The verity of conclusions drawn from psychological research hinges on the reliability and validity of the measures used to collect the data. Any research conducted using measures with low reliability or validity is rendered essentially useless; thus, reporting reliability and validity evidence for measures employed in research is an essential component in creating rigorous, replicable research. Multiple reporting standards have been implemented and revised over the years with the intent to improve measurement and reporting practices within clinical psychology, though few guidelines have been suggested regarding adequate reporting practices for studies' measures. We reviewed a representative sample of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) published in the Journal of Clinical and Counseling Psychology in 1994, 2002, 2010, and 2018 for reported reliability and validity evidence. We examined whether the implementation of reporting standards led to improvement in reporting measures' reliability and validity evidence over time, along with how frequently articles recently published in one of the top clinical psychology journals reported reliability and validity evidence. We found that only 58.1% of measures used in articles published in 2018 reported reliability evidence, and only 12.4% reported validity evidence. Furthermore, although reporting of reliability and validity evidence has improved when comparing articles published in 2018 to those published in 1994 or 2002, such reporting practices were not significantly different from articles published in 2010. We provide a discussion of the importance of these findings and recommendations for improving reporting practices in future research.

In 2015, The OECD released an 15 point action plan to combat base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). Amongst those actions is action 13 which deals with the implementation of Country-by-Country (CbC) reporting on Multinational Enterprises (MNE). Even though South Africa is not an OECD member, it adopted the implementation by enacting CbC reporting into law in December 2016. CbC reports give an overview of how local entities fit into their large group structure of the MNE which in turn will increase the tax transparency in the jurisdictions it operates from. Therefore, CbC Reports can be a great tool for tax administrations to assess tax risk. CbC reports are exchanged electronically between tax payer and tax administration as well as between different tax administrations of the different jurisdictions, thus the use of a digitalised system is of high importance as it will ultimately lead to better tax transparency. This approach of this work is qualitative in nature and the OECDs guidelines and corresponding sections in South Africa‘s Income Tax Act were analysed. Throughout this study South Africa and India‘s tax administrations are being compared, with recommendations drawn from the Indian tax administration. This study addresses the use of CbC Reports in the risk assessment procedure as well as the current tax risk assessment procedures in both countries. The study goes further by explaining the concept of digitalisation and then gauges the digital competence of South Africa‘s and India‘s tax administration according to an gauge set out by EY. There are numerous challenges that are a result of digitalisation of the tax administration. The findings of study prove that South Africa has already made progress towards a digitalised tax administration however there is room for improvement. Furthermore, as the tax administration progress, CbC reports will become more effective as a risk assessment tool. Lastly, the study imparts that even with the challenges that digitalisation of the tax administration brings about, the benefit of a digital tax administration providing tax transparency will be able to overcome these challenges. / Mini Dissertation (MPhil (International Taxation))--University of Pretoria, 2020. / pt2021 / Taxation / MPhil (International Taxation) / Unrestricted

Corporations are expected to be transparent on their sustainability impact and keep their stakeholders informed about how large the impact on the environment is, as well as their work on reducing the impact in question. The transparency is accounted for in a, usually voluntary, sustainability report additional to the already required financial report. With new regulations for mandatory sustainability reporting in Sweden, comprehensive and complete guidelines for corporations to follow are insufficient and the reports tend to be extensive. The reports are therefore hard to assess in terms of how well the reporting is actually done. The Sustainability Reporting Maturity Grid (SRMG) is an assessment tool introduced by Cöster et al. (2020) used for assessing the quality of sustainability reporting. Today, the assessment is performed manually which has proven to be both time-consuming and resulting in varying assessments, affected by individual interpretation of the content. This thesis is exploring how assessment time and grading with the SRMG can be improved by applying Natural Language Processing (NLP) on sustainability documents, resulting in a compressed assessment method - The Prototype. The Prototype intends to facilitate and speed up the process of assessment. The first step towards developing the Prototype was to decide which one of the three Machine Learning models; Naïve Bayes (NB), Support Vector Machines (SVM), or Bidirectional Encoder Representations of Transformers (BERT), is most suitable. This decision was supported by analyzing the accuracy for each model and for respective criteria in the SRMG, where BERT proved a strong classification ability with an average accuracy of 96,8%. Results from the user evaluation of the Prototypeindicated that the assessment time can be halved using the Prototype, with an initial average of 40 minutes decreased to 20 minutes. However, the results further showed a decreased average grading and an increased variation in assessment. The results indicate that applying NLP could be successful, but to get a more competitive Prototype, a more nuanced dataset must be developed, giving more space for the model to detect patterns in the data.

This article provides an analysis of the economic incentives and financial reporting for Special Purpose Entities (SPEs) over the last four decades. The analysis explains economic factors motivating business use of SPEs and the origins of SPEs in lease accounting and securitization transactions. Related financial reporting standards are identified and discussed, including the historical shift from a traditional control viewpoint to a primary beneficiary viewpoint for financial reporting for consolidation for SPEs (recently renamed Variable Interest Entities (VIEs) in U.S. Financial Accounting Interpretation 46R). The article also includes illustrative journal entries explaining SPE transactions from both the viewpoint of the creating company(s) and the SPE. Actual financial reporting examples and/or journal entries for SPEs created by Bank of America, General Motors Acceptance Corporation, Lucent Technologies and Alza Pharmaceuticals Corporation are also provided.

This dissertation examines how the growth of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has led to the development of new public policy in the European Union. While many political scientists remain skeptical of the efficacy of CSR---questioning, for example, why companies would choose to self-regulate in any meaningful way given their profit motive---my research provides evidence for a more optimistic perspective. Looking in particular at the case of corporate non-financial (i.e. social and environmental) reporting, the dissertation illustrates the ways in which civil society organizations have used voluntary standards, not to replace government, but to drag it into policy areas that have been neglected or ignored. Though most thinking about CSR puts the firm at the center of analysis, this project demonstrates that the firm is better understood as the target of other organizations that seek to push the CSR agenda forward. These organizations play a critical role in both expanding the regulatory space and changing societal expectations for good corporate behavior. While voluntary standards are often insufficient to reach desired social and environmental outcomes, my work suggests that their most significant impact on society and the environment actually occurs via their influence on public policy---as what is voluntary becomes expected, and what is expected becomes mandatory. The project begins with the observation that the rise in voluntary corporate non-financial reporting (NFR) in several European countries was followed by the enactment of new legislation making such practices mandatory. Postulating a causal relationship between this increase in private regulation and the introduction of new state regulation, the dissertation proceeds to test this claim using a mixed-method research design. The first empirical chapter traces the process by which private regulation leads to a change public policy. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Europe, this chapter illustrates the critical role that voluntary standards played both in establishing the NFR regulatory space and in building the coalitions necessary for enacting new public policy. The next chapter addresses the possibility of reverse causation by examining the determinants of firms' NFR practices. Using a multilevel data set comprising 2,000 of Europe's largest listed companies, the results indicate that it is firm-level factors such as revenue and sector that primarily drive voluntary reporting; national-level factors play only a supporting role. The third empirical chapter uses the same multilevel data set to examine the relationship between voluntary NFR and the development of NFR legislation at the national level. The results suggest that the popularity of voluntary standards represents a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for the enactment of mandatory legislation in most cases. The final empirical chapter examines the politics behind the European Union's 2014 directive on NFR, using public consultation data to demonstrate how the preferences of business, nonprofit, and public sector organizations across Europe are rooted in national policy legacies. / 2020-02-14T00:00:00Z

This study is on implementation of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by reporting entities in Nigeria. Since Nigeria adopted IFRS in 2010, managers of reporting entities have been confronted with organizational changes both in the structures and processes of financial reporting. Previous studies have not assessed the claims that adopting IFRS improves the quality of financial reports and managerial efficiency. This study evaluated the assertion that IFRS adoption impacts the quality of financial reports, operational costs, and operational efficiencies of management. The theoretical frameworks which undergirded the study were theories of organizational behaviors and attitudinal change. Data were collected via a stratified sampling of 520 respondents who completed a 5-point Likert scale, which has a long history of reliability and usage in social science research. This study adopted a documentary review of financial statements before and after IFRS implementation to evaluate how IFRS adoption affected them. Logistic regression was used to test the main effects of IFRS adoption as independent variable to predict managerial efficiency as outcome variable. The study found statistically significant improvement in the quality of financial reporting and managerial efficiency following IFRS adoption. Participants' perceptions about IFRS measured on the attitudes scale did not significantly predict managerial efficiency, however, and the cost and benefit of implementing IFRS had no significant relationship with managerial efficiency. The study has positive social change implications as its findings, when implemented, may lead to more efficient company management, business expansion, improved government accounting oversight, more job opportunities, and reduced crime rates.

Leaders at nonprofit academic institutions are following the global business trend of embracing sustainability initiatives for positive social change; however, there has been slow growth in sustainability reporting among academic institutions. The purpose of this study was to explore the strategies and processes necessary for leaders and managers to integrate sustainability reporting into the reporting cycle for a nonprofit higher education institution. I conducted a single case study of a nonprofit academic institution that utilized sustainability reporting. The study sample consisted of 4 leaders and managers at a nonprofit academic institution located in the state of Michigan that published sustainability reports. The conceptual framework used for the study was corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainability, and triple bottom line (TBL). The data collection process included interviews with leaders and managers involved in the sustainability reporting process and document reviews of the sustainability report and annual reports. I used a data-driven coding approach for data analysis. The codes were linked to create categories, and the categories led to the development of themes. The results revealed 5 themes regarding the sustainability reporting process, including the steps of the sustainability reporting process and the collaborative process in sustainability reporting. The implications for positive social change included the potential for greater transparency for students, faculty, staff, administration and community partners, and greater effectiveness of the implementation of environmental, economic, and social initiatives for higher education institutions and the community.

An assessment was made to determine the level of awareness among Utah public school special educators concerning the state's child abuse reporting laws and procedures. The assessment was made with a questionnaire developed by the author and mailed to those teachers involved with programs for the learning disabled, the emotionally disturbed, and the trainable and educable mentally retarded. Accompanying each questionnaire was a letter of transmittal and a self-addressed, stamped, return envelope. Two mailings were utilized, fourteen days apart, to achieve a useable 81.9% return. The data collected showed the following: (1) More than half of the population knew only one of nine salient and important points of Utah's child abuse statutes, and for that one question only 57.2% knew the correct answer. (2) Slightly more than half of the population claimed to have ever been exposed to the subject of child abuse. (3) About 2/3 of the population claimed to have suspected cases of child abuse. (4) About 1/4 of the population claimed to have reported cases of child abuse.

This study of the pupil-progress reports of the elementary school of the state of Utah came about as the result of an assignment of the late Superintendent Keith Wahlquist. In answer to requests of local teachers and principals, a committee was assigned to make an investigation and recommendations for a revision of our reporting system. The work with the committee led to further study, which finally led to the writing of this thesis.

Thesis M.Com. (Accounting)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, 2015 / With changes in international governance trends leaning towards integrated reporting, and the inclusion of good governance practices in the Companies Act No. 71 of 2008, it has become imperative for companies to embrace integrated reporting in order to be, and also be seen to be, responsible with regard to social, environmental and economic issues. The purpose of this report is to investigate the trends in the extent of integrated reporting by companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). The report sought to investigate compliance with the recommendations of the King Report and Code of Governance Principles for South Africa 2009 (King III) by companies listed on the JSE. The report assesses the extent of reporting and disclosures made by companies in relation to the specific recommendations contained in the various chapters of King III since the inclusion of King III in the JSE listing requirements for financial years beginning on or after 1 March 2010. The report also assesses the extent of economic, social and environmental sustainability reporting as required by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines. The annual integrated reports of fifty-two companies listed under the various sectors of the JSE were examined to determine whether there had been significant changes in the specific disclosures provided by these companies, as recommended by King III, from 2010 to 2012. The key findings of the study show that although there has been an increase in the level of disclosure by companies, this change was not significant over the three-year period. The results also show that much improvement is needed in disclosures relating specifically to the new King III sections of risk management, compliance management and IT governance. Key words: corporate governance, disclosure, financial performance, integrated reporting, non-financial information, sustainability