Browsing by Author "van Staden, C. J."

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Aspects of the motivation for voluntary disclosures: evidence from the publication of value added statements in an emerging economy
    (2001) van Staden, C. J.
    This paper investigates the motivation for the voluntary disclosure of financial information by companies in their annual financial statements, by examining aspects of the usefulness of the value added statement. The value added statement is published voluntarily with the annual financial statements and is currently experiencing high levels of publication in South Africa, which is evidently brought about by the high political costs and significant legitimacy threats that companies operating in South Africa are facing. It was found from the literature and from a survey among management that the value added statement was primarily aimed at the employees. Employees have also been regarded as users of financial information in the literature. However, a survey among trade unions in South Africa found that almost no use is made of the value added statement even though the unions make use of other financial information. This indicates that voluntary disclosures do not necessarily satisfy the information needs of their intended audience. The research also indicates that the trade unions might not use the value added statement because they suspect that the statement is being used to reduce political costs and legitimacy threats, and is therefore not reliable. This is a major shortcoming of voluntary disclosures.
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    The corporatisation of local body entities: A study of financial performance
    (2003) Hooks, J. J.; van Staden, C. J.
    The New Zealand electricity industry provides us with a unique opportunity to examine how entities responded to major restructuring of the industry. This research studies the financial performance of three entities, each with a different ownership structure, over a 15 year period from 1988 to 2002. The aim is to examine the possible influence of ownership type and corporatisation on the development and financial performance of the entities by examining the changes that took place from the pre-corporatisation period to the post-corporatisation period and comparing and contrasting the performance and funding of the three entities over that time. In this way an assessment is made of the possible influence of ownership type on financial performance. This research can be framed to some extent by agency theory aspects of positive accounting theory. In addition legitimacy theory has been used to explain the behaviour of managers and the process of organizations adapting to a changing environment. Both theories acknowledge the interaction of organizations and their environment. The comparison shows that at the end of the study period the council owned company was the smallest, in terms of total assets, of the three companies examined (although it was similar in size to the biggest one at the outset). The council owned company also returned most capital to its shareholders and is the most conservatively financed one of the three with only 10% debt at the end of 2002 compared to 28% for the trust-held company and 87% for the listed company. The listed company ended up being the biggest and the one with the highest gearing, the highest ROA and the highest profit margin. The study concludes that ownership structure did have an influence on financial performance and level of debt funding.
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    The value added statement: bastion of social reporting or dinosaur of financial reporting?
    (2001) van Staden, C. J.
    South Africa is at present experiencing the highest incidence of publication of the value added statement reported anywhere in the world to date. In addition research investigating the predictive ability of value added information has been conducted in the USA since 1990, even though the value added statement has not been published there. The research reported in this paper sets out to establish whether the value added statement is a disclosure worth considering by companies around the world, by investigating the South African experience with the value added statement. The social accounting theories of organisational legitimacy and political costs were found to be best suited to explain why the value added statement is published. Surveys among the companies publishing the value added statement indicated that management had the employees in mind when they published this information. However, a survey among users has indicated that very little use has been made of the value added statement. The main reason for this seems to be that the unregulated nature of the value added statement allows for inconsistencies in disclosures, which eventually caused users to suspect bias in the reports. The USA evidence that the information has additional predictive power is not confirmed by a South African study, and is complicated by the limited additional information contained in the value added statement. The South African experience with the value added statement does not make a convincing case for publication. Rather, it highlights the need for unbiased and verified social disclosures that will be useful to all the stakeholders of the company. In addition, it has implications for other voluntary social and environmental disclosures.
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    Web assisted teaching: an undergraduate experience
    (2002) van Staden, C. J.; Kirk, N. E.; Hawkes, L. C.
    The emergence of the Internet has created a number of claims as to the future of education and the possibility of dramatically changing the way in which education is delivered. Much of the attention has focussed on the adoption of teaching methods that are solely web-based. We set out to incorporate web-based teaching as support for more traditional teaching methods to improve the learning outcomes for students. This first step into web-based teaching was developed to harness the benefits of web-based teaching tools without supplanting traditional teaching methods. The aim of this paper is to report our experience with web-assisted teaching in two undergraduate courses, Accounting Information Systems and Management Accounting Services, during 2000. The paper evaluates the approach taken and proposes a tentative framework for developing future web-assisted teaching applications. We believe that web-assisted and web-based teaching are inevitable outcomes of the telecommunications and computer revolution and that academics cannot afford to become isolated from the on-line world. A considered approach is needed to ensure the integration of web-based features into the overall structure of a course. The components of the course material and the learning experiences students are exposed to need to be structured and delivered in a way that ensures they support student learning rather than replacing one form of learning with another. Therefore a careful consideration of the structure, content, level of detail and time of delivery needs to be integrated to create a course structure that provides a range of student learning experiences that are complimentary rather than competing. The feedback was positive from both extramural (distance) and internal students, demonstrating to us that web sites can be used as an effective teaching tool in support of more traditional teaching methods as well as a tool for distance education. The ability to harness the positives of the web in conjunction with more traditional teaching modes is one that should not be overlooked in the move to adopt web based instruction methods. Web-based teaching need not be seen as an all or nothing divide but can be used as a useful way of improving the range and type of learning experiences open to students. The Web challenges traditional methods and thinking but it also provides tools to develop innovative solutions to both distance and on campus learning. Further research is needed to determine how we can best meet the needs of our students while maintaining high quality learning outcomes.