When job dissatisfaction leads to customer-oriented citizenship behaviors

This thesis places boundary conditions on the withdrawal model in the frontline setting of service organizations by considering continuance commitment and supervisory support as moderators of the relationship between job dissatisfaction and customer-oriented citizenship behaviors (COCBs). Departing from traditional research in the areas of the service-profit chain and employee withdrawal, the author advances our understanding of conditions that may lead frontline service employees who are dissatisfied to deposit COCBs into the organizational system. Specifically, based on principles derived from social exchange theory, high continuance commitment and high supervisory support are expected to lead to COCBs, because under this condition the benefits of performing such behaviors are increased (i.e., promotion-based, reciprocity-based), while the costs are decreased (i.e., opportunity costs). Utilizing a sample of 127 frontline employees from both the financial services and travel agency industries, the hypothesized relationships are empirically supported using moderated hierarchical regression analysis. To conclude discussion, implications of the results for both academics and p

Information Asymmetry and Accounting Conservatism under IFRS Adoption

LaFond and Watts (2008) provide evidence that information asymmetry might be a determinant of accounting conservatism. One implication of their paper is that regulators trying to reduce information asymmetry by lowering the level of accounting conservatism might be wrong. However, there is a trend in moving away from conservative accounting. The typical example is IFRS adoption. Therefore, this paper studies information asymmetry and accounting conservatism under IFRS adoption. The results show that the level of accounting conservatism decreases after mandatory IFRS adoption, but the adoption of IFRS is likely to weaken the relationship between information asymmetry and accounting conservatism. Moreover, this paper investigates how the change of accounting conservatism under IFRS is related to the change in information environment. The finding shows that accounting conservatism increases information environment, supporting the idea that, by providing comparatively credible information, conservative accounting is beneficial to the information environment.

Accounting for Human Rights Violations Risk: Conflict Minerals Mandatory Disclosures under the Dodd Frank Act

This paper examines the equity market response to firms’ disclosure of human rights violation risk with regard to conflict mineral usage as required by Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act (the Act). This paper assesses the aggregate equity market response to regulatory events leading to the passage of the Act, the equity market reaction to voluntary early disclosures and mandatory disclosures of conflict mineral information in Form SD, as well as the determinants of the equity market response. Using a sample of 4,399 US registrants from January 1, 2008 to September 30, 2014, we document a significant negative stock market reaction to the passage of the Act and to conflict minerals disclosures on Form SD. The equity market reaction is more negative and limited to companies that source their minerals from conflict zones, companies with human rights violations, and companies with ambiguous disclosures. Taken together, the results of this study provide an economic justification for companies with poor conflict minerals practices to improve in order to avoid high costs that will arise if firms are forced to disclose human rights abuses. This paper also provides preliminary evidence that Form SD is successful in reducing the governance gap that exposes investors to unnecessary sanction, litigation and reputation risk from firms’ activities in conflict minerals usage.