bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Real earnings management in public vs private firms in the GCC countries: a risk perspective
Authors: Al-Amri Khalid , Al Shidi Saif , Al Busaidi Munther , Akguc Serkan 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of real earnings management by private and public firms in a unique institutional setting, which is the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The paper also compares the level of real earnings management between public and private firms in the GCC area.

Design/methodology/approach
The GCC area is a unique setting to investigate the use of real earnings management because of the low enforcement of reporting standards and supervisory rules, lack of sophisticated financial analysis, specialized media tools and high concentration of capital ownership. The authors use different models of real earnings management proposed by Roychowdhury, 2006, cash flow management, productions cost management and discretionary expenses management to examine the use of real earnings management.

Findings
The paper documents evidence consistent with private and public firms using real earnings management to influence their earnings figures. The paper also shows that the level of real earnings management is higher for private firms compared to public firms when cash flow management and discretionary expenses management models are used. The production cost model results show evidence consistent with public firms only engaging in real earnings management through production cost reduction.

Research limitations/implications
The results of this study might not be applicable to other emerging markets.

Practical implications
The findings of this study should promote a general understanding of firms’ behavior in unique environment such as GCC countries. Regulators in the GCC region should be aware that real earnings management techniques have been used by firms and that extra caution is required when auditing or analyzing the financial information of private and public firms in the GCC market.

Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature in many aspects. First, it provides additional evidence on the use of earnings management in unique market contexts outside the USA and Europe. The GCC markets share many common characteristics that make them interesting settings to be investigated. Second, this paper adds more evidence on the use of earnings management between public and private firms. In this regard, the paper adds additional evidence in the discussions proposed by Ball and Shivakumar (2005) and Givoly et al. (2010) who use two competing perspectives to investigate earnings quality in public and private firms: the demand hypothesis and the opportunistic behavior hypothesis.
Achieving legitimacy through co-operative governance and social and environmental disclosure by credit unions in a developing country
Authors: Mathuva David M. , Mboya Josephat K. , McFie James B. 
Published: March 2017

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to utilize legitimacy theory to test the association between the governance of credit unions and their social and environmental disclosure in a developing country, Kenya. A further examination of institutional pressures due to regulatory forces on the association between co-operative governance and credit union social and environmental disclosure (CSED) is performed.Design/methodology/approachUsing a sample comprising of 1,272 credit union observations over the period 2008-2013, panel OLS regressions are performed to establish the association between co-operative governance and CSED. A comparison of the pre- and post-regulatory influences on co-operative governance and CSED is also performed.FindingsThe findings, which are in support of both legitimacy and institutional theories, depict a positive and significant association between co-operative governance and CSED. The significance of the co-operative governance score improves from the pre-regulation period to the post-regulation period. Other significant variables influencing the volume of CSED by credit unions in Kenya include credit union size and financial performance as measured by the return on assets.Research limitations/implicationsThe study examines CSED practices in a developing country and in organizations in a single sector. Further, CSED is measured using a self-constructed index with data being obtained from audited annual reports only.Practical implicationsThe study highlights the need to develop CSED guidelines tailored for credit unions, and a focus on co-operative governance as a way of improving disclosure practices.Originality/valueThe study utilizes a sector-specific governance variable and a CSED index to examine the association between the two variables by credit unions in a developing country. The study also attempts to investigate the role of regulation on the association between co-operative governance and the volume of CSED.
Behavioral and lifestyle influences on reported calorie intake: a latent class model
Authors: Popovich Deidre 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the behavioral and lifestyle influences on reported calorie intake. Marketing segmentation techniques applied to self-reported food consumption can offer benefits to both health policy and marketing research.

Design/methodology/approach
The two-stage modeling process in this research determines important behavioral, lifestyle and sociodemographic influences on reported calorie intake. Significant predictors are then included in latent class models, which are used to derive and describe five consumer segments.

Findings
These segments differ with respect to their food-related activities, such as dieting, grocery shopping and preparing food at home. The segments also differ with respect to lifestyle characteristics, such as household size, employment status and income. Data obtained from a multi-period probability sample help generalize the results to the US population.

Originality/value
The models developed in this paper can inform health policymakers by explaining reported calorie intake patterns more thoroughly than demographics alone, aiding their ability to create more targeted interventions. This approach also allows food marketers to clarify consumer insights that can be used for targeting particular food shopper segments.
The impact of product assortment size and attribute quantity on information searches
Authors: Dörnyei Krisztina Rita , Krystallis Athanasios , Chrysochou Polymeros 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the impact of assortment size and attribute quantity on the depth and content of consumer information searches.

Design/methodology/approach
For a computer-aided experiment using an information display board, participants (n = 393) were placed in a simulated shopping situation that involved choosing a product among three sets of frequently purchased, low-involvement, FMCG alternatives.

Findings
The findings show that when the assortment size increases, consumers acquire information from more products and cues but sacrifice product attributes. In particular, this sacrifice comes at the expense of secondary product attributes (e.g. nutrition information, country of origin), whereas primary product attributes (e.g. brand name, price) remain constant. Attribute quantity does not have a significant effect on information search.

Practical implications
Provided that several strategies rely on providing more information to consumers with the aim of making more deliberate and better choices, the findings suggest that they may have a limited effect in product categories in which the assortment size is wide. The authors discuss the implications for category management and public policy.

Originality/value
Information searches are measured by means of three different variables (searched cues, searched products and searched attributes), which enable a more complex exploration of the consumer information search process.
Leading school for learning: principal practices in Taiwan
Authors: Pan Hui-Ling Wendy , Nyeu Fong-Yee , Cheng Shu-Huei 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss how principals in Taiwan lead student and teacher learning at a time of leadership and learning paradigm shifts and the imminent implementation of the curriculum guideline for 12-year basic education.

Design/methodology/approach
This study interviewed 32 elementary and junior high school principals purposively sampled based on reputation and recommendation from senior principals and government officials.

Findings
As a society which values credentialism, principals in Taiwan face challenges in executing the vision of educating student as a whole person. The authors discuss how principals are solidifying whole person education as the espoused value, how they are enforcing school-based curriculum and effective instruction, and encouraging teacher professional learning. Principals are sharing power by recruiting stakeholders’ participation in guiding school development and enacting distributed leadership, while also building relationship as social capital and soliciting support from the community to establish the conditions to improve teaching and learning.

Research limitations/implications
This paper highlights how principal practices are evolving in a time of changing conception of learning from academic achievement to multiple competencies and the shifting paradigm of power from participatory decision making to distributed leadership. This paper ends with a discussion on how leadership for learning (LfL) as a community engagement has emerged.

Practical implications
With the shifting of the concept and paradigm of learning, principals in a high power distance society like Taiwan are now facing opportunities as well as challenges to lead teachers to engaging students in inquiry and collaboration.

Originality/value
This paper highlights the indigenous practices of principal LfL in a high-performing East Asian education system in a time of changing notions of learning and leadership.
Income-expenditure elasticities of less-healthy consumption goods
Authors: Hoffer Adam , Gvillo Rejeana , Shughart William , Thomas Michael 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify how consumption of 12 goods – alcohol, cigarettes, fast food, items sold at vending machines, purchases of food away from home, cookies, cakes, chips, candy, donuts, bacon, and carbonated soft drinks – varies across the income distribution by calculating their income-expenditure elasticites.

Design/methodology/approach
Data on 22,681 households from 2009-2012 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey were used. The data were analyzed using ordinary least squares regressions and Cragg’s double hurdle model which integrates a binary model to determine the decision to consume and a truncated normal model to estimate the effects for conditional (y>0) consumption.

Findings
Income had the greatest effect on expenditures for alcohol (0.314), food away from home (0.295), and fast food (0.284). A one percentage-point increase in income (approximately $428 at the mean) translated into a 0.314 percentage-point increase in spending on alcoholic beverages (approximately $1 annually at the mean). Income had the smallest influence on tobacco expenditures (0.007) and donut expenditures (−0.009).

Research limitations/implications
Percentage of a household’s discretionary budget spent on the studied goods falls substantially as income gets larger. Policies targeting the consumption of such goods will disproportionately impact lower income households.

Originality/value
This is the first manuscript to calculate income-expenditure elasticities for the goods studied. The results allow for a direct analysis of targeted consumption policy on household budgets across the income distribution.
Spillovers from public entrepreneurship: a case study
Authors: Fuller Caleb , DelliSanti Dylan 
Published: March 2017

PurposeExisting scholarship indicates that more research is needed to explore beneficial spillovers from public entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap in that literature by examining a case of public entrepreneurship by a corporation. While political engagement by private firms frequently reduces to rent-seeking, this paper explores an instance in which public entrepreneurship by a private firm lead to beneficial spillovers – specifically, positive externalities resulting from the engagement of Cummins Engine Company with city government in Columbus, Indiana. In the case study, these spillovers consist of improved infrastructure, altered norms, and the reintroduction of economic calculation.Design/methodology/approachThis case study uses publications in popular outlets, newspapers, and historical documents to understand the relationship between Cummins Engine Company and its local government.FindingsContrary to the presumption that public engagement by private firms necessarily reduces to rent-seeking, the activities of the Cummins Engine Company lead to beneficial public spillovers by way of improved infrastructure and norms, as well as by restoring a degree of economic calculation to the production of public buildings in Columbus, Indiana.Originality/valueThe authors illustrate the precise mechanisms that generate the potential spillovers from public entrepreneurship that Kleinet al.(2010) explore theoretically.
Failure is an option: the entrepreneurial governance framework
Authors: Carroll John J. 
Published: March 2017

PurposeIt has been more than 20 years since the “Reinventing Government” movement swept through the American public sector. Over time, the tenets of public entrepreneurship and new public management have diverged due to liability and risk aversion. One of the core elements of entrepreneurship is risk taking, and with it the likelihood of failure. The purpose of this paper is to reconcile these issues under a simple framework of “entrepreneurial governance” that works across the elements of knowledge, innovation, opportunity, and implementation.Design/methodology/approachThis is primarily a set of problems (liability, risk aversion, critiques) that negatively impacts the application of public entrepreneurship. To build a framework, the author made a substantive review of the literature to “get back to basics” and clarify the problems, as well as draw fundamental concepts about entrepreneurship.FindingsThe framework was developed by applying the more current notion of “governance” with the basic elements of entrepreneurship, acknowledging that in implementation we have to account for the critiques by reinforcing responsible risk reduction and ethical decision making.Research limitations/implicationsThe intent was to create a framework based on fundamental aspects of entrepreneurship. The limitations/implications are that additional research will have to develop more concrete testing methods and then test the framework.Practical implicationsThe intent here was to create a “practitioner friendly” prescriptive framework that could be almost immediately applied.Social implicationsA culture shift away from risk aversion (and corrupt practices) has to allow risk taking and with it responsible risk reduction (and failure or success).Originality/valueThe reliance on existing literature reduces some of the originality, except to re-conceptualize public entrepreneurship in a way that accounts for its shortcomings. The value in shifting culture and responsibly reducing risk is difficult to estimate.
The entrepreneurial rent: the value of and compensation for entrepreneurship
Authors: Henrekson Magnus , Stenkula Mikael 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to show that entrepreneurship can be fruitfully analyzed by positing that entrepreneurs are searching for rates of return exceeding the risk-adjusted market rate of return, i.e., they try to create or discover economic rents.

Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual paper trying to bridge the gap between neoclassical economics and the entrepreneurship field by seeing entrepreneurship as the search for and creation of (entrepreneurial) rents.

Findings
In the short to medium term the search for and creation of entrepreneurial rents give rise to supernormal profits if successful. In the longer term these rents are dissipated and accrue to society at large as cheaper and better products. Entrepreneurial rents are crucial for bringing about the innovation and continuous structural change required to generate economic growth.

Practical implications
The search for entrepreneurial rents is crucial for economic development. Without the possibility to earn entrepreneurial rents, no entrepreneur would be willing to exercise entrepreneurship and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. Successful entrepreneurship attracts imitating firms that push back profits to normal levels and the benefits of the innovation will be diffused to consumers.

Social implications
Understanding the role of entrepreneurship and its compensation is crucial for analyses of potential policy measures. High ex post compensation for successful entrepreneurship cannot be taxed harshly without affecting entrepreneurs’ willingness to supply effort.

Originality/value
The entrepreneurial function and its compensation are often neglected in neoclassical economics. This is a major shortcoming, as the presence of and search for entrepreneurial rents are necessary for bringing about the innovation and structural change that result in economic growth.
Building the African economy
Authors: Adenle Ademola A. 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the President Obama Youth African Leadership Initiative (YALI) program with evidence from experts and other relevant stakeholders. This study examines YALI program with a focus on entrepreneurship and public management.

Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative semi-structured interviews used in this study explore the understanding and diverse views of various stakeholder experts on training of young leaders in entrepreneurship and public management in Africa regarding the YALI program.

Findings
The study provides insight into the importance of the YALI program, but questions whether it can make a positive impact and be effectively implemented in Africa. The findings suggest that there is lack of clarity in the objectives of the program, particularly with regards to the role of the key stakeholders including academics, government institutions, policymakers and the private sector. The results underscore the need for sound and clear-cut government policies toward entrepreneurship development that will foster a better relationship between the African governments and the United States Agency for International Development program.

Research limitations/implications
The study focused on academic experts and a number of policymakers and may not have been representative of all stakeholders.

Originality/value
The study specifically emphasizes policies that target entrepreneurship training and education for women and youth, using a participatory approach and multi-stakeholder partnership to promote innovative entrepreneurship and social development in the continent.
Factors influencing academic performance in quantitative courses among undergraduate business students of a public higher education institution
Authors: Yousef Darwish Abdulrahamn 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the impacts of teaching style, English language and communication and assessment methods on the academic performance of undergraduate business students in introductory quantitative courses such as Statistics for Business 1 and 2, Quantitative Methods for Business, Operations and Production Management and Operations Research in a non-Western setting.

Design/methodology/approach
Data was collected from 750 undergraduate business students in third- and fourth-year classes at the UAE University (UAEU). Descriptive statistics were used to gain some insights into the demographic and educational characteristics of respondents and their opinions regarding the importance of the three factors of concern to their understanding of quantitative courses material, along with multiple regression analysis that was used to test the hypotheses of the study.

Findings
The results of the present study indicate the importance of the teaching style in terms of the way the lecturer speaks and the pace of presenting the material, in addition to the structure of the lecture in understanding quantitative course material. Additionally, availability and contents of the material on the course website play an important role in helping undergraduate business students understand the subjects of quantitative courses. The study revealed that the UAEU undergraduate business students are, to some extent, uncomfortable in reading printed textbooks and writing reports on quantitative topics in English. The results of multiple regression analysis revealed that both teaching style and English language and communication have a great influence on the academic performance of UAEU undergraduate business students.

Research limitations/implications
The paper has a number of limitations. For instance, the sample was taken only from students in a single university. Moreover, this study focuses on the business students and in turn, it excludes students of other colleges. On the other hand, it has a number of implications for administrators, instructors and researchers. Administrators should pay special attention when setting admission standards. Instructors teaching quantitative courses should prepare well-structured lectures and deliver them at a reasonable pace to allow students the time to understand them. They should also pay attention to the way they speak. For researchers, this study will indicate the need for further research to confirm or refute the results of the present study.

Originality/value
The present study is the first attempt to investigate the impacts of the three factors of concern on the academic performance of undergraduate business students in introductory quantitative courses in a public university setting in the UAE context.
Using decision analysis to explore cable television delivery
Authors: Willoughby Keith , Zappe Christopher 
Published: March 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the efficacy of decision analysis in determining the most efficient strategy for installing cable television in the residence halls of Bucknell University.

Design/methodology/approach
The decision analysis model compared five distinct approaches for achieving and maintaining a successful delivery of cable television service to students enrolled in this private, residential institution. For each alternative, the model incorporated installation costs, likelihood of installation failure, installation failure costs, likelihood of obsolescence and obsolescence-related costs. In addition to considering the trade-offs between cost, timing and riskiness of the various alternatives, a thorough set of sensitivity analyses was performed to gain insight into the parameters that most strongly influence this decision-making process.

Findings
The quantitative model advocated the adoption of the university’s data network as the mode for cable delivery. Sensitivity analysis further supported this notion.

Practical implications
The analysis of this problem incorporated the knowledge and judgments of senior administrators and staff members, thus demonstrating the critical contributions offered by subject-matter experts in advising, informing and launching successful decision analysis projects. Incorporating stakeholder viewpoints enhances model understanding and, eventually, model implementation. Decision analysis represents a powerful approach in communicating uncertainties and advising on the benefits of particular alternatives.

Originality/value
To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, this paper represents an initial attempt to investigate cable delivery options within a decision analysis framework.