by Stanley Chu Kam Po. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Bibliography: leaves 84-87.

The purposes of this study were to examine the effects of six variables on auditor independence and the reliability of financial statements as perceived within the Irish commercial environment and to explore the reasons underlying these perceptions. The six variables comprised of audit firm size, audit market competition, audit committees, audit tenure, provision of nonaudit services (NAS) and client employment. From a combination of questionnaire and interview approaches, the study sought to obtain supportable and useful insight as to the perceptions held. The approach builds on and develops previous research conducted outside the Irish market. The results of the study showed that auditor independence and the reliability of financial statements were perceived to be significantly impaired when the audit was performed by a non-Big Six firm, the audit environment was highly competitive, no audit committee existed, audit tenure was long, NAS were provided by audit personnel to audit clients, and the auditor took up an employment position with a former audit client. Some of the reasons underlying these perceptions were as follows. The importance of reputation to, and. the international profile of, the Big Six firms allowed interviewees to have greater confidence in their independence. A highly competitive audit market was perceived to impair auditor independence by encouraging auditors to cut back on the amount of audit work performed in order to maintain audit fee income. Audit committees were perceived to enhance auditor independence by reducing the power that management could exert over the auditor. Long audit tenure was perceived to impair auditor independence by encouraging auditors to become cosy in their relationships with their clients. The lack of confidence as a result of NAS provision was associated with the audit firm's dependency on such services for fee income. Client employment was perceived to provide the ex-auditor with power to influence auditor-client relationships.

The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the effect of the segmental disclosure required by Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 14 (SFAS 14) on the operating risk of multisegment firms. This investigation is accomplished in two phases. A theoretical model establishing the relationship between segmental disclosure and operating risk is developed in phase one. In the second phase, this model is employed in an empirical study that evaluates the effect of SFAS 14 on the operating risk of the affected firms. The findings of each of these phases are summarized below. A theoretical model for measuring operating risk is developed first. This model is developed by decomposing systematic risk into operating and financial risks. Then it is shown how the additional segmental disclosure provided by SFAS 14 can be used to assess the value of this measure of operating risk. First, the determinants of operating risk are identified. Then it is argued that if the additional disclosure provided by SFAS 14 had an effect on the assessment of operating risk, this effect would be associated with the disclosure of segmental assets. This argument provides the basis for conducting an empirical study that evaluates the effect of the segmental disclosure provided by SFAS 14 on operating risk. In this dissertation, the empirical study examines the effect of disclosure of segmental assets on the operating risk of firms that disclosed such information for the first time following the initiation of SFAS 14. A sample of these firms form the treatment group. The control group is composed of single-segment firms. The firms in the control group did not disclose segmental assets prior to or after SFAS 14 went into effect. A control group composed of multisegment firms is not used in this study because only two firms are available from the sample taken. Two hypotheses are tested. Hypothesis 1 simply tests whether SFAS 14 had an effect on the operating risk of the affected firms. Hypothesis 2 then tests if SFAS 14 had a favorable effect on operating risk. The effect on operating risk is evaluated by comparing changes in operating risk from pre-regulation period to post-regulation period for the treatment group with those of the control group. In both hypotheses, the null hypothesis that SFAS 14 did not affect operating risk is tested. The Mann-Whitney U test is employed to test Hypothesis 1. The Mann-Whitney U test, the Wilcoxon Matched-Pairs Signed-Ranks Test and multiple regression analysis are used to test Hypothesis 2. The empirical results indicate that neither of the null hypotheses could be rejected at any conventional level of significance. In short, the empirical results tend to suggest that the additional segmental disclosure provided by SFAS 14 did not have a favorable effect on the operating risk of the affected firms. However it is advised that caution should be exercised in drawing inferences based on these results because of the potential effects on operating risk by factors not controlled for in this study. Finally, an alternative future study is suggested. Pending the empirical findings of the future study it is suggested that the empirical results presented in this study should be considered preliminary.

This thesis proposes a multi-theoretical framework based on information asymmetry and institutional theories by focusing on the period of change in OFR regulation from 2004-2006. As a means of examining various aspects of the proposed framework, this thesis carries out an empirical investigation to find the extent of forward-looking information for a sample of 690 UK non-financial firm-year observations which are drawn from the top 500 UK listed firms by total market capitalization as listed by Financial Times on 30 March 2007. The investigation concentrates on three aspects: (1) the association between the extent of voluntary disclosure of forward-looking information and both information asymmetry and institutional characteristics; (2) the association between changes in disclosure and information asymmetry and institutional characteristics; and (3) the association between disclosure of cash flow forecasts and industry behaviour. Before examining the extent of FL information, another subsidiary objective arises: to investigate the impact of alternative methods choice on the measurement of information. Different methods of disclosure indices and content analysis (an un-weighted index, a weighted index, a frequency count, a manual content analysis, and a computerised content analysis using coding by text unit as a unit of analysis and coding by sentence as a unit of analysis) are conducted on a sample of 30 UK non-financial companies for 2006. Once the disclosure scores are computed, several set of analyses are performed (descriptive analysis, correlation matrix, multiple regression analysis, and ranking). The results of analyses reveal that, on average, alternative methods of measurements provide quite similar inferences; hence, a trade-off should be made to decide upon a method by which to measure the extent of FL for a large sample. Computerised content analysis using a text unit as a unit of analysis is chosen to perform coding for the large sample. For the purpose of testing the study hypotheses, both parametric and non-parametric tests are undertaken to examine how firm characteristics affect the level of forward-looking information. The results of regression analysis indicate that the extent of voluntary disclosure of FL information is positively and significantly related to growth opportunities, leadership, audit committee, competition rate, corporate size, and cross-listing. However, the extent of FL information is negatively and significantly associated with blockholding of 5% or more. In terms of changes in the extent of disclosure, the results show that changes in capital need is positively and significantly related to changes in disclosure, whereas changes in analyst following, blockholding of 5% or more, and corporate size are negatively and significantly related to changes in the extent of disclosure among consecutive years. In order to examine the relationship between industry behaviour and the extent of forward-looking information, disclosure of cash flow forecasts is chosen as a proxy for forward-looking information. This is done, because of the difficulty of measuring the disclosure practices of other companies in the same industry by means of a scoring sheet. The results of logistic regression analysis document that operating cash flow, industry behaviour, cross-listing, and company size are positively and significantly related to disclosure of cash flow forecasts, whereas performance and competition rate are negatively and significantly related to disclosure of cash flow forecasts

This thesis examines the accounting policy and financial reporting changes made by Malaysian telecommunications between 1957 and 1994. During this period, the telecommunications sector moved from being a government department to being a government-owned company in 1987 and a partially privatised company in 1990. A periodisation analysis method (Tinker and Neimark, 1987) is adopted to divide the time frame into three discrete periods: Period 1 (1957-1970) when the Malaysian Telecommunications Department pursued the cash basis of accounting; Period 2 (1971-1986) when the Department was supposedly changing to the full accruals basis of accounting; and Period 3 (1987-1994) when the corporated Syarikat Telekom Malaysia achieved full compliance with Generally Accepted Accounting Practice as an essential preliminary to flotation as Telekom Malaysia. Lüder's (1992) contingency model of public sector accounting innovations is used as a framework to analyse the stimuli to accounting change in Malaysian telecommunications, their effect on the expectations of change of users of accounting information and the behaviour of the producers of accounting information. The barriers to accounting change before corporisation are identified and the outcome of the process is evaluated. The discussion of privatisation as policy innovation stresses the importance of policy transfer from developed countries to developing countries and, in particular, the role model offered by experience in the United Kingdom to countries such as Malaysia. While acknowledging the importance of the influence of early experience of privatisation in developed countries, it is revealed that Malaysia had its own political and economic context which shaped privatisation policy and the manner in which it was implemented. Liberalisation of the market and regulation of telecommunications especially developed in a different way from that of the United Kingdom.

Thesis (M. Ec.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Commerce, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 212-217).

Thesis (M.U.R.P.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Planning, 1977.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2005. / Title from title screen (viewed 22 May 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Faculty of Economics and Business. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [131]-136).

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Genève.