客户重要性与会计信息可比性 ——来自中国证券市场的经验证据

审计师的执业特征对被审计单位的会计信息质量有一定的影响。以审计师客户重要性为经,以会计信息可比性为纬,运用2005—2014年我国A股上市公司数据实证分析审计师客户重要性与会计信息可比性之间的相关性。实证结果表明：会计师事务所对某一客户的经济依赖越强,该客户的会计信息可比性越差;同样地,签字注册会计师的客户重要性与会计信息可比性呈现显著负向关系;并且,会计师事务所和签字注册会计师的客户重要性在对会计信息可比性的作用过程中存在互补关系。     

Why More Forward-Looking Accounting Standards Can Reduce Financial Reporting Quality

A premise of standard setters and of much empirical research is that improving the quality of accounting standards and their implementation increases information in capital markets. This paper challenges this premise and shows that there are situations in which ‘better’, that is, more forward-looking, accounting standards reduce the information content of financial reports. The reason is that a forward-looking accounting standard affects the smoothness of reported earnings, which can conflict with the manager's smoothing incentive and her willingness to incorporate private information in the financial report. Although the manager could eliminate the effect by earnings management, it is too costly to do so. As a consequence, the capital market's ability to infer the financial and nonfinancial information in reported earnings declines. This finding should increase the awareness that an ‘improvement’ in accounting standards, without considering incentives and other information residing in firms, can adversely affect the quality of financial reporting.     

上市公司变更会计师事务所对会计稳健性的影响研究

伴随着我国证券市场的逐渐发展和完善,上市公司发生会计师事务所变更的现象日益普遍,这逐渐引起监管部门、媒体以及社会大众的高度关注。目前国内外有大量关于上市公司发生会计师事务所变更和会计稳健性的研究,但大都没有将两者结合起来。基于此,将2010—2014年所有深沪A股上市公司作为研究对象,考察会计师事务所变更对会计稳健性的影响,并区分不同变更类型进行研究。研究发现,上市公司发生会计师事务所变更会降低其会计稳健性。     

Management Accounting Practices in the U.S. and Japan: Comparative Survey Findings and Research Implications*

In recent years, the success of Japanese firms in the global market has prompted efforts to understand the sources of their competitive advantage. It has been suggested that one such source is the Japanese firms' management accounting systems, and a number of articles have claimed that important differences do exist between U.S. and Japanese firms in this area. However, these claims have tended to be supported by anecdotal, rather than systematic, evidence. The objective of this article is to contribute further insights into similarities and differences between U.S. and Japanese firms' management accounting practices. Exhaustive searches of published surveys in the U.S. and Japanese literatures (much of which is in Japanese) provided the basis for U.S.-Japan comparisons on six aspects of management accounting practices. In turn, these comparisons were used for deriving implications for future research. Two major limitations of extant research and, thus, directions for future research are identified. First, future research needs to go beyond the simple use or non-use of techniques to investigate more detailed aspects of technique use. Second, since management accounting is only one component of a firm's total management system, attention also needs to be devoted to the organizational context, process, and goals of a firm's management accounting practices.     

EUROPEAN ACCOUNTING REVIEW

This study contributes to the accounting literature by providing empirical evidence from China that adopting IFRS does not necessarily lead to IFRS-type accounting practices. We examine the impact of regulatory enforcement, in particular, an important Chinese government compulsory compliance policy implemented in 2001, and audit upon the convergence of Chinese accounting practices. Using a sample of 103 Chinese B-share companies between 1999 and 2004, we reveal that the decline in earnings difference between firms' financial statements under Chinese GAAP and IFRS is the result of the implementation of the 2001 policy and the audit committee which effectively control the firm's application of standards rather than the differences between the standards. The effect of audit committee leads us further to argue that the convergence of accounting practices may be affected by not only the lack of insufficient understanding of IFRS by local accounting professionals, but also the management opportunistic behaviour during the application of different standards. It implies that corporate governance may affect the convergence of accounting practice. However, we do not find evidence for international audit firms outperforming their Chinese local CPAs with regard to IFRS compliance. Therefore, the Chinese government should be cautious in promoting the participation of international audit firms in China for achieving IFRS compliance.     

The role of perceived organizational justice in shaping the outcomes of talent management: A research agenda

Talent management is in need of a theoretical foundation and empirical research at the level of the individual. To address these gaps, the current paper relies on the literature on workforce differentiation and provides a research agenda by introducing perceived organizational justice as a key mediator between talent management practices and differential employee reactions. We discuss employees' varying reactions to talent management on one hand and their underlying perceptions of organizational justice, on the other hand. In particular, we propose that, amongst others, an employee's high potential status serves as an antecedent for different distributive justice perceptions, while procedural interventions and relationship building can provide organizational latitude in shaping employee reactions to talent management. Research methods, challenges, and practical implications are discussed.     

企业社会责任会计研究综述

目前,学术界越来越关注社会责任会计的研究,文章在阅读国内外有关社会责任会计文献的基础上,对社会责任会计理论研究、实证研究及企业社会责任会计信息披露问题进行综述,并提出今后我国社会责任会计的研究方向。     

基于事项法的管理会计课程体系再探

在目前新经济环境下,管理会计学的培养目标应当是使所培养的人才能够胜任不断变化的市场经济,其现实应用更多的体现出信息使用者对相关性的需求。而事项法的一个显著特点就是强调某个事项的关联信息,即会计信息的相关性。事项法为管理会计研究内容不断更新,应用范围不断拓展,突出信息相关性奠定了理论基础。     

企业社会责任会计研究综述

目前,学术界越来越关注社会责任会计的研究,文章在阅读国内外有关社会责任会计文献的基础上,对社会责任会计理论研究、实证研究及企业社会责任会计信息披露问题进行综述,并提出今后我国社会责任会计的研究方向。     

Cooperation for Publication? An Analysis of Co-authorship Patterns in Leading Accounting Journals

This paper examines patterns, antecedents, and effects of (international) cooperation in accounting academia based on 7105 papers published in 15 leading accounting journals. In particular, we investigate the dissemination of different forms of cooperation, identify author characteristics that are related to the propensity of cooperation and analyze whether cooperation is associated with research performance (in terms of research impact and output). We find that scholars from Asian countries tend to be more heavily involved in international cooperation than researchers from most European countries and the USA. A Ph.D. from a leading school, a scholar's previous publication experience and a past appointment as editor or editorial board member are positively associated with the propensity for cooperation, while a researcher's current affiliation has only limited impact. Surprisingly, our findings show that cooperation is not related to a greater research impact as measured by citation numbers per paper. Finally, we find a significant negative relationship between a scholar's share of co-authored papers and his or her research output in leading accounting journals as measured by the weighted numbers of papers per author.     

The role of cash flows and accruals in explaining security returns: evidence for the UK

The assessment of earnings usefulness in returns studies has been at the forefront of accounting research since the seminal work of Ball and Brown (1968). Recently, regulatory bodies worldwide have paid increased attention to cash flow reporting. Empirical research provides evidence that earnings information dominates cash flows in market-based accounting research. This study extends the growing empirical literature on the association of earnings and cash flows with security returns. We hypothesize that the association of cash flows with security returns improves (i) the smaller the absolute magnitude of aggregate accruals, (ii) the longer the measurement interval and (iii) the shorter the firm's operating cycle. The dataset consists of all UK firms included in the Global vantage database for the period 1984–1992. This study provides evidence that cash flows play a more important role in the marketplace when the operating cycle, magnitude of accruals and the measurement interval are taken into consideration. Moreover, results indicate that cash flows have more information content than earnings in explaining security returns.     

Research productivity patterns in the organizational behavior and human resource management literature

Closely following the analysis approach used for similar studies in the economics and finance literature, we present the first study to examine if there exists an empirical regularity in the bibliometric patterns of research productivity in the organizational behavior (OB) and human resource management (HRM) literature. Our results present strong evidence that there indeed exists a distinct empirical regularity. It is the so-called Generalized Lotka's Law of scientific productivity pattern: The number of authors publishing n papers is about 1/n^c of those publishing one paper. The observed pattern in the OB and HRM area is interestingly very consistent with those in much older, related business disciplines.     

Disclosed Values of Option-Based Compensation – Incompetence,Deliberate Underreporting or the Use of Expected Option Life?

Abstract

This paper provides a commentary on Mark Christensen's (2005) analysis of the role of private sector management consultants in the pursuit of accruals-based accounting reforms in the state of New South Wales. The commentary gives particular consideration to the role and responsibilities of public sector officials in choosing to pursue accruals-based accounting reforms. It questions the claimed knowledge basis underpinning such an initiative and reviews the more general pertinence of accruals accounting to practical public sector financial management issues. In seeking to reinforce a number of the messages emanating from Christensen's work, the commentary makes a number of suggestions for developing accounting research in this area. In particular, it emphasises the need to enhance understanding of the operation of accrual accounting systems in practice, the epistemic ‘communities’ serving to promote them and the importance of challenging the privileged status so often attached to such reforms/technologies.     

Insights to be gained from the study of ancient accounting history: some reflections on the new edition of Finley's The Ancient Economy

Accounting historians have attempted to relate their knowledge of the variety of accounting practices at various points of time, and in various places, to wider questions of the role of accounting in reflecting and shaping not only business and management practice, but also economic and social organization more generally. Finley's classic The Ancient Economy, which analysed the embeddedness of ancient economic activity in the social structure, and in the status concerns of the free citizens, as constituting a brake on the development of profit-focused markets and correspondingly on technology and trade, saw the state of ancient accounting as itself making impossible sophisticated profit-oriented calculation and rational decision-making. In his monumental The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, de Ste. Croix rejected Finley's analysis in terms of Weberian 'status' in favour of an explicitly Marxist analysis based on ‘class’. But he took up essentially the same argument about the economic impact of ancient accounting technique. Their argument in turn raises further questions about the general relationship between accounting practice and economic and social organization in the ancient world. This paper comments on Finley and briefly surveys the contribution to answering some of the ‘big’ questions concerning both accounting and history that has been made by recent research into ancient accounting history (most of which has been published outside the accounting and accounting history journals).     

GENUINE SAVINGS AND SUSTAINABILITY

Genuine Savings (GS) has emerged as the leading economic indicator of sustainable economic development at the country level. It derives from the literatures on weak sustainability, wealth accounting and national income accounting. We discuss the theoretical underpinnings of GS, focusing on the relationship between changes in a nation's extended capital stock and the future path of consumption. The indicator has entered widespread use propelled by the World Bank's publications, despite its varying performance as a predictor for future consumption. Notwithstanding the extensive body of literature reviewed, promising future research avenues are identified.     

The competitive determinants of a firm's environmental management activities: Evidence from US manufacturing industries

Environmental management (EM) issues have received substantial attention in operations management. While the link between EM practices and firm performance has been well studied, little is known about the competitive drivers of a firm's EM activities. In this research, a Schumpeterian economics perspective is adopted to investigate competitive interactions among leader and challenger firms in the domain of EM, with a particular focus on operational EM activities. Using econometric methods, the empirical analysis of panel data from a broad cross-section of US manufacturing firms reveals that such rivalry does exist and that the effect of a rival's past EM activity on a focal firm's EM activity is greater for more profitable and smaller firms. In addition, firm characteristics such as market leadership, firm size and firm profitability are found to significantly affect the magnitude of a firm's EM activities. This study presents theoretical and empirical evidence of rivalrous behaviors in the domains of EM and OM and, thus, has interesting implications for operations management research and practice.     

Strategic groups: Untested assertions and research proposals

Strategic group theory has become a popular tool for analyzing competitive structure of industries. Indeed, testing for the existence of strategic groups, and the impact of strategic groups on a firm's performance, has become one of the dominant areas of empirical research in the strategic management literature. Unfortunately, the impact of this stream of research will be limited until some fundamental assertions in strategic groups theory are tested. Two of these assertions are: (1) that strategic groups exist and (2) that a firm's performance depends upon strategic group membership. These key assertions in strategic group theory remain untested for a variety of theoretical and empirical reasons. What needs to be done to test these assertions is discussed. Until these tests are complete, the contribution of the strategic groups concept will be unclear. If these tests do not build credibility for the concept of strategic groups, it may be necessary to abandon this concept and develop models where the strategically relevant attributes of firms are those that are idiosyncratic.     

The remuneration of CEOs and corporate financial performance in Norway

Economics and management literatures advocate that senior company executives should be remunerated on the basis of the financial performance of the firms they manage. This helps align the interests of management with those of stockholders. There are, however, problems in implementing pay for performance schemes and these, along with other factors, may lead to there being no empirical relationship between compensation and stockholder returns. This study set out to explore the determinants of chief executive compensation in Norwegian stock exchange listed firms. To date there have been very few studies on this topic using data from Norway; most previous research has employed American data. The results show a positive relationship between CEO pay and corporate size but there was no significant association between remuneration and corporate financial performance as measured by accounting profitability and as measured by stock returns. Estimates of the value added by companies were significantly related to chief executive pay. There was also a positive and significant relationship between a CEO's compensation and the average wage level of the company. This association may be due to the unique characteristics of Norway's social and economic structure.