This participant-observation study explores the process of gathering and evaluating both financial and non-financial information and communication and transfer of that information within a medium-size Electrical Company in Christchurch, New Zealand. The previous literature has established the importance and the main characteristics of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), mainly studying manufacturing companies. However, there has been little research done in New Zealand on the overall communication process and the financial and non-financial information usage in a small-medium enterprise. Face-to-face interviews were carried out with all the office employees and two partners, along with a ten month participant-observation in the Electrical Company in order to understand how financial and non-financial information is communicated and processed in an SME. Also, research in an SME that has overcome the 2008 economic depression and several major earthquakes allows a deep understanding of lessons learned and what is valued by the Electrical Company. The research has found characteristics of this SME similar to those that have been mentioned in previous literature. However, the partners of the Electrical Company understand the importance of financial management and use financial information extensively to ensure the business expenses are under control. Moreover, the partners use more than just financial information to manage the company. They gather non-financial information through talking to their accountant, their customers and people in the same industry and they keenly follow the news on the rebuilding of Christchurch.

The efficient market hypothesis states that an efficient market incorporates all available information to provide an accurate valuation of an asset. Presently investors and researchers attempt to forecast future returns (profit/loss if the asset is held for a certain period) and volatility (variance of the returns) of the asset based on past trading behaviour, and commonly ignore non-numerical information. It is almost impossible to forecast future returns for frequently traded assets such as stocks, bonds, and currencies, so many institutional investors prefer to forecast future volatility. Volatility is frequently used by traders and fund managers to measure the risk of continuing to own the asset. Most volatility forecasting models completely disregard the arrival of news and therefore theoretically violate the efficient market hypothesis. The aim of this research is to investigate how the inclusion of details of the arrival of asset specific news (news which is relevant to the asset) can improve the volatility forecasts of a model. The problem is that the efficient market hypothesis indicates that only new information will cause the market to react, and therefore it is necessary to determine whether the news contains any new information. Most news does not include any new information and therefore assuming all news will trigger abnormal market behaviour is unlikely to improve the performance of a model. Furthermore news which causes a shock, i.e., news which contains highly unexpected new information, will cause a greater change in volatility than news which contains expected information. Therefore to produce a model that factors in the arrival of news into volatility forecasts, it is beneficial to examine the content to predict the reaction to the news. This research combines the field of econometrics with machine learning and intelligent data analysis. All hypotheses tested within this thesis are tested on a large collection of stocks traded in the US, UK and Australia. To my knowledge, this is the largest dataset used for the types of experiments conducted in this thesis. In this thesis evidence is provided to suggest that asset specific news is correlated with abnormal returns, volatility, and volatility forecast errors. There is also evidence to suggest that abnormal volumes and trading activity correlate to asset specific news. This confirms the findings of previous studies though in most cases only a small dataset was used and often only one or two time series (i.e., return, volatility, volume etc.) were used. Furthermore many studies did not investigate the intraday effect of news (i.e., the reaction on the day the news was released). The studies which investigated the intraday effect tended to focus on macroeconomic news, which is scheduled and eagerly anticipated by investors. Therefore the behaviour is easier to detect that for asset specific news. It is demonstrated that the content of news can be used to forecast abnormal returns and forecast periods when the given volatility forecasting model exhibits abnormally large errors (the difference between the realised volatility and the volatility which the given model forecast) with a high degree of accuracy. This was achieved by analysing the content of past news which correlated with abnormal market behaviour. For this research a new method for ranking terms is introduced and demonstrated to be very effective. Previous studies have revealed that the content of news can be used to forecast abnormal returns but, to my knowledge, no study has investigated the volatility forecast error. Furthermore, most previous studies have used a small dataset, and to forecast at relatively low frequencies (most are daily, though one is hourly). To the best of my knowledge no previous study has use such a large dataset to predict the high frequency (as little as 5 minutes) market reaction to news. Nor has any previous study achieved classification accuracies as high as those achieved in this thesis. Finally, a news aware volatility forecasting model is produced and the evidence demonstrates that the performance is better than an alternative model which does not account for news under certain circumstances. Furthermore it is demonstrated that using the content of news to choose documents which are more likely to cause the market to react yields better forecasts. Very few researchers have included the arrival of news in a volatility forecasting model, and all of these have used small datasets. Furthermore, to my knowledge, none of these researchers have used the content of the news to choose news which is more likely to cause the market to react.

In a developing country such as Saudi Arabia where alternative sources of company information tend to be more limited in a quantity and quality, the role of corporate annual reports for investment activities assumes a much more dominant and prominent role than in the more advanced and economically developed countries. This study was undertaken to examine empirically the usefulness of corporate annual reports to investment analysts in Saudi Arabia and their role in the investment activities. Before undertaking the empirical investigation it was essential to provide a background of the economic and accounting environment under which the Saudi companies operate and investment activities being carried out. Three chapters are designed to fulfil this objective, these are Chapter 2,3 and 4. Chapter 5 is focused in reviewing the literature related to usefulness of financial information. This review is believed to be an important step in providing a framework for the empirical investigation. To achieve the main objective of this research which is to evaluate the importance of corporate annual reports to the investment analysts in Saudi Arabia, a questionnaire survey was carried out to obtain the investment analysts views of the annual reports, the importance they attached to them and the uses of these reports in their investment activities. The results of the survey are presented and discussed in chapters seven and eight. The statistical tests results show that Saudi Arabian investment analysts, despite the differences in their background characteristics, still regard corporate annual reports as the most important source of information for their investment activities. A summary of the main conclusions of the study, as well as a number of recommendations, are reported in the final chapter.

Following the advent of the knowledge-based economy, the foundations of enterprise competition shift traditional physical assets to knowledge resources gradually. In order to keep continuous competition advantages, the knowledge management turns into the most critical issue in the 21st century enterprises. Accounting is a kind of business language. It provides users the financial status of enterprise. Financial information become more important when the economy has more developed. The organization of modern enterprise is huge and complicate. In order to manage the keen competition in economy and business environment, accounting works have to possess rich and diversification knowledge. Today, the workers in accounting department are not only an intelligent workers but also a knowledge worker. In the past thirty years, accounting department played an important role during CSC has grown up . Accounting department provides CSC the good quality financial information which depends on not only the expertise of accounting people and CSC integral information systems but accounting fellows accumulate and transfer their knowledge and experiences. This study uses depth- interview method which tries to find out what is the organism of knowledge management within CSC and how a base unit in a company to build up the knowledge management system. The conclusion is that there are two kinds of knowledge exits in CSC. One is common and the other is expertise. CSC now pays more attention on common knowledge than the expertise.

One form of knowledge that has been proven to be important for companies’ perfor-mance during the recent financial crisis is the understanding of the financial data and information.The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how three Swedish companies – Sto Scandi-navia AB, Swedbank and Axfood SSC – communicate internal financial information to their middle managers. As well as how the companies use knowledge management to leverage their financial communication internally.The study presents an integrated framework of information management and knowledge management based on the works of the leading and often quoted re-searchers in those fields.This study uses 12 semi structured interviews to gather qualitative data about how nine middle managers and three top managers view the communication of financial in-formation at their companies. The interviews were complimented with closed question surveys handed to the nine middle managers.Our analysis concludes that the three companies differ significantly in their approach to communicating financial information. Swedbank uses a wide range of financial in-formation in their daily operations. Further, they have an organized and structured ap-proach to communicating and managing their financial information.Sto and Axfood (SSC) do not use financial information to the same extent in their oper-ations. Additionally they communicate the information in an informal and unstruc-tured way. Although using a less structured approach, the managers at Axfood were more satisfied with how the company uses financial information then the other com-panies. This could be due to the lesser importance given to financial information at SSC compared to Swedbank.We found Sto to be at the verging point from turning from a small company to large company and thus needs to review their current strategy, which has previously been based on the ability of the managers to receive information through informal paths.

<p>One form of knowledge that has been proven to be important for companies’ perfor-mance during the recent financial crisis is the understanding of the financial data and information.The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how three Swedish companies – Sto Scandi-navia AB, Swedbank and Axfood SSC – communicate internal financial information to their middle managers. As well as how the companies use knowledge management to leverage their financial communication internally.The study presents an integrated framework of information management and knowledge management based on the works of the leading and often quoted re-searchers in those fields.This study uses 12 semi structured interviews to gather qualitative data about how nine middle managers and three top managers view the communication of financial in-formation at their companies. The interviews were complimented with closed question surveys handed to the nine middle managers.Our analysis concludes that the three companies differ significantly in their approach to communicating financial information. Swedbank uses a wide range of financial in-formation in their daily operations. Further, they have an organized and structured ap-proach to communicating and managing their financial information.Sto and Axfood (SSC) do not use financial information to the same extent in their oper-ations. Additionally they communicate the information in an informal and unstruc-tured way. Although using a less structured approach, the managers at Axfood were more satisfied with how the company uses financial information then the other com-panies. This could be due to the lesser importance given to financial information at SSC compared to Swedbank.We found Sto to be at the verging point from turning from a small company to large company and thus needs to review their current strategy, which has previously been based on the ability of the managers to receive information through informal paths.</p>

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Structural economic changes in many countries, together with unprecedented developments in the business environment, have significantly affected the value creation processes of firms and the way business is conducted. The traditional financial reporting model is inadequate as a consequence of these developments, and intellectual capital (IC) information has gained importance for investment decision making. Empirical capital markets research demonstrates the value-relevance and predictive ability of certain types of IC information. The use of IC information by capital market participants is a topic that has begun to gain attention from contemporary researchers, but for which scant empirical evidence exists. Much of the research in this area relies on the literature about the use of non-financial information (NFI), which is inadequate in its examination of certain types of IC information. Therefore, the main aim of this thesis is to examine the use and communication of IC information by sell-side analysts. Sell-side analysts are of particular interest because they are capital market intermediaries and sophisticated processors of corporate information. The reports they produce provide an opportunity to examine their use and communication of IC information. The specific objectives of this thesis are to examine: the extent and types of IC information used by sell-side analysts in initiating coverage reports produced by them; how IC information is used and communicated in these reports; and factors that may influence the use of IC information by sell-side analysts. In order to address these research objectives a content analysis of IC references in 64 initiating coverage reports written on an equivalent number of S&P/ASX 200/300 companies is performed. The content analysis identifies and measures IC references by topic, evidence (discursive, monetary, numerical, or visual), news-tenor (positive, neutral or negative) and time orientation (forward-looking, past-oriented or non-time-specific). The findings indicate that Australian sell-side analysts appreciate the importance of IC in firm valuation, and thus are not ambivalent about the use of IC information in general. However, the findings suggest that their communication of IC information is inconsistent and unsystematic, and inadequate in relation to certain types of IC. This highlights the need for undertaking work at a policy level to educate and train sell-side analysts to deal with IC information, and the development of better models and guidelines for analysing and communicating IC information. On how IC information is used, this thesis finds that sell-side analysts have varying uses of IC information. It was found that IC is predominantly communicated discursively, positively, and in a past-oriented manner; and in doing so IC is used as a tool to further the sell-side analysts’ agenda for the company analysed. Further, the results highlight that the type of investment recommendation in analyst reports impacts on the evidence, news tenor, and time-orientation of IC communicated. These findings alert future researchers to the wider role played by IC beyond its use in forecasts and valuations. Also, the findings indicate inter-sectoral differences in the use of IC information in analyst reports, highlighting the need to improve IC reporting practices of firms by including additional information on industry-specific IC value drivers. Further, it was found that sell-side analysts emphasise IC information in analyst reports for companies from high IC-intensive sectors compared to those from low IC-intensive sectors. Similarly, it was found that analyst reports on risky companies contain significantly more IC information than analyst reports on less risky companies. Contrary to expectations, the extent of IC information is not found to vary with firm size and firm profitability. Also, the results support that the extent of certain types of IC information differs between types of analysts’ investment recommendations. More generally, the findings of this thesis suggest that the corporate reporting process could be improved by including additional types of IC information and providing this information more effectively in a manner that enables users to visualise the interrelationships between resources (both tangible and intangible) and outcomes. This study calls for standards or guidelines for intellectual capital reporting (ICR) in Australia and the expansion of the role of auditing and assurance services to enhance reliability of firm provided IC information in a bid to improve the use of IC information in company analysis by sell-side analysts.

La presente investigación tiene como objetivo, determinar como la gestión empresarial puede incidir en la competitividad de las MYPES en el Cercado de Lima durante el año 2015. La metodología de la investigación, es de método, descriptivo e inductivo, el tipo de la investigación es el descriptivo correlacional y el diseño utilizado es el No Experimental y Transversal. La muestra ha sido obtenida de forma aleatoria estratificada por sectores económicos encontrando un tamaño de muestra de 92 MYPES. The present investigation has as objective, to determine how the management can affect the competitiveness of the MYPES in the Cercado de Lima during the year 2015. The methodology of the research, is method, descriptive and inductive, the type of the research is the descriptive correlational and the design used is the Non-Experimental and Transversal. The sample has been obtained in a random way stratified by sectors economical finding a sample size of 92 MYPES.

abstract: In this thesis I examine the opportunities and challenges faced by the community banks in China. Rooted in the local communities, community banks generally focus on serving the local residents, farmers, and micro and small business enterprises (MSBE) through relationship building. Although community banks tend to be small relative to the other financial institutions, their unique market positions and business strategies have helped them to survive the competition and secure some market shares. Thus, it is important to understand the business strategies of community banks and to explore their future business opportunities and challenges. I first provide a brief overview about the importance of local communities, community economy, and community banking, on the basis of an analysis about mismatch in the demand and supply of community financial services due to information asymmetry. Next, I review and analyze how commercial banks have utilized different types of information in their operations. I classify the information used by commercial banks into different categories and discuss their importance to the operations of commercial banks. After that, I conduct a case analysis to illustrate the role of non-financial information in the development of community banks’ business strategy. I conclude this thesis with a discussion of how community banks can better utilize data analysis to develop their core competencies in the era of “Big Data”. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2015

Orientador: Ricardo César Gonçalves Sant'Ana / Resumo: A divulgação de informações financeiras na internet tem se tornado uma prática cada vez mais comum em empresas e órgãos públicos, uma vez que a internet possibilita a ampla disseminação e divulgação de informações a diversos públicos. Nesse contexto, visando a agilidade e praticidade para a elaboração de relatórios financeiros emerge a linguagem Extensible Business Reporting Language – XBRL. Assim, o presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar como as empresas, que atuam no Brasil e aderiram ao XBRL disponibilizam suas informações financeiras na internet. Para tanto, adotou-se uma amostra de cem empresas nacionais e estrangeiras que atuam no Brasil, e a partir da amostra, realizou-se buscas na internet, por meio da ferramenta de busca Google, utilizando-se site:<domínio da empresa> xbrl, para a identificação de documentos no formato XBRL disponibilizados por essas empresas. A partir da busca, constatou-se que apenas uma pequena parcela das empresas utiliza o XBRL, e que os formatos de documento predominantes ainda são HTML, XLS, PDF e Microsoft Word, e estes formatos pouco contribuem para que haja um maior aproveitamento e análise dos dados disponibilizados, uma vez que alguns desses formatos não permitem selecionar e organizar os dados de forma que o usuário possa reaproveita-los. E por fim, constatou-se que a linguagem XBRL ainda não é utilizada pelas empresas para divulgar informações financeiras no Brasil e que uma das causas da não adesão ao XBRL seja a falta de conheci... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Mestre