability. In the mature stage, the value relevance of change in profitability increases, relative to that of change in sales. When firms are in stagnant stage, the value‐relevance of changes in profitability are relatively greater than that of change in sales. Collectively, the results demonstrate a shift in the value relevance of earnings components from a growth emphasis early in the life‐cycle to a profitability emphasis later in the life‐cycle.

We aim to explore to what extent and how pro-poor PPP projects engage with local communities and what the possibilities are for the communities to become genuine partners with governments, businesses and civil society organizations (CSOs). We look into three different PPP projects funded by the Dutch international cooperation that emphasize the pro-poor aspects in Africa and find patterns of how local communities are positioned in each project. The analysis of the three projects indicates that the existing pro-poor PPP projects deal with local communities as either mere beneficiaries, business partners with substantial brokering by CSOs, or those who potentially lead the projects. The difference stems from how a PPP project allows local communities to participate and balance the relationship between the project’s profit maximization and benefit-sharing for the poor. Our findings can be used to evaluate pro-poor PPP projects by reference to its local development relevance. They also show possibilities for local communities to identify their positions vis-à-vis large-scale investment projects and reflect on what pro-poor projects actually mean. The importance of PPP projects to become pro-poor and enhance its local development relevance has been widely discussed; however, the actual positionality of the poor within PPP projects remains unclear. In this chapter, we specifically look into the question of where local communities are in pro-poor PPP projects in order to suggest a new research and policy agenda.

This study aims to look at how corporate governance, specifically internal mechanisms of corporate governance, affects the value relevance of reported accounting earnings of listed firms on the Ghana Stock Exchange.

The study used the Ohlson valuation model with a panel dataset, employing pooled regression analysis with random effects.

The findings indicate that net asset value per share is value relevant on the Ghanaian market, and even more so when the board size is small or the CEO also doubles as the board chair. Board independence as captured by the percentage of non‐executive directors on the board is relatively irrelevant in the market valuation of shares, and when relevant has a negative effect.

The value relevance of accounting information on the Ghanaian financial market, by implication, requires that the necessary rules and supervision regarding financial reporting must be provided to ensure that the information that reaches the investing public is therefore a true reflection of the underlying economic value of firms, so that capital allocation decisions based on these sources will be efficient.

The purpose of the research is to analyse the theoretical foundations of the balanced scorecard (BSC) with the aid of a microeconomic model and to illustrate the results in an empirical case.

The model includes demand, production, and objective functions. Demand is presented as a function of price and customer relationship management (CRM) costs. Production depends on labour, capital, and development and learning (D&L) costs. The strategy is depicted by objective function based on profit and net sales. The output variables are classified as four perspectives of BSC. Shadow prices and performance measures are analysed. The theoretical model is applied to the annual financial statement data from Nokia Corporation. Simulation is used to find appropriate estimates for the parameters of the model.

It is shown that a shift in the objective function (strategy) towards revenue maximization may alter the importance order of the BSC perspectives. Non‐financial and financial performance ratios may change into opposite directions, when the strategy is shifted. The figures extracted from the data of Nokia Corporation give support to these interpretations.

The theoretical model is based on the traditional assumptions of microeconomic analysis. Empirical analysis is only based on a naive estimation methods. The sensitivity of the results with respect to the assumptions should be analysed in further studies. The parameters should be estimated with more advanced statistical methods.

The focus of the BSC should be elastic and react to changes in the strategy. When evaluating the causal relationships between non‐financial and financial performance measures, attention should be paid to potential shifts in the strategy. The present model for example in a worksheet version would be useful in analysing the optimal behaviour of a firm and the causal relationships within the firm. It would be useful also in teaching the BSC and in general the behaviour of the firm to university students and managers. The model offers a platform for teaching and learning how the market (demand) and production (technology) environments affect the performance measures in the BSC.

There is a lack of theoretical modelling and analysis of the BSC. The present mathematical model is discussed earlier in Managerial Finance. However, this paper throws light to modelling the approach in a real‐life case of the Nokia Corporation and shows the value of the approach in interpreting the BSC in practice.