Giving it all You’ve Got: How Daily Self‐Sacrifice and Self‐Esteem Regulate the Double‐Edged Effects of Callings

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Abstract

Occupational callings are a combination of passion and enjoyment with a sense of duty and destiny. Pursuing a calling is a double-edged sword, sometimes beneficial and sometimes detrimental, but it is unclear why it has contradictory effects. We show how daily self-sacrifice behaviour explains these effects and reveals how workers regulate their callings on a daily basis. We argue that people with intense callings use self-sacrifice to attain daily calling goals. However, this has a cost to their wellbeing in terms of daily emotional exhaustion. Diary data from church ministers and chaplains reveals that daily self-sacrifice behaviour mediates the positive effects of calling intensity, via felt obligations, on both daily calling goal attainment and emotional exhaustion. Within-person, we show how state self-esteem further regulates this double-edged process both within a day and from one day to the next. Low morning state self-esteem promotes daily self-sacrifice and is indirectly related to higher calling goal attainment and emotional exhaustion via daily self-sacrifice. But morning self-esteem is itself predicted positively by the previous days’ goal attainment and negatively by emotional exhaustion. Therefore, state self-esteem in conjunction with daily self-sacrifice behaviour and its double-edged effects represents a daily regulation mechanism for self-sacrifice in callings.

Aligning disclosure requirements for managerial assessments of going concern risk: Initial evidence from New Zealand

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Abstract

This study examines the impact of the Financial Reporting Standard No. 44 New Zealand Additional Disclosures (FRS 44) amendment issued by the New Zealand Accounting Standards Board (NZASB). The FRS 44 amendment aligned disclosure requirements for managerial assessments of going concern risk in financial reports with auditing standards for periods ending on or after 30 September 2020. We first present descriptive evidence on the frequency of going concern opinions (GCO), frequency of going concern issues identified as key audit matters (GCKAM), and frequency and content of managerial assessments of going concern risk (GCMA) before and after the FRS 44 amendment. Second, we show lower audit fees and shorter audit lags for financially distressed companies post-FRS 44 implementation. This suggests that the harmonisation of accounting and auditing disclosure requirements alleviates tension during the going concern decision-making process for affected companies, subsequently leading to reduced audit fees.

Motivation and hygiene factors for curriculum (re)development and the embedding of technology in accounting programmes

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Abstract

Using Herzberg's two-factor theory, this paper examines the hygiene and motivation factors that drive (re)development in accounting higher education programmes. Interviews with accounting educators and discipline leaders demonstrate a range of factors at play in the (re)development of accounting programmes in pursuit of embedding relevant technologies and contemporary business acumen into the accounting curriculum. In particular, hygiene elements such as policy and administration, and supervision were central to driving and steering change, coupled with accounting educators motivational desire to do what is right for their graduates and the profession while simultaneously fulfilling their sense of meaningful work, achievement, and responsibility.

Do more children lead to greater blessings? Birth quantity and household economic risk in China

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Abstract

Does the number of births in a family decrease a household's economic risk? We find that in a distribution of households by children's age stages, the economic risk of households in the middle (16–22 years) and late stages (23–38 years) appears to be more significantly affected by the dual nature of children as consumable goods and investment assets than does the risk of households in the early stage (0–15 years). Furthermore, we find that this pattern persists even when we consider China's one-child policy. Our findings also reveal that households with higher parental education levels and education investment expenditures in the middle stage exhibit greater resilience against economic risks in the late stage.

Social Comparison Inside Business Groups and Strategic Change: Evidence from Group‐affiliated Chinese Firms

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Abstract

This study examines the effect of performance feedback on strategic change with a focus on internal social comparison in a business group context. We argue that group affiliates are more responsive to internal social comparison with group peers than to external social comparison with industry peers. However, the salience of internal social comparison is subject to institutional contingencies. We test these arguments using panel data from 1449 group affiliates in China during the period 2005–12. We find that internal social comparison has a greater effect on a group affiliate's strategic change than does external social comparison. Moreover, this effect differential is smaller in groups located in regions with more developed market institutions but larger in state-owned groups and groups managed by internally promoted CEOs.

Firms’ Response to Slacktivism: When and Why are E‐Petitions Effective?

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Abstract

E-petitions have evoked an important debate about the potential for digital activism to pressure firms to change social policies and practices. One prevailing perspective is that slacktivism, a tendency of online supporters to provide only token support, undermines any possible impact. An alternative perspective is that social media dynamics underlying digital activism offer new pathways for social activists to pressure firms toward social change. To explore this debate, we combine insights from research on social movements, social media, and the logic of connective action to theorize the impact of social media mechanisms such as e-petition connectivity and velocity. With a hand-coded database of 1587 e-petitions targeting Fortune 500 firms from 2012 to 2017 through the platform Change.org, we empirically evaluate whether these e-petitions matter. Our empirical results strongly suggest that e-petitions do matter, and we explain when digital activism has impact. The activation of social media mechanisms spreads negative information and directly intensifies the threat to the targeted firm's reputation, pressuring firms to concede to e-petitioner demands. Furthermore, our findings indicate that firm visibility and resource availability can represent boundary conditions for the firm's vulnerability and ability to respond to digital activism.

Tax‐Motivated Relocations of Headquarters: The Role of Affinity Bias among Socially‐Responsible Blockholders and CEOs

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Abstract

While socially-responsible large shareholders have been shown to have a substantial impact on corporate leaders’ decisions on social responsibility, prior research remains silent on whether that impact is subject to bias among these two sets of actors. To shed light on this issue, we study the role of socially-responsible blockholders as well as CEOs in the occurrence of tax-motivated international relocations of corporate headquarters (HQs) – a key form of shareholder-oriented behaviour. Drawing on stewardship theory and corporate governance research, we first hypothesize that responsible blockholders’ total equity stake in a firm is negatively related to a firm's propensity to undertake a tax-motivated HQ relocation. Using complementary insights from social identity theory, we then propose that both socially-responsible blockholders and CEOs tend to identify more strongly with compatriots than with foreigners. This leads us to hypothesize that (a) the stake of responsible domestic blockholders is more negatively related to a firm's relocation propensity than the stake of responsible foreign blockholders, and that (b) the stake of responsible blockholders that are compatriots of their firm's CEO is more negatively related to that propensity than the stake of responsible blockholders with a different nationality than the CEO's. Logit analyses of a sample of US firms covering the period 1998–2017 lend substantial support to our hypotheses, indicating that affinity bias among socially-responsible blockholders and CEOs shapes the occurrence of a key form of shareholder-oriented behaviour.