Management accounting practices and organizational performance

This study focused on corporate governance and performance of selected Nigerian multinational firms from 2012 to 2016. Specifically, the study focused on the effect of board size, activism and committee activism on return on asset and firm growth rate. Secondary data collected from four multinational firms were analyzed via static panel estimation techniques. While board size and board activism exerted significant negative impact on return on asset, committee activism exerted insignificant impact. The results of the study further showed that board size and board activism exert insignificant negative impact on firm’s growth rate, while committee activism insignificantly spurs firm’s growth rate. Decisively, discoveries from this study reflect that corporate governance has significant negative impact on return on asset, but has insignificant influence on the growth rate of Nigerian multinational firms. Based on these findings, the authors recommended that corporate governance dynamics in firms world over should be reconsidered, such that it gives credence to more than just numbers of persons or meetings held, but the main reasons and deliberations in such meetings. It was also recommended that excessive increase in magnitude or frequency of meetings held by board of directors cum committee should be avoided.

Working capital management plays a pivotal role in enhancing the operational efficiency of firms and their ultimate profitability. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the trends in working capital management and its impact on the financial performance of listed manufacturing firms on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE). A panel data methodology was used with different regression estimators to analyze this relationship based on an unbalanced panel of 69 manufacturing firms listed during the period 2007–2016.
The findings revealed that the average collection period and the average payment period are negative and statistically significant for profitability, implying that firms which efficiently manage their accounts receivable and those that pay their creditors on time perform better than those that do not. Additionally, a positive statistically significant relationship between the number of days in inventory and profitability was supported suggesting that firms which stock-up and maintain their inventory levels suffer less from stock-outs and avoid challenges of securing financing when needed. This increases their operational efficiency and ensures profitability in the long run. It could not be ascertained whether a shorter or longer cash conversion cycle enhances firm profitability, since findings to support this premise were weak. However, it was observed that manufacturing firms are on average, carrying lot of debt in their capital structures.
The present study contributes to existing literature by presenting one of the very recent findings on this topic while simultaneously testing the validity of recent local and international methodologies, in order to inform policy change.

Sustainability is a key area of concern for manufacturing firms’ long-term success. However, the manufacturing industry has not been fully conscious of the potential sustainable values across manufacturing system. There is a need to better understand how companies can improve sustainable value creation. Recent research and practices have shown that sustainable operations can be one way to create sustainable values (e.g. economic, environmental and social). This review article focuses on the available empirical studies on the impact of lean and sustainability practices on sustainable performance from 2000 to 2018 in the context of manufacturing firms. Integrating lean and sustainability practices into manufacturing system confrontы operations managers with paradoxical tensions of sustainability objectives. Theoretically having paradoxical mindset will help firms’ managers make sense of and responв to such paradoxical tensions. In the context of sustainable operations studies, the issue of paradoxical mindset has been given less emphasis. Therefore, through the lens of the paradox theory, this study has developed a new conceptual framework for future research to investigate how paradoxical mindset moderates the impact of lean and sustainability practices on the sustainable performance of manufacturing industry. This study may add to the understanding of the circumstances, under which lean and sustainability practices impact sustainable outcomes.