Software repositories such as source code repositories and bug repositories record information about the software development process. By analyzing the rich data available in software repositories, we can uncover interesting information. This information can be leveraged to guide software developers, or to automate software development activities. In this thesis we investigate two activities of the development process: selective code integration and grouping of field crash-reports, and use the information available in software repositories to improve each of the two activities. / Thesis (Master, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2012-09-04 12:26:59.388

Literature suggests that countries should adopt the International Financial Reporting Standards and the worldwide recommended narrative reporting in annual reports. However, in developing countries, a range of prerequisites have to be put in place to ensure compliance therewith. This study has two main aims: firstly, to identify the way Rwandan companies report and to compare their reporting system with international requirements, and secondly to establish how aware Rwandan companies are of narrative reporting. This study uses a basic research and a mixed methods approach. A mixed method approach is used when the researcher supplements qualitative information with a quantitative approach to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the problem. A sample of 24 companies formed the subject of this study. Data were collected using a questionnaire which was supplemented in some cases with interviews. This study revealed that although Rwandan companies report annually, they do not all comply with International Financial Reporting Standards. While Rwandan companies do not totally ignore narrative reporting and are aware of its importance, some preparers lack some knowledge towards the preparation and presentation of such reports. Some of the reasons for this were the lack of a properly constituted accounting board, the lack of sound regulation in the accounting profession and the absence of enough qualified accountants Based on the current study’s findings, it is recommended that the accounting profession in Rwanda should be strengthened. This can be achieved with the help of the government of Rwanda and the international community. The current study also revealed the necessity for Rwanda to adopt the International Financial Reporting Standards. To achieve this, an incremental adoption approach is recommended which could lead the way to the full adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards. / Thesis (M.Acc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2009.

An increasing number of companies are reporting their environmental performance, impacts, and activities. The objectives of such reports are many including, in particular, reacting to external pressures from company stakeholders demanding more information about environmental performance. This might also be matched by management requiring information to better run the business - hence an internal requirement for information that would then be available for publication. Because, this environmental reporting serves multiple objectives and satisfies different needs of different readers, it varies in the type of information provided, the scope and depth of material disclosed, presentation formats used, the credibility of the information provided and its overall quality. Although richness of report content, scope of topics covered, presentation and credibility of this content have all been used to assess the quality of corporate environmental reporting (CER), to date most prior studies have looked simply at the volume of and/or the types of information when assessing the quality of CER. Studies have used two main indices to measure disclosure quality; subjective analysts' indices and semi-objective indices. Subjective indices such as the Association of Investment Management and Research (AIMR), formerly the Financial Analysts Federation (FAF) disclosure ratings, are built on corporate disclosures' ratings weighted by a panel of leading analysts in each industry. In semi-objective indices, on the other hand, a pre-determined list of items (topics of disclosure) is developed and tested for their presence (absence ) and/or the richness of their content. It is noted that most disclosure studies adopt this second approach in the form of disclosure index studies, a partial type of content analysis. Other disclosure measures have included textual analysis such as thematic content analysis, readability studies, and linguistic analysis. However, there is no consensus about the best measure for assessing reporting quality. One of the most important limitations encountered in the disclosure literature is the difficulty in assessing the quality of disclosure (Healy and Palepu, 2001; Urquiza et al., 2009). For example, these studies identify three key limitations. Firstly, there is inherent subjectivity involved in the selection of the quality measure and in the coding scheme to assess this 'quality' generally researchers choose their own methods or proxies. Secondly, there is an ignorance of the quality perceptions of preparers and users of corporate disclosure. Hammond and Miles (2004) argue that we cannot assess the quality of disclosure independently of a detailed understanding of users' need of disclosure. Thirdly, it has been common to use annual reports (ARs) to assess the extent and quality of corporate responsibility disclosure, ignoring the other reporting media such as corporate responsibility reports (CRRs), websites, home advertisings, etc (Forst et al., 2005; KPMG, 2011). Thus considering the fact that robust, reliable, and replicable quality assessment is problematic, the objectives of this research are threefold. Firstly, to build a more representative quality model based on the findings of a questionnaire ascertaining the views of both preparers and distinct categories of readers of ARs and/or CRRs. Secondly, to apply this model to FTSE 100 CER in both ARs and CRRs to ascertain whether the proxies frequently used in prior literature yield similar results to those derived from this more complex model. Thirdly, to investigate whether the common use of ARs, rather than more detailed CRRs in assessing CER quality is giving a misleading picture of the level and richness of disclosure available to stakeholders.

The focus of this research is the disclosure of accounting information in interim reports. The main objective of the research is to assess disclosure of accounting information in interim reports of UK companies listed on the LSE and to investigate whether variations in interim disclosure can be explained by corporate attributes that differentiate companies. The secondary objective is to examine perceptions of investment analysts regarding the importance of information items disclosed in interim reports for investment decision-making. Employing a disclosure-index framework, a list of 113 information items that are and could be disclosed was compiled and a mail questionnaire forwarded to investment analysts to determine the importance of the items. A cross-sectional disclosure model was developed to examine the relationship between interim disclosure and companyspecific and corporate governance attributes. The primary findings show that (1) investment analysts perceive information disclosed in interim reports as important for their investment decision-making and that there exists agreement between what companies disclose and what investment analysts perceive as importance items of disclosure, and (2) there are variations in the extent of interim disclosure and that both company-specific and corporate governance variables help explain these variations. The findings indicate that the extent of interim disclosure is positively related to company size, listing status, external auditor involvement, acquisition transactions, payment of an interim dividend, techMARK listing, and substantial institutional investors. The results also show that interim disclosure is negatively related to liquidity ratio, CEO age and shareholding of audit committee members. This research contributes to the disclosure literature in a number of ways. First it examines variables previously associated with annual disclosures as possible explanatory factors of differences in interim disclosure. Second, it investigates the influence of corporate governance variables on interim disclosure, an area that has been neglected in previous studies. Furthermore, the research introduces two new variables (external auditor involvement and shareholding of audit committee members), which have not been examined in prior disclosure studies. These findings have implications for the development of interim reporting and for corporate governance policy formulation.

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

Charities are important in modern Australian society because they provide a substantial proportion of the health, community welfare, education and religious services available in the community (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2002). Yet despite their social and economic importance, charities are often characterised in the media as being less accountable than either for-profit entities or government sector organisations. Annual reports are widely regarded as an important means of acquitting accountability in the corporate and government sectors and may be one of the means by which charities can improve stakeholders' perceptions of their accountability. Yet little is known of the annual reporting behaviours of charities or whether annual reports have the potential for improving perceptions of accountability among their stakeholders and the wider community. This research focuses on a class of charities termed &quotpublic fundraising charities" (those that raise funds from the public rather than just their members), and the role that annual reports play in acquitting accountability and improving perceptions. The research uses a new combination of theories that have previously been used separately to explain accountability and annual reports in other sectors, and using the insights from these theories, examines the role of annual reports in a population of public fundraising charities in Queensland. The major findings of this research are that annual reports have both functional and symbolic roles in the system of accountability of public fundraising charities. Functionally, annual reports are a useful and generally valued means by which public fundraising charities communicate a wide range of types of information about their activities and their performance to interested parties. Symbolically, annual reports also serve as an important signal of assurance to those who receive them. For those who prepare them, annual reports serve as useful signals of managerial and governance competence to those whose opinion is salient to preparers. Annual reports also have a role in the system of accountability for the maintenance of the mission of these organisations, in ways that statutory reports and returns do not. This research makes three original contributions to the literature. First, it provides for the first time a detailed analysis of the role of annual reports in a system of accountability for public fundraising charities in Australia. Second, a new theoretical lens is proposed and tested for its descriptive and explanatory power in the examination the accountability of nonprofit organisations. Third, it makes an original contribution to accountability theory by identifying the importance of the annual report as a quality signaling device. The results of this research will be of use to public fundraising charities, regulators and policy makers, as they respond to the calls for charities to demonstrate that they are accountable.

The purpose of financial reporting is to provide information that is useful for decision making. Recently, however, there has been a systematic decline in the usefulness of such information. Indeed, the current reporting model seems to be no longer sufficient mainly due to the fact that it ignores many of the nonfinancial intangible factors which are increasingly becoming important in determining corporate value and performance. That is, there is a need for the traditional reporting model to be modified or at least broadened to reflect Intangible Assets (IA) in order to enhance the usefulness of information being provided to different stakeholders. In the absence of mandatory reporting requirements, one alternative way of disseminating information regarding IA is to engage in voluntary disclosure practices. It has also been suggested that companies which would benefit the most from such practice are those originating from emerging economies looking to expand into international markets. While there exists an array of empirical studies which have examined the voluntary disclosure practices of corporations from developed economies, less considered are the reporting practices of emerging market companies regarding their IA. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the voluntary disclosure practices of the top 200 emerging market companies regarding the variety, nature and extent of IA and to consider some of the factors that may be associated with the level of such disclosure. Using a disclosure index based on the Value Chain Scoreboard??? (Lev, 2001), narrative sections of the 2002 annual reports of the top 200 emerging market companies are analysed. The findings indicate that emerging market companies engage in voluntary disclosure practices in order to disseminate different varieties of mainly quantitative IA information to their global stakeholders. Further, the variety and the extent of IA disclosure are associated with corporate specific factors such as leverage, adoption of IFRS/US GAAP, industry type, and price to book ratio. Contrary to the existing literature on voluntary disclosure, however, firm size and ownership concentration are not found to be associated with the IA disclosure level. Country specific factors such as the level of risks associated with economic policy and legal system are also found to be significantly associated with the IA voluntary disclosure level.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Structural economic changes in many countries, together with unprecedented developments in the business environment, have significantly affected the value creation processes of firms and the way business is conducted. The traditional financial reporting model is inadequate as a consequence of these developments, and intellectual capital (IC) information has gained importance for investment decision making. Empirical capital markets research demonstrates the value-relevance and predictive ability of certain types of IC information. The use of IC information by capital market participants is a topic that has begun to gain attention from contemporary researchers, but for which scant empirical evidence exists. Much of the research in this area relies on the literature about the use of non-financial information (NFI), which is inadequate in its examination of certain types of IC information. Therefore, the main aim of this thesis is to examine the use and communication of IC information by sell-side analysts. Sell-side analysts are of particular interest because they are capital market intermediaries and sophisticated processors of corporate information. The reports they produce provide an opportunity to examine their use and communication of IC information. The specific objectives of this thesis are to examine: the extent and types of IC information used by sell-side analysts in initiating coverage reports produced by them; how IC information is used and communicated in these reports; and factors that may influence the use of IC information by sell-side analysts. In order to address these research objectives a content analysis of IC references in 64 initiating coverage reports written on an equivalent number of S&P/ASX 200/300 companies is performed. The content analysis identifies and measures IC references by topic, evidence (discursive, monetary, numerical, or visual), news-tenor (positive, neutral or negative) and time orientation (forward-looking, past-oriented or non-time-specific). The findings indicate that Australian sell-side analysts appreciate the importance of IC in firm valuation, and thus are not ambivalent about the use of IC information in general. However, the findings suggest that their communication of IC information is inconsistent and unsystematic, and inadequate in relation to certain types of IC. This highlights the need for undertaking work at a policy level to educate and train sell-side analysts to deal with IC information, and the development of better models and guidelines for analysing and communicating IC information. On how IC information is used, this thesis finds that sell-side analysts have varying uses of IC information. It was found that IC is predominantly communicated discursively, positively, and in a past-oriented manner; and in doing so IC is used as a tool to further the sell-side analysts’ agenda for the company analysed. Further, the results highlight that the type of investment recommendation in analyst reports impacts on the evidence, news tenor, and time-orientation of IC communicated. These findings alert future researchers to the wider role played by IC beyond its use in forecasts and valuations. Also, the findings indicate inter-sectoral differences in the use of IC information in analyst reports, highlighting the need to improve IC reporting practices of firms by including additional information on industry-specific IC value drivers. Further, it was found that sell-side analysts emphasise IC information in analyst reports for companies from high IC-intensive sectors compared to those from low IC-intensive sectors. Similarly, it was found that analyst reports on risky companies contain significantly more IC information than analyst reports on less risky companies. Contrary to expectations, the extent of IC information is not found to vary with firm size and firm profitability. Also, the results support that the extent of certain types of IC information differs between types of analysts’ investment recommendations. More generally, the findings of this thesis suggest that the corporate reporting process could be improved by including additional types of IC information and providing this information more effectively in a manner that enables users to visualise the interrelationships between resources (both tangible and intangible) and outcomes. This study calls for standards or guidelines for intellectual capital reporting (ICR) in Australia and the expansion of the role of auditing and assurance services to enhance reliability of firm provided IC information in a bid to improve the use of IC information in company analysis by sell-side analysts.

Dissertation (MBus) -- AUT University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print (ix, 113 leaves ; 30 cm.) in City Campus Theses Collection (T 658.4080951 LI)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Catholic University of America, 1931. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 85-92.