The determinants of auditor switching in China

Auditor plays a crucial role in providing credibility of financial disclosure and mitigating the agency problems. However, there is high trend of auditor switching in China. This could lead to a series of negative effects to both company and society. Although there were many past empirical studies examined the determinants of auditor switching, those studies were conducted in different countries with different national conditions which may not appropriate and suitable to China context. Thus, it is necessary to conduct this study to investigate the determinants of auditor switching and to examine the relationship between determinants of auditor switching in China context. This study used data of A-share listed companies from Shanghai Stock Exchange. The sample of this study consists of 182 listed companies from the period of year 2012 to 2014. Moreover, this study employed Logistic Regression Model to examine the determinants of auditor switching. This study measured four determinants, which are going concern issue, ownership concentration, leverage, and big audit firm. The finding shows that big audit firm is significantly and negatively related to auditor switching. Therefore, this study recommended that based on the special national conditions of China, more variables could be investigated in the future research and the implications of auditor switching, such as implications of auditor switching on audit quality or audit independence, could be investigate

Explaining the Effect of Incentives and Control Mechanisms on Information Technology Usage: A Theoretical Model and an Empirical Test

Current theories of information technology (IT) usage do not include the role of managerial incentives and control mechanisms in motivating individual IT usage behavior. Drawing on agency theory in the microeconomics literature, this paper develops a principal-agent model (PAM) of intraorganizational IT usage which addresses this issue. This model is empirically validated using data collected from a laboratory experiment. PAM and TAM (technology acceptance model) variables are then combined within a TPB (theory of planned behavior) framework to propose an integrated model of IT usage. A comparison of the explanatory power of PAM, TAM, and the integrated model indicates that explanation of IT usage can be increased by adding incentives and control as additional determinants of behavioral intention, over and above the attitudinal variables in TAM

Information technology and the 'new managerial work'

Includes bibliographical references (p. 62-73).Supported by the Center for Coordination Science and the Center for Telecommunications Management at MIT.Erik Brynjolfsson

The impact of Cloud Computing adoption on IT Service Accounting approaches – A Customer Perspective on IaaS Pricing Models

Cloud computing has been recently a trending topic beyond the technological field, due to its implementation and expansion thanks to the internet revolution. Although it has reached end-users’ hands during the past two years, the technology has been used for a longer period in the business world. In a scenario where cost-cutting strategies and start-up companies seem to have an increasing importance in global economy, cloud computing has been one of the pillars of many business’ success in recent times. Companies like Netflix, Instagram or Spotify are recent examples of how an enterprise can grow spectacularly quick and become a market-leader basing its business activity on the cloud technology. This master thesis tries to explain how companies should behave when acquiring a cloud service. Due to the wideness of the cloud market, the specific focus of the work is infrastructure as a service, and pay-as-you-go model was chosen for the study due to the novelty it introduces in the information technology market. Apart from technical details, the economic point of view of cloud computing has also been researched, as not only providers care about how their service have to be priced, but also companies want to predict the expenditure to make in their brand new information service. Through the pages of the work, the predecessors of cloud computing are presented as well as the theories appeared to explain its costs and accounting aspects, to finally explain how cloud computing changed the role. After a brief introduction to cloud computing and its different service models, a market analysis of different providers is performed, to extract the patterns and peculiarities of the actual situation of cloudmarket. Transferring the knowledge obtained in the market analysis, an accounting model is developed, based on costs categories and factors and a metering framework. Finally, a case study is performed applying the model to the market situation extracted from the market analysis.Outgoin

Learning from "shadow security": understanding non-compliant behaviours to improve information security management

This thesis examines employee interaction with information security in large organisations. It starts by revisiting past research in user-centred security and security management, identifying three research questions that examine (1) employee understanding of the need for security, (2) the challenges security introduces to their work, together with their responses to those challenges, and (3) how to use the emerging knowledge to improve existing organisational security implementations. Preliminary examination of an available interview data set, led to the emergence of three additional research questions, aiming to identify (4) employee actions after bypassing organisational security policy, (5) their response to perceived lack of security support from the organisation, and (6) the impact of trust relationships in the organisation on their security behaviours. The research questions were investigated in two case studies inside two large organisations. Different data collection (200 interviews and 2129 surveys) and analysis techniques (thematic analysis and grounded theory) were combined to improve outcome validity and allow for generalisability of the findings. The primary contribution of this thesis is the identification of a new paradigm for understanding employee responses to high-friction security, the shadow security: employees adapt existing mechanisms or processes, or deploy other self-devised solutions, when they consider the productivity impact of centrally-procured security as unacceptable. An additional contribution is the identification of two trust relationships in organisational environments that influence employee security behaviours: organisationemployee trust (willingness of the organisation to remain exposed to the actions of its employees, expecting them to behave securely), and inter-employee trust (willingness of employees to act in a way that renders themselves or the organisation vulnerable to the actions of another member of the organisation). The above contributions led to the creation of a structured process to better align security with organisational productive activity, together with a set of relevant metrics to assess the effectiveness of attempted improvements. The thesis concludes by presenting a case study attempting to apply the above process in an organisation, also presenting the emerging lessons for both academia and industry

An agency theory view of the management of end-user computing

"Last revised: October 1989.

AN AGENCY THEORY VIEW OF THE MANAGEMENT OF END-USER COMPUTING

The growth in end-user computing (EUC) in organizations and its implications for the degree of centralization of the information services function have led to the need for a theory that will assist in the management of this process. This paper employs microcconomics and, in particular, agency theory to describe the development of EUC in organizations. The results suggest that agency theory provides useful insights and significant normative implications for the management of computing in organizations