There is a concern that auditors and the public may have different beliefs about the auditors’ responsibilities and the messages delivered by audit reports. During the past few years, some spectacular and well‐publicized corporates such as Anderson consulting collapse and the subsequent implication of the reporting auditors have emphasized on the audit expectation gap. It appears that public misperceptions represent a major reason for the legal liability crisis facing the accounting profession. The objective of this paper is to present an empirical investigation on the audit expectation gap for some privately hold firms in Iran. The population of this survey includes two groups of official auditing officials and management of some privately held firms. The results of the survey have indicated that there were some meaningful difference between management and audit group’s perceptions in terms of the auditors’ roles and responsibilities. However, there was no meaningful relationship between management and audit group’s perceptions in terms of the auditors’ independence.

In this study, the impact response of glass/epoxy laminates interleaved by Polycaprolactone (PCL) nanofibers is considered. PCL is a thermoplastic polymer, which is a good choice for toughening epoxy-based composite. The impact tests were conducted on curved laminates and under 24 and 36J. The results showed that the effect of interleaving on impact parameters such as maximum load is negligible, but on the other hand could decrease damaged area significantly. By inserting 30?m of PCL nanofibers between each layer of laminate the damaged area decreased about 27%.

Management teams are always expected to provide transparent financial reports for public. Different characteristics such as honesty, conservatism as well as management capability may play essential role for the success of businesses in supply chain. The proposed study of this paper considers the effects of three factors; namely management capability, management honesty and management conservatism on quality of financial statements. The proposed study collects the information of 92 firms from Tehran Stock Exchange over a nine-year period from 2004 to 2012. Using some statistical tests, the study has concluded that only management honesty could influence on quality of financial reports. In our study, conservatism did not have any impact on the quality of financial reports and it seems that managers have to take more risk in order to reach financial objectives.

As in today's era firms are looking to sustain while facing multiple challenges. Ultimately talented employees are the backbone of any firm that provides a sustainable competitive position at a global level. The major aspect is to make appropriate strategies to stay effective and efficient. Firms are focused on their strategies of recruitment and selection, training, and leadership capabilities to build up. A sample is collected from top-level management of the pharmaceutical sector sample data is of 320 Professionals from the different pharmaceutical sector of Karachi Pakistan. For Data collection Survey method is adopted with a close-ended Questionnaire. The study reveals the impact of artificial intelligence on competitive advantage. This research finds out certain strategies to be aligned with the mediation of Artificial intelligence to gain sustainable competitive advantage and serial mediation of the talent management process among the pharmaceutical sector of Karachi Pakistan. Talent management and Artificial Intelligence serial mediation aligned with HR practices to gain competitive advantage. As the study indicates that recruitment and selection are positively aligned with Artificial intelligence and serial mediation of talent management, further aspects of talent development and talent retention are directly linked with a competitive advantage as suitable components. This research merely focused on the pharmaceutical sector of Karachi Pakistan and the results generalized on the professionals of this particular sector, while new aspects of HR practices could be linked up with Artificial intelligence that will help to boost and find better insight into other industries.

This paper presents an integrated granular framework of wavelet decomposition, DCC-GARCH, ADCC-GARCH, Diks-Panchenko nonlinear Granger’s causality and Diebold-Yilmaz spillover assessment techniques to understand temporal correlation, causal interplay and spillovers among volatile financial time series data exhibiting nonparametric behavior. The exercise has been carried out on daily closing observations of eight financial time series. Wavelet decomposition has been used to generate time varying components in which the other research models are applied to extract the interactive pattern of interaction to ascertain short and long run nexus. The findings rationalize the effectiveness of the presented research framework.

Construction sites are accident-prone locations and therefore safety management plays an im-portant role in these workplaces. This study presents an adaptive algorithm for performance as-sessment of project management with respect to resilience engineering and job security in a large construction site. The required data are collected using questionnaires in a large construction site. The presented algorithm is composed of radial basis function (RBF), artificial neural networks multi-layer perceptron (ANN-MLP), and statistical tests. The results indicate that preparedness, fault-tolerance, and flexibility are the most effective factors on overall efficiency. Moreover, job security and resilience engineering have similar statistical impacts on overall system efficiency. The results are verified and validated by the proposed algorithm.

Cash is the life blood of the organizations and cash management is the important aspect of any organization. Corporate cash management boosts the companies from small to giant in the competitive environment. In this study, we highlighted three factors of a good cash management practices; namely cash conversion cycle, cash holding and credit score. Influence of one factor to other help organizations manage their corporate cash more appropriately. In this study, we collected data from Capitaline corporate data base of Mumbai over the period 2002-2011. In this study we observed that due to higher credit score, companies were forced to minimize their cash conversion cycle and helped them maintain lower levels of working capital.

An inexpensive straightforward approach to direct oxidative twofold C-H arylation of 1,4-naphthoquinone catalyzed by readily available Br?nsted acids was developed. Under the simple and easily achievable reaction conditions, electron-rich aromatics undergo Friedel-Crafts type functionalization to furnish 2-arylonaphthoquinones in good yields. The attempt to rationalize the scope and limitation of the approach based on desktop PC DFT calculation and reactivity indexes theory was taken up.

With the ever-increasing demands for high surface finish and complex shape geometries, conventional metal removal methods are now being replaced by non-traditional machining (NTM) processes. These NTM processes use energy in its direct form to remove materials in the form of atoms or molecules to obtain the required accuracy and burr-free machined surface. In order to exploit the optimal capabilities of the NTM processes, it is often required to determine the best possible combinations of their controllable parameters. Different non-conventional optimization techniques have been used for dealing with these process optimization problems because of their inherent advantages and capabilities for arriving at the almost global optimal solutions. This paper reviews the applications of different non-conventional optimization techniques for parametric optimization of NTM processes. It is observed that electrical discharge machining processes have been optimized most number of times, followed by wire electrical discharge machining processes. In most of the cases, the past researchers have preferred to maximize material removal rate. Genetic algorithm has been found to be the most popular non-conventional optimization technique.

In competitive electricity markets, power needed for the network’s reserve is purchased from the ancillary service market. In this market, producing units and buyers alike announce their offers. As will be seen, energy market and reserve market implementation is possible with simultaneous method and serial method by choosing each of the methods based on the type of market and other conditions. In this paper, the energy market and the active power reserve market are simulated in two formations as serial and simultaneous for a uniform pricing system. In each method, limitations of transferring power over the lines, based on available transfer capacity (ATC), is considered alongside the other constraints in the energy market and the active power reserve market. Then, during network overload, economic dispatch is accomplished between winner units in the reserve market by using a linear optimization problem, and needed power is provided from these units at a minimal cost. Finally, our proposed methods are implemented on an IEEE 39-bus test system and results are analyzed.