SYNOPSIS The objective of this paper is to provide a systematic evaluation of independence as a foundational element of the auditing profession. We maintain that while independence is a theoretically ...appealing construct, it is fraught with practical problems surrounding its implementation, monitoring, and regulation. We analyze the current oversight of auditor independence and evaluate the need for auditor independence from the perspective of information users and information producers. In the process, we discuss important implications and intractable challenges that affect one or more parties involved in the financial-reporting process. Finally, we carefully evaluate alternatives to the current regulatory approach for managing auditor independence (i.e., proscribing various auditor-client relationships). We conclude that increasing audit committees' responsibilities for monitoring the auditor's independence—along with additional disclosure about threats and safeguards to auditor independence—is worthy of further consideration and debate as a path toward addressing the auditor independence conundrum.
Financial scandals such as the Enron-Andersen debacle provoke concerns that auditors lack independence when faced with influential clients. Unlike previous studies that examine whether client ...influence affects audit quality on ongoing engagements (providing mixed results), we investigate whether client influence (which engenders “independence risk”) at the audit-office level affects auditor resignations from high engagement-risk clients. We construct summary measures of engagement risk, using client disclosures on Form 8-K filings, potential risk factors (e.g., litigation risk), and auditor action (e.g., issuance of a going concern opinion) on the previous year’s financial statements. Focusing on risky clients, we find that auditors are more likely on average to resign from influential clients, and this positive association holds for auditors that are less likely to have mechanisms in place to mitigate independence risk. Also, importantly, influential clients are prevalent across the spectrum of client size, and the positive association between client influence and auditor resignations holds for both large and small clients.
This paper explores the strength of internal corporate governance as a determining factor in a firm's addressing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) proposed by the United Nations. Using a ...European sample of analysis from 2016 to 2017, the paper examines CEO independence, board composition and board attendance as internal corporate governance factors that affect a firm's commitment to sustainable development. By employing several regression analyses, the evidence supports the assertion that greater corporate governance strength, from an internal perspective, increases the propensity to report SDGs in firms' sustainability reports. In addition, results confirm that CEO non‐duality and board independence act individually as determinants of a firm's contribution to the 2030 Agenda.
The end of World War I saw the former German protectorate of Togoland split into British- and French-administered territories. By the 1950s a political movement led by the Ewe ethnic group called for ...the unification of British and French Togoland into an independent multiethnic state. Despite the efforts of the Ewe, the United Nations trust territory of British Togoland was ultimately merged with the Gold Coast to become Ghana, the first independent nation in sub-Saharan Africa; French Togoland later declared independence as the nation of Togo. Based on interviews with former political activists and their families, access to private papers, and a collection of oral and written propaganda, this book examines the history and politics behind the failed project of Togoland unification. Kate Skinner challenges the marginalization of the Togoland question from popular and academic analyses of postcolonial politics and explores present-day ramifications of the contingencies of decolonization.
Anatomy of a Civil War demonstrates the destructive nature of war, ranging from the physical to the psychosocial, as well as war’s detrimental effects on the environment. Despite such horrific ...aspects, evidence suggests that civil war is likely to generate multilayered outcomes. To examine the transformative aspects of civil war, Mehmet Gurses draws on an original survey conducted in Turkey, where a Kurdish armed group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has been waging an intermittent insurgency for Kurdish self-rule since 1984. Findings from a probability sample of 2,100 individuals randomly selected from three major Kurdish-populated provinces in the eastern part of Turkey, coupled with insights from face-to-face in-depth interviews with dozens of individuals affected by violence, provide evidence for the multifaceted nature of exposure to violence during civil war. Just as the destructive nature of war manifests itself in various forms and shapes, wartime experiences can engender positive attitudes toward women, create a culture of political activism, and develop secular values at the individual level. In addition, wartime experiences seem to robustly predict greater support for political activism. Nonetheless, changes in gender relations and the rise of a secular political culture appear to be primarily shaped by wartime experiences interacting with insurgent ideology.
This book reopens the debate on colonial nationalisms, going beyond 'derivative', 'borrowed', political and modernist paradigms. It introduces the conceptual category of samaj to demonstrate how ...indigenous socio-cultural origins in Bengal interacted with late-colonial discourses to produce the notion of a nation. Samaj (a historical society and an idea-in-practice) was a site for reconfiguring antecedents and negotiating fragmentation. Drawing on indigenous sources, this study shows how caste, class, ethnicity, region and community were refracted to conceptualise wider unities. The mapping of cultural continuities through change facilitates a more nuanced investigation of the ontology of nationhood, seeing it as related to, but more than political nationalism. It outlines a fresh paradigm for recalibrating postcolonial identities, offering interpretive strategies to mediate fragmentation.
The independence equivalence class of a graph G is the set of graphs that have the same independence polynomial as G. A graph whose independence equivalence class contains only itself, up to ...isomorphism, is independence unique. Beaton, Brown and Cameron 2 showed that paths with an odd number of vertices are independence unique and raised the problem of finding the independence equivalence class of paths with an even number of vertices. The problem is completely solved in this paper.
Our Revolution contains a selection of translated Indonesian articles about the Indonesian Revolution (1945-1949) and the significance of that revolution for the development of the nation. The ...articles - written by contemporaries and academics of several generations - show the complexity of the Indonesian Revolution and see the struggle for independence, as well as developments in Indonesian thinking about it. National and local developments interacted. The struggle of the Indonesian population and armed groups against the British and the Dutch, the flaming enthusiasm of the Indonesian youth, the great social unrest and also a very diverse local and regional dynamic are discussed. This anthology offers a fascinating insight into the Indonesian historiography of the revolution.
Onze Revolutie bevat een selectie vertaalde Indonesische artikelen over de Indonesische revolutie (1945-1949) en de betekenis van die revolutie voor de ontwikkeling van de natie. De artikelen – geschreven door tijdgenoten en academici van verschillende generaties – laten de complexiteit van de Indonesische revolutie en de strijd voor de onafhankelijkheid zien, en ook de ontwikkelingen in het Indonesische denken daarover. Nationale en lokale ontwikkelingen werkten op elkaar in. Aan bod komen de strijd van de Indonesische bevolking en van gewapende groepen tegen de Britten en de Nederlanders, de vlammende geestdrift van de Indonesische jongeren, de grote sociale onrust en daarnaast een heel diverse lokale en regionale dynamiek. Deze bloemlezing biedt een boeiende inkijk in de Indonesische historiografie van de revolutie.
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