Sourcing of Internal Auditing: An Empirical Study

In recent years, the scope of internal auditing has broadened considerably, increasing the importance of internal auditing as part of the organization’s management control structure. This expanding role has changed the demands being put on internal auditors. Their new role requires different skills and competencies, and many organizations now need to face the choice whether to develop these broader competencies internally or to outsource internalauditing to outside service providers.This paper studies the factors associated with organizations’ internal audit sourcing decisions, building from a previous study by Widener & Selto (1999; henceforth W&S). In their study, W&S used Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) to explain the organization of internal auditing. Our study seeks to replicate their results, using newly collected data from 66 companies headquartered in the Netherlands. Our findings are supportive of W&S. Like W&S, we find asset specificity and frequency (both individually and in interaction) to be significantly associated with sourcing decisions in a regression model that explains 65% (adjusted R2 = 0.63) of the variance in outsourced internal auditing. Additional analyses reinforce the importance of these TCE variables in explaining organizations’ internal auditing sourcing behaviour.transaction cost economics;internal auditing;make-or-buy decision

Exploring the Experiences After Traumatic Brain Injury

Grief and the experiences associated with adapting to life after a life changing injury are researched and reported in detail in regard to individuals sustaining spinal cord injuries and amputations, but there is significantly less evidence presented on the experiences that people go through after a traumatic brain injury (TBI). There is some empirical information on the experience of the family of the person who experienced the TBI and about the symptoms of TBI. While this is important, it is also imperative to understand the experiences and emotions that people with a TBI have as they go through the rehabilitation process and adjust to their new reality

Awarding Fair Compensation to Bankruptcy Trustees

For almost a century, bankruptcy trustees have argued with courts regarding appropriate compensation. In 1899, a trustee petitioned the court for a lump sum in lieu of the 3 percent commission allowed under the 1898 Bankruptcy Act. The court held that the 3 percent commission was amply compensation for all the services performed, and it was the only type of compensation allowed under the [A]ct. In 1986, a trustee submitted a fee application to the court based upon the maximum statutory amount allowed under the 1978 Bankruptcy code. The bankruptcy court reduced the fee. On appeal, the district court affirmed the award concluding there was no abuse of discretion in the fee reduction

The geometric order of stripes and Luttinger liquids

It is argued that the electron stripes as found in correlated oxides have to do with an unrecognized form of order. The manifestation of this order is the robust property that the charge stripes are at the same time anti-phase boundaries in the spin system. We demonstrate that the quantity which is ordering is sublattice parity, referring to the geometric property of a bipartite lattice that it can be subdivided in two sublattices in two different ways. Re-interpreting standard results of one dimensional physics, we demonstrate that the same order is responsible for the phenomenon of spin-charge separation in strongly interacting one dimensional electron systems. In fact, the stripe phases can be seen from this perspective as the precise generalization of the Luttinger liquid to higher dimensions. Most of this paper is devoted to a detailed exposition of the mean-field theory of sublattice parity order in 2+1 dimensions. Although the quantum-dynamics of the spin- and charge degrees of freedom is fully taken into account, a perfect sublattice parity order is imposed. Due to novel order-out-of-disorder physics, the sublattice parity order gives rise to full stripe order at long wavelength. This adds further credibility to the notion that stripes find their origin in the microscopic quantum fluctuations and it suggests a novel viewpoint on the relationship between stripes and high Tc superconductivity.Comment: 29 pages, 14 figures, 1 tabl