This study is conducted to study the implementation of the audit techniques and procedures executed by auditors using risk-based approach. The study also determines factors affecting audit quality of financial statements in Vietnamese insurance enterprises. Quantitative method is used in the study where questionnaires are sent to 250 independent auditors and 186 valid questionnaires are encrypted, declared and entered into SPSS software version 22.0. The results show that in audit techniques, except for document testing and verification technique, there were significant differences in application level of material testing, observation, interview, calculation and analysis techniques between big 4 firms and non-big 4 firms. The analysis also confirms that the most significant difference was between the two audit groups. In audit procedures, while control testing is not performed singly, detailed testing can be performed alone at all three assurance levels and the analysis is performed alone in the assurance level of 1. It is possible to combine them in these proce-dures with the assurance level of 2 and 3. On the other hand, the combination of these three proce-dures is only guaranteed at level 3. The results of the factor analysis and regression model test demonstrate that there were six factors influencing the audit quality of financial statements in insur-ance enterprises; namely audit method, auditors’ quality, awareness of auditors and director board, characteristics of insurance enterprises, legal environment and position of the audit firm. In particular, audit method and auditors’ quality are the strongest factors.

This paper investigates the impact of lagged-exchange rate along with market risk and financial sector indicators on country risk in Kuwait. For this purpose, time series analyses both in aggregated and disaggregated approach are conducted along with the correlation and descriptive outcomes. Overall study sample is divided into fourth groups; namely the whole-time period, 1980 to 1990, 1991 to 2000, 1991-2005 and finally 1995-2005. To achieve this objective, regression equations are developed, indicating the set of lagged predictors along with market and financial sector indicators of exchange rate volatility. For the whole sample of the study, it is found that exchange rate lagged values are significant predictors of country risk from 1980 to 2005. Under the first subsample, lagged 1 and market risk through real interest rate are blamed for creating exchange rate (ER) volatility. For the 2nd disaggregated analysis, the factors like lagged 1 of ER along with deposit interest (DIR) and price level of the Government (PLG) are significant predictors of exchange rate. Additionally, during the period 1995-2005, none of the regression models appears to create the exchange rate volatility. However, for the last disaggregated time series analysis, it is found that ERL1, and PLG significantly determine the country risk in the region of Kuwait. Findings of the study are contributing in the present literature while confirm the fact that lagged values of exchange rate are very much significant to be observed to understand the current trend in ER. Besides, the re-sults can also support the argument that exchange rate risk and interest rate are interlinked with each other.

This paper attempts to find out various facets of work-life balance (WLB) contribution and relationships with the employees’ working in dairy company in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The study considers 131 employees selected randomly from the Nadec dairy company. Work-life balance Scale developed and standardized by Pareek et al. (2011) [Pareek, U., Purohit, S., & Joshi, A. (2011). Training instruments in HRD and OD. New Del-hi: Tata McGraw- Hills Publishing Company Limited. 287-289.] was used to gather the information from the respondents. Both de-scriptive and inferential statistics are been used to analyze the data. The most prominent findings of the result are: (i) all the facets of work-life balance have positive relationships with each other ex-cept teamwork; (ii) married are scored high in terms of mean on time management and teamwork which statistically indicates an existence of significant difference in contrast to their counterparts and (iii) social needs a component of work-life balance appears as one of the most powerful pre-dictors of personal needs within the employees’ working in the dairy company. The current investigation is an eye-opener for HR professional in the Kingdom to design and implement the certain mechanism to improve the work-life balance of the employees to achieve the Saudi Vision 2030.

This study investigates the effect of dividend payout on firms’ future earnings growth (FEG) in Malaysia. We use panel data analysis methodology to determine the effect of dividend payout and other control variables on FEG in 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 years. Our results show that firm size and payout ratio had significant positive relationship on four out of five dynamic models tested. The remaining factors except of debt ratio are significant at least four out of the five years used in dynamic models in this study. We find evidence that Malaysian firms show mean reversion pattern in their earnings; smaller firms would enjoy greater future earnings growth; increased monitoring from creditors leads to better earnings performance; firms with better investment prospect have greater future growth in earnings; and higher investment in assets leads to higher future earnings growth. The findings show that in Malaysia, managers use dividend as a tool to signal their positive private information about the firms’ future prospect.