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Sustainability Transformation: The Role Of Accountancy And Finance Professionals In The Singapore Manufacturing Sector, Jiwei Wang, Holly I. Yang, Liandong Zhang, Sanli Pinar Darendeli, Ying-Chi Huang Nov 2023

Sustainability Transformation: The Role Of Accountancy And Finance Professionals In The Singapore Manufacturing Sector, Jiwei Wang, Holly I. Yang, Liandong Zhang, Sanli Pinar Darendeli, Ying-Chi Huang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Sustainability is already reshaping the Singapore manufacturing sector. The majority of companies surveyed (70%) have started their sustainability transformation in one form or another, and many have initiated discussions. However, on the whole, only 37% of companies have implemented sustainability initiatives, and 21% have reported on sustainability. On the bright side, these percentages are slated to double within 1-3 years. The infusion of sustainability into the manufacturing sector has led to accountancy and finance professionals potentially playing a bigger role in their organisations, particularly in aligning the sustainability objectives with business strategies. The study notes that manufacturing companies are mostly …


When Do Corporate Good Deeds Become A Burden? The Role Of Corporate Social Responsibility Following Negative Events, Changhyun Kim, Yoonseok Zang, Heli Wang, Kate Niu Aug 2023

When Do Corporate Good Deeds Become A Burden? The Role Of Corporate Social Responsibility Following Negative Events, Changhyun Kim, Yoonseok Zang, Heli Wang, Kate Niu

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study investigates the differential roles of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the context of negative events. By categorizing CSR and negative events by their respective stakeholder groups, primary and secondary stakeholders, we theorize and test differential impacts of CSR and their interaction effects with different types of negative events. We propose that, while CSR toward secondary stakeholders offers the monotonous risk-tempering effect, CSR toward primary stakeholders has heterogeneous effects when facing negative events. Specifically, the effect of CSR toward primary stakeholders varies with the type of negative events. When negative events are associated with secondary stakeholders in the domain …


Trust And Contracting: Evidence From Church Sex Scandals, Gilles Hilary, Sterling Huang Jan 2023

Trust And Contracting: Evidence From Church Sex Scandals, Gilles Hilary, Sterling Huang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Firms located in communities in which people are, on average, more trusting enjoy some benefits in terms of the power of CEO contracts. We present two pieces of empirical evidence to support this claim: (1) higher average trust in a county is associated with “flatter” executive contracts and (2) when an exogenous shock occurs (such as a scandal involving an important social institution), both trust and contracting move in similar directions. We obtain the first result in a panel specification and the second in a “difference-in-difference” specification that uses the revelation of sex scandals involving the Catholic Church across different …


The Effects Of Csr Reputation And Csr Crisis Response Strategy On Investor Judgments, Clarence Goh Aug 2022

The Effects Of Csr Reputation And Csr Crisis Response Strategy On Investor Judgments, Clarence Goh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

I use a controlled experiment to examine, in the context of CSR crises, whether investors’ investment judgments are influenced by a firm’s CSR reputation and CSR crisis response strategy. I find that for good CSR reputation firms, the use of a rebuild or deny crisis response strategy does not lead to improvements in investment judgments. However, for bad CSR reputation firms, the use of a deny response strategy leads to improvements in investment judgments while the use of a rebuild strategy does not.


Accounting Scandals And Implications For Directors: Lessons From Enron, Pearl Hock-Neo Tan, Gillian Yeo Aug 2022

Accounting Scandals And Implications For Directors: Lessons From Enron, Pearl Hock-Neo Tan, Gillian Yeo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We analyze the Enron case to identify the risk factors that potentially led to its collapse and specific issues relating to its aggressive accounting and high-light the lessons for independent directors. In Enron, the interactions between external stimuli, strategies, corporate culture, and risk exposures possibly created an explosive situation that eventually led to its demise. Much of the post-Enron reforms have been directed towards regulating the roles and responsibilities of executive directors and auditors. However, the role of independent directors has received relatively lesser attention. Independent directors should analyze the risks of their companies and understand the pressures that arise …


Beyond Shareholder Value? Why Firms Voluntarily Disclose Support For Black Lives Matter, A. J. Chen, Patricia M. Dechow, Samuel T. Tan Dec 2021

Beyond Shareholder Value? Why Firms Voluntarily Disclose Support For Black Lives Matter, A. J. Chen, Patricia M. Dechow, Samuel T. Tan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We investigate why firms voluntarily disclose support for the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM firms) even though these disclosures have little impact on shareholder value. We examine two competing explanations: that managers are acting in the interests of a broad set of stakeholders, or that they are engaging in “woke-washing.” Our evidence supports the stakeholder perspective since we find that BLM firms have more inclusive cultures on multiple dimensions – from their board members, to employees, to the rights of shareholders, and to the compensation structure of top executives. Furthermore, BLM firms face less risk in speaking out since they …


Accounting For A Hopeful World, Themin Suwardy Nov 2021

Accounting For A Hopeful World, Themin Suwardy

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In a commentary, SMU Associate Provost for Postgraduate Professional Education and Associate Professor of Accounting (Practice) Themin Suwardy noted that environmental reporting has become more common in the last 10 years and that companies are embracing sustainability reporting despite the challenging myriad of seemingly different models, frameworks and regulations. He opined that the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards to be issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) will enable companies to provide comprehensive sustainability information for the global financial markets. He urged accounting professionals to embrace the development wholeheartedly and to help organisations do and report good.


Local Political Corruption And M&As, Chun Liu, Yang Chen, Shanmin Li, Liang Sun, Mengjie Yang Oct 2021

Local Political Corruption And M&As, Chun Liu, Yang Chen, Shanmin Li, Liang Sun, Mengjie Yang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the relation between local political corruption and firms' cross-province M&As using provincial-level data on corruption in China. The results show that firms in more corrupt regions are less likely to engage in cross-province M&As. Further analyses reveal that the effects of local corruption on the probability of cross-province M&As are stronger when corrupt officers have greater impeding benefits or lower impeding costs. Meanwhile, Both ex-ante intervention and ex post punishment are important channels through which corrupt officers hinder firms' cross province M&As. Moreover, informal institutions, such as social capital and informal networks can help to alleviate the negative …


Corporate Governance: Avoid The Groupthink Pitfall, Themin Suwardy Mar 2019

Corporate Governance: Avoid The Groupthink Pitfall, Themin Suwardy

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Consensus due to similar personal backgrounds, lack of diversity in views and failure to see things from others’ perspective can lead to bad decisions.


Societal Trust And Corporate Tax Avoidance, Kiridaran Kanagaretnam, Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim, Gerald Lobo Dec 2018

Societal Trust And Corporate Tax Avoidance, Kiridaran Kanagaretnam, Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim, Gerald Lobo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using aninternational sample of firms from 25 countries and a country-level index for societal trust, we document that societal trust is negatively associated with tax avoidance, even after controlling for other institutional determinants, such as home country legal institutions and tax system characteristics.We explore the effects of two country-level institutional characteristics—strength of lega linstitutions and capital market pressure—on the relation between societal trust and tax avoidance. We find that the relation between trust and tax avoidance is less pronounced when legal institutions in a country are stronger and is more pronounced when capital market pressure is stronger. Finally, we examine …


Zombie Board: Board Tenure And Firm Performance, Sterling Huang, Gilles Hilary Sep 2018

Zombie Board: Board Tenure And Firm Performance, Sterling Huang, Gilles Hilary

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We show that board tenure exhibits an inverted U-shaped relation with firm value and accounting performance. The quality of corporate decisions, such as M&A, financial reporting quality, and CEO compensation, also has a quadratic relation with board tenure. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that directors’ on-the-job learning improves firm value up to a threshold, at which point entrenchment dominates and firm performance suffers. To address endogeneity concerns, we use a sample of firms in which an outside director suffered a sudden death, and find that sudden deaths that move board tenure away from (toward) the empirically observed optimum …


Cross-Country Evidence On The Role Of Independent Media In Constraining Corporate Tax Aggressiveness, Kiridaran Kanagaretnam, Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim, Gerald J. Lobo Jul 2018

Cross-Country Evidence On The Role Of Independent Media In Constraining Corporate Tax Aggressiveness, Kiridaran Kanagaretnam, Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim, Gerald J. Lobo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using an international sample of firms from 32 countries, we study the relation between media independence and corporate tax aggressiveness. We measure media independence by the extent of private ownership and competition in the media industry. Using an indicator variable for tax aggressiveness when the firm’s corporate tax avoidance measure is within the top quartile of each country-industry combination, we find strong evidence that media independence is associated with a lower likelihood of tax aggressiveness, after controlling for other institutional determinants, including home-country tax system characteristics. We also find that the effect of media independence is more pronounced when the …


Keeping Investors Onboard: A Corporate Social Responsibility Crisis Response Framework, Clarence Goh Apr 2018

Keeping Investors Onboard: A Corporate Social Responsibility Crisis Response Framework, Clarence Goh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

There is evidence to suggest that managers use CSR reporting as a means to manage their firms’ CSR reputations. In this study, I jointly examine CSR reputation and CSR crisis response in the context of CSR crises, and how they can influence investor judgments and decision making. In particular, in the context of CSR crises, I build on situational crisis communication theory to develop a CSR crisis response framework which managers can use to examine and understand how specific types of CSR crises can influence their firm’s CSR reputations, which can in turn influence investor judgments and decision making. Following …


Internal Governance And Real Earnings Management, Qiang Cheng, Jimmy Lee, Terry J. Shevlin Jul 2016

Internal Governance And Real Earnings Management, Qiang Cheng, Jimmy Lee, Terry J. Shevlin

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine whether internal governance affects the extent of real earnings management in U.S. corporations. Internal governance refers to the process through which key subordinate executives provide checks and balances in the organization and affect corporate decisions. Using the number of years to retirement to capture key subordinate executives’ horizon incentives and using their compensation relative to CEO compensation to capture their influence within the firm, we find that the extent of real earnings management decreases with key subordinate executives’ horizon and influence. The results are robust to alternative measures of internal governance and to various approaches used to address …


The Influence Of Ethical Leadership On Managerial Performance: Mediating Effects Of Mindfulness And Corporate Social Responsibility, John J. Williams, Alfred E. Seaman Jun 2016

The Influence Of Ethical Leadership On Managerial Performance: Mediating Effects Of Mindfulness And Corporate Social Responsibility, John J. Williams, Alfred E. Seaman

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In a continuing world of corporate misdeeds and unscrupulous decision making, much of the management and academic literatures points to the incomplete knowledge of the consequences of ethics leadership. One of the bastions of ethics gatekeeping in the firm is the CFO but remarkably scant information can be found on their perceptions concerning ethics leadership. This study addresses this void by examining mindfulness and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives as new mediating linkages in comprehending the influence of ethics leadership on managerial performance. Findings reveal that ethical leadership is positively associated with CSR initiatives which, in turn, operate to enhance …


The Downside Of The Network Ties Between Ceo/Cfos And Auditors Through External Directorships: Evidence From Auditor Selection And Subsequent Audit Quality, Jaeyoon Yu, Byungjin Kwak, Myung Seok Park, Yoonseok Zang May 2016

The Downside Of The Network Ties Between Ceo/Cfos And Auditors Through External Directorships: Evidence From Auditor Selection And Subsequent Audit Quality, Jaeyoon Yu, Byungjin Kwak, Myung Seok Park, Yoonseok Zang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study examines whether the professional ties of Chief Executive Officers/Chief Financial Officers (CEO/CFOs) to auditors through external directorships affect auditor selection and subsequent audit quality. Professional ties to auditors arise when the CEO/CFO of a firm (referred to as the home firm) serves as an outside director of another firm that hires an auditor (a connected auditor). Using a sample of firms with auditor switches over the period 2003-2012, we find that home firms are more likely to appoint connected auditors. Furthermore, utilizing a difference-in-differences approach, we find that home firms appointing connected auditors experience a significant decline in …


Audit Committees And Financial Reporting Quality In Singapore, Kwong Sin Leong, Jiwei Wang, Themin Suwardy, Yuanto Kusnadi Apr 2015

Audit Committees And Financial Reporting Quality In Singapore, Kwong Sin Leong, Jiwei Wang, Themin Suwardy, Yuanto Kusnadi

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.


Executive Compensation And Regulation Imposed Governance: Evidence From The California Non-Profit Integrity Act (2004), Sandip Dhole, Saleha B. Khumawala, Sagarika Mishra, Tharindra Ranasinghe Mar 2015

Executive Compensation And Regulation Imposed Governance: Evidence From The California Non-Profit Integrity Act (2004), Sandip Dhole, Saleha B. Khumawala, Sagarika Mishra, Tharindra Ranasinghe

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study examines the impact of the California Nonprofit Integrity Act of 2004 on CEO compensation costs in affected organizations. Contrary to the stated objective of the Act that executive compensation is “just and reasonable,” we find that CEO compensation costs for affected nonprofits during the post-regulation periods have increased by about 6.3 percent when compared with a control group of comparable unaffected nonprofits. In addition, the relative increase in CEO compensation appears to come from nonprofits that have experienced greater regulatory cost increases. We do not find evidence that the Act resulted in a change in CEO pay performance …


Active Cds Trading And Managers’ Voluntary Disclosure, Jae Bum Kim, Pervin K. Shroff, Dushyantk Umar Vyas, Regina Wittenberg Moerman Jan 2015

Active Cds Trading And Managers’ Voluntary Disclosure, Jae Bum Kim, Pervin K. Shroff, Dushyantk Umar Vyas, Regina Wittenberg Moerman

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.


Determinants Of Ethical Climate In The Firm:The Role Of Governance Systems And Environmental Uncertainty, John J. Williams, Alfred E. Seaman Dec 2014

Determinants Of Ethical Climate In The Firm:The Role Of Governance Systems And Environmental Uncertainty, John J. Williams, Alfred E. Seaman

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Corporate governance mechanisms essentially reside in the control structure/systems of most organizations and provide, theoretically at least, a conduit to support a better organizational ethical climate. This linkage, however, has seldom been portrayed this way in the literature and, correspondingly, there are virtually no empirical studies to offer increased understanding, especially with respect to the professional accountant in practice. Accordingly, this paper empirically assesses the governance mechanisms sanctioned by the International Federation of Accountants (2009) as determinants of an organization’s ethical climate based on evidence from a Canadian sample of CFOs/controllers. The ethics/leadership literature relating to ethical climate provides the …


Societal Trust And Corporate Tax Avoidance, Kiridaran Kanagaretnam, Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim, Gerald J. Lobo Jun 2014

Societal Trust And Corporate Tax Avoidance, Kiridaran Kanagaretnam, Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim, Gerald J. Lobo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using an international sample of firms and a country-level index for societal trust, we study how differences in trust across countries relate to corporate tax avoidance. Consistent with our prediction, we find strong evidence that societal trust is negatively associated with corporate tax avoidance by firms, even after controlling for other determinants such as home country tax system characteristics. We also explore the effects of three country-level institutional characteristics – level of investor protection, disclosure requirement, and tax enforcement – on the relation between societal trust and tax avoidance. We predict and find that the effects of trust on tax …


Active Cds Trading And Managers’ Voluntary Disclosure, Jae Bum Kim, Pervin K. Shroff, Dushyantk Umar Vyas, Regina Wittenber Mar 2014

Active Cds Trading And Managers’ Voluntary Disclosure, Jae Bum Kim, Pervin K. Shroff, Dushyantk Umar Vyas, Regina Wittenber

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.


Does Corporate Governance Make Financial Reports Better, Or Just Better For Equity Investors?, Dan Segal, Benjamin Segal, Shai Levi Jan 2014

Does Corporate Governance Make Financial Reports Better, Or Just Better For Equity Investors?, Dan Segal, Benjamin Segal, Shai Levi

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Financial reports should provide useful information to both shareholders and creditors, according to U.S. accounting principles. However, directors of corporations have fiduciary duties only toward equity holders, and those fiduciary duties normally do not extend to the interests of creditors. We examine whether this slant in corporate governance biases financial reports in favor of equity investors, and in particular leads to a downward bias in reported debt that can hurt creditors. We focus on firms’ decision to issue structured debt securities that are classified as equity in financial reports and can circumvent debt covenants. We find that when the local …


Zombie Board: Board Tenure And Firm Performance [Summary Of Paper], Sterling Huang Nov 2013

Zombie Board: Board Tenure And Firm Performance [Summary Of Paper], Sterling Huang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In my paper, Zombie Boards: Board Tenure and Firm Performance, which was recently made publicly available on SSRN, I empirically investigate how board tenure is related to firm performance and corporate decisions, holding other firm, CEO, and board characteristics constant. I find that board tenure has an inverted U-shaped relation with firm value, and that this curvilinear relation is reflected in M&A performance, financial reporting quality, corporate strategies and innovation, executive compensation, and CEO replacement. The results indicate that, for firms with short-tenured boards, the marginal effect of board learning dominates entrenchment effects, whereas for firms that have long-tenured …


Governance Of Financial Reporting, Poh Sun Seow, Gary Pan Aug 2013

Governance Of Financial Reporting, Poh Sun Seow, Gary Pan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.


Non-Audit Fees, Institutional Monitoring, And Audit Quality, Chee Yeow Lim, David K. Ding, Charlie Charoenwong Aug 2013

Non-Audit Fees, Institutional Monitoring, And Audit Quality, Chee Yeow Lim, David K. Ding, Charlie Charoenwong

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We posit that the effect of non-audit fees on audit quality is conditional on the extent of institutional monitoring. We suggest that institutional investors have incentives and the ability to monitor financial reporting quality. Because of the reputation concerns and potential litigation exposure, auditors are likely to provide high audit quality, when they also provide non-audit services to clients, particularly when clients are subject to high institutional monitoring. We find evidence that, as non-audit fees increase, audit quality (measured by performance-adjusted discretionary current accruals and earnings-response coefficients) reduces only for clients with low institutional ownership but not for clients with …


Banks' Survival During The Financial Crisis: The Role Of Regulatory Reporting Quality, Jeffrey Ng, Tjomme O. Rusticus Dec 2012

Banks' Survival During The Financial Crisis: The Role Of Regulatory Reporting Quality, Jeffrey Ng, Tjomme O. Rusticus

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this paper, we investigate the effect of bank transparency before the crisis on bank stability during the financial crisis that erupted in 2008. Using a large sample of private and public commercial banks in the United States, we find that transparency enhances stability. We use two measures of transparency. We develop a new measure of financial reporting transparency based on loan loss provision estimation errors. We corroborate our findings using a second measure based on the incidence of accounting restatements. We show that lower transparency before the crisis is associated with higher non-performing loans and lower profitability at the …


The Effect Of Arthur Andersen's Demise On Clients' Audit Fees And Auditor Conservatism: International Evidence, Bin Srinidhi, Mahmud Hossain, Chee Yeow Lim Sep 2012

The Effect Of Arthur Andersen's Demise On Clients' Audit Fees And Auditor Conservatism: International Evidence, Bin Srinidhi, Mahmud Hossain, Chee Yeow Lim

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using samples from 12 non-U.S.A. countries, we find that following Arthur Andersen's failure in the United States of America, successor Big-N auditors charged an audit fee premium for ex-Andersen clients compared to existing clients and non-Andersen switch-ins. We show that this audit fee premium is not attributable to the Andersen switch-ins having lower prior earnings quality or lower bargaining power than non-Andersen switch-ins. We also show that ex-Andersen clients exhibit higher earnings quality after the switch than do ongoing clients and other switch-ins. These results suggest that the audit fee premium is attributable to auditor conservatism. Furthermore, we find that …


Executive Compensation And Regulation Imposed Governance: Evidence From The California Non-Profit Integrity Act (2004), Tharindra Ranasinghe, S. Khumawala, S. Mishra, S. Dhole Jul 2012

Executive Compensation And Regulation Imposed Governance: Evidence From The California Non-Profit Integrity Act (2004), Tharindra Ranasinghe, S. Khumawala, S. Mishra, S. Dhole

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.


Disciplinary Effect Of Internal Control Provisions Of Sox On Corporate Governance Structures, Beng Wee Goh Jun 2012

Disciplinary Effect Of Internal Control Provisions Of Sox On Corporate Governance Structures, Beng Wee Goh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study examines whether the internal control provisions under the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) have a disciplining effect on the governance structures of firms. We find that audit committee members and outside directors of firms that disclose material weaknesses (MWs) under Section 302 of SOX are more likely to leave the firms compared to their counterparts in a matched sample of control firms without such weaknesses, and they lose more outside directorships than their counterparts in the control firms. These results are consistent with the notion that the labor market imposes reputational penalties for internal control failures. Although the MW firms …