The role of independent directors on financial reporting quality: a review of previous research

Treball Final de Grau en Finances i Comptabilitat. Codi: FC1049. Curs 2013-2014As a result of recent national and international financial scandals, the financial information published by companies has often lost its credibility and transparency. In an attempt to regain confidence in the information produced and released by companies, a series of codes of good corporate governance have been published, with one of their main recommendations being that the Board of Directors be composed of external directors, particularly independent directors, given the role they can play in ensuring the production of quality financial information. Independent directors are those who, appointed for their professional and personal qualities, can perform their duties without being influenced by direct relationships with the company, its significant shareholders or managers. Therefore, this paper aims to review the literature which refers to the impact that independent directors on the Board of Directors have on the quality of financial reporting. The results revealed by the studies have mostly shown a positive relationship between the tasks performed by such directors and the quality and integrity of accounting information. However, it should be emphasized that the results documented in the studies carried out in a Spanish and Anglo-Saxon context differ somewhat, which could be explained by the legal, cultural, social and corporate governance culture differences, amongst others, which exist between the two countries

Treatment needs and impact of oral health screening of athletes with intellectual disability in Belgium

Background: Special Olympics Special Smiles (SOSS) is an initiative created for oral health data collection and education in oral hygiene for athletes with an intellectual disability. The aims of this study were to evaluate treatment needs of participants of Special Olympics in Belgium 2013 in comparison with those from 2008 and to assess the impact of screening and referral within the SOSS in a group of athletes who participated in two consecutive events, 2012 and 2013. Methods: Data were collected following a standardized protocol developed by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Oral Health. Oral hygiene habits, treatment urgency and reports of oral pain, gingival signs, sealants, untreated caries, missing and filled teeth were recorded. Data analysis of data from 2013 consisted in descriptive statistics followed by the analysis of the data by univariable and multivariable logistic regression. This data was compared with data from 2008 published by Leroy et al., 2012 using Chi square tests. Data from athletes who participated in both Special Olympics events (2012 and 2013) were compared using Exact McNemar's test and Chi-square test for homogeneity of proportions. The level of significance for all tests was set at a p-value < 0.05. Results: A total of 627 athletes with intellectual disability participated to the SOSS program in 2013, while 132 athletes met the inclusion criteria of being a participant at both SO Belgium 2012 and 2013. The prevalence of gingival signs was 44.3 % in 2013, slightly higher than in 2008 (42.4 %). The burden of untreated decay affected 27.1 % of the population showing a net increase in comparison to 2008 (20.9 %). McNemar's test and Chi-square test revealed that there were no statistically significant differences in the proportions of all compared parameters between 2012 and 2013. Conclusion: Special Olympics results from 2013 indicate a considerable unmet treatment need among Belgian Special Olympics Athletes, persistent from 2008 to 2013. Moreover, SO intervention had no impact in the oral health of athletes who participated in 2012 and 2013 events. Continuous efforts for preventive and restorative oral health care are needed for this population

Does a CDO enhance Company Inventiveness? An Empirical Study on new Managerial Positions and Innovation

Digital technology has advanced rapidly in the last few years. Consequently, companies need to transform their business and operations models to keep up with these advances, placing digital transformation (DT) as a top priority. Beyond the possible effects of using more digital technologies, is more innovation. One way in which companies can stimulate DT is by creating a new top-management position, the Chief Digital Officer (CDO). Although evidence has been found about the relationship between digital technologies and innovation, the role of the CDO as an enabler has been less studied. We use difference-in-difference estimators to measure this effect, using a unique dataset with 39 companies that appointed a CDO and 39 comparable companies that did not as a control group. We find a significant increase in patent filings as early as the first year CDO’s appointment. We find evidence that a managerial role can have an effect on innovation

Pertinência da criação de um modelo geral de aceitação de tecnologia aplicado a terapias

Introdução: Conhecer os principais fatores que afetam a aceitação e utilização da tecnologia nos diferentes utilizadores e em diferentes contextos de saúde pode contribuir para o sucesso na implementação de novas ferramentas tecnológicas que permitam ajudar ao desempenho das diferentes tarefas. Objetivo: O presente estudo tem como objetivo obter a opinião de peritos na área de aceitação da tecnologia em contextos de saúde, relativa à pertinência de criação de um modelo geral de eTerapia que possa ser aplicado a diferentes utilizadores e com diferentes tarefas. Método: Inquérito por questionário a autores de literatura científica na área de aceitação da tecnologia em contextos de saúde. Resultados: Os resultados permitem verificar que seria importante a criação de um modelo de aceitação de tecnologia aplicado a terapias, que pudesse ser aplicado a diferentes tipos de utilizadores e que considerasse a diversidade de tarefas

The Effect of Talker Identity on Dialect Processing

Recent work has suggested that bilingual listeners use the visual identity of the talker to form expectations about the language the talker will use, which then facilitates lexical processing. In the current study, we extend this work to see if there are analogous effects of talker identity on dialect processing, and whether the impact of talker identity depends on the regional background of the listener. Six actresses recorded stimuli in two dialectal guises, performing Southern US accents and standardized, regionally nonspecific US accents. Participants were introduced to the actresses via video as having one particular dialect type (familiarization), and then later did an audio-visual lexical decision task (test) where some trials would be dialectally congruent and some trials would be dialectally incongruent with their earlier experience of that talker. US English listeners from both Southern and non-Southern dialect regions participated. Listeners who self-reported having (Southern) accents were impacted by talker dialect congruence, performing best with a given dialect when it matched their experience of that talker. However, other listeners were not impacted by congruency, performing better with standardized tokens regardless. This mirrors findings in bilingualism research that early bilinguals are more sensitive to talker language pairing than monolinguals or late bilinguals. We ran three additional conditions without video and/or without a familiarization stage to confirm the importance of each component to observing the effect. Generally, without familiarization, Southern US listeners performed worse with Southern vs. standardized tokens, suggesting that without strong contextual cues indicating otherwise, these listeners may expect standardized tokens in experimental settings. There is some evidence that all listeners were somewhat sensitive to talker identity even from voice alone

Continuity results with respect to domain perturbation for the fractional p-Laplacian

In this paper, we give sufficient conditions on the approximating domains in order to obtain the continuity of solutions for the fractional p-Laplacian. These conditions are given in terms of the fractional capacity of the approximating domains.Fil: Baroncini, Carla Antonella. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Investigaciones Matemáticas "Luis A. Santaló". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Matemáticas "Luis A. Santaló"; ArgentinaFil: Fernandez Bonder, Julian. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Investigaciones Matemáticas "Luis A. Santaló". Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Matemáticas "Luis A. Santaló"; ArgentinaFil: Spedaletti, Juan Francisco. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto de Matemática Aplicada de San Luis "Prof. Ezio Marchi". Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Ciencias Físico, Matemáticas y Naturales. Instituto de Matemática Aplicada de San Luis "Prof. Ezio Marchi"; Argentin

Desarrollo de actividad profesional en el Estudio Jurídico Duran & Alarcón de la ciudad del Cusco

El presente trabajo de suficiencia profesional se centra específicamente en la labor y en el día a día de quienes laboramos en la defensa material de las personas que se ven involucradas dentro de un proceso judicial; específicamente dentro de un proceso penal, el cual vendría a ser la especialidad del Estudio Jurídico Duran & Alarcon. Así mismo, se centra en las labores que como asistente legal vengo desempeñando desde mi ingreso a la ya mencionada institución y cómo día a día vamos investigando, organizando y analizando diversos escenarios en cuanto a la defensa material de víctimas y de imputados

Schizophrenic patients’ expectations facing technology in a cognitive rehabilitation therapy environment

eTherapy can bring numerous advantages, however people have to adapt to a different discourse. It would be interesting to know patients’ expectations regarding to this type of therapy. A questionnaire was developed with the most studied factors proved to have an important role in technology acceptance. The results allowed highlighting some important factors that influence behavioral intention, and made it possible to verify that some of these factors may be linked or influence others among different dimensions