Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons^™

Can Honesty Reminders Reduce Dishonesty In Budgetary Slack?, Wilfred W. H. Cheng, Chee Yeow Lim, Chi Kwan Yuen

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study investigates the effect of honesty reminders on budgetary slack. Based on self-concept maintenance theory, the authors posit that honesty reminders can reduce budgetary slack by making people more aware of their own standards of honesty, resulting in more honest behavior. Using an experimental research design, the authors find evidence that honesty reminders reduce budgetary slack. The authors also find that although penalties can similarly reduce budgetary slack, they tend to cause distrust and resentment from subordinates. Therefore, honesty reminders may be a less costly method than penalties for reducing budgetary slack.

Audit Report Timeliness In Local Governments: An Observation Of North Carolina Governmental Units’ Response To State-Imposed Deadlines And Consequences, Amber N. Daniels

Doctor of Business Administration Dissertations

To provide citizens with transparent financial information regarding the health of their respective districts, local government unit leaders must furnish governmental audit reports in a timely manner. Further, for management to effectively implement auditor suggestions for improvements, leaders must have accessibility to timely audited information. Many governmental units in the state of North Carolina have demonstrated significant lags in reporting timeliness and often miss state-mandated deadlines. Therefore, this research utilized ordinary least-squares regression to estimate the effects the variables representing report message and managerial competency, accountability, and audit environment groups had on the time required for each unit to file …

Constructing The ‘Public Interest’: (De)Legitimizing The Acquisition Of Aer Lingus By Iag, Joseph K. Fitzgerald

Articles

This article assesses how the ‘Public Interest’ was used to (de)legitimize the acquisition of a national airline. It does this by adopting a case study approach that analyses the acquisition of Aer Lingus by International Consolidated Airlines Group (IAG). This acquisition is part of a broader trend of international consolidation that the aviation industry has experienced in recent years. The article also critiques whether the ‘Public Interest’ was constructed on valid grounds. Its analysis found that the public interest was constructed as the continuance of routes between Irish airports and London Heathrow as a means for Ireland to maintain international …

Explicating The Influence Of Religion In Forming Corporate Governance: Insights From The Philippines, Leveric T. Ng, John Paolo Rivera

Graduate School of Business Publications

Religion plays a role in shaping personal values and directing an organization’s moral filter. It is an avenue to impose social morality that may impact corporate governance. We examined the influence of religion in the formation and development of good corporate governance through ethical leadership in the Philippines – a country that has strong religious culture. Invalidating scholarly literature on religion and enterprise; we looked into the conception and interpretation of religion and corporate governance through a key informant interview of 30 executive directors from private corporations in the country.We found that corporate governance may arise from religious convictions; where …

How Likely Are Viewers To Watch Television Commercials: A Connectedness Perspective, Velitchka D. Kaltcheva, Anthony Patino, Dennis Pitta

Marketing & Business Law Faculty Works

With the recent return to more advertising-generated content by entertainment providers, it again becomes important to understand what will drive consumers to view commercials. We utilize the construct of television connectedness developed by Russell, Norman, and Heckler (2004) to predict viewers’ propensity to watch television commercials. Based on data derived from a survey completed by 816 residents of the United States, we estimate a logistic regression model and find that older (35+) viewers high on connectedness are more likely to view television commercials. We further employ correspondence analysis of free-response data to uncover differences in motivations to view commercials among …

The Negative Impacts Of Border Patrol On The Mental Health Of Migrants, Breyana M. Newton

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

The research in this paper is a deep dive into the actions of Border Patrol on migrants and refugees and their effects on the individual. This includes impacts on mental health, child development, resettlement prevention, and racism and discrimination within border patrol itself. To understand all of this and how wide reaching all of this goes there needs to be a reflection on the history and policies of Border Patrol and the Government behind it.
The problem with patrolling our borders is that there are consequences on the U.S. as a nation and unintended consequences on those individuals migrating into …

Female Lawyers Don’T Need Pity; They Need A Paycheck, Meagan S. Bilodeau

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Whether it's pity or patronization female lawyers have often been criticized. They're visualized on the lower level of the patriarchal hierarchy system in the Hollywood courtroom. However, women that hold emotional intelligence don't need pity. Emotional intelligence encompasses how to set boundaries, stay motivated, hold healthy relationships inside and outside the courtroom, as well as maintain self-regulation. Through analysis of the biographical films Erin Brockovich, On the Basis of Sex, and The Mauritanian this study explores how extensively psychological resilience subfactors are depicted, proving whether or not female lawyers are emotionally prepared to succeed in their noteworthy cases.

A Precedent For Peace: The Role Of All Children Together In The Integration Of Northern Irish Schools, Sarah J. Kraus

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Established in County Down, Northern Ireland in the early 1970s, All Children Together was an organization comprised of both Protestant and Catholic parents who wished to see children from both denominations interact and be educated alongside one another. In 1981, the organization successfully established Lagan College, Northern Ireland’s very first school with a shared curriculum designed to accommodate children from both denominations. This work situates the organization within the greater context of the Troubles and examines the extent to which school integration played a role in Northern Irish community relations during a period of political and social upheaval.

Exposing Endo: Labor Abuse And Exploitation On Contractual Workers In The Philippines, Olivia M. Fisher

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Article 281 states that workers must be put on a probationary period for 6 months of employment before receiving benefits. ENDO-contracting is the situation where corporations hire workers on 5 to 6-month contracts to avoid paying their workers benefits. This research will be conducted using qualitative data from past research publications, court cases, and interviewing anti-ENDO advocates. The historical summary will explain the origins of this law and how it has progressed into common labor practice. ENDO- contracting disproportionately affects the low-wage workforce and deprives them of regular employee benefits. The lack of these benefits has created poor working conditions …

Reframing The Dei Case, Veronica Root Martinez

Faculty Scholarship

Corporate firms have long expressed their support for the idea that their organizations should become more demographically diverse while creating a culture that is inclusive of all members of the firm. These firms have traditionally, however, not been successful at improving demographic diversity and true inclusion within the upper echelons of their organizations. The status quo seemed unlikely to move, but expectations for corporate firms were upended after the #MeToo Movement of 2017 and 2018, which was followed by corporate support of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement in 2020. These two social movements, while distinct in many ways, forced firms to rethink …

The Paycheck Protection Program's Effect On Real Estate Prices, Someswar Amujala

CMC Senior Theses

This paper investigates the relationship between the Paycheck Protec- tion Program (PPP) and real estate price increases. The Paycheck Protection Program was established by the Small Business Association in 2020 to pro- vide forgivable loans to businesses to aid with potential losses from COVID- 19 impacts. I leverage zip code level data across the United States and a fixed effects panel data model to quantitatively measure the PPP’s influence on housing and rental prices. I find a positive and significant relationship between the number of PPP loans disbursed and housing and rental rates. Specifically, a 1% change in the number …

Regulating The Corporate Governance Of State-Owned Enterprises In Investment Arbitration, Mark Mclaughlin

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The renaissance of sovereign investment is one of the defining economic trends of the 21st century. While many states have benefitted, and continue to benefit, from an influx of state-backed foreign investment, this embrace is not without its hesitancies. Host states are particularly concerned that state-owned enterprises (SOE s) pursue non-commercial policy objectives, maintain lower levels of transparency than their private counterparts, and operate with inferior standards of responsible business conduct. In response, domestic regulators have enacted a series of countermeasures for SOE investment, including requirements that such enterprises must invest on a “commercial basis.” However, the regulation of foreign …

When Does Csr Payoff?, John A. Doukas, Rongyao Zhang

Finance Faculty Publications

We investigate whether firms engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR) can preserve firm value during normal and unprecedented exogenous adverse events. Our evidence shows, in regular times, a negative relation between CSR engagement and firm value, but under adverse economic conditions, CSR protects firm value by decreasing firm risks. We also find that firms with high managerial attributes engage in greater CSR activities that benefit shareholders in both normal and aberrant financial times. Despite the controversy surrounding CSR, our evidence points out that CSR can be viewed as a set of intangible assets that can improve firm value across good …

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 …

Public Reporting Of Monitorship Outcomes, Veronica Root Martinez

Faculty Scholarship

When a corporation engages in misconduct that is widespread or pervasive, courts, regulators, or prosecutors often insist that the firm obtain assistance from an independent third party — a monitor — to oversee the firm’s remediation effort. The largest firms in the world — from Deutsche Bank, to Volkswagen, to Carnival Cruise Lines — have found themselves having to retain a monitor for corporate misconduct, despite attempts to avoid a monitorship entirely. Traditionally, monitors, or their special master forebearers, were utilized by courts to assist in overseeing compliance with court orders, and their work was both accessible and transparent. As …

Businesses Supposedly Held The Key To The Ada, But They Dropped The Ball: Can Marketing Be The Shot In The Arm America Needs To Bring The Spirit Of The Ada Back To Life?, Elizabeth T. Gratz

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This research investigates the historical and current focus of the field of marketing on the disability community and considers whether marketers can positively impact attitudes toward the group through their firm media content. My first essay uses the Rocky Road to Policy Pavers model to discuss the importance of this large and underserved consumer group, and highlights several opportunities for the marketing community to reduce existing barriers to disabled consumers in the marketplace. One way that marketers can reduce stigma and improve attitudes toward the disability community is by strategically portraying individuals with disabilities in their firm media content. My …

Breaking Boundaries And Creating Inclusion-Based Organization Through Critical Performativity And Dialogical Accountability: The Case Of Fc United Manchester, Daniel Torchia, Simone D. Scagnelli, Laura Corazza

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to extend research on boundary making and breaking through alternative football clubs. These entities have borne out of the disappointment caused by the neoliberal turn of the football industry, which excluded traditional fans from being active actors and therefore call for study and generalization of specific forms of alternative accountability. Design/methodology/approach: The study looks at emerging trends in the accounting and sport literature by drawing on two concepts that emerged in critical scholarship: critical performativity and critical dialogical accountability, with the aim of better understanding how these elements are developed and shaped within …

The Political Economy Of Due Diligence Legislation, Peter Draper, Andreas Freytag, Naoise Mcdonagh, Matthias Menter

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The policy challenge. Citizens and politicians in Western democracies have increasingly become aware of the importance of human rights, civil liberties, social rights, and sustainability issues as well as the different adherence to basic rights (such as equal treatment) all over the world. This trend has recently materialized in laws in the United States (US), Europe, Australia, and elsewhere. To varying extents, these oblige domestic businesses to comply with, and enforce, Western values and standards along their international supply chains. This values-based due diligence legislation has caused ongoing controversies over compliance costs, impacts on foreign relations – particularly with developing …

Calling Time: How To Remove Fossil Fuel Sponsorships From Sports, Arts & Events, Ashlee Morgan, Sophia Nimphius, Genevieve Stewart, Jennifer Rayner, Ashleigh Croucher, Simon Bradshaw

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Sports, arts and major events are deeply embedded in the Australian way of life. Weekend matches, concerts and festivals bring us together - to cheer, to share pride and excitement, to feel connected to each other and to keep building our national story.

When we barrack for our beloved teams, discover the work of a new local artist or laugh until our cheeks hurt at a comedy show, we are taking part in a ritual that has shaped social and cultural life in Australia for generations.

Climate change – driven by burning coal, oil and gas – is putting all …

Toxic Chemical Releases And Idiosyncratic Return Volatility: A Prospect Theory Perspective, Stephen Bahadar, Muhammad Nadeem, Rashid Zaman

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

We investigated whether and how firms’ toxic chemical releases (TCRs) affect idiosyncratic return volatility (IRV) using a prospect theory lens. Utilising a large sample of US public listed firms over the period 2001–2018, we find a significant and positive association between TCRs and IRV, suggesting that firms releasing more toxic chemicals have higher IRV. Additional analyses show that a positive association between TCR and IRV is more evident among firms with (i) high revenue, (ii) lower financial constraints and (iii) fewer environmental violations. A further test also suggests that a positive association between TCRs and IRV is contingent on political …