Using the management fashion perspective as a theoretical lens, we explicate the limited success of the beyond budgeting (BB) concept in Sweden from a supply-side perspective. The fashion perspective assumes that management concepts do not emerge or diffuse by popular demand, instead viewing the activities of supply-side actors, such as management consultants, professional associations, and academics

We study the temporal evolution of going-concern reporting from 2004 to 2013 and test whether sanction risk is related to the likelihood of a going-concern opinion using samples of privately held firms. In 2009, the Supervisory Board of Public Accountants (SBPA) in Sweden started to issue significantly more going-concern-related disciplinary sanctions, and we test whether and how auditors at different

This study investigates the value relevance and persistence of the excess of expected return over interest income on pension assets (excess return on pension assets) and pension-related other comprehensive income (OCI) components under SFAS No. 158. I find that firm value is positively associated with the excess return on pension assets and prior service cost OCI adjustments, but not associated with

This paper documents that managers of multinational companies adjust voluntary disclosure after significant events at international subsidiaries. We show an increase in the likelihood and frequency of management forecasts following natural disasters in regions where companies operate subsidiaries. The exogenous and staggered nature of natural disasters as well as our research design choices substantially

This study investigates the relative importance of accrual-based earnings management (AEM) and real earnings management (REM) as reflected in audit fees. Auditors charge not only for AEM, but also for REM, because it increases the litigation risks and audit complexity they face by dampening firms’ long-term fundamentals; however, whether auditors charge more for AEM or for REM is relatively unexplored

This paper studies the role of publicly available accounting information in class conflict between capital and labour in Victorian Britain. The company investigated – the Staveley Coal & Iron Company Ltd – is one of the earliest industrial enterprises registered under the Companies Act 1862. The period studied is 1863, when the company was incorporated, through to 1900 by which time the workforce comprised

(2021). Special section editorial: Enforcement of financial reporting. Accounting and Business Research: Vol. 51, No. 3, pp. 237-245.

(2021). Value and profit; an introduction to measurement in financial reporting. Accounting and Business Research: Vol. 51, No. 3, pp. 298-302.

(2021). Thank you to reviewers. Accounting and Business Research: Vol. 51, No. 3, pp. 303-305.

In its recently revised conceptual framework, the IASB re-affirms decision-usefulness as the objective of financial reporting, disregarding claims about its lack of coherence. In this paper, we examine how this notion of decision-usefulness works in practice by focusing on the case of fair value measurement. In particular, we explore how decision-usefulness is perceived and experienced by financial

UK national museums and galleries (MaGs) are organised as non-departmental public bodies to enable them to pursue their desired socio-cultural objectives with minimal interference from the government. This study examines how the UK government controls heterogenous UK national MaGs to insidiously influence their objectives. It uses data collected from published sources and from interviews conducted

This paper examines the effects of friendships with the CEO on the decisions of directors of non-profit organisations. Participants in the experiment are active non-profit directors. Results indicate that non-profit directors with no corporate director experience manage earnings less for the benefit of a CEO when they are friends of the CEO, relative to when they do not have a friendship with the CEO

We provide insights into how the market processes going concern audit opinions based on the trading of some well-documented sophisticated investors—short sellers. We find that abnormal short selling increases significantly upon impending going concern disclosures. While prior literature attributed much of short selling around some corporate events to private information, we find evidence that pre-going-concern

We posit that investors and social media users place more weight on cash flows than on earnings for innovative small cap firms and that, in turn, innovative small cap firms (i) manage cash flows mo...

We extend the literature on accountability in an experimental setting to examine the influence of formal accountability, individual-level perceived accountability and their interactions on accounta...

This paper is a historical account of the founding, organisation and early operation of the International Auditing Practices Committee (IAPC), which was one of the committees of the International F...

Prior research documents that financial capacity could be positively or negatively associated with the demand for audit quality. We re-examine this relation using changes in local real estate price...

Building on semi-structured interviews and publicly available documents in the realm of accounting, auditing and capital market regulation in Romania, this paper reviews and reflects on the prerequisites for, and conditions affecting the development of a financial reporting enforcement system (FRES) of Western origin in an emerging economy. It does so by examining institutional factors within and across

From October 2013, UK law and regulations (the Reform) require periodic binding shareholders’ approval of executive directors’ remuneration policy, as well as enhanced disclosure in remuneration reports. These requirements supplement an ongoing requirement for an annual non-binding vote on compensation outcomes that are detailed in the remuneration report. Using a large sample of listed companies from

This study examines the effect of income shifting on the implied cost of equity capital (ICOE) for US multinational corporations (MNCs). We find that income shifting is significantly positively ass...

This study examines the association between the political corruption of a local government and the readability of firms’ annual reports. Based on a sample of 12,742 firm-year observations during th...

(2020). Correction. Accounting and Business Research. Ahead of Print.

We examine the role of industry-level product market competition on non-GAAP disclosure decisions. We consider traditional measures of industry competition (concentration, price-cost margin, and se...

This study adopts an institutional lens to explore enforcement as a complex and nuanced phenomenon shaped by the dynamics of its social context. It examines an IFRS regulatory incident that fails t...

I examine whether the informativeness of income smoothing varies with the extent to which the CEO holds inside debt (i.e. pension benefits and deferred compensation). I document that for firms where the CEO holds less inside debt, income smoothing reduces stock price informativeness. This result suggests that CEOs with lower inside debt smooth earnings to conceal firms’ underlying economic performance

In this study, we examine how a CFO’s social ties with non-CEO senior managers in the same firm affect the likelihood of financial restatements. We categorise social ties as either professional or ...

The real effects of reporting is a key issue when setting accounting standards, the job I have done for ten years, and an increasing focus for people evaluating those standards, including the Europ...

Financing and investment decisions occur across a vast range from top corporate executives considering acquisitions of plant, property and other companies, to retail investors running their own portfolio, private equity investors looking to acquire a stake in a business, be that a small first-time buy-out at around a million pounds or Apollo’s recent purchase of the materials division of General Electric

This paper discusses two real effects of financial reporting on pay and incentives: (1) Better earnings leads to better incentives, and (2) If pay is mismeasured, pay can be misused. The first real effect follows from the fact that incentives are often based on earnings, and the effectiveness of earnings-based incentives is positively related to the quality of earnings. Greater use of earnings in incentives

This paper reviews the literature on the real effects of financial reporting and disclosure on corporate innovation, highlighting both the possible channels of influence and the potential challenges that researchers face when attributing causal effects. We discuss the concept of innovation, emphasising the specific characteristics that make investments in innovation difficult to report. We then provide

In this paper, I provide an overview of the research on the real effects of financial reporting on investing and financing decisions made by firms. Accounting can improve investment efficiency and affect nearly every aspect of the financing decision by reducing information asymmetry and improving monitoring. However, limitations in the financial reporting system, specifically distinguishing liabilities

I am a partner at Mercer, in the executive reward team. My day job is to advise companies and boards on everything that is mentioned in John Core’s paper, in particular how to make incentives work for a company, and how to make incentives work for shareholders. Core (2020) mentions that we need good-quality earnings to help ensure incentives are effective. I wholeheartedly agree with that. I would