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(2010)ThesisThis thesis investigates the dynamics of trading behaviour and provides a comprehensive assessment of the overall performance of all Finnish retail and institutional investors over the years 1995 through 2004 using detailed transaction data on daily trades and investor identities. In contrast to prior published studies for Finland, this study reveals a significantly superior performance achieved by households over institutions in the longer run, either before or after the trading expenses. Despite much lower transaction costs, institutions trade several times as much as the most active household age group that reduces their net return as much as for households. I also find institutional trading is the key contributor to the volatility of Nokia share price. This study further examines the trading performance of individual investors across gender and age bands and documents both males and females in their thirties are the best performing traders among their respective gender groups on either a gross or net basis. In term of gender, male groups show significantly higher turnover while females hold higher-risk stocks. Frequent trading reduces men’s net return more so than do women in all age groups. The life cycle hypothesis does not seem to apply to Finnish working males nearing retirement after Nokia price crashed in 2000. This age group of 60 to 69 were net buyers of Nokia shares, and hence does not indicate a movement out of a high-risk investment into cash or bonds. I find strong evidence of correlated trading among household groups with young and middle-aged males sharing the highest cross correlations between their contemporaneous buy intensity. The level of correlated trading is surprisingly persistent and increases year by year. This finding suggests that profitable herding behaviour encourages more information sharing among households over time.
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(2010)ThesisThe study examines the impact of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) on changes in auditor reporting behaviour in Australia, in particular, whether auditors change their likelihood of issuing a going concern opinion and change their audit effort in response to a challenging audit environment. Using non-financial Australian listed companies over the period 20052009, I test whether the propensity of going concern modifications issued by auditors, audit report lag and audit fees vary in the financial crisis period (2007-2009) compared with the pre-financial crisis period (2005-2006). I find an increase in the propensity to issue going concern opinions by auditors during the period 2008•2009 compared with the period 20052006; that Big N auditors respond to the GFC earlier than non-Big N auditors; and that all Big auditors increase their propensity to issue going concern opinions in response to the GFC, though the degree of increase varies between Big N auditors. However, variation between Big N auditors in propensity to issue going concern opinions is sensitive to model specification and definition of the GFC period. I also find evidence of increased audit fees but no evidence of longer audit report lags during the crisis period relative to the pre-crisis period. Overall, I provide evidence on to what ex tent auditors exercise their professional scepticism regarding particular issues and how much resources they invest in conducting audit engagements during the GFC. My findings are of interest to regulators, auditors and financial information users because it assists auditors and regulators to assess the appropriateness of the strategies implemented and it also informs financial information users of the extent to which audit opinions are informative during the financial crisis. Also, the study informs the policy and law makers as to the impact of shareholder actions on auditor opinion issuance.
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(2010)ThesisAccording to the knowledge based view of organisation, knowledge is an important productive resource that provides organisations competitive advantages. It is also argued that no single organisation has the full-range of expertise to survive. New knowledge is acquired not only from internal knowledge resources but also from sources outside the organisation’s boundaries. Thus, inter-organisational knowledge sharing is important for organisations to gain new knowledge. Many organisational relationships have been created to transfer knowledge. The customer-supplier relationship as part of the supply chain is a special type of inter-organisational relationship that is highly knowledge-intensive. Many of the critical failures in supply chain management are the consequence of poor knowledge sharing activities with organisation partners. One of the barriers to knowledge sharing is the lack of intention to share knowledge. The lack of intention to share knowledge as a starting point for knowledge sharing is even more important in customer supplier relationship because knowledge sharing is not normally viewed as one of the main targets by supply chain partners and therefore may not receive appropriate attention. Unlike knowledge transfer activities in other types of inter-organisational alliances, knowledge transfer between supply chain partners is generally not targeted and is less guaranteed. Thus, intention to share knowledge with its supply chain partners is of particular interest for an organisation. The focus of this study is to investigate the intention to share knowledge in customer-supplier relationships. The study aims to identify factors influencing this intention to share knowledge between supply chain partners by focusing on a simple two-level supply chain. In order to achieve this aim, a research model is developed based on the relevant theories of knowledge sharing in existing literature and then tested and extended through multiple case studies. The resulting integrated conceptual model about the intention to share knowledge in supply-chain relationships makes an important contribution to the literature as well as to knowledge sharing in practice.
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(2010)ThesisI investigate market reactions to a star resource analyst Keith Goode’s recommendations over daily and intraday horizons. Goode is a well known analyst with a strong media presence, specialising in gold and precious metals, and unique in that he is an independent commissioned analyst. In daily analysis, I find size and industry matched mean buy-and-hold abnormal returns of 8.7% over a short run window, mostly coming from gold stock performance. I argue he is a valuable information intermediary in a high information asymmetry setting, being the Australian mining industry. I also contribute to the literature in relation to Development Stage Enterprises (DSE) and analyst ‘learning-by-doing’ (LBD) theory by measuring the differences between performance of recommended stocks partitioned on a DSE-like criterion and on time-based measures of experience. I find no significant results that an alternative informational signal is move valued by DSE-like firms; nor do I find evidence for LBD in relation to this star analyst. I pose a general, non-parametric method for measuring abnormal values of a wide range of intraday metrics capturing various microstructure features, while controlling for idiosyncratic stock-metric effects. Using this method, I detect abnormal trade frequency, volume, traded value and amount of limit order book activity during the first hour, and trade imbalance during the first 2 hours, of the market opening following Goode’s recommendations. I am unaware of any prior research which measures intraday reactions to analyst recommendations.
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(2010)ThesisFraud is a matter of grave social and economic concern. For organisations, Accounts Payable (AP) fraud remains the most common type of fraud because it dominates most payment functions which are facing lots of challenges. Failure to adequately protect against fraud exposes an organisation to increased vulnerability in terms of fraud related risks. Traditional anti-fraud approaches (e.g. Strategic Fraud Detection Approach, red flag techniques, etc.) are widely accepted but demand very detailed knowledge about the fraud, IT security domain and the specific business environment. The main purpose of the research is to develop an improved approach for proactively preventing and detecting fraud in accounts payable. The approach is broadly characterized by: (1) Using IT techniques to facilitate the protection of accounts payable. (2) Providing an extensive set of red flags and IT control practices by conducting literature review and empirical study. (3) Modelling the fraud and information security knowledge on a very concrete and highly granular level. Led by the literature and based on the Strategic Fraud Detection Approach developed by Albrecht et al. in 2001 which was refined in 2003a, a model-based fraud prevention and detection approach has been proposed with two major reference models for AP: Fraud Risk Model and IT Control Model. The models provide an extensive set of fraud indicators together with corresponding control practices. Based on the existing audit projects sourced from the researcher's work company, relevant AP transactions data from nine different industries were analyzed to evaluate and discuss the applicability and practicability of the developed models. Finally, the issues relating to the design works (the approach and the models) have been justified and further refined. The approach advocates the use of models to improve efficiency in relation to risk assessment and the control implementation process. The approach also contributes new knowledge to the already existing knowledge base in terms of anti-fraud methodologies and techniques. Whilst at the same time, further providing benefit to the business world with practical solutions for preventing and detecting fraud in accounts payable.
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(2010)ThesisDue to the increased adoption of the Internet over the last decade, business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce has become a popular medium for consumers to purchase products or services. However, despite a growth in e-commerce, it is difficult to succeed in online businesses because customers can easily switch between competitors and it is difficult to gain consumers' trust online. Trust is a complex and multifaceted issue that must be addressed from multiple angles. Previous research on trust has attempted to understand consumers' attitudes, intentions, and behaviours that are related to trust in online shopping. However, few studies have provided a comprehensive understanding of the multi-dimensional nature of the trust construct such as the impacts of different trust dimensions on e-loyalty, inter-relationships among trust dimensions, and antecedents of different trust dimensions. The objective of this research is to fill the gaps by investigating the factors that affect different types of trust, the relationships among different types of trust and the importance of the trust issues in forming e-loyalty in the online environment. Led by the literature, a research model was proposed and hypotheses were developed to explore the answers to the research questions. Data was collected through a web-based survey in Chinese markets and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with Partial Least Squares (PLS) was used to analyse the data. Empirical results showed that all three dimensions of trust had impacts on e-loyalty. Dispositional trust had an impact on institutional trust, and institutional trust had an impact on interpersonal trust. Among the factors that influence interpersonal trust, store reputation and information quality not only had significantly impacts on interpersonal trust, but also mediated the relationships between other antecedents and interpersonal trust. This research contributes to the body of knowledge on trust by exploring the nature of trust with a multi-dimensional scale. Another theoretical contribution is the provision of a comprehensive understanding of the trust antecedents in e-commerce. Furthermore, this research benefits the companies doing e-businesses by allowing them to better understand how to improve consumers' trust in the online environment and thus to retain and attract more loyal customers and succeed in online businesses.
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(2010)ThesisWhile carbon emissions have received mounting attention from regulators, academics and practitioners for the past two decades, little is known about the current reporting and assurance practices in this area. More recently, there has been a growth in studies related to carbon emissions disclosures. Although disclosures are the first step towards carbon emissions reduction, these disclosures would be less meaningful if they lacked a certain degree of credibility. This is where the assurance on carbon emissions disclosures plays an indispensible role. However, few studies have examined the assurance practice specifically on carbon emissions. This thesis fills in the gap by providing an international comparison of the determinants underlying the decision to purchase assurance on carbon emissions as well as the factors associated with the choice between accounting firm providers and other providers of such assurance. Building on legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory and institutional theory, it is expected that certain country, industry and company specific characteristics will have an impact on companies‘ decisions to adopt the assurance services on their carbon emissions disclosures. It is also expected that those characteristics will have a similar effect on companies‘ choice of assurance providers, which in this thesis have been classified into two types, i.e. accounting firm providers and other providers. To identify those characteristics, this thesis examines the carbon assurance practices for 3008 companies across 47 countries between 2006 and 2008 as included in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) databases 2007 to 2009. CDP is an independent not-for-profit organization that collects carbon emissions data by sending out questionnaires to the world‘s largest companies. To promote the consistency and comparability among the responses of responding companies, a detailed examination of the responses to CDP by participating companies was performed to retrieve information about the nature of the assurance services including: Whether the assurance was purchased in response to regulatory requirements or was it voluntary? And whether the assurance services were at the corporate level or facility level? Further information was also hand collected from the assurance statements of responding companies including: the type of assurance providers, i.e. accounting firm providers and other providers; the subject matters included in the assurance services, i.e. sustainability as a whole or carbon emissions specifically; the report containing the assurance statements, i.e. sustainability reports or annual reports or carbon emissions reports; the level of the assurance provided, i.e. limited or reasonable, and also the assurance standards used to carry out the assurance services, i.e. ISAE3000 or AA1000 or others. Results indicate that the assurance decisions exhibit a strong country and industry pattern, with companies from stakeholder oriented countries and environmentally sensitive industries such as ―Energy‖ and ―Materials‖ more inclined to purchase the assurance services on their carbon emissions. At the same time, company level characteristics such as internal control and corporate governance were found to be important in the assurance decisions, with companies having certain forms of internal control on their carbon emissions disclosures and those having a board responsible for the climate change issues more likely to have their carbon emissions disclosures assured. In relation to the choice of assurance provider decisions, country and industry characteristics were found to have an impact on the decision, with companies domiciled in stakeholder oriented countries and companies from environmentally sensitive industries more likely to select accounting firm providers than other providers. However, company level characteristics were not found to be highly correlated with the choice of assurance providers. These results indicate that the choice of assurance provider is mostly determined by country and industry factors rather than company specific factors. Future research could explore whether additional company level factors not examined in this thesis are associated with companies‘ choice over different assurance providers.
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(2010)ThesisThis thesis investigates whether U.S. banks’ assets and liabilities, reported using Fair Value Accounting (FVA) under SFAS 157 Fair Value Measurement, are associated with information asymmetry among equity investors during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Using bid-ask spread as a proxy for information asymmetry and controlling for bank size, profitability, default risk and capital adequacy, I find that bid-ask spread is positively and significantly associated with total fair value net assets and net assets measured using Level 1 inputs (unadjusted observable inputs in active markets), Level 2 inputs (other indirect observable inputs), and Level 3 inputs (unobservable inputs reflecting firm’s own assumptions and models), as specified in SFAS 157. On the other hand, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (2008) has alleged that large loan loss provisions, determined based on managerial internal information and discretion, played a significant role in bank failures in the Global Financial Crisis. I, therefore, examine whether banks’ loan loss provisions, specifically Provisions for Loan Losses (PLL) appearing on the income statement and Allowance for Loan Losses (ALL) appearing on the balance sheet, are associated with information asymmetry. I find that both PLL and ALL are positively and significantly associated with bid-ask spread, with higher standardized coefficients than that of fair value net assets. As the economic condition kept worsening during the Global Financial Crisis, I also find that both fair value net assets and loan loss provisions are constantly and positively associated with information asymmetry across the four quarters of 2008. The results are robust using constant samples, analysing fair value assets and liabilities separately, using a sample of non-bank firms, and extending the dataset to the fiscal year 2009. In short, both fair value net assets and loan loss provisions are associated with information asymmetry among equity investors during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, with loan loss provisions having the stronger of the two effects.
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(2010)ThesisThis thesis is motivated by the growth in and significance of alliances involving transfers of intangible resources and the challenges that these alliances present to traditional management (accounting) planning and control practices. To this end, a field study was conducted in an Australian-Chinese alliance formed between two government research institutes working on a green gas project. This alliance involved the transfer of intangible knowledge-based resources between the Australian and Chinese partners. A field study examining this project considered two research questions: first, ‘what networks of actors/actants informs partner selection in a non-monetary cross-national collaborative alliance?’ and, second, ‘how are the management (accounting) planning and control practices implicated in the functioning of a non-monetary cross-national collaborative alliance?’. These questions were examined using Actor Network Theory. Data were collected via semi-structured interviewing and document study. It was found that partner selection was informed by individual social ties located in university alumni networks, time pressures and political influences. In terms of formal planning and control practices, the contract played an important role regulating this alliance because of its political and symbolic significance. Although there was no monetary exchange between the partners, accounting played a role in regulating the practices of the Australian alliance partner. Budgets were important to the financial justification and administration of the alliance. In relation to socio-ideological forms of control, actors struggled to achieve common understandings and shared values because of a lack of face to face interaction and differences in communication practices. Nonetheless, this alliance was regarded as an example of successful collaboration at the inter-governmental level. The findings from this research have three main implications in terms of how we think about alliances. First, this thesis raises issues relating to the role of contracts in non-market based exchanges. Second, this research also questions the importance of shared values and beliefs to the operation of collaborative alliances. Third, and finally, this research also motivates future research seeking to address the governance of alliances in the absence of market disciplines and shared values informing collaboration.
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Driving preferences for co-branded products: effects of extendibility, compatibility and uncertainty(2010)ThesisFirms frequently use brand extension strategies to enter new product categories. Another type of entry strategy is co-branding by effectively exploiting the equity of both constituent brands. Co-branding may effectively drive consumer preferences if consumers believe the combination of two brands offers a better solution than either one separately. However, there is also the risk that consumers may get confused with the combination, or have perceptions of strengths regarding one of the brands diluted, leading to the failure of this strategy. While much has been written on brand-category extension, despite its prevalence, the use of co-brands to enter a new category has attracted relatively little attention. In this study, the author models the effects on consumer perceptions and preferences of combining two brand names for a new product. The proposed model provides a mechanism to represent how consumers’ prior attribute beliefs about constituent brands, the extendibility of the brands into the extension category, the compatibility between the constituent brands, and the uncertainty associated with them can jointly determine their preferences for the co-branded product. The contribution that this model enables is a means to study co-branding and new category entry simultaneously, by assessing the drivers of consumer preference for a co-brand in a new product category. An empirical study is designed to test the model, using real brands and hypothetical extensions and co-brands. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications of this study are discussed.