Thesis (M.M.S.)--University of Waikato, 2009. / Title from PDF cover (viewed August 31, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 1-37)

by Lan Yat Si, Wong Tai Chun, Mark. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 35-37). / ABSTRACT --- p.iii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iv / LIST OF TABLES --- p.vi / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS --- p.vii / Chapter / Chapter I. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Research Problem --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Overview --- p.2 / Chapter 1.3 --- Different Perspectives Explanation --- p.2 / Chapter 1.4 --- Earnings Management Explanation --- p.3 / Chapter 1.4.1 --- Big-bath Hypothesis --- p.3 / Chapter 1.4.2 --- Blaming Hypothesis --- p.3 / Chapter 1.5 --- Difference between Big-bath and Blaming Hypotheses --- p.4 / Chapter 1.6 --- Motivation and Potential Contributions of Study --- p.4 / Chapter 1.7 --- Chapter Summary --- p.5 / Chapter II. --- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK / Chapter 2.1 --- Earnings Management --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Definition --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Overview --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1.3 --- Motivations --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1.4 --- Patterns of Earnings Management --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2 --- Executive Succession --- p.9 / Chapter 2.3 --- Accounting Change --- p.10 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Definition --- p.10 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Accounting Policies --- p.10 / Chapter 2.3.3 --- Accounting Bases --- p.11 / Chapter 2.3.4 --- Accounting Estimates --- p.11 / Chapter 2.3.5 --- Disclosure Requirements --- p.11 / Chapter 2.3.6 --- Discretionary Changes --- p.12 / Chapter 2.4 --- Summary of Related Empirical Research --- p.12 / Chapter 2.4.1 --- Copeland and Moore (1972) --- p.13 / Chapter 2.4.2 --- Moore (1973) --- p.13 / Chapter 2.4.3 --- Strong and Meyer (1987) --- p.14 / Chapter 2.4.4 --- DeAngelo(1988) --- p.14 / Chapter 2.4.5 --- Elliot and Shaw (1988) --- p.15 / Chapter 2.4.6 --- Lilien et al (1988) --- p.15 / Chapter 2.4.7 --- Chen and Lee (1990) --- p.16 / Chapter 2.4.8 --- La Salle (1990) --- p.16 / Chapter 2.4.9 --- Walsh et al (1991) --- p.16 / Chapter 2.4.10 --- La Salle et al. (1993) --- p.17 / Chapter 2.5 --- Chapter Summary --- p.17 / Chapter III. --- RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS AND METHODOLOGY / Chapter 3.1 --- Development of Hypothesis --- p.18 / Chapter 3.2 --- Sample --- p.20 / Chapter 3.3 --- CEO Change and the Likelihood of Accounting Change --- p.21 / Chapter 3.4 --- CEO Change and the Directional Effect on Earnings --- p.22 / Chapter 3.5 --- Statistical Test and Employed --- p.22 / Chapter 3.6 --- Chapter Summary --- p.22 / Chapter IV. --- RESEARCH FINDINGS / Chapter 4.1 --- Officer Titles for CEOs --- p.23 / Chapter 4.2 --- Accounting Changes --- p.24 / Chapter 4.3 --- Income Effect on Accounting Changes --- p.24 / Chapter 4.4 --- CEO Change and Accounting Change --- p.25 / Chapter 4.5 --- CEO Change with Positive and Negative Accounting Changes --- p.27 / Chapter 4.6 --- Chapter Summary --- p.28 / Chapter V. --- SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION / Chapter 5.1 --- Summary of Key Findings --- p.29 / Chapter 5.2 --- Implications and Discussion --- p.30 / Chapter 5.3 --- Concluding Summary --- p.31 / APPENDIX --- p.32 / BIBIOGRAPHY --- p.35

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-74).

This study is concerned with determining the role, responsibility, qualifications, and changing trends regarding the position of chief financial officer in higher education : institutions as perceived by presidents and chief financial officers. After a comprehensive review of the literature, a questionnaire was developed, validated, and sent to the presidents and chief financial officers of 100 private and 100 public institutions which had randomly been selected. One-hundred seven presidents and 117 chief financial officers returned the completed questionnaires which produced data upon which the findings of the study are based.

In essay 1, I investigate the association of place attachment and financial reporting quality. Management characteristics affect a wide range of corporate decisions, including decisions affecting financial reporting quality; however, the influence of managerial place attachment on corporate decision-making has received relatively little attention - even though place attachment is thought to play a significant role in forming individual identity. Place attachment affects the decisions that individuals make with regards to social and environmental policies, lifestyle, and, in the corporate context, firmlevel policies. Because firms hire local CEOs and CFOs five to eight times more often than expected if geography were irrelevant to the matching process, the question of how managerial place attachment affects financial reporting outcomes is an important one. I investigate the effect of managerial place attachment on financial reporting quality in a sample of publicly traded U.S. firms. My findings indicate that firms with place attached CEOs display higher financial reporting quality, indicating a significant caretaking bond between CEO and stakeholders. CFOs, on the other hand, are marginally associated with lower financial reporting quality, indicating that they are more likely than CEOs to extract personal gain when they are local to their firm headquarters. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The purpose of this study was to analyze the characteristics of, and the perceived responsibilities of chief financial officers in California single and multi-district community colleges. This study sought to answer questions about how current CFOs in California Community Colleges perceive the necessary skills and the value of job and professional development to do their job. This study focused on three research questions: 1) What do current California Community College CFOs perceive to be necessary preparation and skills and 2) How do current California Community College CFOs acquire the skills they believe necessary to be a California Community College CFO? 3) What are the demographic characteristics of California Community College CFOs? A survey with both structured closed and open-ended questions was used to identify what 110 California Community College CFOs perceive to be the necessary preparation, skills, and professional preparation is needed to be an effective community college CFO. The majority of the community college CFOs of California are white males between the age of 50 and 59 who are likely to retire within the next ten years. Women constitute 33 percent of the CFOs; 17 percent are African American; 8.5 percent Asians; and Hispanics, the fastest growing minority group in California, made up only 1.7% of the respondents. In this study, the data showed that California's current CFOs are highly educated and bring an average of 12 years of experience to their position. They tend to work in urban, ethnically diverse Hispanic serving community colleges with average student enrollments of 15 to 20 thousand unduplicated student head count. These seasoned CFOs identified skills and on the job experiences they felt were important to being a community college CFO. The identified skills and experiences provide data that can support the development of a comprehensive mentoring, training and professional development program that closely aligns with the needs of California's community college CFOs.

Performance and accrual-based financial management systems as envisaged in the 1990 Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act, the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), the 1996 Federal Financial Management Improvement Act (FFMIA) and related legislation have been in place since prior to the turn of the millennium. Nevertheless, although performance has been measured and financial accountability improved in U.S. federal government agencies, there remains a gap in reporting on operational efficiency and effectiveness. This dissertation extends research into performance management to determine the extent to which performance measurement systems report on operational efficiency and effectiveness and thereby further facilitate performance management. It examines outputs as the unit-of-analysis within the input-output-outcome framework of performance measurement and reporting systems and their integration with accrual-based financial management systems in assessing government operations. It challenges the predominantly outcomes-focused reporting system as insufficient to the objective of improved operational efficiency and effectiveness. The research methodology employs qualitative analysis of selected agency performance reports, interviews of selected agency senior managers and oversight officials, analysis of previous research on performance reporting, and analysis of GAO survey data. The research examines an increased focus on output reporting as a means to improve operational efficiency and the linkage of outputs to outcomes as an effectiveness measure. The research leads to the conclusion that very little output efficiency or effectiveness measurement and reporting is occurring. The failure to measure performance in this manner is to the considerable detriment of operational efficiency, effectiveness and cost reduction in the federal government. / Ph. D.

In this work, we concern ourselves with particular topics in Polish space theory. We first consider the space A(U) of complex-analytic functions on an open set U endowed with the usual topology of uniform convergence on compact subsets. With the operations of point-wise addition and point-wise multiplication, A(U) is a Polish ring. Inspired by L. Bers' algebraic characterization of the relation of conformality, we show that the topology on A(U) is the only Polish topology for which A(U) is a Polish ring for a large class of U. This class of U includes simply connected regions, simply connected regions excluding a relatively discrete set of points, and other domains of usual interest. One thing that we deduce from this is that, even though C has many different Polish field topologies, as long as it sits inside another Polish ring with enough complex-analytic functions, it must have its usual topology. In a different direction, we show that the bounded complex-analytic functions on the unit disk admits no Polish topology for which it is a Polish ring. We also study the Lie ring structure on A(U) which turns out to be a Polish Lie ring with the usual topology. In this case, we restrict our attention to those domains U that are connected. We extend a result of I. Amemiya to see that the Lie ring structure is determined by the conformal structure of U. In a similar vein to our ring considerations, we see that, again for certain domains U of usual interest, the Lie ring A(U) has a unique Polish topology for which it is a Polish Lie ring. Again, the Lie ring A(U) imposes topological restrictions on C. That is, C must have its usual topology when sitting inside any Polish Lie ring isomorphic to A(U). In the last chapter, we introduce a new ideal of subsets of Polish spaces consisting of what we call residually null sets. From this ideal, we introduce an algebra consisting of what we call R-sets which is consistently a strict extension of the algebra of Baire property sets. We show that the algebra of R-sets is closed under the Alexandrov-Suslin operation and generalize Pettis' Theorem. From this, we provide new automatic continuity results and give a generalization of a result of D. Montgomery which shows that minimal assumptions on the continuity of group operations of an abstract group G with a Polish topology imply that G is actually a Polish group. We also see that many results pertaining to the algebra of Baire property sets generalize to the context of R-sets.