Editorial

Citation

Burton, B. (2009), "Editorial", Qualitative Research in Financial Markets, Vol. 1 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/qrfm.2009.40701caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Qualitative Research in Financial Markets, Volume 1, Issue 3

Welcome to the third issue of Qualitative Research in Financial Markets (QRFM). The reaction to the journal's launch continues to be wholly positive and I am genuinely delighted that colleagues in the academic and practitioner communities see substantive merit in having a dedicated outlet for work of a qualitative nature. I would in particular like to thank all the editorial board members, paper reviewers, Emerald's publishing team and colleagues in the School of Accounting and Finance at the University of Dundee for their support, support which has ensured that the first year of QRFM has been a success.

I would again like to express my appreciation to William Forbes, Paul Hamalainen, and Gulnur Muradoglu for their efforts in organising the conference on “Behavioural Perspectives on the Financial Crisis” at Cass Business School, City University, London on the 10 and 11 December. World-renowned scholar Werner DeBondt is the plenary speaker at the conference and it promises to be an exciting couple of days. A session for PhD students working in the behavioural finance area is now part of the event. All accepted papers will be considered for publication in a future issue of QRFM; further details, including the call for papers, are available via the link on this journal's homepage or directly at: www.cass.city.ac.uk/conferences/BFWG_Meeting/BFWG_Meeting.html

The papers contained in this issue once again demonstrate the wide range of financial market-related issues where qualitative research can make a substantive contribution. In “The usefulness of accounting information; evidence from the Egyptian market”, Omaima Hassan and David M. Power provide novel evidence about the behaviour of financial analysts operating in Egypt. The findings presented in the study suggest that Egyptian analyst behaviour is broadly consistent with that found in earlier surveys; however, the authors also report that value is placed on forward-looking information and a need is identified for more voluntary disclosures of this type. The second paper in this issue, “Are sovereign wealth funds ‘white knights’?”, by Jerome Couturier, Davide Sola, and Paul Stonham provides an extremely timely analysis of the nature of these funds and their role during and after the global credit crunch. The study, which is likely to be of significant interest to both academics and practitioners, contains a fascinating in-depth examination of the role of sovereign wealth funds at Barclays Bank that sheds light on the bank's recent re-capitalisation and its decision not to accept funds under the UK government's scheme. Finally, in “‘Looking behind the veil’: invisible corporate intangibles, stories, structure and the contextual information content of disclosure” John Holland continues his highly successful analysis of corporate communications by focussing on the process whereby story and narrative are linked to value creation and are used to make “invisible” intangibles “visible” to market participants. The study investigates the dynamic nature of the corporate response to change and generates a new-grounded theory of disclosure content that is linked directly to extant literature. The paper provides useful pointers for further research in the area by indicating how corporate disclosures might be rated by stakeholder groups, as well as suggesting new benchmark and contextual information measures that could enhance visibility and stability in corporate valuation.

Bruce Burton