The Human Resource (HR) disclosure in annual report is voluntary in nature in India. Therefore, it creates inconsistency in the HR disclosure practices across companies as well as industries. The purpose of the present paper is to look at the nature and level of HR disclosure and study the effect of company characteristics on HR disclosure in annual reports of public sector companies in India. This research is motivated by the dearth of studies on HR disclosure among companies in developing countries. Initially, an 86-item Human Resource Disclosure Index (HRDI) has been constructed for a set of 500 companies listed on National Stock Exchange. From that point onward, the effect of various explanatory variables on HRDI is analyzed. Finally, HRDI has been regressed against the independent variables to find the important elements of HRDI. The outcomes of the descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and multivariate analysis reveal that the total number of pages of annual report is positively associated with HR disclosure. Company size and profitability are partly associated, while other variables like leverage, ownership concentration, liquidity and globalization have no association with HR disclosure.

The Small and Medium-Scale Enterprises (SMEs) sector has been recognized worldwide for its role in economic advancement through various ways like wealth generation, employment creation and poverty reduction. Accounting techniques serve as a critical tool for recording, analyzing, monitoring and evaluating the financial condition of organizations, preparation of documents necessary for tax purposes, and providing information support to many other organizational functions. In the context of SMEs, accounting techniques are important as it can help the firms manage their short-term problems in critical areas like costing, cash flow and budgeting by providing information to support monitoring and control. The present paper examines the impact of financial literacy of entrepreneurs on the performance of SMEs. An inquiry into their level of adoption of financial literacy is also studied. A review of related literature is carried out to examine the extent of work done in this field. A structured questionnaire is used to collect data on the level of adoption of financial literacy. The results show that the level of adoption of financial literacy by entrepreneurs of SMEs is low and that the utilization of accounting records does not influence their performance and success rate.

This study attempts to examine the determinants of audit fee in the manufacturing sector in Nigeria using data of 10 companies listed on the Nigeria Stock Exchange (as on December 31, 2017) for six years from 2012 to 2017. Using the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression technique, the study reveals that there exists a negative significant relationship between audited-firm size, audited-firm net income and audit fee, and a positive significant relationship between audited-firm profitability and audit fee. The findings also reveal that there is no significant relationship between audit firm size, audited-firm tangibility, audited-firm turnover and audit fee in Nigeria. The study thus highlights the urgent need for regulation of audit fee in the Nigerian environment. The market framework for determining the audit fee may not readily suffice for fostering auditors’ independence.

The much-hyped tax structure, Goods and Service Tax (GST) was recently introduced. The Government of India took the decision to implement GST on July 1, 2017. This affects every citizen and raises various concerns amongst consumers towards GST implementation. The present paper aims to examine the level of consumer awareness and the perception they have towards GST implementation in India. Additionally, the study attempts to suggest some measures to the government for effective GST implementation. Questionnaire method has been used for primary data collection. The consumers of National Capital Region (NCR) region are the sample audience. The level of awareness for GST implementation has been examined based on Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test, descriptive analysis and Spearman’s correlation. The perception towards its acceptance is examined based on descriptive analysis. The findings reveal that demographic factors are not significantly correlated to the level of awareness. Consumers have a high level of basic awareness. Promotional activities are not insufficient, but awareness programs should be increased which is moderately accepted. Overall, the implementation of GST is highly accepted by the consumers.