Business Commons^™

Audit Firm Executives Under Pressure: A Discursive Analysis Of Legitimisation And Resistance To Reform, Michael Harber, Warren Maroun, Alan Duboisee De Ricquebourg

Business Papers and Journal Articles

The UK audit profession is facing a crisis of public trust and legitimacy following a series of high-profile audit failures. This resulted in the executive leadership of UK audit firms being summoned before a House of Commons Select Committee as part of its inquiry into ‘the future of audit’. During this inquiry the audit executives walked a tightrope, to both defend the social contract from an existential threat and attempt to influence policy reforms in their favour. This paper draws on ‘neutralisation techniques’ from deviance theory and the ‘grammar of legitimation’ from legitimacy theory to inform a discursive analysis of …

Household Recycling Behaviour In Metropolitan Australia: A Social Practice Theory Perspective, Susann Noe

Theses

Australians generate almost 545kg of annual kerbside waste per capita, one of the highest amounts compared to other OECD countries (Blue Environment, 2022). Although kerbside systems in Australian metropolitan areas are well-developed and the recycling practice is considered a social norm, residents' inaccurate handling of recyclable items send as much as 35% of valuable recyclable materials to landfill, contributing to environmental harm (Cleanaway Waste Management Limited, 2021). Furthermore, newly established recycling schemes in Australian jurisdictions are not used to their full potential.

In the context of both issues, the current thesis aims to understand the underperforming nature of recycling practices …

The Commercialist Identity Of Mid-Tier Firm Auditors: A Precarious Balancing Of Priorities, Michael Harber, Gizelle D. Willows

Business Papers and Journal Articles

Purpose: This paper aims to extend our understanding of how mid-tier firm auditors legitimise and institutionalise the logic of commercialism within their profession. This paper is responsive to research that shows how Big Four auditors have restructured the market and re-cast the relationality between the two logics to forge an identity that suits them commercially. Such research provides insight into auditor agency and intentionality, illustrating how auditors maintain and indeed grow their status and role within society.

Design/methodology/approach: Semi-structured interviews with audit executives situated in a strategically challenging regulatory context are interpreted through a theoretical framework developed from institutional …

Disputed Interpretations And Active Strategies Of Resistance During An Audit Regulatory Debate, Michael Harber, Grietjie Verhoef, Charl De Villiers

Business Papers and Journal Articles

Purpose: The paper aims to examine disputed interpretations of “key meanings” between the audit regulator and Big 4 firms during a highly contentious regulatory debate, showcasing their use of “strategies of resistance” to achieve their intended outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative analysis is performed of the discourse in a South African audit regulatory debate, set within the country's unique political and historical context. The analysis is informed by the theoretical construct of a “regulatory space” and an established typology of strategic responses to institutional pressures.

Findings: The study’s findings show how resistance to regulatory intentions from influential actors, notably the Big …

The Golden Age Of The Economics Of Bureaucracy, Chang-Yeh (Michael) Wu

Theses

The economics of bureaucracy (EOB) is a field of research that emerged from the public choice movement in the mid-1960s through to the early 1970s. It entailed applying traditional economic theories and modelling techniques to study decision-making in non-market hierarchies that are often referred to as bureaucracies. The field was pioneered and codified by Gordon Tullock, Anthony Downs, and William Niskanen in what may be called the ‘golden age’ of EOB. Establishing EOB as a bona fide research domain was a challenging intellectual enterprise due to the absence of a pre-existing conceptual framework to readily model bureaucracies within the economics …

The Role Of Tradition For Food And Wine Producing Firms In Times Of An Unprecedented Crisis, Alessandro Bressan, Abel Duarte Alonso, Oanh Thi Kim Vu, Lan Thi Ha Do, Wil Martens

Business Papers and Journal Articles

Purpose: The purpose of the present study is twofold. First, the study will investigate the importance of tradition for businesses operating during the COVID-19 crisis, notably, as a valuable proposition and strategy. Second, the study seeks to advance theoretical understanding, proposing two frameworks based upon emerging dimensions, the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities.

Design/methodology/approach: An online survey gathered the views of 107 predominantly micro and small-scale owner-manager and family-owned firms involved in the food and wine sector. These participants are based in Italy, one of the hardest-hit countries in the crisis.

Findings: Three fundamental dimensions emerge from the findings. The …

Audit Quality Implications Of Regulatory Change In South Africa, Harina Ndaba, Michael Harber, Warren Maroun

Business Papers and Journal Articles

Purpose: This paper explores how technical constructions of audit practice are influenced by mandatory audit firm rotation (MAFR) regulations. The paper responds to calls for additional research on how external regulation influences audit quality and supplements the predominately quantitative research dealing specifically with firm rotation and its relevance for audit quality.

Design/methodology/approach: Data are collected from South Africa which is the latest jurisdiction to adopt MAFR (from 2017). Detailed interviews with 49 participants comprising 24 audit partners and 25 non-auditors are conducted to explore how MAFR can impact audit quality. For this purpose, audit quality is defined according …

Solar Energy Penetration And Volatility Transmission To Electricity Markets - An Australian Perspective, Abdul Rashid Abban, Mohammad Z. Hasan

Business Papers and Journal Articles

The contribution of solar energy to electricity production has intensified in recent years. In this study, we aim to measure the impact of higher solar penetration on electricity prices across regional and national electricity markets in Australia. Using daily data, we also estimate volatility transmission among the Australian electricity markets. Univariate and multivariate GARCH models are employed to achieve the objectives of the study. The results show that increasing solar penetration decreases electricity prices in the regional electricity markets of Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania. However, the results further reveal that the joint negative effect of solar energy on electricity …

Large-Scale Renewable Energy Penetration – A Quantitative Analysis Of Political Determinants Of Renewable Energy And Its Impact On Electricity Price Volatility Transmission And Corporate Financial Performance, Abdul Abban

Theses

This thesis presents four studies on renewable energy. In this thesis, we analyse the political determinants of renewable energy investment in Chapter 2, evaluate the interaction effect between government system and governance quality on renewable energy investment in Chapter 3, estimate the impact of renewable energy on electricity prices and volatility transmission across the Australian regional markets in Chapter 4 and finally investigate the bi-directional causation between environmental and financial performance in Chapter 5.

The findings from Chapter 2 show that both the left and central-orientated governments promote renewable energy investment more than the right-orientated government. Although the presidential system …

The Impact Of Psychological Contract Breaches Within East-West Buyer-Supplier Relationships, Russel P.J Kingshott, Piyush Sharma, Herbert Sima, David Wong

Business Papers and Journal Articles

The expanding role of Asian firms in global supply chains has meant that their Western counterparts need to be capable of transcending the East-West divide in their relational building efforts if they wish to successfully participate in these networks. This paper draws upon social exchange (SE) theory to integrate the exit, voice, loyalty, neglect (EVLN) typology with the psychological contract (PSYCON) literature, to examine how Australian buyer firms build and nurture relationships with their Chinese suppliers. Data from 327 Australian managers collected using an online self-administered questionnaire reveals the negative effects of PSYCON breaches towards their suppliers on neglect, voice …

National Culture And The Gender Diversity Of Corporate Boards, Catherine Whelan, Sarah A. Humphries

Business Papers and Journal Articles

Controlling for board size and the presence of a female chairperson, this study investigates the association between the gender diversity of corporate boards and the six Hofstede cultural dimensions. Results indicate that the percentage of women on boards is negatively related to Power Distance and positively related to Individualism and Long-term Orientation. The percentage of women on boards tends to be higher in cultures that tolerate inequalities in the distribution of power. There is also evidence that the percentage of women on boards is influenced by the degree of interdependence a society maintains among its members and the long-term horizon …

From Valuable Resource To Valued Person: Ontologies Of Human Resource Management, Gregory M. Latemore

Theses

This thesis examines the conceptualisations of those who do the work of organisations as evidenced in human resource management (HRM) scholarship. It contrasts three perspectives in the HRM discourse: strategic, humanistic and personalistic, and distinguishes the world-views and philosophies within them. The four papers in the thesis address these perspectives and indicate implications for HRM theory, research and practice.

The primary research question is ‘how is the person conceptualised in the HRM discourse?’ which is answered by affirming that such conceptualisation has varied throughout the HRM tradition wherein the ‘human’ in HRM is regarded as both a valuable resource and …

Theorising Leadership Authenticity: An Existentialist-Personalist Perspective, Anthony Howard

Theses

The purpose of this study is to describe authentic leadership theory (ALT), identify its philosophical limitations regarding the meaning of authenticity and what it is to be authentically human. The study also evaluates the contribution of three thinkers—the existentialists Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger, and the personalist Karol Wojtyła—towards overcoming those limitations.

This study straddles the fields of management and philosophy, combining management concepts regarding authentic leadership with the philosophical traditions of existentialism and personalism, to interrogate authenticity and authentic leadership. It finds that the existentialists Kierkegaard and Heidegger offer a more extensive understanding of authenticity than what the authentic …

Worker Psycho-Spiritual Self-Care Choices: Making Sense During Times Of Stress And Anxiety, Peter Devenish-Meares

Theses

This thesis explores and extends the use of psycho-spiritual self-care choices in support of sense-making and inner healing of workplace stress. The study was motivated by a lack of research about and the observation that, despite their usefulness in other disciplines, psycho-spiritual self-care choices are often poorly understood or ignored in the workplace. Yet, chronic stress, if left unaddressed, can lead to adverse mental health consequences. This is particularly so when harsh self-criticism, poor self-acceptance and lack of self-kindness stymie self-care and meaningful sense-making. Notably too, there is next to no research that shows how workers might detach from work …

Influence Of Personality Traits And Moral Values On Employee Well-Being, Resilience And Performance: A Cross-National Study, Vidya S. Athota, Pawan Budhwar, Ashish Malik

Business Papers and Journal Articles

Research examining the relationship at the interface of personality, values, moral foundations and its impact on employees’ subjective well-being, resilience, job performance and satisfaction is almost non-existent. This study addresses this Special Issue’s call focusing on the key antecedents and consequences of resilience on individual and/or organizational level outcomes. It does so by analyzing data from two different, through comparative cross-national studies in Australia and India. Employing a quantitative survey method, we collected data from 195 respondents in Australia and 257 respondents from India. Employing the core theory of moral foundations in association with its relationships with individual personality, values, …

Reality Checks For Career Women: An Interpretevist Paradigm, Mary Anthony, Werner Soontiens

Business Papers and Journal Articles

This paper reflects on the latent organisational process that leads tothe scarcity of women in senior positions. Utilising characteristics of legitimisation, institutionalisation and self-determination theories the paper observes how women manage upward mobility. Subsequently, it was important to investigate the mid-level cohorts, as there lies the critical question triggering the anomaly. Focusing on the public sector with an interest in gendered organisations, the study examines law enforcement. Conversely, the aim of this paper is to focus on why there is a continued dearth in the number of policewomen at top level positions in USA and Australia. A qualitative study with …

An Eeg Study On Emotional Intelligence And Advertising Message Effectiveness, Joseph Ciorciari, Jeffrey Pfeifer, John Gountas

Business Papers and Journal Articles

Some electroencephalography (EEG) studies have investigated emotional intelligence (EI), but none have examined the relationships between EI and commercial advertising messages and related consumer behaviors. This study combines brain (EEG) techniques with an EI psychometric to explore the brain responses associated with a range of advertisements. A group of 45 participants (23females, 22males) had their EEG recorded while watching a series of advertisements selected from various marketing categories such as community interests, celebrities, food/drink, and social issues. Participants were also categorized as high or low in emotional intelligence (n = 34). The EEG data analysis was centered on rating decision-making …

Motivation In Knowledge Workers, Carmen Wong

Theses

Traditional theories that form the basis of workplace motivation may be inadequate to manage workers in the knowledge-based economy. Knowledge workers are a growing segment of the workforce, and their needs differ from previous generations of employees. How managers can best motivate knowledge workers towards greater performance and employee satisfaction may not have a definitive answer, however we will explore the effectiveness of some of the commonly used practices in the current workplace.

Knowledge workers add value to a company's products and services by applying their knowledge. The self-determination theory (SDT) is considered a more encompassing theory than the traditional …

University- Based Entrepreneurial Ecosystem And Entrepreneurial Intentions: Evidence From South India, Deepa Subhadrammal

Theses

This study seeks to understand the impact of University-Based Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (UBEE), particularly entrepreneurial support infrastructure within a university ecosystem on the entrepreneurial intentions of students in South India. A UBEE can directly affect the likelihood that students identify and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities, which, affects their entrepreneurial intentions. India is one of the top three countries globally in terms of the number of start-ups and is projected to host over 10,500 start-ups by 2020. However, there is a dearth of research investigating the impact of university entrepreneurial support initiatives on students’ entrepreneurial intentions and entrepreneurial self-efficacy. This is especially true …

Australian Dollar Price Shocks And The Australian Stock Market, Ramzi E.N Tarazi

Theses

This thesis presents three studies on the Australian dollar price shocks and the Australian stock market. In this thesis, we study the volatility of the major currencies, identify the effect of the Australian dollar return and volatility on six sectors of the Australian stock market, evaluate volatility from the Australian dollar to the big four banks’ shares volatility in Australia, and finally identify the risk factors for the real estate market in Australia at the fundamental factors and macroeconomies level.

In chapter two, we investigate the influence of volatility of the foreign exchange rate of the US, the UK, Euro-zone, …

The Failure Of Historians To Engage With Recent Economic Thought: The Case Of Millmow, Gregory C. Moore

Business Papers and Journal Articles

The narrative that follows is a review essay of Alex Millmow’s A History of Australasian Economic Thought (2017). The chief finding is that Millmow fails to devote sufficient attention to the history of economic theory in the last decades of the twentieth century because of his preoccupation with the history of economic policy. This is demonstrated, in part, by considering the extent to which Millmow appraises the work of those prominent modern economists who are identified in an informal survey of ten respondents.

Managing Women's Post Retirement Career In Law Enforcement Organisations: Lessons From Developed Nations For Emerging Economies, Mary Anthony, Werner Soontiens

Business Papers and Journal Articles

This paper explores protean careers US and Australian policewomen seek post retirement. Two research questions address why policewomen seek a protean career after retirement from law enforcement. The study utilised a phenomenological approach involving semi-structured interviews conducted with 40 policewomen in middle and top management roles in the USA and Australia. Analysis of data involved coding for emergent themes based on the interpretivist research philosophy. Interview transcripts of 40 policewomen from these countries show that more than 90% of the women from the USA were aggressively seeking to develop protean careers while that was not the case in Australian law …

"No Sir, It’S Not Discrimination, You’Re Just Too Old". An Auto-Ethnography Of The Effects Of Perceived Age Discrimination Among Older Australian Male Professionals., Colin Brown

Theses

This thesis investigates the effects of perceived age discrimination in employment practices on Australian professional men. It commences by outlining the global setting of the age discrimination phenomenon, and then draws attention to the myths and stereotypes that have engendered this unsavoury, often hidden, form of discrimination by focusing on the attitudes of recruitment agencies, private and government employers and older workers themselves. The thesis examines the literature on the multiple negative effects of discrimination, and then presents the method used, the personal interviews, the analysis and findings, and finally, the conclusion.

There is limited ethnographic research into the psychological …

Macroeconomic Risk Factors Of Australian Mining Companies, Mohammed Kamruzzaman

Theses

This thesis identifies the priced macroeconomic risk factors for the Australian mining industry from January, 2004 to December, 2013, and the macroeconomic variables that have had an impact on stock returns. A rapid growth in the stock returns of the mining industry in Australia occurred during this period. This phenomenon is studied using a multifactor model and arbitrage pricing theory. The method involves analysis of two samples: the top ten mining firms and the aggregate mining industry. Firstly, unbalanced panel data containing 1550 yearly observations of 155 mining companies is selected for the aggregate industrial analysis. Secondly, data from the …

4e’S Socratic Model: A Grounded Theory For Managing Team Creativity In An Organisational Context, Philip Dennett

Theses

There has been considerable research on identifying the antecedents of creativity and the determinants of organisational creativity, but researchers are yet to develop an effective model for managing creativity within a traditional hierarchical management structure. It has been suggested that using the Socratic Method to create a learning environment within an organisation is a way to foster creativity in an uncertain environment. In this context the Socratic Method is defined as a directed questioning technique to encourage critical thinking. This thesis proposes that taking a Socratic approach to champion creativity enables management to increase creativity in their teams. It also …

Workforce Nationalisation In Papua New Guinea: Security And Logistics In Resource Organisations, Warren Doudle

Theses

Many multinational organisations fail to fully employ the capabilities of their local staff, particularly those in sensitive roles, such as security and logistics positions. It is commonplace to rely on expatriate staff for many of these roles, and this practice is particularly prevalent in the resource industry in Papua New Guinea. This research first aimed to determine whether this reliance on expatriates does exist, and, if so, why this situation occurs. It then examined how resource companies operating in Papua New Guinea manage and develop their national logistics and security workforce, and how nationalisation or workforce indigenisation occurs in this …

Environmental Advertising In China And The Usa: The Desire To Go Green, H De Burgh-Woodman

Business Papers and Journal Articles

Book Review

Environmental advertising in China and the USA: the desire to go green, by Xinghua Li, London and New York, NY, Routledge, 2016, 158 pp., £90.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-415-74413-3

To Punish First And Reward Second: Values Determine How Reward And Punishment Affect Risk-Taking Behavior, V Sagar Athota, P O'Connor, R Roberts

Business Papers and Journal Articles

The current study investigated whether manipulating participants’ pre-exposure to reward and punishment affects the extent to which sensation seeking and values predict risk-taking behavior. Participants (n = 195) were randomly allocated to one of two conditions, defined by the order at which they were rewarded or punished for risk-taking behavior. Risk-taking behavior was measured in both conditions using the Balloon Analogue Risk Test, however this was set-up such that participants in group 1 were rewarded for risk-taking behavior prior to being punished, whereas participants in group 2 were punished for risk-taking behavior prior to being rewarded. Participants also completed questionnaires …

Non-Financial Disclosure And Market-Based Firm Performance: The Initiation Of Financial Inclusion, S Bose, A Saha, H Khan, S Islam

Business Papers and Journal Articles

We examine the association between financial inclusion disclosure and firm performance in Bangladeshi banks from 2009 to 2014 in response to a regulatory directive on the engagement of banking firms in financial inclusion activities. We find a positive association between financial inclusion disclosure and banking firms’ subsequent performance, with this relationship moderated by market competition and government ownership. We also find evidence that firms’ engagement in financial inclusion activities increases their market share, with the disclosure of this information reducing the information asymmetry between managers and capital market participants. The broad implication of our research findings is that firms considering …

A Systematic Narrative Review Of Literature On Catholic Schools In Australia To Better Understand The Role Of School Leadership Deploying And Integrating Information And Communication Technology (Ict) In This Environment, Steven Francis Vella, Oliver Kisalay Burmeister, Arnela Ceric, Andrew Barnden

eJournal of Catholic Education in Australasia

Research literature within school education present school leaders with a range of roles deploying and integrating Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Roles range from being critically important for success, being needed but to a lesser extent, through to not being needed at all. Australian Catholic schools operate in the same political and social context as schools from other sectors but assimilate the Catholic mission in what they do. To determine if the role of school leadership deploying and integrating ICT in Australian Catholic schools reflected literature from the broader education environment, this study carried out a systematic narrative literature review …