Digital Commons Network^™

Corporate Ethical Training: An Answer To White-Collar Crimes, Richard Pitre, Claudius Claiborne

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

The modern business corporation is a culturally significant component of American Society. It is facing a cultural invasion of the highest order. The categorical imperative, an unconditional principle that rational individuals must follow despite natural desires or inclinations to do otherwise, is today being called into question. This is most likely the result of grounding moral values upon information that is transient and unstable rather than upon established data. The social contract, which governs the formation and maintenance of individual morals, is a requirement in organizations that demands collective agency – employees acting together to set forth moral rules of …

How Does The Capability Of Top Management Influence Financial Reporting Fraud?, Michael Wojcikiewicz

Honors Projects in Finance

This study examines the attributes which capture the capability of a perpetrator to engage in financial reporting fraud. Fraudulent financial reporting can be devastating for a company and its employees. Capability includes such measures as the person’s position and the function in which they work. The study reveals how capability influences the occurrence of fraud, the amount of the fraud, and whether capability interacts with concealing the fraud from an audit. The results of the thesis should assist fraud professionals, investors, and regulators as well as stakeholders of corporations by examining publicly available data and highlighting characteristics that can contribute …

The Future Of Work Now: Ai-Driven Transaction Surveillance At Dbs Bank, Thomas H. Davenport, Steven M. Miller

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

One of the most frequently-used phrases at business events these days is “the future of work.” It’s increasingly clear that artificial intelligence and other new technologies will bring substantial changes in work tasks and business processes. But while these changes are predicted for the future, they’re already present in many organizations for many different jobs. The job and incumbents described below are an example of this phenomenon. Steve Miller of Singapore Management University and I co-authored the story.

Fight Or Flee: Outside Director Departures Prior To Contested Management Buyout Offers, Matteo P. Arena, Michaël Dewally, Sarah Peck

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

Research Question/Issue: We investigate outside director departures prior to management buyout offers (MBOs). In these transactions, managers have both an information advantage and incentives to make a lowball offer to shareholders. Outside directors can safeguard against managerial self‐dealing by negotiating for the best terms for public shareholders from either management or another bidder. Research Findings/Insights: It is typical that outside directors stay on the board through an MBO offer as MBOs are less likely to have changes in directors—either joining or leaving—relative to a control sample. After controlling for endogeneity as well as firm and director characteristics, we find that …

Strategies To Prevent And Detect Occupational Fraud In Small Retail Businesses, Marquita V. Davis, David Harris Iii

International Journal of Applied Management and Technology

The objective of this multiple case study was to explore internal control strategies owners of small retail businesses in southeastern Pennsylvania used to prevent and detect occupational fraud. The results of this study indicated that there are areas for action that owners of small retail businesses could take to prevent and detect occupational fraud. Strategies business owners could implement to protect their businesses from occupational fraud include monitoring, employee identity documents to track employee activity, separation of duties, and communication with employees. Small business owners serve their communities by focusing on wealth distribution, including donations to local charities that foster …

A Practitioner's Approach To Implementing Community Bank Internal Controls, Paul A. Dubrey Jr

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Some community bank compliance professionals lack strategies to comply with the 2013 Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) internal control framework statement, so they have been slow to adapt to the new COSO framework. However, they will be under increased regulatory pressure to do so. Grounded in Cressey's fraud triangle theory, the purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore strategies community bank compliance professionals use to comply with the revised COSO internal control framework. Four compliance professionals at a community bank in the Boston, Massachusetts area who have successfully implemented strategies for internal control …

Chief Financial Officer Demographic Characteristics And Fraudulent Financial Reporting In China, Jinghui Sun, Pamela Kent, Baolei Qi, Jiwei Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We investigate whether management's cognitions, values and perceptions are associated with fraud for 18 863 firm-years for Chinese listed firms from 2000 to 2014. Demographic characteristics of the chief financial officer (CFO) are used as proxies for management's cognitions, values and perceptions. We find that fraudulent financial reporting is higher when CFOs are younger, male, and have lower education backgrounds. An analysis of inflated earnings, fictitious assets, material omissions and other material misstatements provide similar results, with the exception that CFOs with higher education levels are associated with more inflated earnings. Accounting and Finance

Incumbency Or Innovation: Why A Collective Agency View Of Cross-Border Payments Means Private Blockchains Cannot Prevail, Boaz B. Goldwater

Cornell International Law Journal

The abstract below was generated using an artificial intelligence tool. It has not been endorsed by the author.   This Note examines the global cross-border payments system through the lens of collective action theory, arguing that the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) functions not merely as a financial messaging network but as a collective agent essential to the stability and legitimacy of international finance. While technological innovations—particularly blockchain-based platforms such as Ripple—promise improvements in speed, cost, and efficiency, the author contends that these advantages alone are insufficient to supplant SWIFT. The cross-border payments system requires not only technical functionality …

Compensation Clawback Policies And Corporate Lawsuits, Matteo P. Arena, Nga Nguyen

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to study the relation between compensation clawbacks and lawsuits and analyze how these two corporate disciplinary forces interact. This paper hypothesizes that by allowing firms to recoup compensation from managers who breach their fiduciary duty, clawbacks provide a form of discipline that potentially reduces the likelihood of managerial wrongdoing, which, in turn, lowers the risk of corporate lawsuits.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper identifies whether or not a company in the S&P 1500 had a clawback policy between 2007 and 2014 by searching the company filings and press releases. The authors also construct different proxies …

Information Sources That Influence The Financial Literacy Of Puerto Rican College Students, Enid Alvarez

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Researchers agree that Puerto Ricans lack basic financial knowledge that would allow them to participate in the financial system actively. However, the literature did not provide any data about the knowledge transmission practices that Puerto Ricans use to gather and transmit financial knowledge. As a result, there was a limited understanding of the social learning processes used by Puerto Rican college students to make financial decisions. Using consumer socialization and family financial socialization models as the theoretical framework, the purpose of this quantitative, nonexperimental study was to identify the information sources that Puerto Ricans use to gather financial knowledge. A …

Factors Leading Corporations To Continue To Engage In Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives, Radu-Marius Gavrila

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Accountability for corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its societal challenges is undetermined, and it is unclear whether business or society should carry these responsibilities. Despite severe criticism from some, many organizations continue to invest in and promote CSR. The purpose of this multiple-case study was to increase the understanding of the phenomenon from the perspective of a purposeful sample of participants who contribute to CSR execution and who were representatives of the 10 organizations identified as active promoters. The participant corporations (case studies), in Europe and North America, were mainly in the telecommunications industry. Study data came from 11 face-to-face, …

Community Bank Leaders' Perception On Maintaining Values In Decision Making, Jennifer H. Matheny

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This qualitative study explored community bank leaders’ perception of conflicts between their personal values and core corporate values when negotiating critical decisions. At this stage in the research, the negotiating of decisions were generally defined as resolving conflicts between personal and organizational values. Results provide an understanding of how values-based leadership affects executive level decisions in community banks. A purposeful sample of community bank leaders participated in qualitative interviews. These leaders were selected based on their responsibility to make decisions that influenced their corporate culture and/or had a significant impact on their company. Based on the study, there was a …

Early Detection And Prevention Of Corporate Financial Fraud, Marcia Schillermann

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The economic cost of financial statement fraud continues to be a problem for organizations and society. The research problem addressed in this study was the limited risk management strategies available for the early detection and prevention of financial statement fraud by corporate managers and auditors. These strategies are important to the proactive prevention of fraud. This study is important to future trustworthiness of financial statements. The purpose of this qualitative, multiple-case study was to explore current early detection and prevention methods in financial statement fraud using a risk management conceptual framework. The research question focused on current fraud detection and …

Essays On The Tax Policy And Insider Trading, Han Shi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the first essay I examine the relation between firm advertising and tax aggressiveness. Advertising increases firm visibility in both the product and the financial market. While investors would appreciate more tax savings, they are aware of the negative impact of tax aggressiveness on consumers’ views of the firm and hence its competitive positions in the product market. We find that firms that spend more on advertising have fewer tax sheltering activities, lower book-tax differences, and higher cash effective tax rates. Specifically, an increase of 1% on Advertising_i,t (ADVGP_i,t), the firm pays an additional tax of $0.70 …

Factors Predicting Profitability Of Enterprises Funded By Microfinance Institutions In Burkina Faso, Fulgence Kabore

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In sub-Saharan Africa, only 13% of new businesses show profitability and survive beyond start-up. Such a low rate of success has an adverse impact on the region economy as small and medium enterprises comprise 90% of African businesses. Understanding the cause of business failure can help existing and new entrepreneurs to focus on factors that may help to overcome barriers to business growth and increase entrepreneurs' chances of success. The purpose of the correlation study was to examine the relationship between business ownership characteristics, resources and professional management, timing, and profitability. The resource-based theory served as the theoretical lens for …

A Survey Of Litigation In Corporate Finance, Matteo P. Arena, Stephen P. Ferris

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to review research on litigation in corporate finance.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper surveys studies on the estimation of litigation risk, litigation costs, stock reaction to lawsuit announcement, and the effect of litigation on corporate financial policies and outcomes.

Findings

The first section presents a survey of studies that estimate litigation risk. The authors then discuss a set of studies that focus on the various costs associated with litigation. The third area of review is about studies which estimate the market reaction to a lawsuit announcement. The next section surveys studies that examine the relation …

Three Essays On The Compensation, Structure, And Decision Making Of The Board Of Directors, Duong Pham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My first essay examines compensation of newly formed boards of directors following tax-free corporate spin-offs. The empirical results show newly formed spin-off boards are paid significantly more than peer boards in the same industry with similar firm size. Higher compensation is observed for spin-off firms where the CEOs are not formerly employed by the parent firms but not for spin-off firms with parent related CEOs, indicating that new directors demand higher compensation for the work involved in setting up the new governing system for the spun-off firms especially when there is a brand new CEO managing the spinoff firm. Differences …

The Price Contagion Effects Of Financial Reporting Fraud And Reputational Losses: Evidence From The Individual Audit Partner Level, Ferdinand A. Gul, Chee Yeow Lim, Kun Wang, Yanping Xu

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This study investigates the existence of price contagion effects for the low-quality audits of individual audit partners and the associated reputational losses in China. Low-quality partners are identified as those whose clients have been sanctioned by regulators for financial reporting fraud. Our evidence shows that sanctions induce a significant stock price decline among the contagion firms that share common low-quality partners and common low-quality audit firms; however, the decline is greater for the former. We also find that the price contagion effects of low-quality partners are more pronounced for firms located in regions with weak institutional development and less pronounced …

The Economic Impact Of Deficient Anti-Money Laundering Program To A Multinational Bank, Emmanuel Hayble-Gomes

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Money laundering is a financial crime that threatens the stability of a country's financial sector. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the strategies that compliance officers used to improve the AML program in a multinational bank in the northeastern United States. The target population was purposefully selected using bank compliance officers because they have experience with the strategies to improve the AML program. The normative neo-institutional theory framed the discussion of this study. Data were collected from interviews with 10 AML compliance officers and the achieved data. The Krippendorff method of content analysis was used to …

Perspectives On Regulating Systemic Risk, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

This book chapter, which synthesizes several of the author’s articles, attempts to provide useful perspectives on regulating systemic risk. First, it argues that systemic shocks are inevitable. Accordingly, regulation should be designed not only to try to reduce those shocks but also to protect the financial system against their unavoidable impact. This could be done, the chapter explains, by applying chaos theory to help stabilize the financial system. The chapter then focuses on trying to prevent excessive corporate risk-taking, which is one of the leading triggers of systemic shocks and widely regarded to have been a principal cause of the …

The Effect Of The Dodd-Frank Act On Risk In The Financial Sector, Beatrix S. Haddon

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, commonly known as the Dodd-Frank Act, was passed in 2010 in an attempt to increase transparency and accountability in the financial system. The purpose of this thesis is to discover what effect, if any, the Dodd-Frank Act had on both systematic risk and total volatility in the financial sector. My study shows that while the legislation significantly reduced systematic risk in only one out of the seven industries within the financial sector in the time period I analyzed, it successfully reduced total volatility in all seven industries.

Network Connections In Reit Markets, George D. Cashman, Stuart L. Gillan, David M. Harrison, Ryan J. Whitby

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

Relationships play a central role across the spectrum of real estate transactions. Whether negotiating prices, securing funding, or acquiring permits, knowing the right people provides multiple channels to facilitate deal making. To better understand the role of relationships in real estate markets, we examine how the connectedness of REIT directors is associated with deal making, growth, and profitability. We find strong evidence that REIT connections are positively associated with both deal making and accounting based measures of profitability, however, those relations do not translate into better market returns or higher valuations. One explanation of these somewhat contradictory results is that …

Narrowing The Gap Of Financial Fraud Detection In Corporations, Solomon Aborbie

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Business leaders remain exposed to financial and accounting fraud as well as loss of profitability, despite the dictates of the SOX Act of 2002. The most challenging aspect of corporate management is the unexpected nature of an emerging, existing, or an inherent financial risk. Guided by the evolution of fraud theory, this exploratory case study's purpose was to identify and explore the financial management strategies that corporate financial managers need to adequately protect investors. Twenty participants from a population group of corporate auditors of Fortune 1000 corporations within 70 miles of Columbus, Ohio provided input for this study. Data from …

The Duty To Manage Risk, A. Christine Hurt

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Essays On Mergers And Acquisitions, Marcin Krolikowski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation includes two essays that examine mergers and acquisitions. In the first essay we examine how pay-for-performance influences the quality of merger decisions before and after Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX). Pay-for performance has a significant positive effect on acquirer returns of 0.9% pre-SOX and 1.1% post-SOX around the three day event window. Bidders with high pay-for-performance pay a 23.3% lower merger premium in listed target acquisitions. The positive effect of pay-for-performance is more important for public target acquisitions overall, for small acquirers pre-SOX, and for large acquirers post-SOX. In the long-run, bidders with high pre-merger pay-for-performance experience 27.6% higher returns after …

The Effect Of Compliance With Section 404 Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act On Small Cap Technology Company's Stock Prices, Joshua Weaver

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper analyzes the effect of compliance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, also referred to as SOX, on small market cap technology firms using a comparable company analysis model. The comparable company analysis model is used to calculate and compare the average intrinsic values of 45 small and 45 large cap technology companies from the periods of January 1, 1999 to January 1, 2001 (Pre SOX era) and January 1, 2007 to January 1, 2009 (Post SOX era). The purpose of looking at large cap technology firms as a benchmark is to compare how different sized firms within …

Essays On Institutional Trading Behavior With Conflicts Of Interest And Information Sharing, Hyoseok Hwang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores a controversial issue of institutional trading behavior with conflicts of interest and information sharing. Using firms sued for alleged financial misreporting, the first essay examines whether analyst-affiliated institutions reduce the portfolio weights of sued firms prior to their analysts releasing the information through downgrade revisions – trading huddles. Empirical evidence is consistent with this behavior, particularly among the institutions with investment banking operations but without underwriting relationships with sued firms. Institutions with underwriting relationships only reduce portfolio weights significantly when their analysts are the first to provide downgrades during the class period, which is a proxy for …

The End Of The Internal Compliance World As We Know It, Or An Enhancement Of The Effectiveness Of Securities Law Enforcement? Bounty Hunting Under The Dodd-Frank Act's Whistleblower Provision, Justin Blount, Spencer Markel

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

In the wake of Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme and the recent economic crisis stemming largely from loosely regulated subprime lending and mortgage-backed securities, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act on July 21, 2010, signaling loudly and clearly that change is coming to Wall Street. But Wall Street is not the only one receiving a message. Buried deep within the 2,319 pages of the Dodd-Frank Act, companies can find Section 922, the whistleblower provision, which provides a bounty for whistleblowers who report securities violations to the Securities and Exchange Commission.These bounty provisions and …

Did Board Configuration Matter? The Case Of Us Subprime Lenders, Maureen I. Muller-Kahle, Krista B. Lewellyn

Management Faculty Publications

Research Question/Issue: The origins of the global financial crisis have been attributed to the combination of a housing price bubble and innovative financial instruments, as well as the lack of restraint by corporate executives and boards to engage in excessive risk-taking. The rise in subprime lending between 1997 and 2005 played a crucial role in inflating the housing price bubble. We take a unique dataset of US financial institutions heavily engaged in subprime lending and ask the following research question: Did board configuration play a role in determining whether a financial institution specialized in subprime lending?

Research Findings/Insights: We use …

Essays On Corporate Governance, Tih Koon Tan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is composed by two essays that explore corporate governance issues in S&P firms. The first essay examines changes in corporate governance after a firm gets added to the S&P 500 index? Using firms added from 1994 to 2007, this paper examines how governance mechanisms change for these firms. Specifically, I look at both the overall governance and details on how each mechanism changes. I find that governance improves after being added to the index. Controlling for firm size, leverage, prior firm performance, and growth opportunities, the market reacts positively to governance improvements as a whole. In addition, changes …