Major Corporations Research Articles

Private Equity Blues: Warner Music Group, Nonesuch Records, and Jazz in the Era of Financialization

AbstractSince the 1980s, the Nonesuch label, a longstanding subsidiary of the Warner Music Group (WMG), has become noteworthy for its steady market performance during a period of volatility for media multinationals. Nonesuch Records, having once been an adventurous boutique classical label under Teresa Sterne, has developed over the last three decades as a creatively idiosyncratic and commercially successful “adult” imprint under Robert Hurwitz, the erstwhile director of the Munich-based Edition of Contemporary Music jazz label.Nonesuch has not historically been understood as a jazz label, though it has served as a home for a few jazz acts, including Bill Frisell, Fred Hersch, and the World Saxophone Quartet. By the early years of the new millennium, though, Nonesuch had become one of the few major label subsidiaries willing to maintain an active roster of jazz instrumentalists, harnessing its diversified roster as a source of strength.This paper examines the Nonesuch label's cultivation of a distinctive jazz niche and situates this development against the backdrop of a period of structural turbulence for the WMG. The leveraged buyout of WMG in 2004, which precipitated the dissolution of the Warner Jazz subsidiary and the transfer of much of its jazz roster to Nonesuch, reflects a contemporary logic of financialization, where value extraction has become the overriding goal of corporate restructuring. Mergers and acquisitions enacted at the uppermost reaches of major label corporate hierarchies pass along significant costs to the label subsidiaries and their artist rosters, installing precarity at the core of the music industry's creative ecologies.

From tax havens to cryptocurrencies: secrecy-seeking capital in the global economy

The global backlash against tax havens has pushed secrecy-seeking capital to explore alternative opportunities in non-tax-haven countries and new financial technologies (FinTech). We identify two major corporate practices—organizational ring-fencing and swarming—that have enabled secrecy-seeking capital to adapt to new regulatory realities and illustrate these practices empirically with the extreme case of Estonia. In the 2010s, several Nordic banks turned their Estonian offices into hotbeds of high-risk transactions, ring-fencing their Baltic affiliates from their group-level systems and generating several money laundering scandals with global repercussions. More recently, secrecy-seeking capital ‘swarmed’ into Estonia’s large cryptocurrency sector and thereby thwarted effective supervision of the activities of the firms involved. Neither swarming nor organizational ring-fencing have been sufficiently explained by existing approaches in International Political Economy (IPE) as new core practices of secrecy-seeking capital. We study both practices in a mixed-methods research design and provide novel empirical insights to illuminate this phenomenon. In filling this gap, our study paves the way for a second generation of global tax governance scholarship amidst the cryptocurrency and FinTech boom, and calls for a research agenda that addresses these new practices that take advantage of the lack of administrative capabilities in non-tax-haven jurisdictions.

ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INTERNAL CONTROL OVER THE FINANCIAL REPORTING SYSTEM

After the major corporate accounting scandals that happened at the beginning of the 21st century, many countries introduced the obligation to disclose information about the effectiveness of internal control over the financial reporting system. It was based on the assumption that mandatory reporting on internal control will encourage managers to pay more attention to the improvement of internal control over the financial reporting system and that this will lead to an improvement in the quality of financial statements and restore investor confidence in financial statements. The aim of this paper is to examine the economic consequences of the introduction of the obligation to disclose information on the effectiveness of internal control i.e., whether the assumed benefits have been realised. In order to realize the established goal, the author analyses the results of numerous empirical studies that investigated the impact of disclosure of information about the effectiveness of internal control on the quality of financial statements, the behaviour of investors and the behaviour of lenders. According to the author's findings, the obligation to disclose information about the effectiveness of internal control led to an improvement in the quality of financial statements. Also, the disclosure of this information has informational value for investors and lenders and affects their behaviour i.e., their risk assessment and the decisions they make.

<em>Roblox</em> and Meta Verch

<em>Roblox</em> and Meta Verch

The Influence of External Stakeholders on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Reporting: Toward a Conceptual Framework for ESG Disclosure

In recent years, governments and investors globally are compelling major corporate organizations to disclose important environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. The continued flatlining of ESG reporting quality has led some parties to call on policymakers to take advantage of the distinct contextual pressure from external stakeholders to improve corporate ESG commitments. However, the relationship between external stakeholders and ESG disclosure remains ambiguous, both theoretically and empirically. Grounded in stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory, resource-based theory, and slack resource theory, this article reconceptualizes Ullmann’s 1985 model of corporate social performance to present a novel conceptual framework to examine the external stakeholders-ESG disclosure relationship. This article contributes to the literature by illustrating the mediating effect of the strategic posture and the moderating effect of corporate financial performance on corporate ESG discourse perpetuated by powerful stakeholders.

Investors’ Reactions to Alliance‐Engendered Acquisition Ambiguity: Evidence from U.S. Technology Deals

AbstractWe study how, when target firms are engaged in strategic alliances, the ambiguity surrounding an acquisition's anticipated synergies influences investors’ reactions to announcements of acquisitions. Drawing on behavioural finance research and the resource redeployment literature, we predict that investors’ limited access to the information encoded in the target firms’ alliances and the uncertainty around the re‐deployability of their embedded resources generate a negative relationship between the number of target alliances and investors’ reactions. We also hypothesize that this negative effect is exacerbated when the alliances involve foreign alliance partners but is attenuated when acquirers are experienced in acquiring targets with alliances. Analysis of a large sample of US technology acquisitions supports all our hypotheses. We contribute to management research by offering a viable explanation of investors’ reactions to the announcement of major corporate events, such as acquisitions, whose structural characteristics deny investors material information about these events’ potential to create value.

Does Corporate Governance Impact Risk Disclosure? An Empirical Analysis in the Indian Context

This study aims at identifying the determinants of corporate governance that impact corporate risk disclosure in India’s top non-financial listed companies based on market capitalisation. The analysis of the study is based on risk disclosure practices of the leading non-financial listed companies using annual reports as well as risk disclosure practices in the presence of various regulations. The risk exposure is measured using manual content analysis while the impact is analysed using multiple regression. The empirical findings reveal that the corporate risk disclosure level has improved significantly. The major corporate governance variables namely board size and ownership are insignificant to risk disclosure whereas audit committee meetings and role duality are somewhat significant. Firms having bigger size plays a major role in risk disclosure practices of companies, on the other hand, liquidity and growth of the firm do not influence risk disclosure practice. Due to the constant fallouts of companies, this paper tries to analyse the role of corporate governance practices in minimising companies’ risk exposure. The results of the study help analyse the failures in corporate governance practices that lead to companies’ poor disclosure policies.

한국 전통재래식 간장과 개량식 간장의 이화학적 품질 특성 및 항산화 활성 비교

In this study, we compared and analyzed the physicochemical quality characteristics and antioxidant activity of Korean traditional Ganjang made from 100% Korean Meju in six provinces in Korea The Ganjang was aged for three years after manufacturing with Korean sun-dried salt of traditional Ganjang AS (Gangwon-do), BS (Gyeonggi-do), CS (Chungcheong-do), DS (Jeolla-do), ES (Gyeongsang-do), FS (Jeju-do), GS (Improved brewed Ganjang marketed by major corporations) and HS (acid hydrolyzed Ganjang). The moisture content was 64.67%∼73.39%, with HS (acid hydrolyzed Ganjang) the highest, and GS (brewed Ganjang) the lowest. The ash content was 13.14%-25.49%, and all samples of Korean traditional soy sauce were higher than those of GS and HS soy sauce. The crude protein content was 3.20% to 6.80% for six types of Korean traditional Ganjang, and 10.97% for GS and 5.54% for HS. The content of crude fat was not measured in the samples of GS and HS. The pH was in the range of 4.19 to 4.96, and all samples showed similar values. The salinity was measured at 15.98% in GS and 14.65% in HS, which is lower than that of Korean traditional Ganjang. The sugar content was the highest at 40.63 Brix% and the lowest at 26.70 Brix%. The acidity of Ganjang was 4.20∼5.85 in Korean traditional Ganjang, showing a difference between samples, and HS 1.86, which was the lowest. The color values lightness of Ganjang was higher in six types of traditional Korean Ganjang than GS and HS. The total phenol contents, DPPH radical scavenging ability, and ABTS radical scavenging ability were higher than those of GS and HS samples in all samples of Korean traditional Ganjang.

The Curvilinear Role of Trust in Marketing Systems: Analysis of a Moderated-Mediation Model with Hierarchical Linear Modeling

Trust has long been recognized as an important component of marketing systems. However, while macromarketing researchers argue that a lack of trust in business can impact other components of marketing systems, very few empirical studies in marketing investigate the determinants or outcomes associated with this type of trust. Accordingly, we begin with the premise that trust in major corporations is a critical, micro-level attitude that affects the performance of a marketing system. Then, we investigate the factors that influence trust in major corporations by analyzing how perceptions of government involvement in business, political ideology, and other attitudinal and demographic variables affect trust. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we find that trust has a curvilinear relationship with perceptions of free-market competition, in which too much trust, or too little, leads to negative perceptions - trust plays a critical mediating role in constructing beliefs about free markets. Additionally, we show that macroeconomic variables influence the first stage of attitude formation toward major corporations, with gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and foreign direct investment (FDI) acting as moderators in our analysis. Overall, the multi-level moderated-mediation model used in this research embodies a true systems approach to the analysis of marketing systems by demonstrating how the economic outcomes of marketing systems (e.g., GDP and FDI) can also have feedback effects on participants within a marketing system.

Major government-background customers and corporate green innovation

ABSTRACT Using a sample of 1,595 Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2019 and the Ordinary Least Squares method, we find that major government-background consumers have a positive effect on corporate green innovation. This finding is robust to a battery of tests. Mechanism tests suggest that major government-background consumers promote corporate green innovation output by alleviating financial constraints rather than by providing information feedback. Further analysis shows that major government-background consumers improve green innovation efficiency and are conducive to green invention innovation and green utility innovation. Finally, we find that stronger intellectual property protection strengthens the association between major government-background consumers and corporate green innovation. Our study suggests that the identification of larger consumers plays an important role in green innovation.

Corporate Governance Practices in India: Problems & Importance

The paper seeks to explore the impact of corporate governance (CG) measures on the performance, importance and problems from the viewpiont of India.The focus on corporate governance has increased since the past few decades in most countries around the world, especially in the wake of corporate collapses in early 2000s. These corporate collapses have leads to the growing volume of academic and practical research in this area. Corporate governance refers to the set of rules and practices that ensure the effective and corporate efficient management of a company. In India, the Companies Act, 2013 lays down the legal framework for corporate governance, which is overseen by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and other regulatory authorities. Some of the key corporate governance practices in India include: Board of Directors: Companies in India are required to have a board of directors that oversees the management of the company. The board is expected to act in the best interests of the company and its stakeholders.Independent Directors: At least one-third of the board of directors of a listed company in India must be independent directors. These directors are expected to provide unbiased and objective advice to the board. Audit Committees: Listed companies in India are required to have an audit committee that oversees the financial reporting process and ensures that the company's financial statements are accurate and reliable. Shareholder Rights: Shareholders in India have a number of rights, including the right to vote on key issues such as the election of directors and the approval of major corporate transactions. Disclosure and Transparency: Indian companies are required to disclose a wide range of information to the public, including financial statements, annual reports, and information about the company's management and operations. In this paper we will study the concept and principles of corporate goverbance along with its importance from the viewpoint of India. Then we will discuss the various issues and challenges related to corporate governance.

Platformization of Korean Internet portals toward mega-platforms: A historical approach

This paper documents the evolution of Korea’s digital platforms. By using a historical approach in tandem with platformization — helpful in determining the causes behind the changing processes of new technologies — we examine the advancement of digital platforms. The digital platform era can be divided into three significant periods based on major technical advancements and corporate transformations, including the early construction of ICT infrastructure between the mid-1990s and early 2000s; the early platformization period of Internet portals amidst the smartphone revolution between the mid-2000s and mid-2010s; and the duopoly market of Naver and Kakao from the mid-2010s, after the merge of Daum and Kakao, to the present. Multiple causes led to the advent of digital platforms, both in terms of technologies and systems. Power relations developed between several major players, such as the government, corporations, and global forces. This work ultimately describes the relationship between sociocultural transitions and accompanying structural changes in digital platforms and relevant policies.

‘Here in the US’: Identity narratives, national beliefs and corporate governance values in Big Tech Hearing discourse

Starting from the idea that understanding Big Tech ideologies is a prerequisite for assessing how major tech corporations see a (re)organization of society, this paper offers an analysis of the opening statements of the CEOs of four of these corporations during 2020 antitrust hearings before the U.S. House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee. These statements were ‘critical discourse moments’ that foregrounded the beliefs of the CEOs in the collision between their discourse and that of government and politics. Using a critical perspective on discourse analysis as a main research approach, this research found that the opening statements blended (inter)national imaginaries, identity narratives and corporate values. Together, these factors communicated the notion of an ideal society in which tech companies awarded themselves a dual role: (1) national conductors towards what we call ‘techno/opportunity’ for individuals, and (2) politically neutral agents in the service of American world dominance. In this sense, ‘competition’ was reconstructed as a practice that, on a national level, must occur within Big Tech instead of between tech corporations and other actors. On an international level competition existed between ideologically opposed nation states where corporations were envisioned as representatives of these states.

Underage Sales of Tobacco in Dollar Stores and Top Grocery Stores, 2015–2020, U.S.

Youth access to tobacco in retail settings remains a pressing public health concern and may vary across retail corporations. This study compares underage sales violation rates in tobacco-selling dollar store corporations-a rapidly growing retail segment where cheaper tobacco prices may appeal to youth-with rates in other major grocery corporations. In 2021, U.S. Food and Drug Administration data (N=64,059 inspections) from January 2015 to March 2020 were used to compare underage tobacco sales in the two major tobacco-selling dollar store corporations, Dollar General and Family Dollar, with sales in major grocery corporations: Albertsons, Delhaize, Kroger, Publix, and Walmart. Generalized linear mixed models controlled for neighborhood characteristics. Post hoc analyses examined whether the corporation with the highest violation rate was more likely to be in neighborhoods with higher proportions of racially minoritized residents, socioeconomic disadvantage, or rural status. Family Dollar failed 12.1% of underage sales inspections. All other corporations had a significantly lower likelihood of selling tobacco to an underage buyer than Family Dollar. This significant association persisted after controlling for neighborhood characteristics. Family Dollar locations were associated with being in neighborhoods with higher proportions of racially minoritized residents and greater socioeconomic disadvantage. Regulating corporate behavior is necessary to reduce underage access to tobacco in dollar stores and address place-based inequities in youth tobacco access. Increasing the use of U.S. Food and Drug Administration no-tobacco-sale orders and Assurances of Voluntary Compliance, which provide a mechanism for state attorneys general to engage with tobacco retailers regarding enforcement of minimum legal sales age laws, may help to reduce youth tobacco access in retail settings.

Implications of E-Banking on Household Financial Management

Financial management is carried out for small businesses as well as for major corporations, including digital financial services for consumers. As a result, it has an impact on how consumers use financial technology. Understanding behavioral changes in home finance management is the goal of this study. This study employed a qualitative methodology. Primary research data in the form of a questionnaire was used. Samples were collected from Pekalongan City homes. The study's findings indicated that because m-banking makes it so simple to conduct transactions, housewives who continue to keep track of their household's financial statements prefer to use banks when making deposits.

Storytelling in Development: universal technologies and current contexts

The article is devoted to storytelling technology, which involves the production and promotion of optimized stories in the interests of companies and their products. The authors explore the dynamic development of this area of science and practice from structuring universal technologies to focusing on certain models of construction and actual application of these technologies in various socio-economic contexts. As a special perspective, the authors consider the interrelated concepts of “storytelling” and “conflict”, which perform the task of conflict management in order to obtain a positive effect. It is shown how the conflict component of the story simultaneously serves to make it more attractive and to promote the conflict towards its constructive solution. The practice of creating immersive stories that arise spontaneously or in an organized manner among consumers and the media, as well as the reaction of companies to them in the form of creating counterstories, is demonstrated. The experience of storytelling of three major corporations is analyzed: Procter & Gamble, Philip Morris and McDonald’s.

Exploration of 3D objects: methods for simulation, application, and presentation

Simulation programs have revolutionized the operations of major corporations in the 21st century. These programs offer meticulous recording and analysis of processes, enabling the identification and resolution of bottlenecks, deficiencies, and errors that could arise during real-world production. Simulations provide comprehensive insights into the entire production process, even before it begins, ensuring optimal efficiency and minimizing downtime and mistakes. They can be customized to varying levels of complexity, encompassing process-oriented perspectives and visually detailed representations. To ensure accuracy, analyzing and evaluating available data is crucial, supplementing it with necessary information to enhance the virtual representation's fidelity. In this discussion, we will primarily explore the modeling of 3D objects within detailed simulations and their subsequent application and interpretation in diverse contexts.

Application of the Internet of Things and 6G Cellular Communication to Optimize Accounting and International Marketing

Digitalization of marketing forms preconditions for personalization and individualization of advertising promotion of goods (works, services). Databases about consumer preferences and market situation are at the disposal of major international corporations, which makes it difficult for advertisers and admen. It is envisaged that the development of technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT) and 6G cellular communication should change the situation in the field of processing and using information for accounting, management and marketing purposes. The purpose of the scientific research lies in optimization of accounting and international marketing in terms of determining income, expenses and, accordingly, profits from the lease of commercial and advertising space in all international participants of lease relations on the basis of information generated by innovative technologies of the Internet of Things and cellular communication of the sixth communication generation. In particular, the method of using technologies of the Internet of Things and 6G cellular networks was developed for obtaining information about the movement of visitors of commercial establishments and their consumer preferences. The procedure for recognition and accounting of all market participants’ income, expenses and, accordingly, financial results from the lease of commercial and advertising space has been developed, including operators of commercial establishments, advertisers, admen, and leasers. The organization of accounting the lease of commercial and advertising areas as part of international economic activity of enterprises has been optimized by providing international access to information and software and technical resources of the Internet of Things and cellular communication. Management decisions have been made as a reaction to information from a database about visiting commercial establishments. Based on the authors’ proposals, the order of circulation of accounting and management information and funds from buyers to operators of trade networks, trade establishments, advertising agencies and, finally, producers of goods (works, services) are proposed through the systems of international information relations that form a closed cycle of economic activity at the global level and require further scientific research.

PostgreSQL изнутри и снаружи

В помощь специалистам, знакомым с устройством реляционных СУБД, планирующим переход на PostgreSQL, издательство «ДМК Пресс» выпустило книгу «PostgreSQL 15 изнутри». The exodus of western IT vendors from Russia has led to shrinkage of local enterprise database market. The way out is PostgreSQL, with major Russian financial and industrial corporations having migrated to the database without waiting for imported software products to “turn into a pumpkin”. However, it is no typical task for a corporation to maintain an opensource solution, tracking its development and ensuring guaranteed reliability of the system-level code. For PostgreSQL, those tasks are handled by Postgre Professional, a company offering the Postgres Pro database that is included into the Unified Registry of Russian Software Products.

Diasporic capital and the financialisation of housing in Ho Chi Minh City

In recent years, policymakers and development practitioners have focused on the potential of remittances for economic growth. The World Bank projects that remittances will soon outpace overseas aid and foreign direct investment combined in low- and middle-income countries. This article examines how remittances, or what I call ‘diasporic capital’, sustain urban financialisation at multiple scales. Most research on urban restructuring in the financialisation literature has focused on major corporations, management actors and financial markets without considering the specific sources of capital flows. Diasporic capital flow is facilitated through a unique financial architecture and an incoherent regulatory framework distinct from foreign direct investment. Drawing from interviews conducted with government stakeholders, private sector representatives and members of the Vietnamese diaspora, this article examines the actors, motivations, mechanisms, regulations and products that shape and constitute diasporic capital flow. I argue that classical notions of remittances as money supporting the social reproduction of family are outdated and do not reflect emergent forms of diasporic investments in Ho Chi Minh City’s financialised landscape.