In 1973, leading professional accountancy bodies from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, United Kingdom and the United States of America established the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) in a bid to confront the problems of international accounting diversities. In addition to the efforts of the IASC, various other bodies such as the United Nations, the European Community, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, have at various times also attempted to address this problem. Against this background, the first main objective of this study is to assess the extent to which the accounting measurement and associated disclosure practices of five leading countries, namely: France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the USA differ in spite of the major efforts made so far to reduce or eliminate diversities in the accounting practices of different countries. The second main objective of this study is to ascertain the extent to which the accounting measurement and associated disclosure practices of multi-listed and domestic listed companies from these five countries differ. This is interesting in view of the argument that globalisation and internationalisation of capital markets provide a justification for global accounting harmonisation. In order to accomplish the study objectives, the financial statements of 413 large listed companies from France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the USA for the 1990/91 financial year and 293 large listed companies for 1970/71 financial year were surveyed to ascertain the extent to which there were significant diversities between the accounting measurement and associated disclosure practices of companies from the five countries before (1970/71) and after (1990/91).

This study explores the value creation in relationship banking from the relationship managers' perspective. A grounded theory approach (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) is adopted that theory is derived from data, systematically gathered and analyzed throughout the research process. This study derives concepts and categories from primary data and identifies relationships among these theoretical elements. This study provides a comprehensive picture of relationship banking as a social phenomenon, and supplies some theoretical and managerial implications. Moreover, this study links the literature relevant to relationship banking from different disciplines. This is a new way of looking at the relationship banking phenomenon and relevant literature in an integrated manner. This study conducted research to investigate why the case banks establish long-term relationships with corporate customers? The case banks considered macro conditions including the advances in technology, financial deregulation, and business globalisation when they adopted relationship banking. The interviewees perceived that relationship banking was efficient for managing risk, effective for saving cost and necessary for cross-selling. Some intervening conditions including customer information and knowledge, customer needs and customer confidence also influence the development of relationship banking. This study investigated how the case banks establish and maintain these relationships and how they organise and motivate relationship managers? The case banks built a relationship orientated corporate culture, organised employees around customer relationships and employed customervalue based performance measurement and incentive-based reward system. The employees cooperated inside the organisation and communicated with their customers regularly, exchanged information and provided relationship transactions. This study also investigated how the case banks and corporate customers get benefits from relationship banking? The interviewees perceived that the corporate customers gained benefits including fund availability, product availability, service quality, in-time heir, and business platform. The case banks gained benefits including reduction of credit risk, increase in income, sustainable profit, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction. The findings were integrated and linked to some banking, finance, organisation and marketing literature related to relationship banking phenomenon. The case banks increased internal service quality through employee relationship management and improved employee satisfaction. The interviewees perceived that the corporate customers received benefits in the corporate banking market by customer relationship management. The increased customer satisfaction resulted in customer retention and profit to the case banks. The case banks perceived that added shareholder wealth improved shareholder satisfaction. This study concluded that the case banks, which had more relationship banking competitive advantages and better relationship banking, related processing systems were expected to outperform the competing banks.

Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) play important roles in socio-economic development and poverty alleviation particularly in developing countries. It has however been argued that the focus of MFIs is changing from the traditional purely social to commercial (mission drift) and has been criticised for neglecting the welfare of citizens and grassroots accountability in favour of commercialisation and accountability to donors/shareholders. This mission drift has resulted in changes in the structure and practices of MFIs. The study has been designed to examine how the accounting and accountability practices of a MFI can change in response to changes in its mission. The study presents case evidence from a large MFI operating in Cameroon with data collected through semi-structured interviews, informal discussions and documents. The study traces the evolution of the organisation and its accounting and accountability practices. A theoretical framework of an interpretive nature is used which draws on institutional entrepreneurship theory in order to highlight the importance of actors in the change process. The findings suggest a mission drift and transformations over the years from a social to a commercial organisation with the change impacting significantly on its structure and accounting and accountability practices.

Korea adopted Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD) in November 2002. Regulation FD, designed with a goal of levelling the playing field among market participants, has created considerable debate among practitioners and academics. This thesis examines the effect of Regulation FD on the Korean securities market, using a large sample of 161,343 forecast-year observations and 2,311 firm-year observations from 2000 to 2007. We uncover four main sets of findings. First, we find that analysts' forecast accuracy has increased after the adoption of Regulation FD. We attribute this finding to the improved quality of public information and reduced importance of private access to managers in the post-FD period. Second, we provide evidence of significant change in firms' disclosure policy in the post-FD period. We report that private earning guidance and private information in analysts' forecasts have decreased as a consequence of curtailing selective disclosure in the post-FD period. Our findings are consistent with the intentions of Regulation FD to increase management disclosure to the general public. Third, we find no evidence of an increase in herding behaviour in the post-FD period. Our results contradict Regulation FD's opponents' claims that elimination of private channels may lead to increasing herding behaviour due to the chilling effect. We find no evidence that Regulation FD makes firms withhold their disclosure. To the contrary, our evidence suggests that Regulation FD has led to an increase in the quality and quantity of public information. Finally, we provide strong evidence for a reduction in informed trading and information leakage prior to unscheduled earnings announcement and release of analysts' recommendations. Overall, our results suggest that Regulation FD has been successful in eliminating selective disclosure and levelling the playing field for investors.

This thesis examines the strategy formulation of small and medium enterprises in Greece by measuring the two principal dimensions of the strategy formulation process, the normative/descriptive dimension and the individual/collective dimension. For the purposes of the thesis a theoretical model of strategy formulation is proposed and evaluated, drawing upon the principles of contingency theory which presumes that there is no exclusive approach to strategy formulation which applies likewise to all firms in all circumstances. According to contingency theory there are many variables or factors which predict and influence the decision of formulating a strategy. Furthermore, the thesis investigates the role of accounting information on the process of strategy formulation by examining the relationship between the adoption of a specific strategy formulation approach and the information sources that SMEs use, the extensiveness of accounting information usage and the perceived usefulness of accounting information to SME managers. Using a data-triangulation (semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire), the findings of the study show the following: First, organizational size, perceived environmental volatility, the level of technology and specific owner manager characteristics (experience and education) are all significant predictors of SMEs adoption of a specific strategy formulation approach. Second, accounting information usage is positively associated with the normative and collective strategy formulation approaches. More specific, SMEs which utilize a broad range of information sources, which engage in extensive accounting information utilization and which perceive accounting information as very useful are positively correlated with the normative and collective approaches of strategy formulation. Third, financial performance was found to have a positive relationship with the descriptive and individualistic approach to strategy, meaning that SME owner managers who employ emergent strategies without the collaboration and participation of others in the process tend to achieve higher levels of profitability. Fourth, significant differences were found between SMEs having a different ownership status (family and non-family SMEs) and belonging to different business sectors (retail, construction and service providing firms) in relation to strategy formulation approach.

This thesis investigates the factors that influence the magnitude of goodwill impairment losses as well as the value relevance of these losses using a sample of 2,466 companies, drawn from 17 countries in which IFRSs have been made mandatory for all their domestic listed companies. The study period is 2007-2013 and includes 14,898 firm-year observations. The results obtained from the Tobit regression analysis involving variables drawn from agency/positive accounting theory, Hofstede’s theory of culture, as well as different theoretical institutional models, reveal that goodwill-impairment amounts are not only driven by economic factors and managerial reporting incentives, but also by country-specific factors, such as cultural and institutional variables. The results also confirm that the strength of the equity market is still the single most influential factor contributing not only to differences in accounting practices but above all, to differences in institutional quality between countries. The results of a K-means cluster analysis reveal that there are two groups of countries, corresponding to strong equity-outsider and weaker equity-outsider clusters. By comparing the relative associations between goodwill-impairment amounts and economic factors and managerial reporting incentives across these two institutional clusters, estimation results reveal that firms in the strong equity-outsider cluster have recorded goodwill-impairment losses that are, on the one hand, strongly associated with economic factors, and on the other hand, weakly associated with managerial reporting incentives. Further analysis also showed that while results for the pooled sample did not indicate that goodwill impairment losses were value relevant this was not the case for firms in the strong equity-outsider cluster, which have recorded impairment losses that are, on average, more relevant and more timely than those recorded by firms in the weaker equity-outsider cluster.

This thesis is structured upon three studies. The first study investigates whether mandatory IFRS adoption improves accounting quality in Latin America. The findings show that in the post-adoption period: accrual earnings management practices are reduced, value relevance of accounting increases, and the delay in recognising bad news reduces. However, these improvements cannot be found in firms with high bankruptcy possibility and poorly performing firms. The second study focuses on whether the analysts’ information environment has improved since the IFRS adoption. The results show that the mandatory adoption of IFRS improves analysts’ information environment, even after controlling for the firm-level reporting incentives. The third study focuses on whether IFRS has affected the cost of equity and debt in Latin America. The findings show that the cost of equity and debt decreased significantly in the post-IFRS period. Overall, the results found can be attributed to IFRS as the institutional environment has not changed significantly around the years of the mandatory adoption of IFRS. Thus, IFRS can contribute to enhance the accounting quality of Latin American firms, and may help to develop the capital market and the development of these firms.

The business environment worldwide has witnessed remarkable changes, which require education to respond. However, accounting bodies and organisations have become concerned about the expansion of the gap between what is being taught in accounting education programmes (AEPs) and what are the requirements of the labour market. Much of this debate has focused on developed countries, but the same issues are likely to apply, but perhapsin different form, in emerging economies too. Using Libya as an example of an emerging economy, this research examines professionals’, practitioners’ and educators’ perceptions regarding three things: the required knowledge and skills; the gap that exists in both university accounting students and employees; and the institutional influences and barriers that may affect the development of university AEPs. Institutional theory was adopted as a lens to help guide and explain the findings. In order to fulfil the research objectives, a mixed method exploratory study design was used. This design included two phases: twelve Viber and Skype interviews were conducted, then 262 valid online questionnaire responses were collected. Thematic analysis of the interview transcripts was conducted, then the questionnaire responses were analysed, mainly using Welch’s ANOVA. The emerged themes showed that what is considered important for AEPs can be classified into three areas: technical knowledge (e.g. financial accounting, auditing, and awareness of ethical issues in accounting and auditing); generic skills such as teamwork, reading with understanding, and analysis skills; and IT skills (e.g. electronic accounting systems and World Wide Web). Most stakeholders were not satisfied with the development level that students exhibited in important competencies. The failures of Libyan AEPs were attributed to teaching and faculty member-related issues, student-related issues, curricula-related issues, and collaboration-related issues. Different institutional influences shape and affect AEPs. Coercive isomorphic pressures stem from the dependency of the universities upon government funding, and the previous regime’s attempts to politicize education. Mimetic isomorphic influences result from different channels, including curricula, teaching methods experience brought by abroad-educated academics, and the good relationship between Libya and the previous colonizer. The study contributes to a knowledge gap in the accounting education literature from an emerging economy context, where educators consider the gap between the required skills and development level in their students even larger than that perceived by professionals and practitioners. Using institutional theory as a lens to answer the research questions provides evidence of the influences that accounting educators in Libya face. As well as following up this project in other emerging economies, further research should consider the voices of students and recent graduates as key stakeholders.

This thesis aims to add empirical evidence to the corporate finance literature by looking at two main financing issues, namely firms’ payout policies and capital structure decisions, in the context of emerging markets. The thesis consists of seven chapters, including five main standalone research papers. After an introductory chapter, the first research paper reviews the existing literature on the dividend policy controversy with an emphasis on recent empirical work. The following two chapters consist of two research papers which look separately at the dividend and capital structure decisions of firms in India and in Mauritius. In the second research paper an agency model of dividend policy is estimated and tested on a sample of Indian firms using Weighted Least Squares methodology. The third research paper applies panel data procedures to estimate and test a model of the determinants of leverage, using the entire population of non-financial quoted firms in Mauritius. The last two empirical papers investigate how affiliation with an Indian Business House impacts on the dividend and capital structure decisions of firms. The impact of group-affiliation on the payout decision is tested by Maximum Likelihood qualitative and limited dependent variable techniques. The analysis of the impact of group-affiliation on the capital structure decision is conducted using Ordinary Least Squares methods and incorporates group-level characteristics as explanatory variables. While the main findings of these papers are on the whole consistent with the theory, there are new major insights that represent the special case of emerging markets. These main insights, as well as the main conclusions of the study, are summarised in Chapter 7, including some promising ideas for future research.

The thesis contributes to the literature in the following ways: First it contributes to the body of literature by extending our knowledge on the predictive ability of alternative Unconditional methodologies. Second it adds to the body of litareture by providing practical tests so as to assess the performance of Conditional models. Third the thesis extends our knowledge on the sensitivity of utilising different portfolio formation criteria, while testing both Unconditional and Conditional asset pricing inferences. Fourth it contributes to the body of literature by extending our knowledge on Unconditional and Conditional beta models and their comparative performance. Fifth the thesis adds to the existing literature by estimating the Industry cost of capital, using the following different models, Unconditional, Conditional, the Arbitrage Pricing Model and the Capital Asset Pricing model. Thus provides empirical evidence using a practical application, estimation of the Industry cost of capital, of which model provides a better description of UK returns. Chapter 4 introduces the portfolio returns used in the thesis and examines the size, price earnings ratio, dividend yield effect and their interactions. The time-series of the primary portfolios start in 1956 and ends in 1996. We find that for the 1976-1996 period, that the dividend yield and PE effect subsume the size effect. However the PE effect subsumes the dividend yield effect and it is the PE effect that is the most dominant. The best documented of all stock market effects, the small-firm premium went into reverse during 1989-1996. The size effect lives on, but for the latest decade, it is the largest firms that outperform the smallest ones by 10.26% per annum. Chapter 5, which examines Unconditional models, aims to examine the predictive ability of alternative Unconditional methodologies. Another objective that is explored is the sensitivity of results to different grouping techniques, of size; PE ratio and dividend yield portfolio groupings. The third issue examined entails the identification of priced factors in the UK market, over a twenty year of period, (1976-1996), and for a data-set (approximately 6000 companies), which provides a complete history of firms traded on the London Stock exchange, inclusive of Unlisted securities market. We find that that the choice of one methodology over another has important implications and that there is a sensitivity of results to different portfolio groupings. Chapter 6, which examines Conditional models, i. e., conditioned on a set of instrumental variables, models the dynamic behaviour of portfolio returns using a Conditional Asset Pricing Model and examine the behaviour of macroeconomic risk premiums over time. We provide practical tests of Conditional Asset Pricing Models and forecast (i) the sign of the price of risk using the probit model, (ii) the magnitude of the price of risk and (iii) portfolio returns for the size, PE ratio and dividend yield portfolios. We find that the instrumental variables show ability to predict variation of the price of risk of the return on FTSE, S&P 500, unexpected UK stock exchange turnover, change in money supply, imports, inflation and portfolio returns. Chapter 7 compares first Unconditional (constant) and Conditional (time-varying & conditioned on a set of instrumental variables) beta models and second the CAPM and the APM, estimates the industry cost of capital. We find differences, between constant unconditional betas and conditional betas cost of capital. The average Mean Square Error (MSE) for the conditional betas are smaller compared to constant betas. Moreover we find that the CAPM has larger MSE not only compared to the APT model with conditional betas, but with APT with unconditional betas. The Conditional beta model provides the best description of UK returns. We also run Monte Carlo simulations and test the statistical significance of the errors of the Conditional beta model. We find the errors to be statistically insignificant.