Publicly traded corporations have dedicated time and money to adhering to the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002; however, some companies face challenges in internal control compliance with SOX. Using the transformational leadership theory as the conceptual framework, the purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the strategies chief financial officers (CFOs) used to comply with corporate financial internal control policies. Data were collected using face-to-face, semistructured interviews with 3 CFOs of publicly traded manufacturing companies in Michigan and a review of documents. The selection criteria for participants included CFOs who have experience in SOX implementation and compliance in a manufacturing industry and who had successful strategies that they used to comply with corporate financial internal control policies. Transcript evaluation and member checking ensured the reliability of the data collected. Data were analyzed using qualitative data-analysis software and triangulation to interpret data collected from multiple sources. Four themes emerged from the study: (a) internal control process and financial reporting, (b) control process accountability, (c) compliance challenges, and (d) risk assessment. The findings could contribute to social change by providing internal-control best practices to help mitigate the elements of the fraud, confirm ethical behavior of employees, and impact positive growth and progress in communities.

Healthcare fraud is threatening the economic stability of the U.S. healthcare system and negatively affecting organizational costs. Financial losses from healthcare fraud account for approximately $80 billion per year of the $2.4 trillion healthcare budget. Leadership strategies that may aid in combating Medicare fraud were explored in this qualitative single case study. The criminal violation of trust theory guided the study as it provides healthcare leaders with an understanding of the portion of the fraud triangle over which they have the most control to combat fraud: the opportunity to commit fraud. Data were gathered from review of publically available documents and information received from 10 semistructured interviews with health care leaders in the Mid-Atlantic area of the United States who have the responsibility of overseeing, developing, monitoring, or implementing control mechanisms for Medicare services. Yin's 5-step data analysis process and thematic analysis were used to analyze the data. Three key themes emerged from the study: an effective control environment, an adequate accounting system, and adequate control procedures. Health care leaders in the study recognized that the control environment plays a crucial role on the integrity and ethical values of its employees. The health care leaders acknowledged that an effective accounting system ensures Medicare funds are properly tracked and accounted for. Health care leaders also shared that adequate control procedures aid in deterring fraud and provide reasonable assurance that leaders meet the fiscal and programmatic objectives of the Medicare program. Social implications include reducing healthcare costs for U.S. citizens and creating control strategies that may contribute to a healthcare system to lead to a healthier citizenry.

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A response to a myriad of rising doubts of the constitutionality of free speech regarding food, the present manuscript offers an alternative political economy and critical legal studies approach to agricultural product disparagement (APD) laws and the disconnect between legal theories and the realities that complicate the legal process. In reality, it is the political economy facing the legal, media, and food system have been driven in the interests of profits over citizen protections, wielding severe limitations on the distribution of food criticisms and information on food safety in the mainstream media. Additionally, the critical legal criticisms of the underlying philosophies and tenets of legal liberalism point to structural rather than mechanistic problems, especially considering the tactical use of SLAPP suits. This manuscript will use the stories surrounding Texas Beef Group v. Winfrey (1998) and New World Communications of Tampa v. Akre (2003) to illustrate how the greatest problem facing food free speech is the tactical manipulation of information by significant actors in the food and media systems. Without a reconsideration of the research, food criticisms will continue to be stifled and consequently consumers will be unable to question food preferences or vote with their dollars for change. In order to continue the fight for fair food, reconsiderations of the legal and policy making process surrounding food and media must be considered and corrected. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Arts. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2010. / Date of Defense: April 23, 2010. / Food, Political Economy, Agricultural Product Disparagement, Akre, Winfrey, Critical Legal, New World Communications Tampa, Texas Beef Group, Fox, Hegemony, Public Sphere, Media Chill / Includes bibliographical references. / Jennifer Proffitt, Professor Directing Thesis; Andrew Opel, Committee Member; Jeanette Castillo, Committee Member.

Internal control systems consist of two evidence domains, automated control evidence and manual process evidence. Auditors can possess knowledge and expertise in both internal control evidence domains. But, auditors tend to possess more knowledge and expertise in one internal control evidence domain than the other internal control evidence domain. Thus, auditors have superior domain knowledge in one of the internal control evidence domains. Auditors at large accounting firms tend to specialize in the evidence domain of automated controls (information technology auditors or IT auditors) or manual processes (financial auditors). Audit Standard 5 requires IT auditors and financial auditors to gain an understanding of clients' automated controls and manual processes in order to integrate key client activities with the dollar amounts reported on the financial statements. While investigating controls and processes, IT auditors and financial auditors are exposed to relevant and irrelevant evidence from both domains. IT and financial auditors become exposed to irrelevant evidence when they conduct walkthroughs, read corporate policies and procedures, interview various employees, and trace transactions through client systems. The exposure of IT auditors and financial auditors to irrelevant internal control evidence may contribute to audit failure. For example, audit failure could occur if irrelevant internal control evidence influences IT auditors and financial auditors to reduce their judgments of relevant control weaknesses and underestimate the amount of effort required to evaluate internal controls. The influence of irrelevant internal control evidence may vary when IT auditors and financial auditors specialize, or do not specialize, in the internal control evidence domain. Previous studies have found that irrelevant evidence influenced financial auditors to reduce their fraud risk assessments and going concern assessments of relevant evidence. The current study extends this literature by focusing on the effects of superior domain knowledge on the use of irrelevant internal control evidence. The researcher compared the internal control judgments (effectiveness of internal controls and risk of material misstatement) and audit planning judgments (the hours necessary to effectively audit internal controls) of IT auditors and financial auditors when both auditor-types were exposed to relevant evidence with, and without, the presence of irrelevant evidence. Both types of auditors evaluated evidence from the automated control domain and the manual process domain separately. Consistent with the existing literature on the influence of irrelevant evidence, the results in this study suggest that both auditor-types are influenced by irrelevant internal control evidence from both evidence domains. Anecdotal evidence suggests that IT auditors and financial auditors should be less influenced by irrelevant internal control evidence when they have superior domain knowledge. The results of this study suggest otherwise. The influence of irrelevant internal control evidence on IT auditors and financial auditors was stronger when IT auditors and financial auditors had superior domain knowledge. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Accounting in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester 2009. / Date of Defense: February 4, 2009. / Evidence Domain, Internal Controls, Auditor Type, Internal Control Effectiveness, Audit Hours, Audit Time Budget, Risk of Material Misstatement, Domain Knowledge, Domain Evidence, Automated Controls, Internal Control Evidence, Manual Internal Control Process, Irrelevant Evidence, Audit Failure, Evidence, IT Auditor, Financial Auditor, Internal Control Strength / Includes bibliographical references. / Gregory J. Gerard, Professor Directing Dissertation; Patrick Maroney, Outside Committee Member; Paul Bowen, Committee Member; Stephen Celec, Committee Member; Richard Dusenbury, Committee Member.

This study extends the employee stock option literature by examining the holding period between exercise and eventual disposition of shares for evidence of earnings management and private information. Prior research has found that hold decisions are associated with future price appreciation, and inferred that private information is behind the decision. This study examines the holding period to determine if the observed future returns are influenced by managers manipulating earnings over the holding period or based on actual private information. It uses multiple proxies for earnings management and finds that individual hold behavior is associated with concurrent and future discretionary accruals. It also finds that a firm-wide hold measure can be used to incrementally explain current and future discretionary accruals. It then examines the relationship between a cleaner proxy for private information (future acquisition announcements), and finds that future acquisitions are associated with current holding decisions. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Accounting in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2010. / Date of Defense: April 16, 2010. / Stock Options, Earnings Mangement, Private Information / Includes bibliographical references. / Richard M. Morton, Professor Directing Dissertation; Patrick F. Maroney, University Representative; James S. Doran, Committee Member; Bruce Billings, Committee Member; G. Ryan Huston, Committee Member.

Non-Point Source (NPS) pollution models are effective watershed-scale predictors of NPS loadings and useful evaluators of agricultural Best Management Practices (BMPs) and water quality Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs). The work reported in this thesis examined two applications of the AGricultural Non-Point-Source (AGNPS) pollution model: 1) predicting surface runoff, nutrient loading, and sediment yield predictions for an artificially delineated farm-scale watershed; and 2) evaluating relative benefits of different BMPs on reducing sediment accumulation in a lake surrounded by agricultural land. A procedure using identification, extraction, and processing of critical area data using an ArcView Geographic Information System (GIS) was used in both applications. In the first, 30 years of synthetic climate data were used to generate event and source accounting predictions for a multi-use 600-acre research farm in South Louisiana. Runoff water quality predictions for hydrologic cells in standard and artificially delineated watershed simulations were compared. Estimates for sediment, N and P loading in paired watershed cells agreed well, indicating that an integrated AGNPS/GIS system can reliably simulate runoff and NPS loadings for artificially delineated watersheds. Thus, successful implementation of AGNPS for an extracted small-scale region eliminated processing extraneous data, hence reducing simulation time and work required. This approach could allow land operators to initiate and/or evaluate nutrient and site management plans. The second application used AGNPS to evaluate benefits of different BMPs on reducing sedimentation in a small lake. Extensive land clearing in the 1970s for row crop production in Avoyelles Parish accelerated sediment deposition in local waterbodies. Data for depth of the original bottom of an approximately 2 ha lake below recent (< 30 years) sediment estimated from 137Cs, Pb, clay and organic matter profiles), and sediment bulk density and texture were used to calibrate the AGNPS water quality model for representative hydrologic cells discharging into this lake. Upland erosion and sediment discharge rates predicted under alternative, conservation management practices indicate that sediment accumulation in this lake could have been substantially reduced.

Financial analysts earnings forecasts are more consistent with stock recommendations when their earnings forecasts are more accurate (Loh and Mian 2006, Ertimur et al. 2007). This suggests that analysts use other information in their private valuation models in addition to earnings forecasts especially when earnings have greater uncertainty. Recent studies show that political connections are important for firm valuation and are associated with future positive returns and future positive operating performance (Faccio 2006, Cooper et al. 2010). In this study, I examine how a firms political connections affect stock recommendation informativeness as well as the efficiency with which analysts translate their earnings forecasts into stock recommendations. Using data from the Federal Election Commission through the Center for Responsive Politics from 1993 2011, I first show that analysts recommendations are less informative when firms have political connections. This relation holds for both All-Star and non-All-Star analysts, upgrade and downgrade recommendations, as well as initiation and non-initiation recommendations. Second. I show that analysts earnings forecast accuracy is less consistent with recommendation informativeness when firms are politically connected. This inconsistency appears to be driven by non-All-Star analysts, upgrade recommendations, and non-initiation recommendations. The findings of this study imply that political connection information is one source of important nonfinancial disclosure that influences how analysts map their earnings forecasts into stock recommendations.

We examine the effect of stock liquidity on accruals-based earnings management. Finance literature suggests that stock liquidity leads to price efficiency. If prices are efficient, more future earnings should be reflected in current prices. Therefore, gain from shifting accruals across periods should be low and managers should have less incentive to manage earnings. We find that higher stock liquidity is associated with higher future earnings response coefficient and lower accruals-based earnings management. Our finding has important implication for the decline in accruals-based earnings management during 2001-2005 documented in prior study. Our additional trend analysis suggests that instead of SOX and other concurrent events, price efficiency improvement resulting from microstructure regime shifting (e.g., reduction in tick size from $1/16 to $1/100) may drive the decline in accruals-based earnings management during the period of 2001-2005.

<p>I use the monthly release of the Employment Situation (ES) by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to examine the impact of macroeconomic uncertainty on the pricing of firm-level earnings news. I use this setting because uncertainty about employment conditions is high the day before the employment report is released and is resolved just after the release of the report. I find a muted initial response to earnings announcements made the day before the employment report. This effect is stronger when ex-ante uncertainty about the contents of the employment report is high. The muted initial response is followed by a stronger-than-usual earning-return relation measured two days after the earnings announcement, or the day after the release of the employment report. These results are consistent with investors applying less weight to earnings signals when there is high uncertainty about macroeconomic conditions, and increasing the weight applied to these signals after the resolution of macroeconomic uncertainty. I consider earnings announcements made on employment-report Fridays and find a muted initial market response followed by greater-than-usual post-earnings-announcement drift. Finally, I find the proportion of bad news earnings announcements (negative unexpected earnings) is significantly higher on employment-report Fridays than on other days, including other Fridays.</p> / Dissertation