This thesis investigates the extent to which CFOs matter to corporate cash policies, M\&A and accounting practices. We construct an index that attempts to capture the ability of the CFO to influence financial decision-making. This index is based on a set of CFO-specific attributes such as work/board experience, educational level, tenure and remuneration. In the three chapters that follow, we use this index to examine how CFOs affect several corporate policies. Chapter 2 examines the effect of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) on corporate cash holding policies. We find that firms with strong CFOs hold substantially less cash than firms with weaker CFOs, ceteris paribus. This finding is robust to the inclusion of several governance characteristics, firm, CEO and CFO fixed-effects in our models; it also goes through a range of static and dynamic panel data estimators and multiple methods to control for endogeneity. Overall, our analysis suggests firms with strong CFOs are well positioned to hold less cash due to their relatively weak precautionary motive and superior ability to raise external funds even in periods of financial stress. We also offer some evidence supporting the view that strong CFOs reduce cash in an attempt to mitigate agency problems associated with free cash flow. Chapter 3 examines the role of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) in mergers and acquisitions (M\&A). Our results show that the firms with stronger CFOs (high levels of our CFO index) are more likely to make acquisitions and , when they do, these are mainly financed with cash. We also provide evidence supporting the view that strong CFO firms exhibit better post-acquisition operating performance. These results are robust to the inclusion of several governance characteristics, firm and CEO fixed effects; as well as to tests addressing endogeneity concerns. Chapter 4 examines how Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) affect earnings quality. We find that earnings quality is positively related to the CFO index. Specifically, firms with strong CFOs are associated with lower discretionary accruals. This relation is robust to the inclusion of firm-, CEO- and governance-level controls, including fixed effects. The negative effect of strong CFOs on accruals seems to persist even in firms whose CEOs have greater incentives and power to manage earnings, which suggests that CFOs may play an important monitoring role in the governance process. Chapter 5 concludes this thesis, providing an overview of empirical results, outlining their implications and discussing avenues for future research.

Recent issuances of sukuk were confronted with wide criticism from, both by Islamic scholars and investors. The part of the problems arise due to the agency relations in sukuk structures that have a distinctive nature with great complexity and various features. Due to the higher complexity of the responsibilities undertaken by the agent, greater exposure to agency costs results. This research aims to examine sukuk associated risks, agency costs and Sharia issues. Specifically, it analyses asset-backed sukuk structures from financial and Sharia viewpoints. This is achieved by adopting a case study strategy and inductive approach to examine the legal and financial issues arising in three different types of asset linked sukuk structures. The data is collected using content analyses of sukuk prospectuses, AAOIFI Sharia standards and publications issued by international agencies with the aim of enabling the study to achieve insights into the market. Furthermore, information is gathered from Sharia scholars using semi structured interviews to generate some specific information on the issues involved. The objectives of this study are to analyse three key issues: based on theoretical discussions identify the risks arising in securities in general and sukuk in particular; to carry out a comparative analysis of the principle/agent conflicts which arise in different cases of sukuk investment; and to determine the extent of adherence to Sharia rules. The dissertation discusses in depth the agency costs that arise in asset-backed sukuk structures. It determines how these costs are minimized and conflicts managed in the applications. Among the strategies and tools used to reduce agency costs is to apply the concept of co-ownership. Under this type of agreement between the originator and investors, the sukuk structure becomes more competitive and shows a better allocation of the risks. Although the issuance of sukuk are reviewed and approved by eminent scholars, they show different levels of contradictions with AAOIFI Sharia standards. The study identifies the status of different stipulations of different contracts in terms of Sharia requirements. The research then shows the extent to which the compatibility of the sukuk cases differ with key Sharia principles. The analysis found that the key requirements are mostly related to the guarantee, ownership, principle, return and maintenance costs. It found out that SEC sukuk are far away from the spirit of Sharia as most of the essential requirements are not fulfilled. Sadara sukuk show better harmonious with AAOIFI requirements because of their unprecedented feature involved in their structure, which highlighted some of the distinctive nature of sukuk. Zamzam sukuk achieved the best harmonious with Sharia among the three applications. This positive result is attributed to the real ownership to the investment, meaning that there is no guarantee for the principle or the return. The results show that there is a higher exposure to risks related to liquidity legality in sukuk cases than in conventional bonds. More importantly is that the credit risk in sukuk cases are higher than in bond investments. The three cases were more exposed to the credit risks since any loss in the assets has to influence both the distribution amounts and the purchase undertaking. The critical point found is that despite SEC and Sadara sukuk cases involve higher exposure to credit risk as required in Islamic finance, they do not provide in turn a recourse to the assets according to the concept of sukuk. The cases also show that the purchase undertaking solves the agency conflicts, caused by the originator being the servicer. The undertaking device has reduced the incentive asymmetries from different perspectives.

This work makes three main contributions to the financial econometrics literature. In Chapter 3, we study the intraday volatility of European government bonds under the framework of the multiplicative component GARCH model (Engle and Sokalska, 2012). We suggest a flexible and effective procedure for jointly filtering mid-quote prices and estimating volatility models and show that intraday data contain relevant information for daily volatility forecasts. In Chapter 4, we show that a bond portfolio can reduce its intraday variance risk by including bonds from Italy and Spain. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the bivariate (scalar) DCC model is capable of computing an accurate VaR, providing correct conditional and unconditional coverage at lower than 1% (inclusive) confidence level and inducing lower losses. In Chapter 5, we demonstrate that liquidity measures, such as the bid-ask spread and quantity available for trading at the best quotes, improve across maturities and countries after EuroMTS has allowed every market participant to post limit orders and not just designated market makers. In particular, we show that the relative bid-ask spread for trading 10 million bonds decreases with the rule change. The proportion of time when the relative bid-ask spread stays low also increases. The results suggest that greater competition amongst liquidity providers improves liquidity.

The importance of disclosure in corporate annual reports has increased over the past couple of decades (Beattie and Pratt, 2002). This increase has been attributed in part to growth in the knowledge economy (Beattie and Pratt, 2002; Beattie, 2012). Disclosure is now accepted as an essential component of financial statements and its place is cemented by recent changes in the regulatory framework which place disclosure matters at the heart of some key accounting standards. In addition the recent financial crisis has further fuelled debate on the need for relevant disclosures but concern is growing about information overload and avoiding ‘clutter’ (Beattie and Pratt, 2002; Beattie, 2012). Disclosure has long been considered essential to economic development and growth particularly in an emerging economy context (Gill and Tropper, 1988). Notwithstanding the importance of corporate financial disclosure and a few notable exceptions, very little is documented in the extant literature about financial disclosure practices in developing countries. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to extend empirical knowledge and contribute to the corporate disclosure literature by providing empirical evidence on corporate financial disclosure in the emerging capital market of Kuwait. Kuwait is of interest because of the remarkable growth in stock exchange activity and the unique business environment faced there. In addition, as Kuwait first adopted IAS/IFRS in 1991 users and preparers should be well-versed in it and the country therefore represents an ideal and fruitful site for analysis. The results of the study are likely to have implications for decision makers, the academic community and accounting standard setters. This thesis has five principal aims: (i) to explore the extent of compliance with IFRS disclosure requirements by Kuwaiti non-financial listed companies; (ii) to investigate the extent of aggregate (mandatory and voluntary) financial disclosure provide by Kuwaiti non-financial listed companies; (iii) to ascertain the relationships between selected corporate characteristics such as company size, leverage, profitability, liquidity, listing age, type of auditor, and type of industry and aggregate, mandatory, and voluntary financial disclosure; (iv) to document the annual report preparers’ perceptions of financial disclosure practices in Kuwaiti non-financial listed firms; and (v) to analyse whether/how annual reports of Kuwaiti non-financial listed companies satisfy users’ needs. The study is grounded in the decision usefulness literature and makes use of two primary research methods, namely: (i) three unweighted disclosure indices aimed at measuring the extent of aggregate, mandatory and voluntary disclosure published in annual reports issued by 51 non-financial Kuwaiti companies; and (ii) a questionnaire survey which explored the perceptions of preparers and users of corporate annual reports. Overall, the results provided a detailed picture of reporting practices in Kuwait with large companies disclosing more information than small companies, but only in terms of voluntary disclosure. More profitable companies tended to disclose less mandatory information than companies with lower income levels, while leverage, liquidity, listing age and audit type were found to have no significant association with disclosure. The questionnaire evidence revealed that accounting practices in Kuwait non-financial firms are firmly rooted in a decision-usefulness tradition with management and the board of directors viewed as the key audience for reporting information. Indeed, the annual reports of Kuwaiti non-financial listed companies are perceived as the most important sources of information. On the whole both preparers and users shared similar concerns regarding the volume of information contained within annual reports, however, their views differed in terms of identifying potential solutions.

Change is a pervasive force in many organisations. In recent years, the potential for change in accounting systems, practices and roles is an area that has attracted considerable research attention (e.g. see the 2001 special edition of Management Accounting Research for a selection of articles). Some research has focused on the drivers of accounting change (e.g. see Innes and Mitchell, 1990; Bums et al., 1999; Cobb et al., 1995; Bums and Vaivio, 2001). There have been attempts to understand and conceptualise theoretically the nature of accounting change (e.g. see Bums and Scapens, 2000; Quattrone and Hopper, 2001). Whilst empirically, the process of implementing new accounting systems and techniques (e.g. Activity-Based Costing), along with the impacts and consequences for organisational change, has been studied in various organisations (e.g. see Scapens and Roberts, 1993; Vaivio, 1999; Malmi, 1997; Bums, 2000; Collier, 2001; Granlund, 2001; Soin et al., 2002; Major, 2002, Granlund and Malmi, 2002; Caglio, 2003). This thesis aims to explore accounting change through an in-depth case study of an organisation implementing new accounting information systems (AIS). The broad research question at the start of this thesis was: how and why does the process of accounting change develop within a specific organisational context? In addressing this question, the investigation aims to understand how and why the AIS are implemented, how they link to management accounting practices, and the consequences for organisational change. In so doing, the thesis aims to contribute to recent studies of accounting change which attempt to explain, understand, and conceptualise processes of accounting change, resistance and stability (e.g. see Scapens and Roberts, 1993; Granlund, 2001; Kasurinen, 2002; Ribeiro, 2003; Siti- Nabiha and Scapens, 2005). The thesis adopts a processual approach to studying accounting change (see Dawson, 2003). This approach was complemented by a social and institutional perspective on management accounting. More specifically, Bums and Scapens' (2000) framework for exploring processes of management accounting change was adopted as the initial theoretical framework. Based on the insights of this investigation, the intial theoretical framework was criticised and refined using additional theoretical concepts. To this end, a reshaped theoretical framework focused on specific issues raised by the investigation, was a theoretical contribution of the thesis. The reshaped framework is argued to be useful for theoretically extending Bums and Scapens' (2000) explanations of the processes of change, stability and resistance to change. For instance, the reshaped framework attempts to explain the stability of institutions; and how and why actors may be motivated to challenge prevailing ways of thinking and doing.

In this doctoral thesis we bring together some empirical analysis on investors’ participation in initial public offering (IPOs) from a market whose characteristics are unique and significantly different from US and other important IPO markets. There are two important features which distinguishes the Indian IPO market. First, the Indian IPO market is characterised by a high level of transparency. Information on the participation of different investor categories is publicly available during the offer period on a real time basis. Second, Indian IPO firms are also required to reserve and allocate pre-determined fraction of total shares on offer to different investor categories participating in the IPO. Our first empirical study shows that the transparency in the mechanism creates highly inelastic demand curves for a large number of IPOs. Analysis of demand over-time shows that while institutional investors take the lead in subscribing to strong IPOs, noninstitutional investors do so in weak IPOs, but perhaps not always with an honest intent. Our analysis of IPO pricing shows that favourable demand by uninformed investors is positively associated with a high IPO price. Further, while reputed underwriters appear to exercise far more caution and restraint in setting prices, we find that in a large number of IPOs, less reputed underwriters ignore information produced during the offer period and set the price at the upper bound of the price range. Our findings suggest that the transparency in allocation mechanism appears to be a double edged sword for the uninformed (retail) investors. We recommend a change in the current regulation to protect investor’s welfare. We also examine the influence of the participation of different investor categories on initial returns. Unsurprisingly, we find that while the participation of both the informed investor categories significantly influences initial returns, the participation of retail investor losses its significance in explaining initial returns for bookbuilding and auction IPOs. We also analyse the participation of informed institutional investors to examine whether the presence of new bank loans at the time of the IPO reduces information asymmetry. Our results show that presence of bank loans do not appear to reduce information asymmetry as institutional investors participate significantly less in IPOs with new bank loans. While this result is contrary to prior studies on bank loan announcements, it is consistent with a recent study which shows that prior studies on bank loan announcements are plagued by sample selection issues. In our final empirical analysis we examine the participation of employees in IPOs and analyse whether such participation can predict superior financial and operating performance of the firm. We find that IPOs with high employee participation offer significantly higher initial returns than IPOs with low employee participation. We also find that firms with high employee participation in their IPOs exhibit superior post IPO operating performance. Further, we find that the prior participation of other investor categories, in particular the institutional investors, does not appear to influence the participation of employees in IPOs. Our results suggest that employees have valuable private information about the quality of the firm. The evidence presented in the study suggests that in the context of Indian IPOs, where data on investors’ participation is available on a real time basis, uninformed investors may use information on employee participation to select well performing IPOs.

This thesis aims to study the impact of shareholding structure on corporate governance and firm performance in case of China. Firstly, with the dataset of 714 listed companies during 1998-2000, we use panel data methods to examine whether the existing shareholding structure, which is directly or indirectly controlled by the state, can bring about proper corporate governance and in turn the improvement of firm performance. Our results show state and LP shareholdings are negatively related to firm performance for improper governance pattern. Secondly, we further examine the impact of shareholding structure on the sensitivity of investment to internal funds using the dataset of 802 companies over the period of 1998-2002. With dynamic panel data estimation methodology, we find state shareholding leads to over investment and management entrenchment problems. Finally, we examine the share price reaction towards several types of M&A (merger and acquisition) events. The results reveal that shares sale, which involves changing the existing shareholding structure, is the most effective way of improving corporate governance in the market for corporate control. Considering all research results of this thesis, we conclude that shareholding structure under the state control has a negative impact on corporate governance and in turn firm performance.

This thesis contributes to our understanding of how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries cope with data-rich quality management (QM) concepts in terms of information systems (IS) provision over time, with particular reference to emergent bottom-up initiatives and semi-dynamic competencies. IS is frequently seen as the enabler of QM concepts, but rarely as a system whose necessity becomes apparent through the implementation of externally imposed QM concepts. This is of concern for SMEs in developing countries at the very early stage when IS competencies and infrastructure have yet to be developed and aligned. Although QM standards are accepted as data-rich technologies, there has been no empirical research on the implications of those concepts for IS development. The contributions made thus far have been based on theoretical and conceptual thinking only. This research adapts an intellectual framework from the strategic renewal literature and makes it applicable to bottom-up initiative formation in SMEs. The methodology chosen was that of detailed case studies conducted in three automotive SMEs in Turkey. Three research questions provide the focus and direction to investigate. the complexities of initiative formation and co-evolutionary systems development through theory and practice. In terms of results, we find that i) imposed QM concepts drive IS development ii) alignment quadrants of the strategic IS alignment model are still evolving iii) IS development is a bottom-up process involving mid-level managers as innovators and mediators and iv) the process of initiative formation is an adaptive process requiring the emergence of semidynamic competencies, a concept that is also an outcome of this thesis. These four findings are consolidated enabling us to make the fifth and ultimate contribution to the domain ofIS alignment paths in SMEs. One can now understand the underlying process of the 'efficiency to collaboration route' in Levy and Powell's (2005) strategic grid model for SMEs in developing countries. Practical insights cover key organisational and contextual concerns ranging from the role of middle managers and their credibility to strategic coherence and collective capacity. The findings are significant not only because they support various theories, but, more specifically, because they represent the outcome of a multi-disciplinary piece of research that highlights discrepancies between established theories of IS alignment and actual practice. This is not the full story as some of the women interviewed reported that they had to put off marriage for career and likewise, others put on hold or postponed career for family responsibilities. To maintain their positions or climb the professional ladder, they therefore, had to employ a range of strategies such as; working hard, focusing on research and publication for promotion purposes. The wider implications of these findings are discussed.

This thesis reports an intensive longitudinal case study carried out in a Portuguese manufacturing organisation in which attempts to promote change through management accounting were made in recent years. The initial motivation of the research was to study processes of management accounting change with consideration of the rich context in which this change takes place. I was initially inspired by a framework for studying those processes based on the insights of Old Institutional Economics (Bums and Scapens, 2000) and by a technological deterministic view of the relationship between information technologies and management accounting in organisations (e. g. Markus and Robey, 1988). Specifically, I hypothesised that Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems could produce and/or enhance change in management accounting rules and routines. Consequently, I chose an organisation in which an ERP system had recently been implemented. However, in a first pilot visit to the organisation, in January 2000, two puzzling observations were made. Firstly, and particularly in the manufacturing area of the organisation, management accounting systems introduced in recent years were not being used in everyday interactions and practices. In the terms usually deployed in the New Institutional Sociology literature, they were decoupled. Secondly, that decoupling remained despite the ERP implementation. Indeed, the ERP system was having no apparent impact on management accounting or on the work of management accountants. Thereafter, my research aimed at developing a theoretical framework capable of incorporating these puzzling issues while accommodating the insights of institutional models. These models propose explanations for resistance to change and decoupling that did not seem to match my observations in the case study. I found that both the observed decoupling in the case organisation's manufacturing area and the lack of impact of the ERP system on management accounting/accountants were related to issues of power. There were different and conflicting conceptions of which rules should be followed in the manufacturing area, and strategic attempts to enact those conceptions (or to resist alternative ones). To accommodate these aspects, I reviewed different conceptions of power, and developed a theoretical framework based on the insights of the Circuits of Power (Clegg, 1989a). My theoretical framework allowed me to explain the puzzling observations in my case. I could enlighten the processes leading to the introduction and subsequent decoupling of management accounting systems in the organisation studied. I could also clarify the processes and reasons leading to the lack of impact of the ERP system on management accounting/accountants. At stake were attempts to impose new rules through management accounting, and resistance to those attempts - caused by a prevailing configuration of the circuits of power and by strategies conducted within that configuration. The analysis of the case study also allowed me to raise some theoretical issues regarding institutional models. I propose that the theoretical framework developed in this thesis is capable of accommodating the insights of those models, while extending them to incorporate the observations of my case study. Finally, the proposed theoretical framework also constitutes a sensitising device for studying processes entailed in the implementation of ERP systems in organisations.

This thesis reports on two longitudinal case studies in organisations that implemented Business-to-Business (B-to-B) electronic commerce in Egypt. The objective is to explore the processes of management accounting change associated with the implementation of B-to-B e-commerce. Aiming to deal with such a research objective, the following research question will be addressed: how and why the implementation of B-to-B e-commerce facilitated the management accounting change within the two target organisations. The above research question requires a contextual explanation of the change processes. It requires us to look beyond merely the outcomes of implementing B-to B e-commerce taking into account the complexities of what drives and shapes the cumulative processes of change such as, habitual behaviour, power, technology and institutions. Old Institutional Economic (OIE) theory and Hardy's model of power mobilisation are chosen as a theoretical framework to inform the analysis of the cases. The OIE theory offers a particular ''way of seeing" the management accounting change while the concept of power mobilisation provides a means to illuminate the dynamics of how and why new accounting routines evolve in the two cases; also highlighting unforeseen problems encountered in the change process. Each of the two companies in our study was subject to a change in leadership followed by a "process" of questioning the traditional ways of doing things. This process resulted in realising planning and internal control problems within the two companies. The taken-for-granted assumptions of the two companies were challenged. Indeed, the B-to-B systems were chosen to introduce new control-based rules. In both cases, there were difficulties in imposing change on settings where existing production-oriented institutions were not congruent to new intended control-based ways of thinking. Resistance to change was detected in both cases.