Audit exemption and the demand for voluntary audit: A comparative study of the UK and Denmark

This is the accepted version of the following article: Collis, J. (2010), Audit Exemption and the Demand for Voluntary Audit: A Comparative Study of the UK and Denmark. International Journal of Auditing, 14: 211–231, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1099-1123.2010.00415.x/abstract.This study investigates the sufficiency of turnover as a surrogate for demand for voluntary audit and compares the determinants in the UK and Denmark. Empirical data for the study were drawn from government surveys of the directors of small private companies in both countries, which were based on the same research instrument, Bivariate tests support the hypothesised effects of turnover and a range of firm-specific factors suggested by economic rationality and agency theory. The main contribution of the study is the finding that turnover alone is not a sufficient surrogate for the costs and benefits of audit. The main predictors are turnover and a slightly different combination of management and agency factors in each country. The study provides a model that can be tested in other jurisdictions and its findings should be of interest to the accountancy profession and national regulators planning to introduce or revise audit exemption for small companies

The evolution of a national research plan for computers in education in The Netherlands

This paper describes the evolution of a national research plan for computers and education in The Netherlands. This approach was initiated in 1983 and includes two phases: one from 1984 until 1988 and one from 1989 until 1992. The paper describes the research plans for the second phase, based upon the experiences of the first, and draws some general conclusions about the development of national research plans for computers in education

Anxious Records: Race, Imperial Belonging, and the Black Literary Imagination, 1900 - 1946

This dissertation excavates the print and archive culture of diasporic and continental Africans who forged a community in Cape Town between 1900 and 1946. Although the writers I consider write after the Victorian era, I use the term "black Victorian" to preserve their own political investments in a late nineteenth-century understanding of liberal empire. With the abolition of slavery in 1834 across the British Empire and the Cape Colony's qualified nonracial franchise of 1853, Cape Town, and District Six in particular, took on new significance in black radicalism. By writing periodicals, pamphlets and autobiographies, black Victorians hoped to write themselves into the culture of empire. These recovered texts read uncannily, unsettling the construction of official archives as well as contemporary canons of South African, African and diasporic African literatures. By turning to the traffic of ideas between Africa and its diaspora in Cape Town, this dissertation recovers a vision of (black) modernity that had not yet succumbed to the formulations of anti-imperial nationalisms

Survey of UK speech and language therapists’ assessment and treatment practices for people with progressive dysarthria

Background: Dysarthria knowledge is predominantly impairment-based. As a result, speech and language therapists (SLTs) have traditionally adopted impairment-focused management practices. However, guidance for best practice suggests that SLTs should consider the client holistically, including the impact of dysarthria beyond the impairment. Aims: To investigate the current assessment and treatment practices used by UK SLTs with clients with progressive dysarthria and to identify whether these satisfy the needs of SLTs in their everyday practice. To investigate the extent to which they consider oromotor abilities, intelligibility, functional communication, participation and interaction to be important regarding assessment and treatment decisions. To explore whether management decisions are affected by level of clinical experience or settings in which SLTs work. Methods & Procedures: An online survey of UK SLTs working with adults with progressive dysarthria. Outcomes & Results: A total of 119 SLTs completed the survey. Respondents considered that targeting the levels of impairment, activity and participation are important in the management of clients with progressive dysarthria, as recommended by clinical guidelines and recent research. However a particularly high proportion of respondents reported the use of impairment-based assessments. Respondents reported lacking the necessary tools to target interaction in assessment and intervention. The intervention that respondents use with clients varies according to the progressive disorder and dysarthria severity. There is evidence for a trend that less experienced SLTs and those working predominantly in hospital-based settings focus on the impairment, whereas more SLTs with more experience and those based in predominantly community-based settings look beyond the impairment. Conclusions & Implications: The values held by SLTs match guideline recommendations for best practice, however the clinical reality is that the assessment of progressive dysarthria remains predominantly impairment-focused. New tools need to be developed and integrated into practice to target interaction in assessment and intervention, to reduce the gap between best practice recommendations and clinical reality. Ongoing research into the effectiveness of SLT intervention with clients with progressive dysarthria is required to guide clinical management decisions

Material growth and characterization for solid state devices

Manganese was used as the dopant for p-type InGaAs layers grown on semi-insulating (Fe-doped) and n-type (Sn-doped) InP substrates. Optical, electrical (Hall) and SIMS measurements were used to characterize the layers. Mn-diffusion into the substrate (during the growth of In GaAs) was observed only when Fe-doped substrates were used. Quaternary layers of two compositions corresponding to wavelengths (energy gaps) of approximated 1.52 micrometers were successfully grown at a constant temperature of 640 C and InP was grown in the temperature range of 640 C to 655 C. A study of the effect of pulses on the growth velocity of InP indicated no significant change as long as the average applied current was kept constant. A system for depositing films of Al2O3 by the pyrolysis of aluminum isopropoxide was designed and built. Deposited layers on Si were characterized with an ellipsometer and exhibited indices of refraction between 1.582 and 1.622 for films on the order of 3000 A thick. Undoped and p-type (Mn-doped) InGaAs epitaxial layers were also grown on Fe-doped InP substrates through windows in sputtered SiO2 (3200 A thick) layers

What Do We Know About Corporate Headquarters? A Review, Integration, and Research Agenda

During the past five decades, scholars have studied the corporate headquarters (CHQ) – the multidivisional firm’s central organizational unit. The purpose of this article is to review the diverse and fragmented literature on the CHQ and to identify the variables of interest, the dominant relationships, and the contributions. We integrate, for the first time, the existing knowledge of the CHQ into an organizing framework. Based on a synthesis of the literature, we identify major shortcomings and gaps, and present an agenda for future research that contributes to our understanding of the CHQ and the multidivisional firm

The Size and Composition of Corporate Headquarters in Multinational Companies: Empirical Evidence

Based on a six-country survey of nearly 250 multinationals (MNCs), this paper is the first empirical analysis to describe the size and composition of MNC headquarters and to account for differences among them. Findings are as follows: MNC corporate headquarters are more involved in "obligatory" and value creating and control functions than in operational activities; there are no systematic differences in the determinants of the size and composition of corporate headquarters between MNCs and purely domestic companies; and as the geographic scope of an MNC increases, two offsetting phenomena occur—headquarters decrease their influence over operational units that, ceteris paribus, reduces the size of headquarters, but the relative size of obligatory functions at headquarters increases with increased country heterogeneity. The net effect is that the size of corporate headquarters expands as MNC geographic scope increases. The notion of "administrative heritage" is validated as MNCs from different countries have substantially different corporate headquarters—U.S. headquarters are large (255 median staff for a 20,000 FTE MNC) and European headquarters smaller (124). Implications are drawn that countries will lose activities if domestic firms are acquired by foreign MNCs, and that MNCs need to allow more subsidiary autonomy as their geographic scope increases

Unintended consequences of changes in the regulatory landscape on the statutory audit processNie

We examine the effect of changes in the regulatory environment on the conduct of financial statement audits in a European setting. These changes include the adoption of risk-based auditing, new Audit Risk Standards and increased scrutiny of audit quality by a new, co-ordinated oversight body in each Member State. We investigate this by analysing the audit hours and fees and their determinants for clients of Big N audit firms in Finland in 1996 and 2010. Our results show that audit fees and audit effort by senior auditors were generally higher for high risk clients in 2010 than in 1996. Second, we find that the relationship in 1996 between the client being owner-managed and lower audit hours for both senior and junior auditors is absent in 2010. This supports our argument that the increased auditor scepticism has increased audit effort for owner-managed firms. Third, we find that the average number of junior staff hours increased between 1996 and 2010, but the variance across engagements declined. In contrast, senior auditor hours (and total audit hours) decreased, but the variance across engagements increased. This supports the view that risk-based auditing has increased the efficiency of audits. However, it suggests that the general increase in regulation and the tightening of audit standards, reinforced by the new quality inspections, have led to less emphasis on processes requiring professional judgment and more emphasis on compliance with rules. These unintended consequences should be of interest to the auditing profession and policy makers

Facial expression of affect in children with Cornelia de Lange Syndrome

Background: Individuals with Cornelia de Lange syndrome (CdLS) have been reported to show comparatively high levels of flat and negative affect but there have been no empirical evaluations. In this study, we use an objective measure of facial expression to compare affect in CdLS with that seen in Cri du Chat syndrome (CDC) and a group of individuals with a mixed aetiology of intellectual disabilities (ID). Method: Observations of three groups of 14 children with CdLS, CDC and mixed aetiology of ID were undertaken when a one-to-one interaction was ongoing. Results: There was no significant difference between the groups in the duration of positive, negative or flat affect. However, the CdLS group displayed a significantly lower ratio of positive to negative affect than children in the other groups. Discussion: This difference partially confirms anecdotal observations and could be due to the expression of pain caused by health problems associated with CdLS or neurological expression of the CdLS gene in facial muscles related to expression of positive affect. However, further research is needed to directly test these possible associations. </p

Elastic Pekeris waveguide normal mode solution comparisons against laboratory data

Following the derivation presented by Press and Ewing [Geophysics 15, 426-446 (1950)], a normal mode solution for the Pekeris waveguide problem with an elastic bottom is outlined. The analytic solution is benchmarked against data collected in an experiment performed at the Naval Research Laboratory [Collis et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 122, 1987-1993 (2007)]. Comparisons reveal a close match between the analytic solution and experimental data. Results are strongly dependent on the accuracy of the horizontal wavenumbers for the modes, and horizontal wavenumber spectra are compared against those from the experimental data. (C) 2012 Acoustical Society of AmericaNational Science Foundation Division of Graduate Education [DGE-0638719