This dissertation compared the role priorities and curricular values identified by educational staff ministers serving in purpose driven model churches as compared to those serving in classical programmatic model churches within the Florida Baptist Convention. The study consisted of educational ministers serving in churches identified by their local Director of Mission as expressing either a purpose driven church model or a classical programmatic church model. A review of the precedent literature revealed that while the purpose driven model is a significant church methodology utilized by church leaders; little has been published regarding the role priorities of educational ministers serving in these churches. Demographic differences were noted in the age and gender of the two groups however, they had similar educational backgrounds. Educational ministers serving in purpose driven churches were significantly younger and had a larger representation of females than their classical programmatic model counterparts. Of the ten identified roles, the study found a significant difference only in the role of growth agent as classical programmatic model educational ministers rated this role as their highest priority. Purpose driven model educational ministers rated the role of equipping as their highest priority. Educational ministers serving in both church models rated the roles of evaluating and initiating their two lowest priorities, indicating a deficit in the area of critical reflection among church educational leaders. Two out of the nine identified conferences represented a significant difference between the two groups. These conferences focus on outreach strategies and partnering with denominational agencies. Both groups had lower curricular values scores than roles priorities indicating a gap between conferences provided by their state convention and their role priorities. / This item is only available to students and faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. If you are not associated with SBTS, this dissertation may be purchased from <a href="http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb">http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb</a> or downloaded through ProQuest's Dissertation and Theses database if your institution subscribes to that service.

University of Macau / Faculty of Business Administration. / Department of Accounting and Information Management

Whilst extensive research has been done on the association between corporate governance and firm performance, the empirical evidence is inconclusive. This thesis argues that the failure of past studies to establish a positive association between corporate governance and performance might be caused by the use of conservative accounting in firms. If firms with stronger corporate governance adopt more conservative accounting procedures, then tests of the relationship between corporate governance characteristics and performance will be biased downwards. If market participants fail to recognise a link between conservative accounting and corporate governance, then firms with stronger corporate governance might also be systematically undervalued. Therefore, studying the relationship between selected corporate governance attributes and the extent of conservative accounting does more than just extend our understanding of the link between governance characteristics and accounting quality. It also provides useful insights for interpreting the existing literature on the association between corporate governance and performance. In this thesis, detailed investigation is undertaken of the link between several governance characteristics (as well as an aggregate index) and the extent of conservatism evident in Australian firms?? financial reporting. Overall, the results provide only weak evidence that firms with certain governance characteristics report more conservatively. Evidence of any such link is restricted to measures of board composition and leadership, and even then the results are sensitive to the method used to measure the extent of conservatism in financial reporting. There is no systematic evidence of an association for measures of audit committee composition, nor board size. Finally, there is only weak evidence that use of a Big 5 auditor affects the extent of conservatism and the results are sensitive to the period investigated. These results are all robust to explicitly recognizing possible endogeneity between the extent of conservative accounting and the governance attributes examined. Overall, the results raise important questions about the extent to which widely advocated corporate governance attributes result in accounting outcomes which accelerate the revelation of relatively poor economic news, at least for Australian firms in the years examined (1998 and 2002). However, beyond the immediate relationship examined, the results also suggest that caution is appropriate before dismissing the absence of a link between governance attributes and firm performance as being attributable to accounting conservatism.

Specialist degree in education, Eastern Illinois University. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 23).

Using the attention-based view, this study is concerned with two levels of board of directors’ interaction relating to strategic entrepreneurship: (1) how individual board members may affect the attention of the entire board, and (2) how the board may affect the attention and resource allocation of the firm. Unique to prior literature, this study considers contextual factors at each level of interaction and views the board room communications through unprecedented access. Multiple regression and negative binomial regression analyses are used to test the theoretical hypotheses.

Corporate Governance is an important topic that has been given a great deal of attention the last decade and the attention has increased even more with the financial crisis of 2007-2009. The severe financial and economic crisis has worsened the relationship between shareholders and corporations, including banks, as well as between the executive management and the board of directors. There is a need to rebuild the trust between these actors and Corporate Governance is considered to be a helpful tool in order to achieve this. A mean that is used within Corporate Governance to protect shareholders in the financial market is the use of independent directors as a monitoring device for the executive management. Independent directors are considered to play an important role on boards and are preventing inside directors from abusing their power in hazardous ways. The efficiency of independent directors has however shown to differ between industries. The banking industry in particular stands out in comparison to non-financial firms. It is vital that independent directors are provided with the right expertise that is needed to fundamentally understand the complex industry of banks, and there is a risk that these directors lack this kind of knowledge which makes their presence inefficient. The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether there have been any changes in the number of independent board members in four Swedish banks within the time period of 2001-2010. The banks that are included in this study are Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB and Swedbank. Variables that are covered in the study are, except for number of independent board members in respect to the bank and major shareholders, the number of executives on the boards, the gender distribution, average age and average tenure of the independent board members. The result shows that there has been an increase in the number of independent board members within the investigated time period. The banks are complying with guidelines concerning board independence that are included in various recommendations provided by both the European Commission as well as the Swedish Corporate Governance Board.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of the awareness of stress and coping strategies of the directors of elementary schools in Taiwan. A total of 103 directors were randomly drawn as subjects from elementary schools in Kaohsiung city of southern Taiwan. Data collected were analyzed through t-test, and one-way ANOVA. Results indicate that awareness of directors¡¦ job stress is below the average, with higher degree on ¡§administration load¡¨, and lower degree on ¡§interpersonal relationship¡¨. Rational thinking is more frequently adopted by directors for coping with job stress. Significant differences in stress awareness were found only on gender, educational and professional background, so were age, and professional background in coping strategies.

Using the attention-based view, this study is concerned with two levels of board of directors’ interaction relating to strategic entrepreneurship: (1) how individual board members may affect the attention of the entire board, and (2) how the board may affect the attention and resource allocation of the firm. Unique to prior literature, this study considers contextual factors at each level of interaction and views the board room communications through unprecedented access. Multiple regression and negative binomial regression analyses are used to test the theoretical hypotheses.

This study examines whether board independence is an effective corporate governance mechanism in reducing earnings management in China, a country with significantly different institutional and legal characteristics from the Anglo-Saxon countries. I investigate: (i) whether voluntary adoption of board independence prior to the China Regulatory Securities Commission (CSRC) regulation on board independence is associated with lower earnings management; and (ii) the extent to which the CSRC regulation is effective in achieving the aim of inhibiting earnings management. I employ two stage least squares techniques to control for potential simultaneity problems between earnings management and board independence and documents that failing to control for such problems will lead to biased and inconsistent estimates. Using three different measures of earnings management, I show that firms that voluntarily move towards board independence (i) have lower levels of discretionary accruals; (ii) employ less severe income smoothing strategies; and (iii) are less likely to manage return on equity to meet regulatory thresholds. In contrast, firms adopting board independence following the CSRC regulation in 2002 do not experience any changes in the levels of earnings management before and after the regulation. These results suggest that regulation alone is not a sufficient solution to motivate effective independent boards.

published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy