This thesis examines the effect of IFRS No.3, <i>Business</i> <i>Combinations</i>, on managers’ accounting choices with respect to the goodwill impairment losses reported by the largest UK firms.  While IFRS No. 3 was issued to improve the accounting treatment of goodwill and provide users with more useful and value-relevant information regarding the underlying economic value of goodwill, it has been criticized by academics, practitioners, and dissenting IASB members on the grounds of the managerial discretion inherent in the process of testing goodwill for impairment.  It is unclear how IFRS No. 3 has affected the reporting of goodwill impairment losses, including the related managerial flexibility exercised in determining them. Results reveal managers are exercising discretion in the reporting of goodwill impairments following the adoption of IFRS No.3.  Specifically, goodwill impairments are more likely to be associated with recent CEO changes, income smoothing and “big bath” reporting behaviours.  However, results also indicate that goodwill impairments are strongly associated with economic indicators of impairment and have significant positive associations with effective governance mechanisms as measured by the percentage of independent directors on the board of directors, the number of board meetings, the percentage of shares owned by blockholders holding at least 10% of outstanding shares, and the percentage of shares owned by executive and non-executive directors, suggesting that managers are more likely to be using the discretion afforded by IFRS No.3 to convey their private information and expectations about the underlying performance of the firm rather than acting opportunistically in the write-off year.  These inferences are robust to a number of modelling specifications and variable definitions.  Further analysis and principal component aggregation of the corporate governance variables provide additional assurance that the perceived managerial reporting incentives are less likely to be opportunistic.

Whether Kant’s account of free will is coherent or not depends upon how we interpret him. On the one hand, if we understand Kant as providing some metaphysical solution to the problem of free will, which secures the reality of free will for agents, then his account seems to be incoherent. One the other hand, if we understand Kant’s account as merely providing a defense of the assumption, or idea of freedom for practical purposes, then his account seems to be useful and coherent. I will argue that the latter account of free will is the one that Kant provides in his works, and will illustrate how this account might shed light on to our epistemic limits and our nature as human beings.

No description available.

The aim of this thesis is to study native advertising and the public perception of newspaper credibility, and if this form of advertising have any ethical implications for the newspapers. Recent studies show that native advertising is perceived, from the public’s perspective, as a deceptive form of advertisement. Therefore this thesis also seeks to understand how the public copes with this deceptive form of advertisement. This thesis employs a qualitative research approach through focus group studies that include three different age groups, reaching from students aged 20-30 up to retirees aged 65 and up. Findings suggest that native advertising has a negative effect on the readers; the respondents explained that they found this form of advertising deceptive and also ethically problematic for the papers. Results also showed that the readers preferred advertisement where they felt in control of the outcome of the persuasion attempt. The study concludes that the public’s credibility judgment towards the newspapers weaken by native advertising.

Psychologists have examined the effects of numerous variables on classroom performance, but little research exists to demonstrate how specific teaching techniques, specifically the provision of printed presentation notes (such as presentation slides), affects student perception of responsibility. This study sought to discover the impact that providing presentation slides for use during lecture would have on students’ performance, as well as their perceptions of personal responsibility. In order to determine the effects of provided presentation notes on performance and perceived responsibility, this study examined the self-efficacy and locus of control of students assigned to either take their own notes or to use provided presentation materials in addition to their own notes, should they choose to take notes of their own. It was expected that the participants in the notesprovided condition would score better on the exam, and feel more responsible for their learning and performance, than those in the no-notes-provided condition. Additionally, the provision of notes was expected to have a greater positive effect on performance in those students with an external locus of control and/or low academic self-efficacy. It was also expected that students provided with printed notes would take better notes than those who were not provided with the printed notes. The results showed that neither performance nor responsibility were affected by condition. However, higher academic self-efficacy had a positive impact on exam score. Additionally, higher academic self-efficacy and a more internal locus of control were positively correlated with personal responsibility for learning and performance. The provision of printed presentation material did not have a direct effect on note quality, but did correlate negatively with the number of questions left blank on the exam. In addition, the number of questions left blank on the exam was negatively correlated with exam score. These results suggest that providing students with printed presentation materials may lead to fewer skipped exam questions and, potentially, better academic performance.

The growing importance of non-market considerations has led multinational corporations to globalize not just production and commercialization but also their corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives as nonmarket strategies. Scholars have shown that CSR can create intangible assets that help companies reduce their foreignness and gain competitive advantages over local rivals. To what extent multinational enterprises (MNEs) can transfer CSR initiatives to other locations is an important question. Prior research, focusing on the transfer of operational initiative, is silent on the transfer of practices that extend beyond the boundaries of the firm to influence the welfare of external stakeholders. This study builds a theory about the conditions that influence success and failure in the transfer of CSR initiatives from headquarters to overseas subsidiaries. Through a case study of an Indian multinational, qualitative data is combined with the formal logic of fuzzy set analysis. The findings reveal that it is the combination of practice characteristics and local contexts that influence the success of practice transfer. Specifically, I explore two characteristics of CSR initiatives that facilitate practice transfer: stakeholder multiplicity and ambiguity. The former denotes the degree to which a CSR initiative can serve more than one stakeholder and the latter denotes the degree to which a CSR initiative can be applied to multiple contexts in different ways. The analysis suggests that stakeholder multiplicity is a predictor of transfer success to countries where coordination among diverse social actors is easy to achieve. In contrast, in high-context culture locations where rapid coordination is less easy to achieve, the ambiguity of CSR initiatives is a more important predictor of transfer success.

Small businesses are critically important to the current U.S. economy. This is especially true for Vermont. In 2010, small Vermont businesses represented 96.3% of all employers accounting for approximately 60% of the private sector workforce (SBA, 2013). Entrepreneurs are drawn to Vermont for the quality of life, progressive atmosphere, and its distinction for fostering companies with socially, ethically and environmentally driven missions. Succession is an important stage in a company's life-cycle. Thus, succession planning is a crucial activity for founders, owners or high-level managers, (here after referred to as leaders,) in which to participate. This study explores the current environment of the intersection of social responsibility and succession planning. In order to examine the confluence of social responsibility value retention and succession planning, each aspect of a leader's intentions needed to be understood. Thus, this study incorporates: a description and analysis of leader's social responsibility attitudes, intentions and behaviors; a description and analysis of leader's succession planning attitudes, intentions and behaviors; and an analysis of the commonalities and distinctions found in the combination of social responsibility and succession planning attitudes, intentions and behaviors. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with small business leaders from September through December, 2013. The interview sample was intentionally weighted towards business leaders who are known for being socially responsible, due to their expected ability to speak more knowledgeably about social responsibility and its implications for their business. Findings indicate there is a lack of consensus among leaders in defining social responsibility values/orientation. Most leaders interviewed are thinking about succession planning and how their value-orientation might fit into that process. Applying the Theory of Planned Behavior, this study attempted to identify how attitudes towards social responsibility would impact the leaders' intentions and ultimately their behavior in succession planning.

Sustainable development is generally accepted as a policy imperative. However, it can be interpreted in very different ways and is perhaps best regarded as a discourse rather than as a precisely defined term. It is also generally accepted that `sustainable development' requires actions at all spatial scales and by all levels of government, including the local. However, parish and town councils, which are the most local level of local government in rural England, are given no responsibilities in relation to sustainability. This thesis is intended to investigate the potential of parish and town councils to take a leadership role in increasing the sustainability of their communities. A casestudy approach is used, involving the study of five larger local councils in the county of Gloucestershire, in the context of larger-scale sustainable development discourses. Two case-study projects are also analysed to study how different discourses come together at the local level. We find that the concept of `sustainable development' has been adapted by UK government to conform to wider political discourses. However, government interpretations are not necessarily reproduced at the local level, where inherent contradictions become more apparent. Although parish and town councillors may express commitment to `sustainable development', they tend to interpret it in terms of the local and the relatively short- term. A discourse of local council legitimation is identified by which councillors see their role as caring for their parish, with the benefit of local knowledge and holistic thinking. The thesis concludes that if parish and town councils are to contribute to sustainable development, they must be given specific powers encompassing the global and long-term effects of local activities, and other local groups must see the local council as a leader of the community and `sustainability arbiter', rather than as just another interest group.

En mettant en œuvre une démarche éthique rigoureuse et en m’appuyant sur mon propre passé de chercheur océanographe, j’explore dans cette thèse les différents aspects du travail de recherche, depuis le choix des sujets de recherche, en passant par l’élaboration de la connaissance, jusqu’aux conséquences des découvertes, et montre qu’ils sont tous le lieu de tensions éthiques. Je tente d’en cerner les contours, et de leur apporter des réponses argumentées. Cela me conduit enfin à proposer un certain nombre de pistes pour développer la vigilance éthique des chercheurs. / In this thesis, using a rigourous ethical approach and relying on my own experience of a researcher in oceanography, I explore all the aspects of research - the choice of a research field, the development of knowledge, the consequences of the findings- to show that they are all subject to ethical tensions. I try to circumvent them, and to bring arguments to answer them. I eventually propose several ideas to develop the ethical carefulness among the scientists.

This paper aims at providing a deeper understanding about how corporate social responsibility (CSR) can help small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries, looking at the case of Dominica, to strengthen their position on the international market. Different views and aspects of CSR have been found and analysed in order to show what previous scholars have contributed to the field. The literature that has been reviewed examines the different aspects of the phenomena of CSR in general but also in a more specific area, the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region in combination with SMEs and their potential to internationalise. This has resulted in the development of a conceptual framework that shows how all these parts are connected with each other. During this research, an abductive approach has been used, as there is a lack of existing research about the specific case of Dominica in the context of CSR and internationalization. By using semi-structured interviews with local companies to collect a qualitative research, a greater understanding of how CSR is used in such a context can be gained. The collected data was then analysed through the program NVivo, which provided us with an overview of the findings and connected relevant conclusions from the respondents. This showed that the underlying reasons for acting in responsible ways are not to accomplish any CSR goals, but rather because the companies wanted to or their situation forced them, due to for example due to high import taxes and relationships with other firms. After the presentation of the findings, these are linked together with the theory in the analysis chapter, where the similarities and differences found are discussed. The final chapter includes answers to our research questions but also limitations, implications and suggestions for future research. The major finding that has derived from this thesis is that the main CSR activity conducted by Dominican SMEs are environmental. Moreover, there is a significant research gap concerning the phenomenon of CSR in the Latin America and Caribbean region combined with an even bigger knowledge gap regarding CSR among local companies in Dominica. In this thesis, we have researched a phenomenon that is new in regards to the island of Dominica and we therefore argue that this thesis can be of great value to SMEs in Dominica and other developing countries when planning to internationalize their company. Lastly, we claim that this research can aid policy makers and governments to impose regulations, which can help the companies to not only develop, but to contribute to society at the same time.