This study investigates whether deviation from target leverage (leverage adjustment speed) in firms with small positive earnings (i. e., SPOS) is higher (slower) than that of other firms. We find evidence suggesting that managers of SPOS manipulate sales, production processes, and discretionary expenses to avoid reporting losses. Our results show that deviation from target leverage in SPOS is higher than that of other firms. In particular, we find that the negative (positive) deviation from target leverage in SPOS is lower (higher) than that of other firms. Furthermore, the results indicate that compared with the other firms, SPOS have slower leverage adjustment speed. After conducting robustness tests, our main conclusions remain valid.

Objective: Intense competition among audit firms will likely encourage auditors to find new clients. An audit firm tries to reach a good reputation in the society. Higher reputation audit firms provide better audit quality service to their clients to protect their reputation in society. They do not tend to audit a firm known for management abuses or providing misleading financial reports. Besides, an incorrect acceptance decision by the audit firm can lead to legal claims and impose excessive costs on the auditor, as well as the loss of reputation of the auditor and public trust in the profession and financial reporting of companies. Paying attention to the good reputation of auditors and the client firms and clients’ financial position is likely to be an effective factor in the auditors' acceptance or rejection decision. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of client firms’ financial position, auditors’ and client firms’ reputation on the rejection decision of client firms by auditors. Method: The sample of this research contains 109 participants, including Iranian audit partners, managers and senior audit supervisors. In order to test the hypotheses, a quasi-experimental method is used. This study has a 2x2x2 mixed design. Two independent variables, including “reputation” and “financial position” of the client firm, are between-subjects variables, and the third independent variable is “auditors’ reputation”, a within-subjects variable. All the participants in the experiment were divided into four groups. Subjects in these groups receive different levels for the financial position of the client firm and auditors’ and client firms’ reputations (profitable and unprofitable, reputable and disreputable) and provide us with their acceptance or rejection decision. In each scenario, the audit firm is asked to suppose that it would be considered for the role of a large auditor with a high reputation or a small auditor with a low reputation. Each participant assesses his tendency to accept the client's firm. Hypotheses are examined using multivariate analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results: The results show that auditors’ and client firms’ reputations and the client firms’ financial position significantly affect the auditor's acceptance decision. In addition, changes in the reputation of client firms do not affect the willingness of auditors with higher reputations to accept that client. As the client firms' financial position improves, more reputable auditors' willingness to accept clients’ offers increases. Conclusion: To manage the reputation risk, large audit firms should prevent accepting client firms with a high risk. Besides, more reputable auditors usually have large client firms, making them considerable income. Therefore, they might more easily reject client firms who are not qualified for them. Also, audit firms with a higher reputation are usually under the supervision of the government, shareholders and the public, making them more cautious in accepting new clients and avoiding clients who damage their reputation. In addition, the client firm's reputation is considered a factor affecting the auditor's acceptance decision. Auditors would not accept notorious clients as they know this would lead to reputational damage and threaten their independence.Due to the effect of the client’s financial position and profitability on the auditor's decision, we conclude that auditors perceive that a firm in financial distress or goes bankrupt may not be able to pay the auditors' fees and provide them with the necessary facilities, and for this reason, they refuse to accept it. Therefore, one of the factors considered in the acceptance decision would be the audit fee, which can be realized from the last annual financial statements. If the client does not have the ability to pay the fee, the audit firm should reject that client.This study makes the following contributions. First, despite doing research at the international level about the factors affecting the rejection decision of client firms, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that examines the factors separately and interactively in an experimental design. Second, This research provides interesting evidence about the impacts of the client firms’ and auditor’s reputation, which may not be easily measured in archival research. Therefore, the findings of this study contribute to auditors’ Judgment and decision-making (JDM) quality literature. In order to reduce the risk of legal claims, it is recommended that audit firms pay attention to the point that the financial information and the reputation of the client firm are closely related, and they should consider factors such as the company's disclosure quality, financial position and performance, cash flows, and corporate governance characteristics.

In this study the efficiency of 44 units of fishery, broiler farm and dairy farm was measured in the year of 2009 using Data Envelop Analysis. The efficiency of each firm was calculated based on the outputs of production units such as employment and income. The results indicated that the propriety of efficiency was in the first, second and third in the towns of Gachsarsn and Dena, Bahmaei, and Kogilooyeh respectively. In fishery, the town of Dena was in the first rank, in broiler farms the town of Bahmaei was in the first, Boyer Ahmad was in in the second, Gachsaran in the third and Dena and kohgilooyeh were in the fourth and fifth respectively. The Average of efficiency in all production units was 85%. According to low necessary capital for a job opportunity and suitable condition of Province in fishery, investing in this activity is recommended.

What is the importance of free access to the instruments and mechanisms of finance, to accommodate the environment of the firm? According to Modigliani- Miller hypothesis, in the absence of transaction cost and government regulations, the firm capital structure and its method of finance is not important. That is, all necessary coordinations to finance the firm are done by price mechanism and each firm could fulfile its needs in current rate. By introducing transaction cost, however, the prediction of this hypothesis in the real world becomes irrelevant. In transaction cost economics framework, each firm, with respect to its financing needs, should arrange a financial transaction. The basic hypothesis of transaction cost economics discriminating alignment- predicts the method of this arrangement: transactions, which differ in their attributes, are aligned with governance structure, which differ in their costs and competence, in a discriminating -mainly, transaction cost economizing- way. Namely, the firm will finance its needs in a way to have the minimum cost.With accepting the point that depending on the firm's characteristics and needs, there is one mechanism of governance with least cost, it is predictable that, in the absence of proper or efficient governance mechanism of financial transaction, the firms are led to use the more costly methods. The difference between an appropriate mechanism of financing and its alternatives is the most important cost that is borne by the firm. In fact, this constraint is one of the reasons that explain the costly nature of the efforts of the firm in obtaining new property rights and maintaining existing rights. These institutional costs reduce the competition power of the firm and, in long run, drive it out of the industry. This hypothesis is studied in 40 small manufacturing firms that are active in Iranian economic environment. For this purpose, a questionary is codified and during interview with manufacturers are fulfiled.

today' s, business environment are strongly influenced by the knowledge based economy and the emergence of knowledge-intensive firms is common. The firms that focus on knowledge, technological innovation and its commercialization, and their main purpose is wealth creation and entrepreneurship. No doubt these firms due to differences with other types of organizations, have their own problems and organizational gaps. Us of metaphors can help managers better understand the organization and reveals hidden aspects of it. Organizational DNA is a new metaphor which assumes that the organization has a structure similar to a living organism. In this study knowledge-intensive firms in Tehran University Science and Technology Park (N=10, consisted of 102 employees) have been investigated. Research instrument was honold and silverman standard questionnaire and to analyze data, the analysis of variance and paired comparison test is used. The questionnaire consists of four dimensions: Leadership tasks and activities (including mission, organizational structure and leadership style), management activities (including planning, team work and performance management), human resource performance (including employment, pay and training and staff development) organization daily activities (including decision-making, interpersonal relationships, processes of change and look to profit. The results indicated that the DNA of knowledge-intensivefirms in Tehran University Science and Technology Park is not similar to any of four types of DNA (Factual, Conceptual, Contextualized and Individual DNA) that Honold and silverman introduced, and Each of the dimensions is scattered in each of four types of DNA.