Bank Loan Agreement and CEO Compensation

Contrary to other forms of outside financing, the announcement of a bank loan agreement prompts a positive and significant market return. Throughout the literature, bank loans are deemed special and unique due to multiple benefits accruing to bank borrowers. The short-term positive market reaction is however inconsistent with the long-term underperformance of borrowing firms (Billet et al., 2006). We find that unlike shareholders, CEOs gain from the bank loan relation over the long-term. Specifically, we find that bank loan agreement elicits a significant increase in total compensation through an increase in non-performance based compensation components such as salary, bonus and other compensation. We also report a smaller proportion of performance based compensation following the bank agreement. Generally, the results suggest that subsequent to a major bank loan, CEOs seem to gain enough influence to shield their compensation from the firm \u27s underperformance. In particular this evidence supports the uniqueness of bank loan relations

Overuse of antibiotics as a key driver to antibiotic resistance in Morocco: A short review with potential solutions

Antimicrobial resistance is a global public health challenge, which has accelerated by the overuse of antibiotics worldwide. Increased antimicrobial resistance is the cause of severe infections, complications, longer hospital stays and increased mortality. Steps must be taken to reverse the damage that has already been done and prevent further resistance from developing. This work will examine the context and societal situations that led to this acceptance of antibiotic overuse and misuse seen in both health care professionals and the public, the biochemical and genetic pathways that allow a microbe to develop drug resistance, the consequences that could follow if this trend of antibiotic overuse is allowed to continue and the various methods and solutions that have been suggested to prevent and reverse this problem

Support for the Inclusion of Personal Value Preferences in Decision Support Systems

We consider the important issue of including personal value preferences in decision support systems (DSS). Various personal differences have been shown to affect the acceptance, use, and effectiveness of DSS. Decision-making models offer a theoretical basis for the inclusion of various personal differences (including personal value preferences) in decision-making. Research in the field of psychology has long recognized the importance of values in both motivation and choice behavior. Other research has also found personal values to be relevant in decision-making. We posit that since personal values are important in the decision-making process, they should also be important in the support of decision-making and thus in decision support systems

Antibiotic determination of antibiotic susceptibility testing disks using liquid chromatography and microbiological assay

Introduction: The aim of this work was to control the quality of some antibiotics cartridges (ampicillin, amoxicillin-clavulanic acid, ciprofloxacin and vancomycin) used for antibiotic susceptibility testing by disk diffusion method. Antibiotics were determined in disks and two techniques were compared for this purpose, chromatographic and microbiological method. Methods: Chromatographic method (High-Performance Liquid Chromatography: HPLC) was used for determining ampicillin, amoxicillin-clavulanic acid and ciprofloxacin, and microbiological method for vancomycin and ampicillin. We used the European Pharmacopoeia 8th edition monographs and a simple and adapted method published in 2015 by Ramli Y. et Al. Results: Dosage results reveal that 35% of unexpired cartridges had low content and all the expired AB’s disks gave low results. Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that the content of antibiotics in disks could decrease if the storage and transport conditions (temperature and relative humidity) of disk cartridges were not respected. Therefore, properly performed quality control of antibiotic disks before use in laboratories would aid in providing accurate and reproducible results of dosage. Keywords: Antibiotic disks, Quality control, Antibiogram, High Performance Liquid Chromatography, Microbiological method

Bank Certification Effect on CEO Compensation

Contrary to other forms of outside financing, the announcement of a bank loan agreement prompts a positive and significant market return. Throughout the literature, bank loans are deemed special and unique due to multiple benefits accruing to bank borrowers. The short-term positive market reaction is however inconsistent with the long-term underperformance of borrowing firms (Billet et al., 2006). We find that unlike shareholders, CEOs gain from the bank loan relation over the long-term. Specifically, we find that bank loan agreement elicits a significant increase in total compensation through an increase in non-performance based compensation components such as salary, bonus and other compensation. We also notice a smaller proportion of pay-at-risk. Additional results indicate that bank loan agreement significantly reduces the probability of CEO turnover in the subsequent year, and no change in the probability of CEO turnover in the three years following the loan. Generally, the results suggest that subsequent to a major bank loan, CEOs seem to gain enough influence to shield their compensation from the firm\u27s underperformance and to secure employment. In particular, this evidence supports the uniqueness of bank loan relations

THE ETHICALITY AND SUBORDINATE JOB SATISFACTION: A STUDY OF ACCOUNTING FACULTY

Using a sample of 539 accounting faculty teaching in the United States, this study explored perceptions of the ethicality of their direct supervisors and self-reported levels of job satisfaction. Ethicality was measured with the Ethical Leadership Scale (ELS) and the Behavioral Integrity (BI) Scale. The results indicated that while the majority of accounting faculty perceived their direct supervisor as being ethical, about a third of them did not affirmatively do so. This latter finding may perhaps be indicative of unethical work environments that have been found to promote unethical behaviors, such as research misconduct, and of unethical work environments that are not conducive to the teaching of accounting ethics. Job satisfaction was measured with the Michigan Organizational Assessment Questionnaire Job Satisfaction Subscale (MOAQ-JSS). More experienced, higher ranked, and tenured faculty were less satisfied with their jobs and perceived their direct supervisors as being less ethical. The findings in this research provide benchmarks for accounting faculty perceptions of the ethicality of their direct supervisors and for the job satisfaction of accounting faculty

Perceptions by employed accounting students of ethical leadership and political skill: Evidence for including political skill in ethics pedagogy

Using a sample of 703 full- or part-time employed students from two U.S. universities, we conducted an empirical investigation of the relation between perceptions of ethical leadership and perceptions of political skill. The sample was composed of 141 accounting majors and 562 non-accounting students. The results indicated that the two concepts were highly correlated. Our findings also indicate that perception of both ethical leadership and political skill significantly dropped with age and work experience. Moreover, accounting seniors who had previously completed a standalone ethics course had higher perceptions than their counterparts on both constructs, which were still highly correlated. This finding suggests that the ethics education of these students may not have positively impacted their discernment in the area of ethical sensitivity. Thus, accounting students may enter the workforce with inadequate ethical sensitivity, and entry-level accountants may therefore be prone to cognitively confuse the leadership attributes of political skills and ethics. The ability of accountants to differentiate between the ethical leadership and the political skill of leaders, and/or knowledge of how the political skills of leaders could mask their unethical guidance, is posited as an area of ethical sensitivity worthy of inclusion in accounting ethics pedagogy

Business Student Perceptions of Academic Cheating: Ethical Theory-Related Rationalizations

Using six one-sentence ethical theory-related scenarios, this paper explored academic cheating with a sample of business students. The results indicated that while most students would not cheat, about 10-37% would. The highest incidences of cheating were found for the scenarios related to Utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. Differences were found between a created theoretical index and several student demographic variables. Significant higher ethical tendencies were found among older students, female students, students with more than five years of work experience, MBA students, graduate accounting students, and students with conservative political orientations. Of note, no theoretical index differences were found between students who had and had not completed an ethics course. In addition, questions also probed student opinions about the consequences of cheating. The results showed that students agreed that those who fail a course due to cheating should have their unethical conduct reported up the administrative “ladder” and that this behavior should be indicated on the student’s permanent transcript. Nevertheless, they did not want employers or credentialing organizations to have access to so marked transcripts. These findings have implications for pedagogies that include an ethical theory component and for the implementation of meaningful consequences aimed at curbing cheating

Optimization of the iterative deconvolution correction method applied to ionization chamber response for small field dosimetry measurements

This study aims to optimize the iterative deconvolution correction of air-filled ionization chamber measurements with limited spatial resolution for photon beam dosimetry. The ionization chamber volume effect could be explained by the inhomogeneity of the absorbed dose in its sensitive volume, leading to a volume averaging effect acting as a convolution kernel $K(x)$. Therefore, the "true" dose profile $P_t(x)$ can be deduced by deconvolving measured 1D profiles $P_m(x)$. The Semiflex 3D ionization chamber type PTW 31021 was studied for beams with flattening filter (WFF), while the SNC125c ionization chamber was investigated for flattening filter free (FFF) beams. The deconvolution distributions were compared for the first ionization chamber with reference dose profiles calculated by Monte Carlo simulation and for the second ionization chamber with reference measurements obtained using a diode EDGE detector, suitable for small field applications. The convolution kernel was assumed to be a sum of normalized Gaussian and Lorentz distributions parametrized by the pair $(σ_{ic}λ_{ic})$. Good results were obtained with respect to the $γ_{index}$ 2.0%/0.5 mm criterion for the field sizes 6 × 6 mm2, 10 × 10 mm$^2$ and 20 × 20 mm$^2$. The highest agreement between reference and corrected measurement data was obtained by using the Gauss-Lorentz distribution parameters (1.92 mm, 0.80 mm) and (1.90 mm, 0.90 mm) for the ionization chambers Semiflex 3D type PTW 31021 and SNC125c, respectively