La jaula de bateo

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en AministraciónRobert Salterio [Parte I]Entre los distritos de panamá y san miguelito existe una población de aproximadamente 140,000 personas que cuentan con muy pocas alternativas para divertirse y compartir en familia. En estas mismas áreas existen alrededor de 7 ligas de béisbol infantil (aproximadamente 2,800 peloteros) quienes entrenan en condiciones limitadas (iluminación, lluvia, estado del terreno) y bajo técnicas de entrenamiento no acorde con las que se practican en los países de alta competición internacional como EEUU, México entre otros. De acuerdo a una entrevista “in situ” luego de una prueba piloto realizada en la ciudad de Panamá, el 96% de los encuestados estuvieron de acuerdo que en la ciudad no existen suficientes centros de entretenimiento deportivo donde compartir con la familia. Salas de cine, bolos y salas de video juegos son las principales opciones que tienen los panameños de este sector, mientras que los competidores ofrecen para los deportistas un servicio estándar y en muchos casos deficiente. De esta manera nace la idea de La Jaula de Bateo, que busca ofrecer una propuesta de valor ofreciendo diversión para toda la familia, en un ambiente único por la pasión del béisbol. La Jaula de Bateo busca integrarse con ligas y academias de Béisbol a fin de generar alianzas a largo plazo que garanticen ingresos recurrentes dentro de este segmento. El conocimiento del mercado se basó en entrevistas a personalidades referentes al deporte, prueba piloto realizadas en centro comercial y encuestas realizadas en situ, con el objetivo de identificar las necesidades que cuenta este mercado deportivo lo cual nos ayudó a formalizar la propuesta. Como objetivo principal La Jaula de Bateo busca posicionarse como marca referente al Béisbol, y como pioneros en el mercado. Para lograr esto la Jaula de Bateo se ha propuesto una estrategia competitiva ofrecer un servicio personalizado; especialmente para el segmento Deportivo a fin de crear un vínculo de largo plazo, y un ambiente familiar, donde todo el grupo pueda compartir y pasar un rato único y divertido

Can auditors be independent? – Experimental evidence on the effects of client type

Recent regulatory initiatives stress that an independent oversight board, rather than the management board, should be the client of the auditor. In an experiment, we test whether the type of client affects auditors’ independence. Unique features of the German institutional setting enable us to realistically vary the type of auditors’ client as our treatment variable: we portray the client either as the management preferring aggressive accounting or the oversight board preferring conservative accounting. We measure auditors’ perceived client retention incentives and accountability pressure in a post-experiment questionnaire to capture potential threats to independence. We find that the type of auditors’ client affects auditors’ behaviour contingent on the degree of the perceived threats to independence. Our findings imply that both client retention incentives and accountability pressure represent distinctive threats to auditors’ independence and that the effectiveness of an oversight board in enhancing auditors’ independence depends on the underlying threat

Auditor-client interactions in the changed UK regulatory environment - A revised grounded theory model

Audit and financial reporting quality are under intense scrutiny nationally and globally. The outcome of high-level auditor-auditee discussion and negotiation issues (auditor-client interactions) is central to this debate. Beattie et al. developed a grounded theory model of these interactions in the 1997 UK setting. This paper reports on a field study of 45 interactions in nine case companies in the radically changed post-SOX regulatory environment. Crucially, interviewees in each case company extend the chief financial officer-audit partner dyad to include the audit committee chair. Fundamental revisions to the model emerge. The strongest influence on interactions has become the national enforcement regime, overlaid upon the international standard-setting regime. The outcome in both the eyes of the participants and in our evaluation is full compliance (contrary to the findings from the 1997 setting), regardless of the perceived quality of the standards and the integrity of the outcome. Personal and company characteristics, which were of most importance in 1997, have become peripheral. The audit committee chair is shown to fulfil a gatekeeping role in relation to the full audit committee

The Impact of Error-Management Climate, Error Type and Error Originator on Auditors’ Reporting Errors Discovered on Audit Work Papers

We examine factors affecting the auditor’s willingness to report their own or their peers’ self-discovered errors in working papers subsequent to detailed working paper review. Prior research has shown that errors in working papers are detected in the review process; however, such detection rates only rarely exceed 50% of the seeded errors. Hence, measures that encourage auditors to be alert to their own (or their peers’) potential errors any time they revisit the audit working papers may be valuable in detecting such residual errors and potentially correcting them before damage occurs to the audit firm or its client. We hypothesize that three factors affect the auditor’s willingness to report post detailed review discovered errors: the local office error-management climate (open versus blame), the type of error (mechanical versus conceptual) and who committed the error (the individual who committed the error (self) or a peer). Local office error-management climate is said to be open and supportive where errors and mistakes are accepted as part of everyday life as long as they are learned from and not repeated. In alternative, a blame error-management climate focuses on a “get it right the first time” culture where mistakes are not tolerated and blame gets attached to those admitting to or found committing such errors. We find that error-management climate has a significant overall effect on auditor willingness to report errors, as does who committed the error originally. We find both predicted and unpredicted significant interactions among the three factors that qualify these observed significant main effects. We discuss implications for audit practice and further research

Determinants of Moral Judgments Regarding Budgetary Slack:An Experimental Examination of Pay Scheme and Personal Values

We study moral judgments regarding budgetary slack made by participants at the end of a participative budgeting experiment in which an expectation for a truthful budget was present. We find that participants who set budgets under a slackinducing pay scheme, and therefore built relatively high levels of budgetary slack, judged significant budgetary slack to be unethical on average, whereas participants who set budgets under a truth-inducing pay scheme did not. This suggests that the slack-inducing pay scheme generated a moral frame by setting economic self-interest against common social norms such as honesty or responsibility. We also find that participants who scored high in traditional values and empathy on a pre-experiment personality questionnaire (JPI-R) were more likely to judge significant budgetary slack to be unethical. These results suggest that financial incentives play a role in determining the moral frame of the budgeting setting and that personal values play a role in determining how individuals respond to that moral frame

Efficacy of endoscopic third ventriculostomy to treat cognitive symptoms in adults with chronic obstructive hydrocephalus

Hydrocephalus is a neurological disease caused by an overaccumulation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) within the ventricles of the brain. This produces expansion of the ventricles (ventriculomegaly) and compression of the surrounding brain tissue. Obstructive hydrocephalus is the result of a macroscopic blockage within the ventricular system distal to the arachnoid villi and can produce cognitive decline. Endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV) has been shown to be a safe surgical treatment in obstructive hydrocephalus, however the efficacy of ETV to improve cognition has limited evidence. In order to determine how ETV affects cognition in adults who have chronic obstructive hydrocephalus, this thesis had the following objectives: 1) to determine the sufficiency of primary ETV to safely improve global cognition in adults with chronic obstructive hydrocephalus, and 2) to determine which cognitive domains ETV produces clinically meaningful changes in adults with chronic obstructive hydrocephalus. To complete the first objective, we conducted a multicenter study using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and Symbol Digit Modality Test (SDMT), measures of global cognition and processing speed, before and twice after ETV at 5-months and 14-months follow-up. We found that global cognition was only clinically improved at 14-months follow-up and processing speed was unaffected. Global cognitive worsening was rare at both follow-up assessments. To complete the second objective, we conducted a single-center study using the RBANS to measure global cognition in better detail and five cognitive domains before and after ETV. We found patients with chronic obstructive hydrocephalus treated with ETV have a clinically and statistically significant improvement in global cognition, attention, and delayed memory domains at 4-months follow-up. Clinical worsening was rare in all domains except visuospatial/constructional, where although there was no statistical difference, 50% of patients had a clinical worsening post-ETV. Lastly, a potential predictor of post-ETV global cognitive improvement was discovered. The likelihood of global cognition improvement was 100% when the difference between immediate and delayed memory indexes were three points or less. Further validation of this predictor is required. Future studies should expand on the neurocognitive testing to include anatomical correlates to elucidate the mechanism of cognitive decline seen in chronic obstructive hydrocephalus.Medicine, Faculty ofExperimental Medicine, Division ofMedicine, Department ofGraduat