Thesis (M.A.)--University of Akron, Dept. of Sociology, 2009. / "May, 2009." Title from electronic thesis title page (viewed 11/18/2009) Advisor, Rebecca J. Erickson; Faculty Reader, Clare L. Stacey; Department Chair, John F. Zipp; Dean of the College, Chand Midha; Dean of the Graduate School, George R. Newkome. Includes bibliographical references.

This study uses the absorptive capacity perspective and adds the firm's commitment to enhance the internationalization process of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). It is proposed that each of the dimensions of absorptive capacity should be considered a separate capability that exists prior to internationalization and that enhances and reinforces the firm's ability to take advantage of its resources to advance international expansion and that internationalization has an effect on firm performance. Based on the absorptive capacity perspective, it is further proposed that an SME's organizational learning, which is gained from international expansion, will influence the relationship between internationalization and the firm's performance. The central theme of the proposed model is, therefore, that understanding the relationships among an SME's absorptive capacity, its abilities, and its commitments to internationalization can improve understanding of the relationship between internationalization and performance. The conceptual framework presented in this study indicates that the process of absorptive capacity which flows across SMEs is complex and it involves multiple levels of analysis. I argued that the moderating effect of absorptive capacity needs to be explicitly transferred to SMEs if it is to have a sustained effect on firm performance through internationalization. Adapting absorptive capacity perspective, my model derives key determinants that influence SMEs' performance, through internationalization, and examines how absorptive capacity leads to the creation of internationalization of SMEs. The perspective advanced here describes how all four facets of absorptive capacity -acquiring, assimilating, transforming, and exploiting -are geared toward internationalization of SMEs and produced competitive advantage for SMEs.

abstract: Firms compete for profitable positions in their technological environments by capitalizing on their design and other capabilities to conceive and realize marketplace strategies more effectively and more efficiently than rivals do. However, research on how technological environment characteristics change the payoff from these capabilities is minimal. Given that possessing superior firm capabilities is a primary source of competitive advantage for firms, this study seeks to fill these critical research gaps in the literature. This dissertation, which is composed of two essays, seeks to answer what capabilities pay off more in various technological conditions. It benefits from the most comprehensive sample to date that includes 2132 publicly traded firms in the United States (US) over 34 years. All the technological industry conditions are captured by using the entire data of utility patents in the US. The first essay shows that design is a firm capability that enhances sales growth. Its effect, however, is attenuated by technology intensity because, in markets with high technology intensity, design attributes become less salient. Moreover, technological competitive intensity and maturity amplify design capability’s positive effect because when technical attributes of products provide limited differentiation, design attributes receive more attention, and consumers overweight them in decision making. The second essay examines the effect of marketing and research and development (R&D) capabilities on return on assets (ROA) in three technological market conditions: Technological turbulence, uncertainty, and acceleration. It shows that all the technological environments amplify the positive ROA performance outcomes from marketing capability, with technological turbulence having the most potent effect. R&D capability, however, is most influential in technologically accelerating markets. Finally, the second essay unveils that marketing and R&D capabilities are complementary only in technologically turbulent markets. These studies thus provide valuable insights to researchers and managers on the payoff from these capabilities and offer new guidance on which capabilities firms should emphasize on under different technological market conditions. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2020

This dissertation investigates the interrelationships between a client's non-GAAP earnings disclosures, financial health (profit and loss status), and the external auditor's assessment of the client's going concern status. This dissertation comprises two essays. Essay 1 examines the informativeness and the quality of non-GAAP earnings disclosures in profit and loss firms separately. Using a large sample of non-GAAP earnings voluntarily disclosed by managers, I find that the informativeness and the quality of non-GAAP earnings vary in firms cross-classified by GAAP loss status and non-GAAP loss status. I also find that loss firms have higher quality non-GAAP exclusions relative to profit firms, although the expenses excluded by both profit and loss firms are associated with firms' future performance. Further, I posit and find that profit firms which voluntarily disclose non-GAAP losses have high-quality exclusions, while other non-GAAP reporting profit firms have low-quality exclusions. Having found that non-GAAP earnings in loss firms is opportunistic to some extent, I next study, in Essay 2, whether auditors understand the implications of low-quality non-GAAP reporting in these firms. Specifically, I examine 1) whether non-GAAP earnings disclosures are associated with the propensity of the auditor's going concern issuance to loss firms, and 2) whether non-GAAP earnings disclosures affect the accuracy of the auditor's going concern assessment. This is important because auditors often conduct audits of loss firms that disclose non-GAAP earnings, and the consequences of issuing wrong audit opinions can be severe. I find that the propensity of the auditor's going concern issuance is negatively associated with the magnitude of expense exclusions in loss firms, after controlling for determinants of going concern opinions that are derived from GAAP earnings. This finding suggests that auditors take into account information embedded in non-GAAP earnings when assessing clients' going concern status. Using bankruptcy outcome as a benchmark, I find that non-GAAP earnings disclosures could increase type II errors in auditors' going concern reporting. I further find that small size auditors and non-specialist auditors are more likely to be misled by non-GAAP reporting when making going concern decisions. In sum, my dissertation furthers our understanding of non-GAAP reporting and its implication for auditors' decision making for issuing going concern opinions.

Bakgrund: Innan rotationskrav för revisorer har hunnit cementeras och ge utslag, har Regeringen i ett nytt betänkande lagstadgat även krav för rotation för byråer. Krav på byrårotation uppkom som en proposition efter finanskrisen 2008, som ett led i att strama åt regelverket för revisionsbyråer. Den Europeiska kommissionen skriver i sitt betänkande att även om de huvudansvariga revisorerna byts ut med jämna mellanrum kvarstår risken för en jävsituation. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur revisionsbyråer, kunder och myndigheter förhåller sig till obligatorisk byrårotation. Vi kommer även att studera hur marknaden för revision ändras, samt studera hur en revisionsbyrå ur ”The Big Four” kommer att förbereda sig inför denna lagförändring. Frågeställningar: Hur kommer byrårotation att inverka på revisionskvalitén för börsnoterade företag och finansiella företag av allmänt intresse? Hur förbereder en revisionsbyrå ur ”The Big Four” sig inför byrårotation? Vilka effekter kan byrårotation ha på marknadsstrukturen? Metod: Studien utgörs av en fallstudie där obligatorisk byrårotation studeras ur tre perspektiv. Studien baseras på ett antal befintliga teorier, varför studiens bearbetas utifrån den deduktiva ansatsen. Primärdata samlas in genom semi-strukturerade intervjuer, där respondenterna har valts ut efter olika kriterier, beroende på perspektiv. Empiri: Tre myndigheter, tre kunder och en revisionsbyrå har varit föremål för våra intervjuer, där vi tematiskt redogör för deras uttalanden. Slutsats: Byrårotation kommer att leda till att revisorn blir mer oberoende, då mandatperioden inte tillåter att nära relationer bildas och på grund av vitesbeloppets omfattning. Revisionen kommer inte kosta mer, med anledning av att det kommer att bli en kamp mellan byråerna om uppdragen. Vi har identifierat tre möjliga marknadseffekter av byrårotation, där kartelliknande verksamheter är en möjlig utgång. Revisionsbyråernas verksamheter kommer att bli mer likt de internationellas, där rådgivningstjänster utgör den största delen. En viktig konsekvens av byrårotation kan vara att bolag roterar byrå vid kritiska tidpunkter, vilket kan skada bolaget ytterligare. Bolag bör kunna flagga vid sådana tidpunkter, för att kunna förlänga rotationen parallellt med den nytillträdda i början av uppdraget.

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Master of Science in Engineering - Engineering / International research indicates that the practice of environmental management may lead to profitability and competitive advantage for the firm. But this theory has not been tested in South Africa. This lack of empirical evidence led the researcher to the primary research question: does environmental management increase a firm’s profitability in South African-based firms? The secondary objective of the study is to determine which factors cause South African-based firms to implement environmental management strategies. Based on a comprehensive literature review, this study delineates the concepts environmental management and profitability and examines the causal relationship between the two factors. Data is collected from firms operating in ten sectors in South Africa using a cross-sectional online mail survey. A proposed research model and hypotheses are tested using confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis with latent variables. The SAS System is used for statistical analysis. The test of the structural model supports the proposed hypothesis that environmental management increases competitive advantage in South African-based firms. Environmental management, however, is limited to the minimization of natural resource consumption and competitive advantage is determined by the strength of the firm’s relationships with its stakeholders. In turn, top management positively influences the strength of these relationships. South African firms follow a strategy of pollution control as opposed pollution prevention. One of the main contributing factors to compliance with regulation in environmental management (as opposed to innovation) is the lack the technical skill and knowledge in both government and the manufacturing sector.

This thesis investigates the impact of corruption by government officials on firm level and macroeconomic growth in the context of Bangladesh. I revisit and extend the existing body of work on cross-country analysis of the impact of aggregate level of corruption on macroeconomic growth. However, the macroeconomic impacts are not necessarily mirrored at the micro level. As Nguyen and Van Dijk (2012 p.2935) observe, ‘country-level research does not help us to understand the determinants of the level of corruption that individual firms face and why and how the level of corruption varies across firms within a country’. To see how firm growth is affected by the corrupt behaviour of government officials in Bangladesh, I conduct a detailed study of the firm level bribing practices using both primary and existing survey data. The cross-country study has been carried out using two data sets; first, a cross-section of 119 countries using averages over 2000-2011 and second, a panel data set for a subsample of these countries over 1985-2013. I use both CPI (constructed by Transparency International) and ICRG index (constructed by the PRS group) as measures of corruption for this impact study. In several instances, the panel data model provides more efficient estimations and also works as a robustness check of the results obtained from the cross-section analysis. Corruption is found to have a positive but small impact on economic growth. This positive impact of corruption on macroeconomic growth supports the so-called East Asian paradox, a term coined to highlight the co-existence of high corruption and high growth in East Asia. This study adds to the existing body of work by examining the effects of corruption on growth by interacting it with freedom status and executive recruitment quality . I analyse the average marginal effect of explanatory variables on the estimated growth with respect to corruption, freedom status, executive recruitment quality and their interactions. It is found that the effect of corruption varies when the freedom status changes from below average to above average and when executive recruitment quality changes from below average to above average, which is in line with the hypothesis. Unlike the cross-country studies, there is very little work on firm level impacts, barring the notable exception of the work by Fisman and Svensson (2007) on industrial sector firms in Uganda. I use two different sets of data for this analysis. For the first exercise, I carried out a survey of 250 firms in Bangladesh and for the second study I use Bangladesh Enterprise Survey data collected by the World Bank. The analyses in these two studies are done using the same methods, and the problems, for example, the problems of heterogeneity and endogeneity are solved in the both in a similar fashion. The first firm level analysis presented in chapter 5 is suspected to suffer from small sample bias and endogeneity, and the instrument used in the Instrumental Variable method is weak. The second firm level analysis overcomes this small sample bias and endogeneity problems. I find that the impact of corruption of government officials on firm growth is negative but small. The important finding that comes out from these two pieces of empirical work on the effect of corruption is that a particular segment of the industrial sector may be benefiting from bribery but it does not necessarily mean that other segments or sectors or the industrial sector as a whole benefits from bribery. Corruption does not have an enormous effect on firm’s growth and perhaps the emphasis that is sometimes put on corruption is misplaced. The analysis is based on the existing firms, firms which survive under the current climate of governance. It may well be that if corruption was to decline, then a different set of firms would emerge. A comprehensive and analytic discussion on the growth trajectory and corruption scenario of Bangladesh has also been presented in the thesis, for which in-depth interviews have been taken from firm owners and managers, and people who have expert knowledge in the concerned areas.

We look at a principal-agent model in which the agent has to perform an action, the difficulty of which is better known ex interim than ex ante. We compare two contracting regimes; one with commitment to an ex ante negotiated contract, and one with an ex interim negotiated contract. The ex ante contract can not be too steep, but attempts to negotiate a steeper ex interim contract may result in bargaining failure. We find that the relative efficiency of the two contracting regimes depends on the nature of the differences between tasks. In a dynamic version of the analysis, we further find that the comparison depends on the frequency with which new tasks are needed. The argument can be interpreted as an analysis of the tradeoff between weak incentives in the firm and the possibility of unsuccessful negotiations in the market

The accounting profession, particularly the public company auditing profession, has experienced a drastic transformation over the last decade. Following a series of costly accounting scandals that tarnished the profession’s credibility, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) for more rigorous regulation of public companies and public accounting firms. The new policy changed audit interactions with clients and included a mandate for the periodic rotation of audit partners on audit engagements to increase auditor independence. Currently being debated are further changes that may lead to additional restrictions and more work for auditors and their clients. This thesis explores the issue of auditor independence in the audit process and examines whether the periodic rotation of audit firms should be mandated in the U.S.