http://hdl.handle.net/1893/230 Electronic theses of Accounting and Finance Students. Sat, 03 Oct 2026 03:53:58 GMT 2026-10-03T03:53:58Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37763 Title: Cultural translation and negotiation: corporate social and environmental reporting in China Author(s): Bai, Songyuan Abstract: While globalisation has strengthened global interconnectedness, it has also triggered concerns over cultural homogenisation and scepticism about the universal applicability of standardised practices. In the field of accounting, the cross-cultural transfer of practices such as Corporate Social and Environmental Reporting (CSER) continues to face challenges, often due to an overemphasis on technical standardisation while overlooking local cultural, political and social complexity. These challenges call for a more context-sensitive approach that considers how global accounting practices are interpreted, negotiated, and transformed within specific local settings. This study explores the translation and adaptation of CSER from global contexts into China. The research aims to understand how culture and translation shape this process. Grounded in Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybridity as the theoretical framework, the study conceptualises CSER translation as a process of cultural negotiation and meaning reconstruction between global and local discourses and practices. Data were collected through documents review of 409 texts from China’s official newspaper, People’s Daily, and interviews with 24 local CSER practitioners with state-owned enterprises (SOEs), non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), and consulting firms. Guided by the hybridity framework, a discourse analysis was deployed to analyse of documents, investigating how the state construct discourses around Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and sustainability; the thematic analysis of interview data further reveals how local practitioners translate and adapt CSER practices into the Chinese context. The results of this research suggest that while the official CSR and sustainability discourse of the Chinese government has been constructing a form of resistance to Western discourse, the space is left for interpretation and negotiation by local enterprises and practitioners, producing culturally hybridised CSER practices that integrate global discourse and local realities. This study questions the extent to which the local adaptation of global CSR and sustainability frameworks can lead to transformative possibilities for substantive social and environmental change. This research contributes to the literature on social and environmental accounting, by examining how global discourses and practices are reinterpreted and localised within China’s specific political and cultural context. Therefore, this research offers insights into the complexities of global and local dynamics in CSER, calling for a reconsideration of how globalised frameworks are constructed and implemented locally. Sat, 01 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37763 2025-03-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37389 Title: Institutional Factors Influencing the Service Provision of Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) in Zimbabwe Author(s): Ncube, Elizabeth Malaba Abstract: There is a lot of literature on telecommunications, but most of it covers telecommunications companies established in foreign countries. That literature has documented experiences of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) companies operating in foreign lands. Of course, these companies must meet certain requirements to establish themselves in those countries. Available literature on these FDI telecommunications firms has found politics, regulations, corruption, cultural and some operational factors. Other than that, these FDI MNOs operate in the same environment as local MNOs and yet very little is known about telecommunications companies operating in the domestic market. This thesis, using the lens of institutional theory, addresses the influence of institutional factors on MNOs in the domestic market of Zimbabwe, a developing country in Africa. This research adopts a case qualitative study with thirteen in-depth interviews and archival documents from International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), Post and Telecommunications Regulatory Agency of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ). These documents together with interviews were studied and triangulated. Regarding formal institutions, this study has found the influences of politicians, regulatory agencies, POTRAZ and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Informal institutions, the community, and infrastructural challenges have influenced the services offered by MNOs in Zimbabwe. This thesis contributes a significant understanding of how institutional factors influence the service provided by MNOs in Zimbabwe. This study has shown how formal institutions, in this case, politics and regulations together with informal institutions, communities affect the operations of MNOs in the country. Politicians, regulators solicit for favours (through bribery and nepotism) from MNOs who must oblige, to remain in business. On the other hand, informal institutions influence the operations of MNOs by destroying or stealing infrastructural components have had communities destroy infrastructure leading to disruption and unavailability of mobile services. This study also contributes to institutional theory literature, by addressing the African view of looking at formal and informal institutions. This study finds that in the African perspective, the two, formal and informal co-exist, but their influence on the service of MNOs is independent of each other. This study further contributes to institutional theory, the African perspective which appears to be lacking. The thesis also contributes to the application of institutional theory, the African perspective in management. The results of this study indicate that the Zimbabwe’s telecommunications regulatory body, POTRAZ needs to be revisited and updated accordingly. Mon, 30 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37389 2024-09-30T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37259 Title: The rise of gold financialization and its safe haven role Author(s): Faraj, Hussain A H Abstract: Gold has always been considered the most safe haven asset in market turmoil. However, this role has appeared to disappear in recent years. Besides, the significant fluctuations in the level and volatility of gold prices have become increasingly evident over the past two decades, compared with a prolonged market stability period. These changes bring to question what has driven these developments. Understanding the transformation in the gold market can help assess gold's role in investment strategies and its revolving function in the global financial environment. This thesis aims first to assess gold market behaviour over the past 37 years and examine the role of gold during equity and bond market stress. Notably, investigating whether gold lost its appeal as a safe haven asset due to its own market instability. Second, it examines whether gold financialisation, through the introduction of gold ETF in the early 2000s, contributes to the observed volatility in the gold market. Next, it investigates the ramifications of gold ETF's onset on traditional gold roles and whether gold ETF supplanted gold's traditional roles. Then, it investigates if the co-integration between gold ETFs' holdings and gold spot prices exists. Last, it determines whether a causal relationship exists between gold ETFs' holdings and gold markets, i.e. whether gold ETFs' holdings cause gold prices. The study first demonstrates that the gold market exhibits two distinct periods, each with differing market movements: a stable era followed by a highly volatile era, in which gold plays an insignificant role during the latter unstable period. Moreover, it exhibits a positive correlation in most high volatility periods of the S&P 500, again, especially during the unstable period. This implies that gold is losing (lost) its safe haven role during market stress. The outcome suggests that as the gold market encounters higher volatility periods, a more positive correlation is expected with the stock market in times of extreme stock market conditions. Second, the study establishes that the gold market exhibits a structural change around the onset of gold ETFs, in which gold spot volatility in the post-gold ETFs period is characterised by an unstable (highly volatile) era. Notably, the findings suggest that the changes in gold market volatility can be attributed to an increase in the rate of information flow to the gold spot market. The outcomes imply that the gold spot market is more efficient in the post-gold ETFs period. Yet, it is highly volatile. Third, The study finds that gold financialisation has altered the traditional roles of gold after the introduction of gold ETFs. In the post-ETF state, gold's traditional hedging capability is shifted and weakened, and the safe haven role is lost. Moreover, the gold ETF shows better roles, playing a strong risk diversification role during normal times and a safe haven role at certain market thresholds. The outcomes suggest that gold ETF is a successful successor for gold, offering new options for mitigating market risks and implementing different investment strategies. Furthermore, the study finds that gold ETF holdings are co-integrated with gold prices, implying a long-run relationship exists. Besides, the findings show that gold ETFs' holdings significantly cause gold prices in the long run and, hence, may play an important role in gold price determination. This suggests that changes in gold ETFs' holdings (inflows and outflows), with limited gold production and high demand, may increasingly influence gold price dynamics and potentially substitute the traditional supply and demand forces in the gold market. These findings have important implications for investors, financial regulators and policymakers. Investors should be aware that the gold traditional roles seem to have waned, and adding gold to a portfolio may raise volatility without providing the expected protection. Gold is more likely to exhibit high volatility and co-movement with other financial markets. Investors should act with cautious hedging strategies to avoid taking on gold volatility risk and deterioration in hedging and safe haven roles, consequently destroying their portfolios. Besides, increasing gold market responsiveness after introducing gold ETFs requires additional attention and reassessment of gold's role in portfolio diversification. Investors may consider including gold ETFs in their investment and trading strategies as they offer more effective hedging and diversification strategies and risk management. Financial regulators need to pay attention to the potentially destabilising effects of financial innovations like ETFs on spot market volatility., i.e., recognising the link between information and volatility. Gold ETFs facilitate the acceleration of the assimilation of new information into gold prices, making the market more responsive and efficient but also more volatile. This indicates that further monitoring and regulation of financial innovations like ETF is needed to minimise detrimental effects. Regulators and policymakers need to monitor gold ETF activities to ensure transparency and promote accuracy and timely disclosure of vital information to market participants, leading to better market stability, portfolio and risk management decisions, and gold price forecasts. Understanding the impact of gold ETF leads to better anticipation and effective adaptation by regulators and policymakers to future changes, not only for the gold market but also for other future innovations and markets. Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37259 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37090 Title: How Can we Diversify Portfolios? Author(s): Huang, Rong Abstract: This thesis aims to provide new insights into how investors can diversify their portfolios by studying the benefits of different types of diversified portfolios, comparing the performance of various diversification strategies, and estimating the effect of U.S. monetary policy on portfolio diversification. The basic concept of portfolio diversification was proposed by American economist Harry Markowitz in his paper “Portfolio Selection” in 1952, which also laid the foundation for Modern Portfolio Theory. Thus, most investors understand the importance of diversification. However, due to the market’s volatility and unpredictability, asset selection and allocation in portfolios have proven to be a challenging task. As a result, researchers and investors have consistently focused their research on this topic. This thesis contains three complete empirical studies, presented in Chapters two, three, and four, respectively, each with different objectives. Chapter two explores how U.S. investors can benefit from various types of portfolio options, including a stock (60%)-bond (40%) portfolio, an internationally diversified portfolio, an asset-diversified portfolio, or only investing in U.S. stocks. In this chapter, we discover that since 2009, U.S. investors are less likely to benefit from an internationally diversified portfolio due to the strong performance of the S&P 500 index. Chapter three compares the performance of various portfolio diversification strategies, including the naive diversified strategy (1/N rule), market capitalisation-weighted strategy, risk parity (equally weighted risk contribution) strategy, mean-variance (MV) strategy, Black-Litterman (BL) strategy, and three types of the Parametric Portfolio Policy (PPP) diversified strategies. Out of these, the naive diversified strategy (1/N rule), the market capitalisation-weighted strategy, and the risk parity (equally weighted risk contribution) strategy are three benchmarks, while the mean-variance (MV) strategy, the Black-Litterman (BL) strategy, and three types of the Parametric Portfolio Policy (PPP) diversified strategy are portfolio optimisation strategies. The mean-variance (MV) and Black-Litterman (BL) strategies consistently do better than the three benchmarks in terms of Sharpe ratio. The market capitalisation-weighted portfolio does better than the 1/N rule and risk parity portfolios among the three benchmarks. Chapter four investigates the impact of changes in the U.S. monetary policy on portfolio diversification. In this chapter, our results show that an unexpected Fed funds target rate cut (negative surprise) triggers an increase in the return of portfolios. Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37090 2024-12-06T00:00:00Z