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Research on organizational aspirations has used various representations of firm-level aspirations and based those representations on various performance measures. To advance our understanding of the measurement of aspirations, we empirically compare three different aspiration models defined using six different performance measures to explain three different firm outcomes (financial misrepresentation, R&D spending, and income-stream uncertainty). The results moderately support a model with separate historical and social aspirations over a model of aspirations that systematically switches between the two. The results strongly support both the separate and switching models over a model where aspirations constitute a weighted average of historical and social comparisons, the model associated most directly with Cyert and March's original specification. We discuss the implications of these results and highlight directions for future research.

We examine whether short sellers detect firms that misrepresent their financial statements, and whether their trading conveys external costs or benefits to other investors. Abnormal short interest increases steadily in the 19 months before the misrepresentation is publicly revealed, particularly when the misconduct is severe. Short selling is associated with a faster time-to-discovery, and it dampens the share price inflation that occurs when firms misstate their earnings. These results indicate that short sellers anticipate the eventual discovery and severity of financial misconduct. They also convey external benefits, helping to uncover misconduct and keeping prices closer to fundamental values.

Social media is full of accusations and counter-accusations of a wrong called ‘cultural appropriation’. Our goal in this article is to sift through these deliberations and identify what cultural appropriation is, what it is not, and what, if anything might be wrong with it. We begin by explaining why public discourse about cultural appropriation should matter to political theorists of multiculturalism, especially in the anti-immigrant mood that has engulfed many immigrant-receiving countries. We then place cultural appropriation under the umbrella of cultural engagement, before identifying two forms of problematic cultural engagement – cultural offence and cultural misrepresentation – that are often conflated with cultural appropriation. In the next section, we define cultural appropriation as the appropriation of something of cultural value, usually a symbol or a practice, to others. We go on to explain that two additional conditions must be present to define an act of cultural appropriation: the presence of significant contestation around the act of appropriation, and the presence of knowledge (or negligent culpability) in the act of appropriation. Although this account of cultural appropriation is normative, cultural appropriation is often wrong only in a trivial sense. One of the ways it can become more serious is through the presence of what we term ‘amplifiers’. The contextual conditions that can render acts of cultural appropriation more egregious include: the existence of a power imbalance between the cultural appropriator and those from whom the practice or symbol is appropriated; the absence of consent; and the presence of profit that accrues to the appropriator. Ultimately, we find that there are very few instances of seriously wrongful cultural appropriation, and that many of the actions decried as cultural appropriation may be wrongful, but not because they appropriate.

Recruitment of health research participants through social media is becoming more common. In the United States, 80% of adults use at least one social media platform. Social media platforms may allow researchers to reach potential participants efficiently. However, online research methods may be associated with unique threats to sample validity and data integrity. Limited research has described issues of data quality and authenticity associated with the recruitment of health research participants through social media, and sources of low-quality and fraudulent data in this context are poorly understood. The goal of the research was to describe and explain threats to sample validity and data integrity following recruitment of health research participants through social media and summarize recommended strategies to mitigate these threats. Our experience designing and implementing a research study using social media recruitment and online data collection serves as a case study. Using published strategies to preserve data integrity, we recruited participants to complete an online survey through the social media platforms Twitter and Facebook. Participants were to receive $15 upon survey completion. Prior to manually issuing remuneration, we reviewed completed surveys for indicators of fraudulent or low-quality data. Indicators attributable to respondent error were labeled suspicious, while those suggesting misrepresentation were labeled fraudulent. We planned to remove cases with 1 fraudulent indicator or at least 3 suspicious indicators. Within 7 hours of survey activation, we received 271 completed surveys. We classified 94.5% (256/271) of cases as fraudulent and 5.5% (15/271) as suspicious. In total, 86.7% (235/271) provided inconsistent responses to verifiable items and 16.2% (44/271) exhibited evidence of bot automation. Of the fraudulent cases, 53.9% (138/256) provided a duplicate or unusual response to one or more open-ended items and 52.0% (133/256) exhibited evidence of inattention. Research findings from several disciplines suggest studies in which research participants are recruited through social media are susceptible to data quality issues. Opportunistic individuals who use virtual private servers to fraudulently complete research surveys for profit may contribute to low-quality data. Strategies to preserve data integrity following research participant recruitment through social media are limited. Development and testing of novel strategies to prevent and detect fraud is a research priority.

Publication in peer-reviewed journals is an essential step in the scientific process. However, publication is not simply the reporting of facts arising from a straightforward analysis thereof. Authors have broad latitude when writing their reports and may be tempted to consciously or unconsciously “spin” their study findings. Spin has been defined as a specific intentional or unintentional reporting that fails to faithfully reflect the nature and range of findings and that could affect the impression the results produce in readers. This article, based on a literature review, reports the various practices of spin from misreporting by “beautification” of methods to misreporting by misinterpreting the results. It provides data on the prevalence of some forms of spin in specific fields and the possible effects of some types of spin on readers’ interpretation and research dissemination. We also discuss why researchers would spin their reports and possible ways to avoid it.

An extensive literature examines the causes and effects of financial misconduct based on samples drawn from four popular databases that identify restatements, securities class action lawsuits, and Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Releases (AAERs). We show that the results from empirical tests can depend on which database is accessed. To examine the causes of such discrepancies, we compare the information in each database to a detailed sample of 1,243 case histories in which regulators brought enforcement actions for financial misrepresentation. These comparisons allow us to identify, measure, and estimate the economic importance of four features of each database that affect inferences from empirical tests. We show the extent to which each database is subject to these concerns and offer suggestions for researchers using these databases.

p class=\"MsoNormal\"This paper examines the strategic manoeuvre of ‘sandbagging’ in mergers and acquisitions (M&As), wherein a party, despite having prior awareness of falsity of certain representations & warranties, attains the right to claim indemnification, damages for the breach of warranties, and restitution along with rescission of a contract for the breach of representations. Sandbagging is globally widespread; hence its permissibility is influenced by jurisdictional differences. This paper focuses its narrative on India, highlighting the nebulous terrain of a buyer claiming a breach of representations & warranties (R&Ws) through sandbagging provisions. The paper navigates section 19 of Indian Contract Act (ICA), 1872, to dissect how misrepresentation is understood and how the requirement of inducement, duty of ordinary diligence, and the presence of awareness of the falsity of representations has evolved. Judicial departure from the requirement of diligence and inducement for representations, aligns India with a pro-sandbagging stance, akin to the modern commercial practices in the United States (US), albeit with the challenge of deviating from the text of section 19 of the ICA, 1872. The paper also seeks to showcase the viability of sandbagging warranties in India by examining the scheme of the Sale of Goods Act (SoGA), 1930, the principle of ‘caveat emptor’, and the courts’ liberal understanding of contractual warranties. This exploration not only sheds light on the evolving legal landscape of sandbagging in India but also underscores the broader implications for M&A stakeholders. As India grapples with these intricacies, the delicate task of aligning statutory law with modern commercial practices echoes the global challenge faced in having clarity and transparency regarding the complexities of M&A transactions.

Despite the many undesirable outcomes of corporate misconduct, scholars have an inadequate understanding of corporate misconduct's causes and mechanisms. We extend the behavioral theory of the firm, which traditionally assumes away the possibility of firm impropriety, to develop hypotheses predicting that top management incentive compensation and poor organizational performance relative to aspirations increase the likelihood of financial misrepresentation. Using a sample of financial restatements prompted by accounting irregularities and identified by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, we find empirical support for both incentive and relative performance influences on financial statement misrepresentation.

Govind calls out the attention of Upal Chakrabarti for representing hisarticle. He stresses that misrepresentation is compounded by misattribution and the drawing on his previously published work without due acknowledgement. He also cites the argumentation of Chakrabarti about the similarity between Lawrence Krader's argument and his own.

The discourse concerning Islam, and in particular the translation of the Quran, has had a profound impact on Western views of Muslim women. Most Quran translations are stained with mistranslations, resulting from translators adopting the literal approach for religious reasons that we will explore. This has an impact on many aspects of meaning, but especially the representation of women. It should be noted that this article is not influenced by the views of feminist groups who focus on seeking new interpretations of the Quran. Instead, it pinpoints the genuine interpretation lost in translation. This article endeavors to identify the translational mistakes, and their influence on the image of women, through a comparison with the original text in terms of linguistic and paralinguistic features found in the Quran. The article adopts the interpretive approach in the form of a multiple-case study to clarify the mistranslated cases and to provide genuine interpretation as understood within the original context, without either addition or omission. The article concludes that many Quran translations instantiate a fertile ground, contributing to the creation of a negative image of Muslim women in the eyes of the West. This is attributed to the translator's lack of knowledge of Quranic scholarship, i.e., the paralinguistic issues and the excessive use of the literal approach that fails to capture the intended meaning of the original text.