Does prestigious board membership matter? Evidence from New Zealand

This study investigates whether ‘prestigious’ multiple board membership is positively associated with firm performance. We employ Resource Dependency theory to explain why performance outcomes may be improved by the presence of ‘prestigious’ multiple directorships. Our analysis relies on extensive hand‐collected data on New Zealand company directorships. The results support the contention that ‘prestigious’ multiple directorships are related to better accounting and market performance. Conclusions reflect upon how Resource Dependency theory informs this phenomenon and how ‘prestigious’ board members may be a valuable resource for firms. We also reveal how these findings expose a new avenue for board governance research.     

Exploring imaginative futures writing through the fictional prototype ‘crime-sourcing’

This fictional prototype presents a future proposition of people interacting with technologically designed or socially engineered producer entities. Entities customised specifically to solve complex societal problems. In this case that of crime and punishment. The prototype speculates how entrepreneurial firms will be able to exploit ‘crowdsourcing’ technologies. It also explores ‘crowdsourcing’ entities by means of a fictional reflection of how life might unfold in the criminal interaction space. The vignette is based on a factual discussion/analysis of the research inspiring these views. In the final section the author explains how this prototype will be developed through field research.     

Bridging the academic–policy-making gap: practice and policy issues

How policy-makers engage with academics is both a current ‘hot’ topic and a perennial problem. Policy initiatives such as the Research Excellence Framework's (REF) so-called ‘impact agenda’ have ‘pushed’ academics towards seeking more such engagement, whilst others ‘pull’ towards it, such as ‘open policy-making’. Apart from some biographical accounts and case studies, surprisingly little is known at a more general level about how policy-makers do actually engage with academic research and expertise. Analysis of these policies, as well as empirical evidence from the British civil service, suggest these engagements may be generating more ‘endarkenment’ (to use Weiss's term) than enlightenment.     

Reform Lessons From Investigative Journalism. Review Essay of ‘Beancounters’ by Richard Brooks

In 2021, the work of investigative journalists ICIJ and the accountants-founded global NGO Tax Justice Network had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. This article reviews a recent bestselling research book by a multi-award-winning Private Eye investigative journalist: ‘Beancounters’ by Richard Brooks. Despite being a significant influence on global accounting practice, the culture, politics, services and practices of the Big 4 firms have hardly received serious forensic scrutiny by accounting academics. This paper discusses the methods, motives and breakthroughs of investigative journalists and how these can help advance our research and teaching in accounting. Their scoops and narratives can certainly make the classroom very interesting. Freed from the need to ‘prove’ scientific credibility and appease academic peer-review, investigative journalists can provide us with new concepts, linkages, data and evidence which we would not otherwise have seen. They force us to step out of our disciplinary boundaries and raise disturbing questions about our academic leadership, pedagogy, moral purpose and strategic direction. We provide suggestions for renewed academic courage, research and education reform in both accounting and finance and how the disciplines can be made more ethical, relevant and impactful.     

The art of risk management: the crucial role of the global art insurance industry in enabling risk and security

This article investigates the under-researched sphere of insurance. It uses empirical research data to focus on one case study, the London art world, to analyse how the global art insurance industry ‘does’ security and how it enables risk and security to be embraced. Examining how the industry plays a crucial role in the security of art and within the art world itself, the article argues that the global art insurance industry’s role is largely beneficial for the art world because by enabling risk to be embraced through insurance, its pre-crime and post-crime responses, and its influence ‘beyond’ insurance, it emboldens and fuels the dynamic, thriving global art world.     

Risk Management as Passionate Imitation: The Interconnections Among Emotions,Performance Metrics,and Risk in a Global Technology Firm

This paper traces the evolution of risk management practices in a global technology company between 2000 and 2015. We extend recent research that has highlighted the emotional aspects of riskwork. We detail how a passionate interest—‘we can do better at risk management’—emotionally ‘hooked’ the staff in the company's Sourcing Unit. Risk management, emotion, and management controls were intertwined. When top management singled out one of the key metrics clearly as a risk‐related metric for the Sourcing Unit, the employees felt a strong sense of relief, which gave rise to subsequent extensive risk measurement. We also contribute to the more general debate about accounting and its entanglement with emotions. Little is known about the ‘birth’ and the reasons for durability of passionate interests. Following Tarde (1903/2013), such ‘birth’ and endurance can be explained by analyzing how passionate imitation emerges as a result of a series of dislocal events—in our case a fire, new performance metrics, and natural disasters. These events triggered emotions that provided the necessary energy for three forms of passionate imitation: a) ‘we need to imitate our main competitor’ and risk mapping; b) ‘others in the organization are imitating us and our suppliers should imitate us’ and risk measurement; and c) ‘others in the organization (more specifically the Product Development Unit) should imitate us’ and proactive risk avoidance. This passionate imitation helped explain why the sourcing staff continued to be emotionally ‘hooked’ to risk management, that is, how the passionate interest endured and became vested.     

What is a fair amount of executive compensation? Outrage potential of two key stakeholder groups

The public discussion of executive compensation often centres on ‘fair’ and ‘unfair’ amounts and the public outrage over compensation that is deemed too high. The academic literature states that such outrage can lead to outrage costs, pressuring firms to adjust compensation levels. However, it is unclear what a ‘fair’ compensation is for various stakeholders and how their fairness concerns relate to outrage constraints. Based on surveys among two key stakeholder groups (representative eligible voters and investment professionals), we provide evidence that fairness is an important criterion for both groups but that opinions on how large a fair compensation amount should be are widely dispersed. Moreover, personality traits systematically influence fairness opinions through self‐serving interpretations of distributive justice and personal risk attitudes, indicating that a ‘fair’ amount of executive compensation may strongly depend on the involved stakeholders. Investigating thresholds for outrage, i.e., amounts above which compensation is judged ‘unfairly’ high, we show that even though investment professionals care for fairness as well, ‘capital market outrage’ might not equate to ‘public outrage’. Our paper contributes to the literature on outrage constraints by linking individual fairness concerns to outrage potential and has implications for transparency of executive compensation and research on shareholder activism.     

What skills and attributes does an accounting graduate need? Evidence from student perceptions and employer expectations

For some years there has been much debate between various stakeholders about the need for accounting graduates to develop a broader set of skills to be able to pursue a career in the accounting profession. This study uses mixed methods to examine perceptions and expectations of two major stakeholders: students and employers. Findings indicate that students are becoming aware of employers’ expectations in terms of communication, analytical, professional and teamwork skills. Although employers are still expecting a good understanding of basic accounting skills and strong analytical skills, they are also requiring ‘business awareness’ and knowledge in terms of the ‘real world’. Both students and employers report that many of the ‘essential’ non‐technical and professional skills and attributes are not being developed sufficiently in university accounting programmes.     

The Globe Sustained: Shakespeare’s allegory for sustainable development

Sustainability theory shows that the sustainability problem is a value orientation problem. In a recent study, Klaas van Egmond identified an underlying pattern of a crossed circle, representing affirmative and adversative value orientations, whose disintegration engenders unsustainable tendencies. This article explicates how Shakespeare’s allegories invite to quests for ‘values worthy of pursuit’, grounded upon a similar immanent cyclical pattern of value orientations, moving from and to the centre of Shakespeare’s works. Holding up the allegorical mirror to contemporary sustainability challenges, Shakespeare’s works anticipate sustainability narratives for society at large and its individual actors. The results of this research are highly relevant in the contemporary debates on the ‘erosion’ of European values, as it demonstrates how to identify sustained European value patterns and how to build on these patterns in relation with contemporary questions of sustainability.     

Foresight education in Australia—Time for a hybrid model?

This paper revisits the original design parameters of what was a ‘new’ Masters in Strategic Foresight that commenced at Swinburne University in 2001. It explores which of the original purposes and assumptions have stood the test of time over the course of a decade and analyses how the course has evolved, partly through design and partly through necessity. The paper reflects on the primary contribution of the Masters teaching experience and proposes that encouraging the students to develop philosophical ‘literacy’ operated to develop both the practicality of their use of methods and the capacity of their leadership and critical thinking. A secondary contribution reiterates the importance of ‘place’ and the necessity of ‘sufficient time’ for adult development to occur.     

‘BIG DATA’, THE ‘INTERNET OF THINGS’ AND THE ‘INTERNET OF SIGNS’

This paper examines the relationship between so‐called ‘Big Data’, the ‘Internet of Things’ (the ‘Internet of People and Things,’ and the ‘Internet of Everything’), and the ‘Internet of Signs.’ In particular, we investigate how the ‘things’ in the ‘Internet of Things’ generate ‘Big Data’, and how both are used to generate semiotic ‘signs’. In addition, we analyse the importance of context in and the relationships between ‘Big Data’, the ‘Internet of Things’, and the ‘Internet of Signs’. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transforming social sector auditing – they audited more,but scrutinized less

The legitimacy of audit technologies is inevitably linked to a knowledge base. Even though it has been pointed out that the agreements on how to measure and verify certain operations are only temporal, empirical studies on change in audit are rare. This paper reports a detailed empirical study of change in performance audit within social services in Sweden. The paper complements previous research since this paper is not about making new things auditable but about challenging existing technologies within a field. We observe how the new ‘sharp’ control‐based model – realized through measures of prioritizing, focusing and standardizing – was related to new demands on ‘facts’ about the audit object. The effect was that many things in this new situation became unauditable; they audited more, but actually scrutinized less. The paper also contributes to existing literature on the role of ‘sharp’ control‐based audit in the social sector. With a ‘soft’ and ‘fuzzy’ object, as is often the case in many parts of the public sector, it is difficult to produce hard, convincing evidence that holds true in different settings.     

‘Slow-burn’ spillover and ‘fast and furious’ contagion: a study of international stock markets

‘Fast and furious’ contagion across capital markets is an important phenomenon in an increasingly integrated financial world. Different from ‘slow-burn’ spillover or interdependence among these markets, ‘fast and furious’ contagion can occur instantly. To investigate this kind of contagion from the US, Japan and Hong Kong to other Asian economies, we design a research strategy to capture fundamental interdependence, or ‘slow-burn’ spillover, among these stock markets as well as short-term departures from this interdependence. Based on these departures, we propose a new contagion measure which reveals how one market responds over time to a shock in another market. We also propose international portfolio analysis for contagion via variance decomposition from the portfolio manager’s perspective. Using this research strategy, we find that the US stock market was cointegrated with the Asian stock markets during four specific periods from 3 July 1997 to 30 April 2014. Beyond this fundamental interdependence, the shocks from both Japan and Hong Kong have significant ‘fast and furious’ contagion effects on other Asian stock markets during the US subprime crisis, but the shocks from the US have no such effects.     

Transforming teachers’ temporalities: Futures in an Australian classroom

There is much rhetoric in education about the ways in which students are prepared for ‘the future’. The notion of the future in Australian education is dominantly singular, vague and abstract. This paper describes research which investigates changes which occur within teacher practices, enacted curriculum and student learning. The case study at the centre of this research focuses on a primary school south-east of Melbourne, Australia, which is internationally acknowledged as ‘innovative and leading’ in ‘educating for the future’. Initially, it was apparent that this notion of the future was assumed, and these specific teachers had given little thought to what that future looked like, or how that related to students’ learning requirements. As a result of professional learning, the teachers underwent temporal transformation, in integrating explicit futures dimensions within their curriculum. Arising from this research were significant key findings which highlight the need for a reconceptualisation of the ways in which curriculum and pedagogy are enacted in regards to notions of multiple futures. Furthermore, it generates renewed calls for futures perspectives to be addressed explicitly within education. Importantly it highlights a deficit in current teacher thinking about their roles in ‘educating for the future’.     

Auditor–client management relationships and roles in negotiating financial reporting

We carry out an interview based field study of chief financial officer (CFO)–audit partner dyads to examine the assumption that the roles played by each side and the nature of the relationships are similar across negotiations. These dyads freely discussed with us their relationship, a specific issue negotiated and it’s resolution process. Employing the lens of social positioning negotiation research, we find these negotiations are ‘fluid’, with continual redefinition not only of the substantive issues under negotiation, but also of the negotiation roles and relationships (i.e. ‘shadow’ negotiations). The CFO’s actions and expectations in these ‘shadow’ negotiations appear to define the auditor’s role and the relationship’s parameters, but both can evolve over time. The audit partners express a desire to be in the “ideal” relationship where they assume the role of the ‘expert advisor’ (as opposed to a ‘police officer’) but they seemingly have no explicit strategy to move the relationship toward a ‘proactive’ (rather than ‘reactive’) state. Furthermore, the audit partner is always the ‘relationship manager’ whose job it is to see that client management remains “happy”. These roles and relationships negotiated in the ‘shadows’ also affect how the negotiation process unfolds, including the set of alternative accounting treatments considered during negotiations. Finally, audit firms appear to manage the assignment of partners to engagements based on CFO preferences and remove those partners who are in “poor” relationships, irrespective of why the relationship is considered by the CFO to be “poor”. Implications for the broader research program on auditor–client management negotiations are discussed.     

Professional Research,Lobbying and Intangibles: A Review Essay

The publication in January 1992 of The Valuation of Intangible Assets, a report by Arthur Andersen & Co., has again stimulated the ‘brands’ debate. The Report claims to present a range of valuation methods for intangibles that command a ‘consensus’ among preparers, and that overcome the problems of subjectivity, consistency, separability and relevance identified in earlier research into brand accounting. This paper argues that the concept of separability, upon which these claims depend, is far from clear. The Andersen Report also raises questions as to the nature of its appeal to consensus, the role of codification in determining accounting policy, and the status of professional ‘research’.     

Reflections on the use of a dual-methodology research design to evaluate accounting and management practice in UK university central administrative services

This paper discusses the application of a triangulated research design in studying the cost-efficiency of central administrative service (CAS) departments in UK universities. The methodology is of particular interest, as it is a dual-method, mixed paradigm study involving two separate teams of researchers with different methodological orientations and, potentially, varying objectives. The political context of this project is also significant, given the climate of cuts in resources to Higher Education and recent moves to make universities more ‘accountable’, not least because the research was funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), The paper reflects upon the philosophical and political issues that were encountered during a research process that encompassed different methodologies, but which aimed at producing a unified body of knowledge. The paper identifies three possibilities for this unified body of knowledge: that the dual approaches complemented each other; challenged each other; or ‘talked past’ each other as they were rooted in different philosophical and political ‘realities’. It is proposed that, given sufficient self-awareness and reflexivity on the part of the researchers, dual-methodological research may be largely complementary and overcome at least some of the obstacles that impede the formation of a unified body of knowledge within accounting settings.     

Accounting activism and Bourdieu's ‘collective intellectual’ – Reflections on the ICL Case

The aim of this paper is to reflect upon the practice of accounting academics as ‘collective intellectuals’ – inspired by the actions and conception of Pierre Bourdieu. While accounting researchers have drawn upon Bourdieu's theoretical contributions on habitus, field and capital, little attention has been paid to his later, more critical ideas and practice of intervention post 1995. As a result, accounting research has yet to discover Bourdieu's work on the ‘collective intellectual’ and, thus, consider its contribution to our understanding of how accounting academics can participate in a form of activism against neoliberalism that would not be in contradiction with professional norms of rigorous research. Rather, activism could enhance academic research.Central to this paper is a reflection on a case of intervention involving a diverse collection of academics and activists who came together to launch a coordinated response to a large-scale industrial disaster in Scotland in 2004. The collective in question took various interventionary steps to campaign for a Public Inquiry into the disaster and seek justice and accountability for workers past and present. These steps are analysed with respect to the methods adopted and the work and practice of Bourdieu's collective intellectual.     

A characterisation of the methodology of qualitative research on the nature of perceived risk: trends and omissions

The issue of how risk is ‘perceived’ is one of significant research interest and immense practical importance. In spite of this wide interest, however, it is probably fair to say that most emerging ‘risk’ crises – whether related to natural or technological phenomena – come as a surprise to researchers and to society as a whole. Prediction of human responses to novel potential hazards (or novel manifestations of old hazards) is neither reliable nor complete; strategies to ameliorate inappropriate concerns when they arise (or to make realistic inappropriate absences of concern) do not appear totally effective. It therefore seems apt to ask the question: just what have we learned about ‘risk perception’? In this paper we conduct a structured review of qualitative research on perceived risk – to be followed by a subsequent analysis of quantitative research in a later paper – focusing upon methodological issues. Qualitative research often precedes quantitative research, and ideally informs it; it seeks depth and meaning from few subjects rather than identifying patterns within larger samples and populations. Without adequate qualitative research, quantitative research risks misanalysis of the target phenomenon, at the very least by the omission of relevant factors and inclusion of irrelevant ones. Our analysis here – of qualitative studies conducted across a range of disciplines, not all of which will be familiar to the readers of this journal – suggests that this research suffers from an incomplete coverage of the ‘risk perception universe’, typified by a focus on atypical hazards and study samples. We summarise the results of this research, while pointing out its limitations, and draw conclusions about future priorities for research of this type.     

Integrating competing conceptions of risk: A call for future direction of research

The goal of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework that integrates between what has been traditionally presented in the risk literature as two opposing perspectives: the positivist‐probabilistic and the contextualist. Acknowledging the differences between the two, we argue that a reconciliation of both could deepen and expand our understanding of risk, enlarge the scope and utilization of research methodologies, and bridge the gap between lay people's and experts' conceptions of risk. This line of thinking reflects a dialectical approach in suggesting integration (‘synthesis’), while acknowledging the existence of differences and oppositions (‘antitheses’). In 1986, Bruner's conceptualization of two irreducible, and at the same time, possibly integrated modes of thought can serve as a promising direction for researching risk. We further suggest how this line of thinking can be integrated utilizing the mixed‐method design in the study of risk. We claim that the positivist‐probabilistic and contextualist perspectives represent two different approaches to understanding and studying risk, and that any attempt to reduce or ignore one at the expense of the other would result in a limited understanding of the phenomenon.