The Down Passage

This chapter explores how the ‘down’ trains carried large numbers of the walking wounded, the terminally ill, the maimed and the weak, as well as ‘healthy’ migrants with cash savings who were being repatriated to Mozambique. The down train had ‘hospital coaches’ but no doctors or, for many decades, trained medical orderlies. On occasion, the corpses of migrants were robbed of their wages. The bodies of those who died on the journey home were taken off the train and subjected to post-mortems with body parts sometimes removed for the purpose of medical research.

Running the South African Gauntlet

Unlike the ‘up’ train, the ‘down’ train to the Sul do Save carried African migrant workers with cash in the form of savings, wages or compensation for injuries sustained in the mines. The mood of many on the train going home was significantly more buoyant than that on the ‘up’ train, even though the returning migrants were often short of sufficient food and drink for the long journey. Passengers with cash savings were subjected to theft at stations or on the train itself. Returning miners also suffered other forms of institutionalised harassment by black and white South Africans preying on ‘foreign’ migrants when the train made enforced and unnecessarily prolonged stops at stations on the way home in order to sell workers refreshments.

Corporate cash savings and discretionary accruals

PurposeThis paper assesses how discretionary accruals (DAs) affect corporate cash savings policies and the motivation behind this cash saving behavior and, also whether the linkage between DAs and cash saving affect the market-perceived cash value.Design/methodology/approachWe construct the measure of DAs using the previous five-year average information to investigate the association of DAs with the change in cash. Moreover, the Faulkender and Wang (2006) methodology is utilized to examine the market-perceived cash value in DAs.FindingsThe key finding is that firms with high DAs save significantly more cash. A one standard deviation increase in DAs saves cash by 12.59%. Furthermore, the value of cash is low for these firms. The effect is stronger in firms with poor governance but not present in financially constrained firms.Research limitations/implicationsThe empirical evidence highlights DAs have negative effect on market-perceived cash value, which underscores the insight that managers manage earnings opportunistically using DAs.Originality/valueTaken together, we provide more evidence on the literature of accruals in earnings manipulation.

IMPROVEMENT OF MANAGEMENT OF FISHING PRODUCTION BASED ON THE MAPPING OF VALUE STREAMING

Исследовано применение принципов бережливого производства на предприятии малого бизнеса по переработке рыбы ООО ТПК Альтаир . Применение новой схемы управления производством позволило сократить время производственных операций на 7,7 с 65 до 60 ч время обработки на 28,3 с 2 мин до 1 мин 26 с. Итоговый результат проекта бережливого производства: экономия денежных средств ООО ТПК Альтаир составила 29 500 р./мес. и 354 000 р./г. The application of lean manufacturing principles in a fish processing commercial and industrial company of Altair LLC was reviewed. The application of new schemes of production management has allowed to reduce time of manufacturing operations by 7,7 from 65 to 60 h the processing time by 28,3 from 2 min to 1 min 26 s. The final result of the lean manufacturing project: the cash savings of commercial and industrial company of Altair LLC amounted to 29,500 rubles in month and 354,000 rubles in year.

Tax Avoidance and Asymmetric Cost Behavior

This study examines the relationship between tax avoidance and asymmetric cost behavior. This relationship arises due to direct economic benefits of cash savings from tax avoidance. On one hand, cash savings from tax avoidance may prompt managers to retain excess resources when activity goes down. On the other hand, tax avoidance may alleviate managers’ concerns about adjustment costs due to cost reductions in sales downturns. Using a large sample spanning the 1993-2013 period, we document a significantly negative relationship between tax avoidance, proxied by cash effective tax rate, and asymmetric cost behavior. The result suggests that asymmetric cost behavior is less pronounced when tax avoidance is higher. We further find that this relationship varies with firms’ business strategies, cash flow volatility, and tax fees paid to the auditor. This study advances the understanding of accounting researchers on the relationship between tax avoidance and managers’ resource adjustment decisions.