Stakeholder Salience And Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence From Three Companies

In this paper, we examine the corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts of three socially conscious companies over time by employing Mitchell et al.’s (1997) stakeholder salience theory.  Mitchell et al. maintain that the extent to which managers pay attention to the interests of various stakeholder groups is based on the power, legitimacy, and urgency of the claims of each group.  Using these attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency, we analyze how the CSR activities of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, Malden Mills, Inc., and Nova Chemicals Company have changed over time.  Our investigation revealed that attributes of stakeholder salience shift over a firm’s life cycle, and therefore levels of CSR activities change as well.  For these firms, we found that power is the primary attribute of stakeholder salience driving CSR.  That is, in order for a firm to engage in purposeful CSR activities, the stakeholder(s) pursuing a CSR agenda must possess the power to impose such an agenda on management.  Based on the results of our analysis, we conclude that without power, legitimacy and urgency may not provide sufficient stakeholder salience to promote CSR activities.&nbsp

Institutional Impediments To Voluntary Ethics Measurement Systems: An International Perspective

Despite numerous appeals in the business ethics literature for a multiple-stakeholder perspective to corporate governance, in practice the widespread adoption of voluntary ethics measurement systems that consider multiple stakeholders remains elusive.  In this paper, we employ an institutional economics framework to examine the legal environment in several English-speaking countries in order to determine potential constraints that might cause managers to avoid the adoption of such systems.  Our findings indicate that in British Commonwealth countries (1) the courts tend to view stockholders as the primary corporate constituency group and (2) there is a lack of documentary privilege.  Therefore, any internally generated metrics on ethics and corporate social responsibility matters could potentially be either trivialized or used against the corporation in court proceedings.  Before adopting a voluntary ethics measurement system, managers should be aware of these and other potential institutional constraints that may impede such efforts

Service Learning: A Valuable Experience

In this paper, we describe how our department recently incorporated a major service learning component into the curriculum. Specifically, we employed participation in the IRS’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program as an effective means of experiential and service learning for the past two years for Masters of Accountancy students. We designed a course devoted entirely to serving in a VITA program operated on a local Air Force base. Our experience confirms that service learning can be a powerful tool in teaching. It has enhanced our students’ academic and professional development. It has given significance to our mission and it has strengthened community relationships. However, recent developments have made it difficult for us to maintain this service learning project in its present form. It appears that we, like many other programs, must consider again how to implement service learning as part of our curriculum, but we will do so now with a greater appreciation and enthusiasm for its unique contributions to learning

Inherent Conflicts Of Interest In The Accounting Profession

In this paper, we critically examine three situations in the accounting/auditing profession in which conflicts of interest arise. Specifically, we describe conflicts of interest that occur (1) because audit fees are paid by the very companies being audited, (2) due to the tension built into accountants’ codes of professional ethics between the responsibility to maintain client confidentiality and the need to serve the public trust, and (3) because of most auditors’ perspective of who is their primary client. Based on our analysis, we conclude that these three inherent conflicts of interest, in the absence of some unforeseen revolutionary changes, are likely to persist within the auditing profession. We also conclude that attempts to mitigate some of these conflicts of interest through the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation have only been moderately successful. We therefore propose that audit professionals must learn to identify and manage the conflicts of interest that will likely remain a part of the profession for the indefinite future

Cultural Diversity, Country Size, And The IFRS Adoption Decision

In this paper, we empirically examine the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption decision of 61 countries in an attempt to determine why some countries have adopted IFRS while others, at least to this point in time, have chosen not to adopt.  In particular, we examine the influence of cultural diversity and country size on the adoption decision.  Our results indicate that the IFRS adoption decision is significantly related to the size of the country, while we are unable to document any cultural influences on the decision.  Our chief result is that larger countries are less likely to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards than small countries.  This result is consistent with the notion that larger countries have a well-established set of financial accounting and reporting standards already in place, and therefore would be reluctant to incur the costs of changing to an international set of standards

Service Learning and Faith Integration in Accounting

oai:cbfa-cbar.org:article/1In this paper, we describe a graduate level tax course that we added to our curriculum that was devoted entirely to service learning. Specifically, the major requirement of the course was for our students to participate as volunteer tax return preparers in the Internal Revenue Service’s Voluntary Income Tax Assistance program at a local air force base. The purpose of this paper is to describe how our students grew intellectually, personally, and especially spiritually as a result of their participation in this service learning tax course

Medical Therapies for Uterine Fibroids - A Systematic Review and Network Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials

BACKGROUND: Uterine fibroids are common, often symptomatic and a third of women need repeated time off work. Consequently 25% to 50% of women with fibroids receive surgical treatment, namely myomectomy or hysterectomy. Hysterectomy is the definitive treatment as fibroids are hormone dependent and frequently recurrent. Medical treatment aims to control symptoms in order to replace or delay surgery. This may improve the outcome of surgery and prevent recurrence. PURPOSE: To determine whether any medical treatment can be recommended in the treatment of women with fibroids about to undergo surgery and in those for whom surgery is not planned based on currently available evidence. STUDY SELECTION: Two authors independently identified randomised controlled trials (RCT) of all pharmacological treatments aimed at the treatment of fibroids from a list of references obtained by formal search of MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane library, Science Citation Index, and ClinicalTrials.gov until December 2013. DATA EXTRACTION: Two authors independently extracted data from identified studies. DATA SYNTHESIS: A Bayesian network meta-analysis was performed following the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence-Decision Support Unit guidelines. Odds ratios, rate ratios, or mean differences with 95% credible intervals (CrI) were calculated. RESULTS AND LIMITATIONS: A total of 75 RCT met the inclusion criteria, 47 of which were included in the network meta-analysis. The overall quality of evidence was very low. The network meta-analysis showed differing results for different outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: There is currently insufficient evidence to recommend any medical treatment in the management of fibroids. Certain treatments have future promise however further, well designed RCTs are needed

Risk for contralateral breast cancer among carriers of the CHEK2*1100delC mutation in the WECARE Study

The protein encoded by the CHEK2 gene is involved in cellular repair of DNA damage. The truncating mutation, CHEK2*1100delC, seems to increase the risk for breast cancer. We investigated whether the CHEK2*1100delC mutation carrier status increases the risk for asynchronous contralateral breast cancer (CBC) and whether it interacts with radiation therapy (RT) or chemotherapy in regard to CBC risk. The germline mutation frequency was assessed in 708 women with CBC and 1395 women with unilateral breast cancer (UBC) in the Women's Environment, Cancer and Radiation Epidemiology (WECARE) Study whose first primary breast cancer was diagnosed before age 55 years and during 1985–1999. Seven women with CBC (1.0%) and 10 women with UBC (0.7%) were CHEK2*1100delC variant carriers (rate ratio (RR)=1.8, 95% confidence interval (CI)=0.6–5.4 for CBC vs UBC). Carriers who received RT for their first breast cancer, compared with non-carriers not treated with RT, had an RR of developing CBC of 2.6 (95% CI=0.8–8.7). We found no significant associations between the CHEK2*1100delC mutation and CBC overall or among those treated with RT. However, the sampling variability was such that modest increases in risk could not be excluded. Nonetheless, because this is a rare mutation, it is unlikely to explain a major fraction of CBC in the population