Whistleblowing is often about disclosing wrongdoings by members of organisations to persons or organisations that may be able to effect action. Media would at times publish stories of whistleblowers who engage in ‘heroic’ acts of exposing wrongdoings at work, but the whistlebowers often face significant negative consequences of their whistleblowing efforts. This book examines effects of national and organisational cultures on the whistleblowing decisions of employees. The book provides empirical evidence of association between organisational culture and whistleblowing and there appears to be a lower likelihood of whistleblowing in organisations that focus more on the cultural dimensions of respect for people, innovation and stability. It also illustrates how remaining silent or blowing the whistle in response to observed wrongdoings affects employees’ key work-related attitudes. This book would interest those wish to gain better understanding of the relationship between culture and whistleblowing in organisations.

The explosion in the number, size and complexity of mergers, acquisitions and alliances during the 1990s demonstrates how ingrained business combinations have become in the global business community.

The severe consequences of the global financial crisis 2008-2009 and numerous accounting frauds and financial scandals over the last fifteen years have let to calls for more ethical and responsible actions in all economic activities including consumption, investing, governance and regulation. Despite the fact that ethics in business and corporate social responsibility rules have been adopted in various countries, more efforts have to be devoted to motivate and empower more actors to integrate ethical behavior and rules in making business and managerial decisions. The Research Handbook of Finance and Sustainability will provide the readers but particularly investors, managers, and policymakers with comprehensive coverage of the issues at the crossroads of finance, ethics and sustainable development as well as proposed solutions, while focusing on three different levels: corporations, investment funds, and financial markets.

The process of globalization has brought into focus the central role of culture in understanding work behavior. In parallel to the accelerating process of globalization, there has been an explosion of empirical studies on culture and organizational behavior. Written by a diverse group of experts in the field, this handbook provides critical knowledge on how cultures vary, and how culture influences basic psychological processes, communication, trust, social networks, leadership, and negotiation. It also covers how to manage multicultural teams, culture and human resource management practices, joint ventures, organizational change, and more.

This review lays out a research perspective on earnings quality. We provide an overview of alternative definitions and measures of earnings quality and a discussion of research design choices encountered in earnings quality research. Throughout, we focus on a capital markets setting, as opposed, for example, to a contracting or stewardship setting. Our reason for this choice stems from the view that the capital market uses of accounting information are fundamental, in the sense of providing a basis for other uses, such as stewardship. Because resource allocations are ex ante decisions while contracting/stewardship assessments are ex post evaluations of outcomes, evidence on whether, how and to what degree earnings quality influences capital market resource allocation decisions is fundamental to understanding why and how accounting matters to investors and others, including those charged with stewardship responsibilities. Demonstrating a link between earnings quality and, for example, the costs of equity and debt capital implies a basic economic role in capital allocation decisions for accounting information; this role has only recently been documented in the accounting literature. We focus on how the precision of financial information in capturing one or more underlying valuation-relevant constructs affects the assessment and use of that information by capital market participants. We emphasize that the choice of constructs to be measured is typically contextual. Our main focus is on the precision of earnings, which we view as a summary indicator of the overall quality of financial reporting. Our intent in discussing research that evaluates the capital market effects of earnings quality is both to stimulate further research in this area and to encourage research on related topics, including, for example, the role of earnings quality in contracting and stewardship.

Understanding National Culture and Ethics in Organisations: A Study of Eastern and Central Europe reveals some leading questions in business research, linking ethics and national culture, with a particular emphasis on Eastern European countries.