Multi-theoretical Approach Research Articles

New Perspectives in Internal Audit Research: A Structured Literature Review

AbstractThis structured literature review adopts a multimethod and multitheoretical approach to identify current knowledge about internal audit as well as related knowledge gaps. To that end, it provides an overview of post‐Sarbanes‐Oxley Act literature, organizing it under three themes: the multiple roles of internal audit, internal audit quality (IAQ), and the practice of internal audit. Despite the volume of literature published during the period covered by this review (2005 to mid‐2017), the first two themes are still in development, while the third is emergent. We suggest research avenues to fill the following main gaps: (i) Given differing opinions about the expected or actual roles of internal audit, prior literature infers that the internal audit function has become the “jack of all trades” of governance, but does not clearly capture its actual roles. (ii) The viewpoint of external auditors has dominated IAQ research, leading to a misunderstanding of how actors with greater stakes in the practice of internal audit conceptualize and evaluate IAQ. (iii) Knowledge of the actual practice of internal audit and its accountability and ethical issues is fragmentary, therefore the literature's current picture of internal audit is far from comprehensive.

Monitoring or empowering CEOs? The moderating effect of shareholder rights

This paper explains the conflicting evidence found on agency and stewardship theories in the previous literature, by introducing shareholder rights as a moderator for the board independence-firm performance relationship. Consistent with agency (stewardship) theory, increasing (decreasing) board independence increases firm performance when shareholder rights are low (high). The results are more pronounced after the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002, when firms where required to increase their percentage of independent directors regardless of their governance structure. We conclude that corporate governance cannot be thought of as one-size-fits-all: a multi-theoretical approach is recommended to better understand the various aspects of corporate governance.

The Failure of Internal Audit: Monitoring Gaps and a Case for a New Focus

Within the management and organization field, the internal audit function (IAF) plays an important role in enhancing good governance. Given the spate of corporate collapses over the last 20 years, this article draws on a multitheoretical approach to governance and a critical review of the published literature to identify where IAFs have failed, and to provide a new focus to strengthen their role. Common themes regarding monitoring gaps by IAFs were identified as occurring across three governance levels. A contributory cause for these gaps is the poor structural and functional arrangements of the IAF, arising from the considerable flexibility afforded in its setup and delivery of services. A negative consequence of this flexibility is the ability of the board and management to manipulate the role of the IAF to the extent that it is not aligned with the intention of its setup as encapsulated in its definition.

Guest editorial

Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to set out key issues on the dimensions in corporate disclosure studies, introduce the papers appearing in this special issue and set agenda for future corporate disclosure research. Design/methodology/approach – This is a discussion paper exploring key issues both theoretically and pragmatically. Findings – The paper finds that there are many dimensions in corporate disclosure studies that are under-researched. The paper argued that future disclosure studies should explore new and challenging determinants of corporate disclosure including socio-cultural factors. It encouraged researchers especially early career and doctoral researchers to experiment with alternative theoretical framing beyond agency theory, including multi-theoretical approaches whilst exploring different avenues of corporate disclosure besides annual reports. Furthermore, the paper encouraged qualitative disclosure studies and alternative analytical techniques complementary to regression models. Research limitations/implications – There is a possibility that the issues explored in this paper, and the other papers in this special issue, will lead to a considerable growth in academic studies in this area. Practical implications – The paper contributes to the growing debate on corporate disclosures. Originality/value – The paper sets an agenda for research into the various dimensions in corporate disclosures. Keywords: disclosure research; theoretical framing; disclosure avenues and regression models Paper type General review

Conflicts in Family Firms in the International Context: A Literature Review

Abstract Objective: This paper reviews the major family business research papers that address factors related to relationship and work-to-family conflicts. Methodology: The procedure this paper applies follows recommendations for literature reviews by Fink (2010) consisting of: (1) selecting a research question (2) selecting bibliographic or article databases, (3) choosing search terms, (4) applying practical screening criteria, (5) applying methodical screening criteria, (6) doing the review and (7) synthesizing the results. Findings: The article summarizes that, although family business research is progressing in terms of theory building, it continues to lack a systematic adoption of longitudinal, cross-national and multi-theoretical approaches. To date, research on conflict in family firms remains underdeveloped in the CEE. Value Added: Outlining the state of the art of theoretical and empirical studies by applying a resource-based view. Recommendations: Application of control variables, such as size of the business, business life cycles, generational status, type of industry and various cultural settings. Furthermore, the role of communication, sibling rivalry and perceived justice of family members could be investigated more thoroughly.

Theoretical Extensions of Minority Stress Theory for Sexual Minority Individuals in the Workplace: A Cross-Contextual Understanding of Minority Stress Processes.

Minority stress theory posits that stress processes specific to a sexual minority orientation can affect the psychological health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer-identified (LGBQ) individuals. In the workplace, LGBQ employees experiencing minority stress report poor mental health outcomes and decreased job satisfaction and commitment. However, few scholars have examined the cross-contextual effects minority stressors that individuals experience in the workplace may have on couples. That is, given the literature highlighting the work-family interface, how do minority stressors at work affect the sexual minority employee within the family dynamics of same-sex couples at home? The purpose of this article is to propose a multi-theoretical approach which includes elements of minority stress theory and work-family border theory to guide future research in examining the cross-contextual effects of minority stress for couple- and family-level outcomes.

Explaining Cyberstalking Victimization Against College Women Using a Multitheoretical Approach: Self-Control, Opportunity, and Control Balance

The foci of the present study are to estimate the extent of cyberstalking victimization, and develop, specify, and test a theoretically based model of cyberstalking victimization among college women. A pursuit- and fear-based measure of victimization was utilized, and three leading theories—self-control, opportunity, and control balance—were tested as explanations of cyberstalking victimization. Key concepts from each theoretical perspective were operationalized using primary survey data from a probability sample of college women ( N = 1,987) from two large universities. Results show that approximately 3.4% of female students were victims of cyberstalking during the academic year. Findings from a path model revealed significant direct effects for opportunity and having a control deficit on cyberstalking. The effects of self-control were indirect through these two measures, whereas having a control surplus was not related to victimization risk. Overall, findings support the application of these three theoretical approaches to predicting and explaining cyberstalking victimization.

The adoption of chief diversity officers among S&P 500 firms: Institutional, resource dependence, and upper echelons accounts

The importance of workforce diversity has become a salient management concern given that demographic minorities comprise key sources of the workforce and consumers. As a result, some firms created chief diversity officer (CDO) positions to manage workforce diversity. This study takes a multitheoretic approach, drawing upon institutional, resource dependence, and upper echelons theories to explain firms' adoptions of this key position. Using Cox event history analyses based on a sample of S&P 500 firms, we find that, from an institutional theory perspective, firms are more likely to adopt CDOs when they are headquartered in legalized gay marriage states and the accumulative number of industry CDO adoptions is high. From a resource dependence perspective, we find that firm innovation intensity, diversification levels, transient institutional ownership, and industry female and African American employment bases can predict firms' adoptions of CDO positions. From an upper echelons explanation, we find that female top management team representation is positively associated with firms' adoptions of CDO positions.

Embracing Maternity Protection into Workplace: The Effects of Progressive Bundling and its Use

This study explores the “maternity protection policy” in the workplace, and its effects on the organizational outcome: voluntary turnover and productivity. We investigate 7,147 firm-level samples from 2005 to 2011, using the Korea Workplace Panel Survey data. A factor analysis of 14 maternity protection items shows three classifications: (1) leave policies, (2) health protection at work, and (3) voluntary policies beyond legal requirements. Each classification is regarded as a bundle. Our finding suggests that: (1) firms with a wider range of policy bundles, especially ones extending beyond legal requirements, have a lower voluntary turnover rate and higher productivity; (2) HR practices consistent with the firms’ business strategy strengthen the positive relationship between maternity protection and productivity; (3) firms with a wider range of policy bundles also have a higher use ratio of available policies; and (4) actually using the available maternity protection policies is significantly related to the voluntary turnover rate and productivity. A multi-theoretical approach is used to explain our findings. This study indicates that maternity protection in the workplace not only corresponds to social norms but also function as a competitive advantage for firms.

A Multitheoretical Approach to Big Text Data: Comparing Expressive and Rhetorical Logics in Yelp Reviews

This article uses a multitheoretical approach to investigate the relationship between language use and opinion expression on Yelp. Using review metadata (e.g., star rating) to observe variation in reviewer feelings and motivations, we test for the strength of different message design logics: expressive logics, where language reflects a reviewer’s underlying opinion, and rhetorical logics, where language reflects a reviewer’s desire to make his or her opinion credible and acceptable to their audience. Results suggest that emotional language is motivated by expression as higher rated businesses are reviewed with more positive and fewer negative emotion terms. Rhetorical logics are associated with the use of abstract and self-focused language, with analysis suggesting this may result from the reviewer’s decision to write either narratively or formally.

Starting Off on the Best Foot: A Review of Message Framing and Message Tailoring, and Recommendations for the Comprehensive Messaging Strategy for Sustained Behavior Change

ABSTRACTHealth promotion programs represent a salient means through which physical activity promoters can cultivate positive health behavior change and maintenance. The messages communicated within these programs serve as an essential component as they are often used to convey valuable information, resources, or tools that facilitate health behavior initiation and sustained engagement. Identifying the most effective way to communicate health promotion information is, therefore, of considerable importance to ensuring that people not only attend to these messages, but also connect with and internalize the information conveyed within them. This paper was written to (1) summarize and evaluate the most prominent reviewed research approaches of message framing and tailoring to message design; and (2) offer a comprehensive messaging strategy to promote sustained health behavior change. A review of the literature demonstrated that a messaging strategy that has consistently led to healthy behavior change has yet to be identified. Furthermore, scholars have articulated that a multi-theoretical approach that places emphasis on facilitating motivation and healthy behavior change needs to be employed. Thus, this paper proposes and provides recommendations for employing the Comprehensive Messaging Strategy for Sustained Behavior Change (CMSSBC), which advocates tailoring messages to peoples’ stage of change and framing them to focus on self-determined motives and intrinsic goals.

“I Am as Fit as a Fiddle”: Selling the Mugabe Brand in the 2013 Elections in Zimbabwe

Robert Mugabe’s dominance in Zimbabwean politics post-independence has led critics to argue that politics in Zimbabwe is personal and patriarchal. Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU PF)’s alleged use of violence, violent discourse, and other unorthodox power retention strategies have been used to justify claims that Zimbabwean politics is the politics of chaos. In this post-colonial (mis)reading of African politics, ZANU PF and Mugabe discourses have been labeled nativism, patriotic history, Mugabeism, grotesque nationalism, etc. However, these studies have either been uncritically pro- or anti-ZANU PF (Moore 2012). The paper, through an analysis of ZANU PF’s rebranding of Mugabe in the July 2013 elections, suggests a new multitheoretical approach to overcome this uncritical reading of Zimbabwe’s political branding practices. The suggested approach utilizes insights gleaned from sign theory, political branding and/or advertising theory, post-colonial theory, and decolonial theory.

Elementary school students’ naïve conceptions and misconceptions about energy in physical education context

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study was to explore and reveal naïve conceptions and misconceptions about energy embedded in elementary school students’ prior knowledge. Students’ performance on standardized knowledge test was used to classify students into low, median and high levels of knowledge about the cardiovascular system. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with students in each group to extract their understanding of energy in relation to food choices, physical activities, and exercises. Analysis of the interview data generated six categories of naïve conceptions and two categories of misconceptions. Different conceptual change theories, including Chi’s ontological change theory, Ohlsson’s resubsumption theory, and enculturation theory were used to analyze and understand these naïve conceptions and misconceptions and why they could be robust to change. The analyses confirm the need to adopt a multi-theoretical approach to the understanding of students’ naïve conceptions and misconceptions (Chinn & Samarapungavan, 2009. Conceptual change-multiple routes, multiple mechanisms: A commentary on Ohlsson. Educational Psychologist, 44(1), 1–10). The findings encourage physical and health educators adopt different strategies to address the potential learning obstacles brought by students’ naïve conceptions and misconceptions.

Gobierno corporativo y desempeño financiero: conceptos teóricos y evidencia empírica

<p>Este documento tiene como objetivo la estructuración de un marco de análisis para el estudio de prácticas de gobierno corporativo y su incidencia en los resultados financieros, teniendo en cuenta estudios teóricos y empíricos en países desarrollados y en desarrollo, principalmente latinoamericanos, con énfasis en Colombia. Las prácticas de gobierno corporativo se han convertido en un elemento esencial de los estudios de la teoría de la firma en vista de que proveen a los gestores y propietarios de mecanismos que permiten establecer normas encaminadas a la minimización de conflictos de interés, la consecuente mejora y transparencia en la toma de decisiones y, por ende, elevar los niveles de desempeño financiero. A partir de la metodología de análisis documental propuesta por David Papineau, se encuentran una significativa evolución y convergencia en la normativa internacional y nacional en lo relacionado con prácticas de gobierno corporativo y su relación con el desempeño; resalta el incipiente impacto en Colombia y otros países en desarrollo. Entre los resultados más relevantes están la necesidad de abordar las prácticas de gobierno corporativo y su impacto sobre los retornos financieros de las firmas desde un enfoque multiteórico, al igual que la identificación del problema que para las investigaciones empíricas representa la endogeneidad entre el desempeño financiero y el gobierno corporativo.</p>

Exploring the wicked problem of athlete and consumer vulnerability in sport

PurposeThis paper aims to extend the literature on wicked problems in consumer research by exploring athlete and consumer vulnerability in sport and the potential role that social marketing can play in addressing this problem.Design/methodology/approachThis paper conceptualises the wicked problem of athlete and consumer vulnerability in sport, proposing a multi-theoretical approach to social marketing, incorporating insights from stakeholder theory, systems theory and cocreation to tackle this complex problem.FindingsSport provides a rich context for exploring a social marketing approach to a wicked problem, as it operates in a complex ecosystem with multiple stakeholders with differing, and sometimes conflicting, objectives. It is proposed that consumers, particularly those that are highly identified fans, are key stakeholders that have both facilitated the problematic nature of the sport system and been rendered vulnerable as a result. Further, a form of consumer vulnerability also extends to athletes as the evolution of the sport system has led them to engage in harmful consumption behaviours. Social marketing, with its strategic and multi-faceted focus on facilitating social good, is an apt approach to tackle behavioural change at multiple levels within the sport system.Practical implicationsSport managers, public health practitioners and policymakers are given insight into the key drivers of a growing wicked problem as well as the potential for social marketing to mitigate harm.Originality/valueThis paper is the first to identify and explicate a wicked problem in sport. More generally it extends insight into wicked problems in consumer research by examining a case whereby the consumer is both complicit in, and made vulnerable by, the creation of a wicked problem. This paper is the first to explore the use of social marketing in managing wicked problems in sport.

Board characteristics effects on performance in family and non-family business: a multi-theoretical approach

This paper examines the role of the board of directors in influencing the value of Italian listed firms from 2003 to 2013. In particular, employing agency, stewardship and resource dependence theories, the study aims to compare board characteristics in family and non-family firms and define the theory that best applies to family firms. Empirical results show that the presence of CEO duality and busy directors has a positive effect on the value of family firms, while gender diversity has a negative impact on the value when a member of the family leads a family firm. Conversely, the size of the board positively affects the value of non-family firms. Our main findings suggest the prevalence, in family firms, of the benefits of the board structure argued by stewardship and resource dependence theories rather than the disadvantages expected from agency theory.

Foreign institutional investment, business groups and firm performance: Evidence from India

The article tries to examine the relationship between equity ownership held by the foreign institutional investors and firm performance both in a static and a dynamic framework. We also examine how the relationship differs between group-affiliated and stand-alone firms. By employing the 2SLS panel data estimation technique on 137 BSE listed Indian firms, the study finds that foreign institutional investment has a positive influence on the firm performance as measured through Tobin’s Q and ROA.Application of linear dynamic panel data estimation in a dynamic framework also yields similar results.The latter method also shows that FII has a positive significant effect on Tobin’s Q in group-affiliated firms. The results are analysed from the perspective of a multi-theoretic approach consisting of agency theory, information asymmetry theory, institutional theory and resource dependency theory.

Enabling robotic social intelligence by engineering human social-cognitive mechanisms

For effective human-robot interaction, we argue that robots must gain social-cognitive mechanisms that allow them to function naturally and intuitively during social interactions with humans. However, a lack of consensus on social cognitive processes poses a challenge for how to design such mechanisms for artificial cognitive systems. We discuss a recent integrative perspective of social cognition to provide a systematic theoretical underpinning for computational instantiations of these mechanisms. We highlight several commitments of our approach that we refer to as Engineering Human Social Cognition. We then provide a series of recommendations to facilitate the development of the perceptual, motor, and cognitive architecture for this proposed artificial cognitive system in future work. For each recommendation, we highlight their relation to the discussed social-cognitive mechanisms, provide the rationale for these recommendations and potential benefits, and detail examples of associated computational formalisms that could be leveraged to instantiate our recommendations. Overall, the goal of this paper is to outline an interdisciplinary and multi-theoretic approach to facilitate the design of robots that will one day function, and be perceived, as socially interactive and effective teammates.

A Culturalist Perspective on Trilateral : Taipei – Beijing - Washington Relations

This paper presents Western analysts and policy makers with a brief analysis of the importance of the trilateral Washington-Taipei-Beijing relationship, and argues for a reconceptualization of that relationship to factor in the polarization of cultural identity in those three nations and how this finds expression in foreign policy on the cross-strait issue, among other areas. The intent herein is to make a case for the adoption of a multi-theoretical approach that injects a culturalist interpretation of the fundamental schisms present in each society that influence their respective worldviews and relations to other powers.

Communication, Reasoning, and Planned Behaviors: Unveiling the Effect of Interactive Communication in an Anti-Smoking Social Media Campaign

This study examines direct and indirect effects of interactive communication in an antismoking social media campaign. To that end, we pose a multitheoretical framework that integrates communication mediation models and the Theory of Planned Behavior. To test the theorized model, we conducted an experiment using a two-group pretest–posttest design. Participants (N = 201) were randomly assigned into two experimental conditions: “campaign message reception only” as a control group and “message reception and social interaction” as a treatment group, in which the participants contributed to the antismoking campaign by posting their own campaign ideas and information they found through mediated and interpersonal communication. The findings show that interactive communication catalyzes the participants’ information searching behaviors through diverse communication channels. In turn, increased media use plays a crucial role in changing their attitudes and perceived social norms about smoking behaviors, and eventually reducing smoking intention. This study affirms that the theory of planned behavior is effective in predicting behavioral intention and demonstrates the usefulness of a multitheoretical approach in interactive campaign research on social media.