Culture and Corporate Governance Statement Disclosure

This study examines the influence of culture on Corporate Governance Statement disclosure in the annual reports of the major airline companies in Malaysia and Australia. The cultural research of Hofstede (1980) and the accounting value dimensions of Gray (1988) imply that Malaysian Airlines, from a large power distance country, will disclose less Corporate Governance Statement information in their annual report than Qantas Airlines, from a small power distance country. The results obtained from a comparison of the differences showed Malaysian Airlines disclosing more pieces of additional information in certain areas than Qantas Airlines and vice versa. However, the net result was that Qantas Airlines provided more pieces of additional information than Malaysia Airlines. This result supports Hofstede (1980) and Gray (1988). The implication for regulators of both countries is that while these culturally different countries do not disclose completely identical information they both suggest fruitful areas of additional corporate governance disclosure. Acknowledgements: The authors gratefully appreciate the helpful comments of the sessions moderator and participants at the International Conference on Corporate Governance and Reporting, Malaysia (2004) on an earlier draft of the paper.

Overseas Accounting Students in Australia and Performance in Literary Work: An Empirical Test

This study compared the performance of local and overseas students, studying in a Western Australian university, in respect of both a literary and practical component of an examination question associated with a second year accounting unit. An analysis of the results, using an analysis of variance, indicated that language background for these two groups of students was a significant discriminating variable. This result lends support for the claim by the large Australian-based major public accounting firms that overseas accounting graduates lack language skill, which is, in turn, cited by the firms as a basis for not employing the graduates. Notwithstanding the extreme importance and implications of this research for concerned stakeholders, including educators, educational institutions, graduates and employers, and government migration policy, the research findings should be treated as tentative and further research is suggested.Accounting education, International students, Literary performance

Corporate social disclosure in the timber industry in Western Australia 1989-1998 : A test of legitimacy theory

In recent years, accounting researchers have turned their attention to media agenda setting theory in addition to legitimacy theory as the theoretical framework for researching voluntary social disclosure in the annual report of a company. Their research has tended to show a significant relationship between the extent and change in the number of press media social reports and the extent and level of social disclosure in the annual report of a company based on the same classification of Social items. They have also explored the existence of a time lag between the number of press media reports and disclosure in the annual report. A critical review of this literature suggested a number of gaps, some of which were acknowledged, present in this research. The purpose of this study is to replicate, refine and/or extend this recent research in a number of important directions

PERBAIKAN SISTEM PEMBONGKARAN BATUBARA PADA PT X MENGGUNAKAN METODE SIMULASI

PT X merupakan salah satu perusahaan yang bergerak pada sektor pertambangan. Berdasarkan IshikawaDiagram, PT X memiliki permasalahan pada salah satu sistem pembongkaran berupa bottleneck yangmenyebabkan keterlambatan proses pembongkaran. Keterlambatan proses bongkar menyebabkan deviasiSOP (batas waktu bongkar) yang berakibat pada penundaan jadwal pembongkaran kereta api berikutnyadan berakibat pada kehilangan profit. Metode dalam penyelesaian masalah ini adalah dengan melakukanpercobaan pada model sistem dibandingkan pengujian pada sistem aktual. Percobaan pada model sistembersifat fleksibel dan mengurangi kemungkinan kegagalan ketika diaplikasikan pada sistem aktualsehingga dapat digunakan untuk merepresentasikan letak permasalahan atau penyebab dari bottleneck,kemudian ditemukan bahwa bottleneck terjadi pada salah satu conveyor yang mengangkut batubara.Dalam penyelesaian masalah tersebut, telah dirancang beberapa alternatif perbaikan berupa pengubahanvariabel pada sistem berupa kecepatan dan ukuran conveyor berdasarkan batasan yang dimilikiperusahaan dan supplier untuk perbaikan. Pada akhir penelitian, telah dipilih satu alternatif terbaik yangdapat mengurangi lama waktu menunggu atau yang disebut dengan bottleneck hingga 27,42% dari sistemaktual

Overseas accounting students in Australia and performance in literary work : an empirical test

This study compared the performance of local and overseas students, studying in a Western Australian university, in respect of both a literary and practical component of an examination question associated with a second year accounting unit. An analysis of the results, using an analysis of variance, indicated that language background for these two groups of students was a significant discriminating variable. This result lends support for the claim by the large Australian-based major public accounting firms that overseas accounting graduates lack language skill, which is, in turn, cited by the firms as a basis for not employing the graduates. Notwithstanding the extreme importance and implications of this research for concerned stakeholders, including educators, educational institutions, graduates and employers, and government migration policy, the research findings should be treated as tentative and further research is suggested

Do Buyer-Size Discounts Depend on the Curvature of the Surplus Function? Experimental Tests of Bargaining Models

A number of recent theoretical papers have shown that for buyer-size discounts to emerge in a bargaining model, the total surplus function over which parties bargain must have certain nonlinearities. We test the theory in an experimental setting in which a seller bargains with a number of buyers of different sizes. We generate nonlinearities in the surplus function by varying the shape of the seller's cost function. Our results strongly support the theory. As predicted, large-buyer discounts emerge only in the case of increasing marginal cost, corresponding to a concave surplus function.buyer-size discounts, large buyer, experimental economics.

Lease Accounting in Australia: Further Empirical Evidence

Key words: Australia; Accounting standard; Efficient contracting; Lease accounting; Signalling The objective of this study is to examine the economic factors motivating Australian listed lessee firms to adopt capitalization of finance leases policy from 1985 to 1987 as permitted by the transitional provision of AAS 17. Capitalization is considered as the preferred accounting policy for finance leases compared to footnote disclosure. Adopting a joint efficient contracting and quality signaling perspective, support for the research hypotheses would be construed as suggesting that capitalization is a means for lessee firms to reduce or mitigate agency and/or political costs and concurrently as a signal to the market that they are better quality firms. The sample consists of3l4 lessee firms; 67 firms as capitalizers and 247 firms as non-capitalizers. A pooled multivariate cross—sectional analysis for 1985 to 1987 was performed incorporating sensitivity analysis to determine the “best” logistic regression model. This model was then assessed to determine its validity and predictive efficacy. the results provide evidence that lessee firms adopted the capitalization as response to the media attention as being politically visible firms and concurrently as a signal to the market that they are better quality firms. The evidence also suggests limited usefulness of a lengthy transitional period

Separated Fringe Packet Observations with the CHARA Array III. The Very High Eccentricity Binary HR 7345

After an eleven year observing campaign, we present the combined visual{spectroscopic orbit of the formerly unremarkable bright star HR 7345 (HD 181655, HIP 94981, GJ 754.2). Using the Separated Fringe Packet (SFP) method with the CHARA Array, we were able to determine a difficult to complete orbital period of 331.609 +/- 0.004 days. The 11 month period causes the system to be hidden from interferometric view behind the Sun for 3 years at a time. Due to the high eccentricity orbit of about 90% of a year, after 2018 January the periastron phase will not be observable again until late 2021. Hindered by its extremely high eccentricity of 0.9322 +/- 0.0001, the double-lined spectroscopic phase of HR 7345 is observable for 15 days. Such a high eccentricity for HR 7345 places it among the most eccentric systems in catalogs of both visual and spectroscopic orbits. For this system we determine nearly identical component masses of 0.941 +/- 0.076 Msun and 0.926 +/- 0.075 Msun as well as an orbital parallax of 41.08 +/- 0.77 mas.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, 4 table