Audit for Whom? Time to Review Roles of Independent Auditors in Hong Kong

The Hong Kong government has been reforming its laws regarding accounting practices in recent years, to pre-empt problems similar to that of Enron. It correctly recognizes an opportunity to enhance and distinguish the financial system in Hong Kong and create a competitive advantage for Hong Kong. The sixty-five billion dollar question is: what is the right approach for accounting practice reform? One obvious approach is to model reform after the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX). The SOX increases personal liabilities of senior management and introduces extremely cumbersome compliance processes (s 3 (b)(ix) of Minutes of Bills Committee of Financial Reporting Council Bill. (19 July 2005)). While this approach may be the right move for the United States, because rescuing investor confidence is paramount, a similar approach may not be optimal for Hong Kong. Hong Kong relies, to a great degree, on foreign investments and a heavy-handed approach may scare investments away (Charles E. Schumer &; Michael R. Bloomberg To Save New York, Learn from London, Wall Street Journal 1 Nov 2006). This paper, argues that failure of independent auditors was mainly caused by bad incentives. In particular, auditors were hired by and responsible to the management of companies. Thus, there is no surprise that auditors were less diligent in finding problems caused by management. Furthermore, proposing of an alternate to the SOA’s approach. Specifically, a new legal approach should be enforced that allows shareholders to sue auditors when failure to uncover accounting issues causes loss of shareholders’ values.     

Organized Activity Involvement,Depressive Symptoms,and Social Adjustment in Adolescents: Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status as Moderators

The current cross-sectional study investigated the links between various dimensions of organized activity involvement and depressive symptoms, loneliness, and peer victimization in an ethnically and economically diverse sample of adolescents (N = 152; 58% female). Results indicate that adolescents who were involved in organized activities for more years also reported lower levels of loneliness. There was evidence of diminishing returns when adolescents were very highly involved in organized activities; those who were either under- or over-involved reported the highest levels of depressive symptoms. Conversely, findings indicate that adolescents who participated in a narrow or wide range of activity contexts reported the lowest levels of depressive symptoms. In addition, results suggested that the relation between organized activity involvement and adjustment differs among adolescents from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Findings from the current study also underscore the importance of considering multiple indices of activity involvement when assessing its association with adjustment.

Parents and Peers as Social Influences to Deter Antisocial Behavior

Growth curve analyses were used to investigate parents’ and peers’ influence on adolescents’ choice to abstain from antisocial behavior in a community-based sample of 416 early adolescents living in the Southeastern United States. Participants were primarily European American (91%) and 51% were girls. Both parents and peers were important influences on the choice to abstain from antisocial behavior. Over the four-year period adolescents relied increasingly on parents as influences and relied less on peers as influences to deter antisocial behavior. Significant gender differences emerged and suggested that female adolescents relied more on social influences than did male adolescents but that as time progressed male adolescents increased the rate at which they relied on peers. Higher family income was associated with choosing peers as a social influence at wave 1, but no other significant income associations were found. Understanding influences on adolescents’ abstinence choices is important for preventing antisocial behavior.

Adolescents’ Educational Outcomes: Racial and Ethnic Variations in Peer Network Importance

Little attention has been paid to the role of peer social capital in the school context, especially as a predictor of adolescents’ academic outcomes. This study uses a nationally representative (N = 13,738, female = 51%), longitudinal sample and multilevel models to examine how peer networks impact educational achievement and attainment. Results reveal that, in addition to those factors typically associated with academic outcomes (e.g., school composition), two individual-level peer network measures, SES and heterogeneity, had significant effects. Although educational attainment was generally worse in low SES schools, for all ethnic groups higher attainment was associated with attending schools with higher concentrations of minority students. At the individual level, however, membership in integrated peer networks was negatively related to high school graduation for Asians, Latinos, and non-Hispanic whites, and to GPA for Asians and Latinos, as only African-American achievement increased in more racially/ethnically heterogeneous peer networks. Our results suggest that co-ethnic and co-racial peer friendship networks should not be viewed as obstacles to the educational accomplishments of today’s youth. In fact, in many cases the opposite was true, as results generally support the ethnic social capital hypothesis while providing little corroboration for oppositional culture theory. Results also suggest that co-racial and co-ethnic ties may mediate the negative effects of school choice, or more specifically of between-school socioeconomic segregation. Consequently, we conclude that school policies aimed at socioeconomic desegregation are likely to beneficially affect the academic outcomes of all race/ethnic groups.

The Intergenerational Transmission of Values in National and Immigrant Families: The Role of Zeitgeist

Correspondence in value orientation between parents and their offspring may be due to actual transmission processes between generations, but it may also be due to influences from the general value context in society that are common to parents and their offspring. This common value context is referred to as Zeitgeist. The present study deals with one family relationship value (i.e., parents’ and adolescents’ obligations toward the family). Participants were 1,252 immigrant and 726 national adolescent–parent dyads from 10 Western countries. There were significant relationships between the value placed on family obligations among parents and offspring, and these were independent of gender. Zeitgeist effects, both intergenerational and intragenerational, were found. The strength of these Zeitgeist effects depended on the basis for defining Zeitgeist, either a person’s own ethnic group or the wider community including both nationals and immigrants. For explaining national adolescents’ acceptance of their family obligations, both the ethnic and the national Zeitgeist played a role, whereas in the immigrant groups only the ethnic Zeitgeist played a significant role. In short, in an immigration context it makes sense to distinguish the influence of a person’s own ethnic group from the influence of the wider community, including other ethnic groups. Explanations are suggested and implications are discussed.

A Qualitative Analysis of Vietnamese Adolescent Identity Exploration Within and Outside an Ethnic Enclave

Focusing on identity development explorations enables a greater understanding of contexts that affect immigrant adolescents. Utilizing thematic and grounded narrative analysis of 46 journal writings, during a one-month period, from first and second generation Vietnamese adolescents ranging in age from 15 to 18 (26 residents of a culturally and politically active ethnic enclave in Southern California; 20 adolescents living outside the enclave), this study establishes ways in which a focus on social context and exploration processes illuminates the complexity of immigrant adolescents’ identity formation. The two groups shared many similarities, including precipitants to exploration and steps undertaken to explore identity. However, two factors—social and cultural influences and emotional reactions—revealed interesting contrasts distinguishing enclave from non-enclave dwelling Vietnamese adolescents. Data also suggested that immigrant adolescents strive to integrate different domains of identity (ethnicity, gender, career) both with one another and with the historical, social, and cultural contexts they occupy.

Chinese American Adolescents’ Perceptions of the Language Brokering Experience as a Sense of Burden and Sense of Efficacy

Children of immigrants who do translations and who interpret for others using their heritage language and English are known as language brokers. Although prior research suggests that children of immigrants’ perceptions of the language brokering experience vary greatly—from feeling a sense of efficacy to feeling a sense of burden—what remains unanswered in the literature is identification of the antecedents and processes that help to explain the varying psychological experience of language brokers. Using data from a two-wave prospective longitudinal study of 256 Chinese American adolescents, the present study tested potential mechanisms that may be responsible for adolescents’ perceptions of the language brokering experience as a sense or burden or sense of efficacy. The results demonstrate that adolescents’ Chinese orientation sets in motion a family process that is linked to variations in the perceptions of adolescents’ language brokering experience. Adolescents who are more Chinese oriented have a stronger sense of familial obligation, and these adolescents are more likely to perceive that they matter to their parents. Adolescents’ perceived sense of mattering to parents, in turn, is associated positively with a sense efficacy, and negatively with a sense of burden as language brokers. Those adolescents who are less Chinese oriented have a weaker sense of familial obligation, and these adolescents are more likely to feel a sense of alienation from their parents. Adolescents’ sense of perceived alienation from parents, in turn, is associated with a sense of burden as language brokers. Implications for developing interventions for children who act as language brokers for their parents are discussed.

Examining Temporal Associations Between School Connectedness and Early Adolescent Adjustment

This study examined (a) the associations between school connectedness and early adolescent adjustment problems over a 1 year period and (b) the equivalence of these associations across gender. Five hundred middle school students (53.4% female), initially in the 6th and 7th grades, participated in the two-wave study. Results from two-group cross-lagged panel analyses were consistent across boys’ and girls’ data. After controlling for baseline levels of adjustment problems, school connectedness predicted lower levels of early adolescent conduct problems 1 year later. Regarding the opposite direction of associations, and even after baseline levels of school connectedness were taken into account, conduct problems predicted lower levels of subsequent school connectedness. There were no cross-lagged associations between depressive symptoms and school connectedness, although elevated levels of baseline depressive symptoms predicted higher levels of subsequent conduct problems. Findings elaborate previous research by demonstrating that early adolescents actively shape the middle school environment.

Autonomy,Belongingness, and Engagement in School as Contributors to Adolescent Psychological Well-Being

Self-determination theory emphasizes the importance of school-based autonomy and belongingness to academic achievement and psychological adjustment, and the theory posits a model in which engagement in school mediates the influence of autonomy and belongingness on these outcomes. To date, this model has only been evaluated on academic outcomes. Utilizing short-term longitudinal data (5-month timeframe) from a set of secondary schools in the rural Midwest (N = 283, M age = 15.3, 51.9% male, 86.2% White), we extend the model to include a measure of positive adjustment (i.e., hope). We also find a direct link between peer-related belongingness (i.e., peer support) and positive adjustment that is not mediated by engagement in school. A reciprocal relationship between academic autonomy, teacher-related belongingness (i.e., teacher support) and engagement in learning is supported, but this reciprocal relationship does not extend to peer-related belongingness. The implications of these findings for secondary schools are discussed.