The impact of service quality on behavioural intentions : the perspective of customers of private healthcare clinics in Sabah

This research was conducted to study the influence of perceived service quality on behavioural intentions of customers of private healthcare clinics in Sabah, Malaysia. Zeithaml et aI.'s (1996) theoretical framework of behavioural intentions was used in the measurement of intentions, whereas the five dimensions of SERVQUAL (Parasuraman et al, 1988) was used in the measurement of perceived service quality. The results of the study provide strong support for empathy to predict customers' behavioural intentions and a weaker support for tangibles, reliability, and assurance to predict it. Contrary to studies made on the banking sector in Malaysia (Ndubisi, 2003a), the result was quite unexpected, which maybe due in part to the local setting and diverse cultures. Responsiveness had no influence on any of the behavioural intentions dimensions. The current research provides a strong support for the ability of perceived service quality (empathy) to predict behavioural intentions in the context of private healthcare clinics In Sabah, Malaysia. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed

Earnings smoothing and CEO cash bonus compensation: The role of mandatory derivatives disclosure policy

© 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd., part of Springer Nature. Motivated by intense controversy over mandatory derivative instruments disclosure required by the Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No. 133 (SFAS 133), this study is to examine whether the sensitivity of CEOs compensation to earnings smoothing changes following the adoption of SFAS 133. Moreover, the study investigates whether the sensitivity of CEOs compensation to earnings smoothing after the implementation of SFAS 133 varies with the level of market volatility. Using the correlation between the changes in discretionary accruals and the changes in pre-discretionary income as a measure of earnings smoothing and dollar value of a bonus earned by the CEOs during the year as a measure of CEOs compensation, the empirical evidence reveals that while earnings smoothing and CEOs compensation are positively related, the positive relation is stronger after the adoption of SFAS 133. The study also finds that the positive association between earnings smoothing and CEOs compensation after the adoption of SFAS 133 is larger when the market volatility is higher. This study provides direct evidence on the impact of the adoption of SFAS 133 on the sensitivity of CEO compensation to earnings smoothing and sheds light on current literature on the effects of accounting regulations, earnings smoothing, and compensation plan. Moreover, this study helps standard setters to better understand the trade-off between transparency and compensation plans

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio