Purpose This study examines the moderating effects of low and high levels of voluntary disclosures (VDs) between corporate governance and information asymmetry (IA). Design/methodology/approach The study used PROCESS macro to construct bootstrap confidence intervals at the 95% level to estimate the model, and “simple slope analysis” to visualize the model. Findings The better corporate governance provides a monitoring mechanism that disseminates private information and reduces IA The effect of corporate governance on IA is contingent on the levels of VDs within a firm, and this relationship is strengthened when the level of VDs within a firm is high, and results remain consistent when levels of sub-indices are high. Additional analysis reveals that effective boards and audit committees reduce IA. Increased inside, an associated company, family and foreign ownership exacerbate IA, whereas institutional owners act as effective monitors to overcome informational disadvantages. Practical implications The findings provide implications for policymakers to promote corporate governance and more relevant reporting practices as effective mechanisms for protecting shareholders' rights and attenuating IA in capital markets. Originality/value The study is valuable to understand the strength of the relationship between corporate governance and information asymmetries based on the moderating role of different VD levels.

Purpose This paper examines how the degree of happiness affects corporate risk-taking and the moderating influence of family ownership of firms on this relationship. Design/methodology/approach The authors use an international sample of 17,654 firm-year observations from 24 countries around the world from 2008 to 2016. Findings Using the happiness index from the World Happiness Report developed by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the authors show that a country's overall happiness is negatively correlated with risk-taking behavior by firms. The findings are robust to an alternative measure of risk-taking by firms. Further analyses document that the negative influence of happiness on firm risk-taking is more pronounced for family-owned firms. Practical implications The paper is consistent with the notion that happier people are likely to be more risk-averse in making financial decisions, which, in turn, reduces corporate risk-taking. Originality/value This study contributes to the broad literature on the determinants of corporate risk-taking and the growing literature on the role of sentiment on investment decisions. The authors contribute to the current debate about family-owned firms by demonstrating that the presence of family trust strengthens the negative influence of happiness on corporate risk-taking, a topic that has been unexplored in previous studies.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the financial autonomy that affects the financial accounting information quality of public organizations. This study also tests the impact of the financial autonomy on support from leadership. How this impact has affected elements of accounting information systems such as hardware, software, communications technology and chief accountant to support providing the quality of the financial accounting information. Design/methodology/approach The research model is in the SEM form and measurement models are reflective scales so this study applies the PLS-SEM analysis technique on the Smart PLS 3.2.7 software to test the research hypotheses. Analytical data is collected through survey questionnaires with observed variables measured using the typical 7-point Likert scales. The result obtained after cleaning the data includes 164 Vietnamese public organizations with the different levels of the financial autonomy. Findings This research has three primary findings: firstly, FA has a positive direct effect on FAIQ and SL. Secondly, SL influences FAIQ through four mediate variables including AM, HW, SW and CN. Finally, SL also acts as a mediate variable in the relationship of FA and FAIQ. Originality/value This is one of the first empirical studies to examine the role of financial autonomy in leadership support to improve the quality of the accounting information in the public sector in the context of the Vietnamese government is promoting the financial autonomy of public organizations.

Purpose Financial health of a corporation is a great concern for every investor level and decision-makers. For many years, financial solvency prediction is a significant issue throughout academia, precisely in finance. This requirement leads this study to check whether machine learning can be implemented in financial solvency prediction. Design/methodology/approach This study analyzed 244 Dhaka stock exchange public-listed companies over the 2015–2019 period, and two subsets of data are also developed as training and testing datasets. For machine learning model building, samples are classified as secure, healthy and insolvent by the Altman Z-score. R statistical software is used to make predictive models of five classifiers and all model performances are measured with different performance metrics such as logarithmic loss (logLoss), area under the curve (AUC), precision recall AUC (prAUC), accuracy, kappa, sensitivity and specificity. Findings This study found that the artificial neural network classifier has 88% accuracy and sensitivity rate; also, AUC for this model is 96%. However, the ensemble classifier outperforms all other models by considering logLoss and other metrics. Research limitations/implications The major result of this study can be implicated to the financial institution for credit scoring, credit rating and loan classification, etc. And other companies can implement machine learning models to their enterprise resource planning software to trace their financial solvency. Practical implications Finally, a predictive application is developed through training a model with 1,200 observations and making it available for all rational and novice investors (Abdullah, 2020). Originality/value This study found that, with the best of author expertise, the author did not find any studies regarding machine learning research of financial solvency that examines a comparable number of a dataset, with all these models in Bangladesh.

Purpose This study investigates the characteristics of business and management consulting firms (firm size, international affiliation and scope of operation) affecting the adoption rate (i.e. recency of adopting big data analytics (BDA) as a new idea) and usage level of BDA. Ten critical areas of BDA application to business and management consulting were investigated, (1) Human Resource Management; (2) Risk Management; (3) Financial Advisory Services; (4) Innovation and Strategy; (5) Brand Building and Product Positioning; (6) Market Research/Diagnostic Studies; (7) Scenario-Based Planning/Business Simulation; (8) Information Technology; (9) Internal Control/Internal Audit; and (10) Taxation and Tax Management. Design/methodology/approach Survey data was obtained through a structured questionnaire from one hundred and eighteen (118) consultants in Nigeria from diverse consulting firm settings in terms of size, international affiliation and scope of operation (Big 4/non-Big 4 firms). Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, cluster analysis, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), multivariate discriminant analysis and multivariable logistic regression. Findings Whereas organizational characteristics such as firm size, international affiliation and scope of operation significantly determine the adoption rate of BDA, two attributes (international affiliation and scope of operation) significantly explain BDA usage level. Internationally affiliated consulting firms are more likely to record higher usage level of BDA than local firms. Also, the usage level of BDA by the Big 4 accounting/consulting firms is expected to be higher in comparison to non-Big 4 firms. Practical implications Contrary to common knowledge that firm size is positively associated with the adoption of an innovation, the study found no evidence to support this claim in respect of the diffusion of BDA. Overall, it appears that the scope of operation is the strongest organizational factor affecting the diffusion of BDA among consulting firms. Originality/value The study contributes to knowledge by exposing the factors promoting the uptake of BDA in a developing country. The originality of the current study stems from the consideration that it is the first, to the researchers' knowledge, to investigate the application of BDA by consulting firms in the Nigerian context. The study adds to literature on management accounting in the digital economy.