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By using Latour’s notion of “action at a distance” (Latour, 1987), the purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which the government acts at a distance to achieve corporate governance of public sector banks, and the extent to which accounting enables such actions of the government.

This study follows the qualitative research approach and adopts the case study research method. A major public sector bank in Sri Lanka was selected as the case organization for this study. Data were gathered from semi-structured interviews with organizational participants and document study.

The study provides evidence to suggest that inscriptions produced through four areas of accounting, namely external reporting, external auditing, management accounting and internal auditing, have the capacity to develop strong explanations enabling action at a distance and good corporate governance in the case organization. The study also provides evidence to show how the role of accounting in long-distance control and corporate governance in the case organization is influenced by various contextual factors. In particular, the study finds that undue government interference over the case organization to gain the long-distance control have resulted in deteriorating the level of corporate governance.

The findings support the literature that examines the accounting in its social context.

The findings suggest that actors should be allowed to operate independently, particularly without political expedience and undue influences from pressure groups, which ensure effective utilization of accounting inscriptions by the actors in long-distance control as well as good corporate governance of public sector banks.

Although research into accounting in public sector organizations has gained considerable importance in recent times, those studies examining public sector banks are still lacking. The paper aims to fill this gap.

This paper aims to present a compact, broadband substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) three-way power divider with improved isolation based on six-port SIW coupler.

The power coupling among the three output ports occurs due to short openings in the narrow walls of the central SIW channel. Performance improvement in the isolation and return loss among ports is achieved using matching posts placed at the input and output ends of the coupling region. This enhances the coupling between TE₁₀ and TE₃₀ modes. The input matching ports enhance the return loss, whereas the isolation is alleviated by both the input and output matching posts. The bandwidth enhancement is achieved by optimizing the outer SIW channel widths.

The measured fractional bandwidth of 27.3% with over 15 dB of isolation and return loss is achieved. The coupling length is 1.55 λ_g at the centre frequency. The power divider achieves better than 15 dB isolation between non-adjacent output ports. The measured reflection and isolation coefficients are in close agreement with simulated results over 8.2 to 10.8 GHz.

Isolation between the adjacent and non-adjacent ports is an important parameter as the reflections from these ports will interfere with signals from other ports reducing the fractional bandwidth of the power divider and affecting the overall performance of the transmitters and receivers.

The authors present the enhancement of isolation between the output non-adjacent ports by optimizing the SIW channel width and matching post in the coupling region to reduce the reflected signals from non-adjacent ports entering into other ports. To the author’s knowledge, this is the only SIW three-way power divider paper showing non-adjacent port isolation among six-port couplers based three-way power dividers.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence of the relationship between female representation on the board and forward-looking information disclosures (FLIDs).

The study uses the content analysis to analyze the narrative evidence from the annual financial reports of non-financial Jordanian companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange. The final sample consists of 1,206 firm-year observations during the period 2008-2013.

The study provides evidence that gender diversity on boards positively affects the level of FLIDs. Further to this, the study reveals that family firms disclose more information than non-family firms.

Results of this study could be beneficial for a number of users of financial information such as, regulators, investors, auditors and lenders. The users might consider the findings of this study when they are using the company’s financial information. Consequently, users of this information could be better assisted to make right decisions.

This study contributes to the literature by identifying the role of gender on the level of FLID, particularly on family and non-family, a relatively little researched area.

The paper examines financial resilience responses/capacities of governments from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ghana in relation to COVID-19. It highlights the governments’ fiscal, budgetary and actions as either anticipatory or coping mechanisms towards the pandemic.

Multiple case studies and secondary data were used, including official government documentation/records, expert views, policy publications by supranational organisations and international financial institutions and media reports. Textual analysis was conducted to evaluate the case countries’ resilience.

The paper highlights how governmental budgetary initiatives, including repurposing the manufacturing sector, can sustain businesses, aid social interventions and reduce vulnerability during health crises. In addition, the paper highlights that external borrowing continues to be indispensable in the financial and budgetary initiatives of the case countries. The paper finds that lessons learnt from the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in West Africa within the last decade have shaped the anticipatory resilience capacities of the case countries against COVID-19.

The paper uses the notion of resilience, the dimensions of the resilience framework and the resource-based view (RBV) theory to unearth resilience patterns. This sort of combined approach is new to financial resilience studies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate returns to search (getting a better product and/or a lower price as a result of search) when consumers use/do not use recommendation agents (RAs). Specifically, it studies the effect of RAs/no RAs on decision quality, decision confidence and decision satisfaction taking into account subjective knowledge (SK) and involvement.

This paper employed two between-subjects factorial experimental designs with subjects searching for digital cameras in a simulated online digital camera store. The experiment was conducted with graduate students in Chennai, Bengaluru and Mysore in India.

Results of two online experiments showed that when consumers used RAs, low search led to better decision quality, whereas when consumers did not use RAs, medium search led to optimum decision quality. When consumers use RAs, SK had a U-shaped influence on the decision quality indicating that decision quality was the lowest for those with medium SK. When consumers did not use RAs, the effect of SK on decision quality was an inverted U-shape, indicating optimum decision quality for medium SK consumers. When consumers did not use RAs, subjects with high involvement made better choices, whereas when consumers used RAs, low involvement subjects made better choices. However, subjects who searched more had higher decision confidence and decision satisfaction even if their choices were not better.

The effect of RA vs no RA in conjunction with relevant consumer characteristics influencing decision quality of the consumer is demonstrated in this study. The findings have important managerial, consumer and theoretical contributions to make.

First, the paper examines the short-term fiscal and budgetary responses of the South Asian governments to the COVID-19 pandemic. Next, it brings out the implications of such responses, focusing on India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The paper is based on multiple secondary data sources, including the viewpoints of experts and government officials. Data are analysed using the ideas of financial resilience.

South Asian governments' response to the pandemic shows a gap in understanding the magnitude of the problem and in developing financial resilience. This paper points out the importance of avoiding austerity, becoming more cautious in accepting lending conditions, rethinking public sector accountability and revitalising mutual collaboration through SAARC for developing financial resilience, both at individual country and regional levels.

The study offers some insights on policy implications for South Asian governments in terms of building financial resilience to deal with future crises.

Managers are concerned about how the macroeconomic environment affects business profit. Focusing on banks, this study aims to investigate the effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on bank profitability in 22 advanced countries.

The study used the panel fixed effect regression methodology to assess the effect of EPU on several measures of bank profitability for 22 advanced countries from 1998 to 2017. The measures of bank profitability are net interest margin, lending-deposit spread, non-interest income (NII) ratio, after-tax return on asset, before-tax return on asset, after-tax return on equity and before-tax return on equity.

The findings reveal that high EPU negatively affects bank NII. Real gross domestic product growth rate, nonperforming loans and regulatory capital ratio are negatively related to profitability in times of high EPU. The findings also reveal that high EPU has a positive effect on bank profitability in Asia and the region of the Americas, as these regions witnessed high return on equity in times of high EPU.

The implication of the findings is that, although EPU has a depressive effect on some indicators of bank profitability, regional characteristics can ameliorate the depressive effects of EPU on bank profitability.

This study contributes to the literature that examine the economic consequences of EPU on firms. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to examine how regional characteristics affect the relationship between EPU and bank profitability using cross-country data.

The paper aims to re-interpret the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in limiting the extreme practices in earnings management (EM) by using evidence from large UK companies.

The study has used content analysis and disclosure index to measure the level of CSR. The authors measured EM based on discretionary accruals by using cross-sectional version of the modified Jones model.

The findings of this study reveal that companies with a higher commitment to CSR activities are less likely to manage earnings through accruals.

This study shed more light on the potential impact of CSR on earnings management in the context of the UK. Prior research on the impact of CSR on earnings management has used exclusively CSR scores, provided by CSR score indices. The manual measurement used in this study for CSR (disclosure index/content analysis) is considered to provide a more detailed and precise measure.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of CEOs’ characteristics on the level of forward-looking information (FLI) disclosure. In particular, the study examines the effect of CEO age, gender and overconfidence on the disclosure of FLI in Jordan firms.

The study uses a disclosure index to measure the level of FLI disclosure and employs random-effect and panel data regressions to examine the relationship between CEOs’ characteristics and the level of FLI disclosure. The sample consists of 201 non-financial companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange for the period 2008-2013.

The results of the study show that the CEO age has a significant negative relationship with the level of FLI disclosure in annual reports of non-financial Jordanian companies, whereas gender and overconfidence have a significant positive association with FLI disclosure.

The single country context limits the generalisability of the findings.

The results of the study could be beneficial for the users of financial information, such as regulators, investors, auditors and lenders. These users might consider the findings of the study when they are using a company’s financial information. Accordingly, they may seek to extend the investigations and verify such reporting practices and consequently make better decisions. In addition, the findings provide empirical evidence that helps managers in assessing their financial transparency and accountability.

The relationship between CEO’s characteristics and the level of FLI disclosure is still ambiguous. This study contributes to the FLI disclosure literature by identifying the role of CEO characteristics on the level of FLI disclosure. Thus, it offers evidence that the level of FLI disclosure is driven by specific CEO characteristics.