As an attempt to investigate the adoption, future emphasis and benefits derived from traditional and contemporary western-orientated management accounting practices in Chinese organisations, in particular, in state-owned enterprises and foreign joint ventures located in China, this empirical study was modeled on a similar study undertaken in Australia (Chenhall and Langfield-Smith 1998). It obtained structured information and carried out a comparison between a western capitalist developed country and an eastern socialist developing country (China), which is moving towards a market economy. The effectiveness of the adoption of management accounting practices is influenced by complex contextual factors. Based on cultural, economic, institutional, organisational and innovation theory frameworks established in the research literature, the study therefore explored a wider range of environmental factors which determined the extent to which state-owned enterprises and foreign joint ventures have employed management accounting practices, Thus, the role which joint ventures have played in the diffusion of management accounting practices in China has consequently been evaluated. A cross-sectional survey involving a postal questionnaire method of data collection was adopted. A total of 179 usable responses were received representing a response rate of 19%. The study also conducted some interviews. The results of this research indicated that management accounting practices in Chinese organisations have made considerable progress in recent years compared to previous Chinese studies (He 1997; Lin and Wu 1998; Qiao 1997). However, there is a lower usage of management accounting practices by comparison with western countries. A number of environmental factors such as external authorities, social services, advanced production and management techniques, long-standing traditional practices, the attitude of the leadership, the quality of the accounting personnel have influenced the adoption of management accounting practices in stateowned enterprises and joint ventures. This study also confirmed that joint ventures have played an important role in the diffusion of management accounting practices in China because they have in general higher adoption rates and place greater emphasis on recently developed, strategically focused, market oriented and investment appraisal techniques than state-owned enterprises. In addition, the research has reinforced some support for the findings from previous studies (Chenhall and Langfield-Smith 1998; Firth 1996; O'Connor et al. forthcoming). The study also provided some evidence supporting institutional isomorphism theory; for example, joint ventures have adjusted the management accounting systems and practices to suit the Chinese management context. The distinguishing feature of this study is that it incorporates an empirical investigation and an exploratory study in order to provide new knowledge relating to the adoption of western practices. of management accounting in China and the influence of foreign joint ventures. However, as with other studies, it has a number of limitations that need to be overcome in the future. Also future research directions are highlighted.

During the late 1980s considerable publicity was given to the criticisms of management accounting. In response to these criticisms new innovations emerged. The innovation that has attracted the greatest interest has been activity-based costing (ABC). This study gathers empirical data to examine various issues relating to ABC derived from an extensive review and synthesis of the relevant literature, including the contingency theory literature. The major aims of the study are to investigate the extent to which various contextual factors influence the adoption of ABC systems, to determine the reasons and factors which have discouraged firms from adopting ABC and to examine the impact of various factors in determining the success of ABC systems. Other objectives include examining the importance of specific motives for implementing ABC systems and examining the extent to which other accounting innovations and strategic management accounting practices are associated with the adoption/non-adoption of ABC systems. A postal questionnaire was conducted using 1,000 UK manufacturing and nonmanufacturing organisations with an annual sales turnover in excess of £50 million as the target population. Not-for-profit organisations were excluded from the population sample. The findings are based on 176 responses (a usable response rate of 19%). Strong support was found for the intensity of the competitive environment, size, extent of the use of lean production techniques (including JIT techniques), importance of cost information, extent of the use of innovative/strategic management accounting techniques and corporate sector having a significant influence in the adoption of ABC systems. Using factor analysis, three factors were found to be significantly associated with ABC success. They were managerial understanding and the ability to use ABC information, positive attitudes by accounting staff towards ABC and adequate training for ABC and a clear understanding of its purposes. The dominant motives for implementing ABC related to the deficiencies of the existing system such as the existing system not providing useful information to management, it was necessary to update the existing costing information system and the existing costing system was not reliable. The most important reasons for not implementing ABC were that the perceived benefits did not justify the cost of implementing it, most of the indirect costs were fixed, the existing system was considered satisfactory for controlling overheads and the general lack of support from top management or individuals to act as champions. A distinguishing feature of the study is that it overcomes the deficiencies of previous ABC studies that have used bivariate statistical tests. These studies have examined independently, without controlling for the impact of other variables in the model, whether the difference between ABC adopters and non-adopters are statistically significant in respect of each of the selected contextual variables. This study uses mutivariate binary logistical regression that systematically controls for the impact of the other explanatory variables that are likely to influence the adoption of ABC.

This thesis contains the findings of an examination of the joint and endogenous evolution of financial development, income inequality and human welfare using data for a sample of 29 Sub-Sahara African countries from 1990 to 2010. Specifically, the study purposed to investigate whether the relationship between human welfare measured by the aggregate Human Development Index and financial sector measured by broad money (M2) is influenced by the level of income inequality in SSA. Unlike previous studies, this study uses the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) methodology to correct for biases arising from the presence of unit roots, serial correlation and endogeneity. The results suggest that financial sector development measured by its size or broad money as a percentage of GDP (M2/GDP) yields a disproportionately higher and significant robust effect on living standards in SSA when national incomes are highly unequally distributed (GINI > 0.45) both in the long and short run. This finding is strongly causal and irrespective of whether a multidimensional measure of welfare such as the human development index (HDI) or a one-dimensional measure such as the infant mortality rate is employed. Also, the finding that high income inequality is not a fatality in SSA could be taken as evidence in support of the Kuznets (1955) hypothesis. In addition, the results suggest that the disproportionate impact of financial sector deepening (credit to the private sector) on human welfare in the highly unequal countries only occurs in the long run. Contrary to Beck et al. (2007), the liquidity, savings and transactions functions offered by a more developed financial sector in terms of broad money (M2) provides a higher economic wellbeing for the residents of our highly unequal SSA sub-sample than credit issued to private individuals and businesses. Again, this study found that the disproportionate impact of financial sector development in the highly unequal countries is related to an average ratio to GDP of broad money (M2) of 25 percent and credit to the private sector of 18 percent calculated independently of the VECM model. The implication is that these average ratios could be important thresholds for which the impact of financial development on human welfare becomes vital. This is consistent with theories that suggest that there is increasing returns to scale as the financial sector develops from a lower level. Consequently, and because of the finding that there is strong causality between M2 and human welfare in the highly unequal SSA countries in our sample, any policy designs to combat poverty and enhance living standards in such countries must have a strong financial sector development component. Then too, the findings suggest that low income SSA countries must enact adequate policies to increase the size and depth of their financial sectors to reach at least, a long term average ratio to GDP of 25 percent for M2 and 18 percent for credit to the private sector.

Despite increasing attention paid to intangibles research since the end of the 20th century, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on the interactions among different intangible elements and their performance implications due to the lack of appropriate intangible measurements and the low level of intangible disclosure in the public domain. From a resource-based view (RBV), this thesis seeks to investigate the role of intangibles in the European banking sector using mixed methods. A quantitative approach is adopted to test the relationships among different intangible elements and between them and bank performance for a sample of 63 banks from 2005 to 2007. The empirical results show that top management human capital (HC) has a positive impact on either customer relationships or bank financial performance, and the combination of different intangible elements tends to better explain the variation in banks’ return on assets than they do individually. Meanwhile, a qualitative approach is employed to assess intangible measurement, disclosure, and modelling by conducting semi-structured interviews with 11 bank managers and 12 bank analysts. A grounded theory model of intangibles is developed, which reveals how intangibles and tangible/financial resources interact in the bank value creation process. In addition, it explores the communication gaps between bank managers and bank analysts regarding the concept of intangibles, intangible measurement and intangible disclosure. More importantly, the adoption of mixed methods research allows this thesis to achieve evidence triangulation and complementarity. Both approaches produce evidence in support of the resource integration of the RBV theory and the importance of top management HC. Besides, the qualitative study provides the means to explore the way of improving the specified models and intangible proxies used in the quantitative study. This thesis makes a contribution to the development of mixed methods research in the fields of finance, accounting and management by providing an example of how quantitative and qualitative approaches can be integrated to investigate a research question. It also contributes to the intangible literature and banking literature in terms of improving our understanding of the role of intangibles in the bank business model.

This thesis empirically analyses corporate governance reforms in Saudi Arabia using a mixed-methods research design. Saudi Arabia has recently pursued corporate governance reforms; the establishment of the Capital Market Authority (CMA) in 2003 and the publication of the Saudi Corporate Governance Code (SCGC) in 2006 constitute a central part of these reforms. This study attempts to provide new insights by exploring the corporate governance reforms pursued. In particular, by using an integrated research design framework, the study seeks to: (i) examine the level of compliance with, and disclosure of, the governance provisions contained in the SCGC by Saudi listed firms; (ii) ascertain whether the introduction of the SCGC has helped improve corporate governance standards in the Saudi corporate context; (iii) investigate the factors affecting voluntary corporate governance disclosure among Saudi listed firms; (iv) examine the association between a number of individual corporate governance mechanisms (i.e., equilibrium-variable model) and financial performance in Saudi listed firms; (v) analyse the relationship between voluntary compliance with the SCGC and firm financial performance by employing a broad composite corporate governance index (i.e., compliance-index model); and (vi) explore the level of awareness and appreciation of good corporate governance practices among key internal and external stakeholders in Saudi Arabia. The first five objectives outlined above are examined using a quantitative methodology, whereas the sixth objective is investigated by employing a qualitative research design. Efforts have been made to achieve integration between the two different research designs by applying the Explanatory Sequential Design (two sequential stages) proposed by Creswell and Clark (2011) within a multi-theoretical framework that incorporates insights from agency, managerial signalling, stakeholder, stewardship and resource dependence theories. The decision to employ a mixed-methods research design is motivated by the relative lack of, and recent calls for, mixed-methods approaches in corporate governance research. The mixed-methods approach seeks to provide a more complete understanding of the effects of corporate governance reforms on corporate disclosure and performance. In addition to the quantitative analysis, semi-structured interviews were conducted with five different groups of key stakeholders. The interview data offers further scope to: (ii) explore the corporate governance reforms; (ii) examine the impact of such reforms on actual governance practices; and (iii) provide a unique opportunity to further understand and explain the quantitative findings. Through the quantitative approach, the study examined balanced panel data of 80 Saudi listed firms from 2004 to 2010. This generated a total of 560 firm-year observations that were collected manually from the sampled firms’ annual reports. First, the constructed Saudi Corporate Governance Index (SCGI) showed that the introduction of the SCGC has helped improve voluntary corporate governance disclosure among Saudi listed firms. Second, this study found that board size, audit firm size, the presence of a corporate governance committee, government ownership, institutional ownership and director ownership have a positive influence on the level of compliance with the SCGC. In contrast, the analysis showed that the proportion of independent directors and block ownership are negatively correlated with the level of voluntary corporate governance disclosure. Third, the findings obtained from the compliance-index model suggest that good corporate governance practices, proxied by the SCGI, are positively related to return on assets (ROA), but have no significant relationship with firm value, as measured by Tobin’s Q (Q-ratio). Similarly, the results from the equilibrium-variable model are by and large mixed. Whereas CEO duality, proportion of independent directors, board sub-committees and director ownership are positively related to ROA, board size is negatively associated with ROA. On the other hand, the proportion of independent directors, board size, frequency of board meetings and director ownership are positively related to firm value, while CEO duality and the presence of board sub-committees have no significant relationship with firm value. The results from the quantitative analysis are robust to controlling for a number of potential endogeneity problems. Finally, the findings obtained from the interview data generally suggest that the regulatory authorities and the CMA in particular need to further strengthen efforts to enhance the level of awareness and appreciation of good corporate governance practices among key internal and external stakeholders of corporate governance in Saudi Arabia.

This thesis contributes to our understanding of CEO succession decisions in family firms with an incumbent family CEO. The successor choice may be a manifestation of conflicts of interests between the controlling family and the minority shareholders. Previous research has focused on the consequences of the CEO succession on firm performance; it has not studied the factors that determine the choice of the successor, the shareholder reaction to this choice, nor methodological concerns particularly relating to adjusting board independence for links the directors have to the controlling family, thin trading and confounding events. Thus, our objectives are: (i) to highlight key methodological concerns and propose ways of addressing these, (ii) to identify the determinants of the CEO successor choice between a family and a nonfamily CEO and (iii) to examine the stock market reaction to the succession announcement. Our sample comprises 283 succession announcements in listed family firms from France, Germany and the UK during 2001-2010. We find that reported board independence is overstated compared to our proposed measure of adjusted board independence. Two factors are found to influence the CEO successor choice. First, while reported board independence has no impact on the successor choice, our adjusted measure of de facto independence reduces the likelihood of a family successor, implying that the former is a biased measure. Second, cross-listed French firms are less likely to appoint another family CEO, confirming the bonding hypothesis of Coffee (1999). Our event study presents new evidence on the drivers of the stock market reaction to the succession announcement in family firms. Investors only react to the announcement of a nonfamily CEO successor, which is met by positive cumulative abnormal returns (CARs). Poor past performance elicits more positive CARs to the announcement of a nonfamily CEO. Two other factors, on interaction with past performance, drive the stock market reaction to the latter announcement. Accordingly, in poorly performing firms, the greater the adjusted board independence, the less positive are the CARs when a nonfamily CEO is announced, whereas, more positive CARs are observed for firms that offer greater shareholder protection. The key policy implication of these results is that definitions for board independence in the codes of best practice must account for directors’ links to the controlling shareholders.

This study examines the extent of and motivations behind corporate social reporting (CSR) by large corporations in general and subsidiaries of multinational corporations in particular in Bangladesh. It particularly addresses the research question: Why, in Bangladesh, do corporations in general and subsidiaries of MNCs in particular produce or not produce social and environmental data in their annual reports? At the first step, the study explores the general trend of CSR in the UK and Bangladesh, and then examines in more detail: (a) CSR of subsidiaries of MNCs in Bangladesh in general; and (b) CSR of UK MNCs and their subsidiaries in particular. Content analysis has been used to capture the nature and quantity of CSR issues provided in the annual reports by the companies. At the second step, the study explores reasons for accepting social responsibility and practising CSR by subsidiaries through in depth interviews. The study argues that CSR in Bangladesh mainly means employee disclosure. More importantly, subsidiaries disclose social and environmental issues more in line with Bangladeshi national companies than they do with their MNC parents. Managerial perspectives on social responsibility are found to be limited to local traditions of philanthropy similar to the South Asian trend. The main reason for practicing CSR by corporations in Bangladesh is found to be to manage certain stakeholders’ perceptions for corporations’ own interests. It appears that a single theory (i.e. stakeholder, legitimacy or political economy) cannot explain the whole social and environmental reporting phenomenon observed in Bangladesh. Rather, each theory provides a slightly different and useful insight into CSR practices. The absence of CSR is not only socio-cultural; rather it is found to be political which hints that corporations are in control of choosing the channel for producing CSR and the choice not to make information available to the public.

The disclosure of Corporate Governance (CG) information by firms has been found in prior studies to have an impact on the market value of firms. This thesis extends the research by studying the impact of voluntary CG disclosure by firms in Hong Kong, a market which provides a strong legal investor protection but characterized by a high insider ownership, on company valuation, as proxied by Tobin’s q. This thesis also examines the role of dividend payout on the CG of Hong Kong firms. Based on hand-collected data for a sample of 258 firm-years over the 2003-2005 period, the empirical results show that, firstly, voluntary CG disclosure is positively and significantly related to market valuation for small firms, but the relationship is not significant for large or medium firms. Combining large firms and small firms in a pooled sample, as done in most previous studies, thus misses the differential value relevance of voluntary CG disclosure for small versus large firms. Secondly, firms with higher CG disclosure are associated with lower dividend payout ratios, ceteris paribus. The evidence appears to suggest that CG disclosure can substitute for dividend payout. Thirdly, those small firms with medium levels of insider ownership are found to pay lower dividends than small firms with either low or very high levels of insider ownership, suggesting that investors would expect higher dividends from small firms that are prone to, or have either agency problems or entrenchment problems. Furthermore, controlling for the level of insider ownership, a small firm with high CG disclosure is always associated with a higher market valuation. The empirical evidence suggests that voluntary CG disclosure has a much stronger impact on the reduction of information asymmetry between investors (i.e., the outsiders) and managers (i.e., the insiders) for small firms than for large firms. Hence, by voluntarily disclosing more CG information, a small firm can be expected to enjoy the double benefits of receiving a higher market valuation and a lower demand for dividend payout from investors. This study contributes to the research of value relevance of CG disclosure in several ways. It provides clear evidence that voluntary CG disclosure enhances the valuation of small firms, which previous research may have overlooked. It also shows that voluntary CG disclosure and the level of insider ownership jointly affect a firm’s valuation and dividend payout. Voluntary disclosure of corporate governance information, even under a strong legal regime for investor protection, seems to be a company attribute very much appreciated by outside investors.

This thesis aims to trace the development of management accounting systems (MAS) in a Portuguese bank, where an activity-based costing system (ABC) was trialled for implementation, as a means to improving the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of employee activity. The culture of banking in Portugal has changed significantly over the last 25 years, but at the same time there are older traditions which remain strong. The purpose of this research was to study how an imported MAS like ABC is developed and disseminated within a Portuguese banking context. The research can be classified as a longitudinal study of organisational change using a single case study. Although based in the interpretive tradition since it is concerned with actors' perceptions, interpretations and beliefs, it also draws on a Foucault-inspired critical framework of the kind developed in the work of Hoskin and Macve (e.g. 1986, 1988, 1994, 2000), and in the research into the financial sector undertaken by Morgan and Sturdy (2000). The particular model developed here is designed to enable the exploration of the effect of accounting practices on change from three perspectives - changing structures, changing discourses and the effect of both of these processes on power relations. It also draws on Fligstein's (1991) institutional framework to understand change in terms of the interplay across three relevant institutional contexts - the organisational field, the state, and the existing strategy and structure of the bank. The research draws on the literature and on primary data, including 41 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, and documentary and archive data. The main contributions of the research are related to the increase of visibility and perceived importance of accounting in the banking sector, and how accounting is significant beyond its technical roles. The study provides new insights into how management accounting practices, along with other organisational systems, play an important role in questioning, visualising, analysing, and measuring implemented strategies.

This thesis explores attitudes and perceptions of the Libyan managerial class to the internal audit function focusing on the oil and gas industries.