Audit sampling strategies and frauds: an evidence from Africa

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate how professionals such as accountants, auditors, senior civil servants and academics perceive the use of audit sampling strategies adopted by professionals to increase detection rates of frauds and corruption within the public sector in Africa. It also examines the respondents’ perceived values regarding the reasons for committing frauds, types of fraud and corruption, as well as the aspects of audit sampling strategies to tackle frauds. Design/methodology/approach: This research uses non-parametric statistics and logistic regression to analyse the respondents’ opinions regarding the state of frauds and corruption in Africa (particularly in Tunisia and non-Tunisia countries), the common factors behind people committing frauds, including the types of frauds and corruption and the respondents’ opinions on the use of audit sampling strategies (non-random and random) to examine the instances of frauds and corruption. Findings: The findings indicate that most respondents prefer to use non-probabilistic audit sampling rather than more robust sampling strategies such as random sampling and systematic random sampling to detect frauds and corruption. In addition, although there are some minor statistical differences between the countries in terms of the respondents’ perceived values on skimming fraud and on the use of audit random sampling to tackle rampant corruption in Africa, the overall findings indicate that opinions do not significantly differ between the respondents from Tunisia and other countries in terms of the types of fraud, the reasons for committing fraud and the auditing sampling strategies used to investigate the frauds. Research limitations/implications: This research serves as an analytical exploratory study to instigate further audit sampling research to combat rampant fraud and corruption in the public sector in Africa. Originality/value: There are few or non-existent studies investigating the application of audit sampling strategies in Africa countries, particularly to examine the application of audit random sampling and audit non-random sampling strategies to detect fraudulent activities and corruption. Correspondingly, this research carries strategic implications for accountants and auditors to successfully detect fraudulent activities and corruption in Africa

Exploring rationales for branding a university: Should we be seeking to measure branding in UK universities?

Although branding is now widespread among UK universities, the application of branding principles in the higher education sector is comparatively recent and may be controversial for internal audiences who question its suitability and efficiency. This paper seeks to investigate how and whether the effectiveness of branding activity in the higher education sector should be evaluated and measured, through exploratory interviews with those who often drive it; UK University marketing professionals. Conclusions suggest that university branding is inherently complex and therefore application of commercial approaches may be over simplistic. Whilst marketing professionals discuss challenges they do not necessarily have a consistent view of the objectives of branding activity although all were able to clearly articulate branding objectives for their university, including both qualitative and, to some extent, quantitative metrics. Some measures of the real value of branding activity are therefore suggested but a key debate is perhaps whether the objectives and role of branding in higher education needs to be clarified, and a more consistent view of appropriate metrics reached? Various challenges in implementing branding approaches are also highlighted

A quadripartite approach to analysing young British South Asian adults’ dual cultural identity

Adopting an acculturation perspective, this article explicates the duality of young British South Asian adults’ cultural dispositions. In so doing, it examines the complex dialectic processes that influence their acculturation strategies. By using a maximum variation sampling method, respondents from six major cities in Great Britain were interviewed for this study. The findings show that young British South Asian adults exhibit attributes of both of their ancestral and host cultures. Their dual cultural identity is constituted due to four major reasons: consonances with ancestral culture, situational constraints, contextual requirements, and conveniences. This quadripartite perspective informs a non-context specific theoretical model of acculturation. Marketing managers seeking to serve this diaspora market (and others) can utilise this theoretical framework in order to more-fully comprehend diaspora members’ religiosity, social, communal and familial bonding and other cultural dispositions and, moreover, their manifestations in their day-to-day lives

Influence of country and city images on students’ perception of host universities and their satisfaction with the assigned destination for their exchange programmes

ABSTRACT: This research focuses on the effect that country image, city image and university image has on students’ a priori satisfaction with the assigned destination for their international exchange programme (Bachelor and Master). In particular, this study establishes six hypotheses related to the causal relationships among the different typologies of image and their effects on students’ satisfaction with the assigned destination to study at least one semester in a host university. In order to contrast these hypotheses, a quantitative research was carried out in the Spanish city of Santander (Spain), by obtaining a sample of 245 international students who participated in an exchange programme at the University of Cantabria. The research findings are: (1) students’ satisfaction with the assigned destination is positively influenced by the university image; (2) the university image is positively influenced by the city image; and (3) the city image is positively influenced by the country image

International marketing of British education: research on the students' perception and the UK market penetration

The study functions as marketing intelligence inputs for the UK Government, the British Council as well as academic marketing planners for constructing their marketing opportunities-threats audits, it investigates international students� perception about the UK education and it researches UK performance in the world markets for international education. UK education has been known to be the best in the world. For many years, the UK universities have enjoyed a high reputation and have benefited in accelerating its market penetration worldwide. Unfortunately, this superiority has begun to decline. Other countries are strongly emerging with their quality education. The study shows that UK competitors achieved a remarkable growth of their international students' enrolment while the UK achieves only a marginal growth with declining market penetration abroad. The findings confirmed the central importance of pricing, product and promotional variables in designing and marketing UK education abroad

Exploring the evolvement of environmental management accounting practices for achieving SMEs' sustainability in an emerging economy

It has been recognised that the information derived from management accounting practices (MAPs) is invaluable for the strategic decision-making processes of businesses and thereby enables better environmental performance. Businesses have recognised MAPs as a viable approach to drive their businesses towards sustainability. Hence, this study was carried out in an emerging economy i.e., Sri Lanka where the aim of this research is to explore the application of MAPs within small-medium enterprises (SMEs) for managing ecological issues. Two qualitative studies, netnography followed by semi structured interviews, were implemented to obtain an in-depth perspective of the application of MAPs and their impact of managing ecological issues of SMEs. The findings imply that although MAPs assist SMEs for their internal control in terms of ecological costing, there remain some challenges for SMEs especially regarding waste management owing to other barriers