Ethical evaluations and behavioural intentions of early career accountants: the impact of mentors,peers and individual attributes

This study examined how mentoring support, peer influence and individual attributes of early career accountants (ECA) influence their ethical evaluations and behavioural intentions. Respondents indicate that their evaluation of the seriousness of the ethical conflict is affected by the perceived standard of ethical conduct of their peers, their personal ethical orientation, the extent of ethics education at university, and gender. ECAs’ evaluation of a senior colleague's unethical behaviour is affected by mentoring support and the perceived standard of ethical conduct of peers. In terms of ECAs’ willingness to contact accounting professional bodies for ethical advice, the size of the accounting firm and the extent of their ethics education at university are significant factors. Furthermore, the likelihood of respondents choosing a more ethical decision is correlated with his or her individual ethical orientation and the extent of ethics education at university.     

Informal mentoring relationships and the career processes of public accountants

Research has shown that informal mentoring relationships benefit the protégé, mentor and employing organisation. As such they have been of interest to public accounting firms. The functioning of these relationships in Big Eight/Big Five accounting firms has been investigated in the USA and more recently in Ireland. The career outcome of most interest has been turnover intentions. This paper reports the results of a questionnaire study of mentoring relationships in the Australian state of Queensland. The receipt of mentoring support by accountants is found to be associated with not only lower turnover intentions, but also higher job satisfaction, and lower intentions of female accountants to seek part-time employment. The impact of the organisational context in which these relationships are initiated and cultivated is also investigated. The size of the accounting firm and the national culture of the country in which the firm operates, appear to have some bearing on mentoring experiences.     

Towards an understanding of excel functional skills needed for a career in public accounting: Perceptions from public accountants and accounting students

Public accounting firms (e.g., Grant Thornton, 2012) are stressing an interest in recruiting accounting students with a proficiency in Excel. The purpose of this study is to investigate which Excel functions are perceived to be important and useful for new hires to understand prior to starting a job in public accounting. We collect survey data from four large public accounting firms as well as undergraduate and graduate accounting students (i.e., potential new hires) to gauge perceptions of Excel importance, knowledge, and usage in public accounting. We find that employees at the firms believe the most important Excel functions are: basic formula, filter and sort data, vertical (horizontal) lookup, formatting of documents, and If/Then statements. In a comparison of new hires at public accounting firms with accounting students, results suggest that accounting students underestimate the importance and usage of some of these Excel functions. In addition, results suggest that new hires’ perceived knowledge on how to use specific Excel functions in their accounting job is statistically different than students’ perceived knowledge on how to use some of the same Excel functions. Our research contributes to educational accounting literature by documenting which Excel functions employers in public accounting want new hires to know prior to starting a job in public accounting. Also, this research informs accounting educators that students’ perceptions are not the same as public accounting employers’ expectations with respect to analytical skills using Excel technology.     

Managerial career concerns and the content of corporate disclosures: An analysis of the tone of earnings press releases

This study examines how the narrative content of corporate disclosures is affected by managers’ career concerns, measured by the enforceability of noncompete provisions in employment contracts. We provide empirical evidence that career concerns lead managers to manipulate the content of corporate disclosures by inflating the tone of earnings press releases to convey a more optimistic picture about the firm’s financial performance. We ensure the causality of our findings by exploiting changes to noncompete enforceability following court rulings. We also show that tone inflation is stronger when CEOs are younger, less capable and less experienced, as well as for managers of firms with more independent boards, more analysts following and better governance.     

Perceptions of the learning context and learning approaches: Implications for quality learning outcomes in accounting

This study analyses learning approaches, course perceptions and learning outcomes of a group of second year accounting students at an Australian university using qualitative data analysis techniques. The research method involves the development of a series of matrices linking types of motives and strategies used by students in their study, together with their perceptions of the learning context associated with learning outcomes. The study focuses on assessing the links between learning approaches and a qualitative assessment of students' conceptual understanding of aspects of financial accounting studied at the undergraduate level. The results confirm how individual differences in the perceptions of the learning context relate to study motives and strategies. The findings show how different forms of memorisation relate to study strategies and how the completion of accounting tasks link to students' perceptions of course requirements. There was also some evidence that, in terms of learning outcomes, students with sophisticated levels of understanding of concepts, tended to have consistent deep and achieving approaches to learning. This result was compared with students' academic performance as a measure of learning outcome. Discrepancies between these two measures of learning outcome are highlighted in the conclusions. The findings strengthen the case for further investigation of the use of measures other than academic performance in examining relationships between learning approaches and learning outcomes.     

Awareness of the public versus private accounting divide,and its impact on the career path preference of accounting students

This research assesses what knowledge upper-level accounting students possess about the distinctions between the public and private branches of accounting, as well as the influence such knowledge might have on their accounting branch choice. Overall, the study concluded that, before they were aware of the pros and cons of each career path, students preferred a career in public accounting over private accounting. But upon learning the pros and cons of each career path, however, students showed a slight preference toward private accounting. The study suggests research on accountant personality be supplemented by research on the impact of practical knowledge about private versus public accounting work environments on accounting career choice. It suggests greater importance be placed in accounting education on instilling such knowledge.     

Enterprise Resource Planning and a contest to limit the role of management accountants: A strong structuration perspective

The implementation and use of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems raise fundamental questions about the role of management accountants in an organisation. The case studied here, involving an attempt to establish an ERP system in an organisation funded by both the European Union (EU) and the Egyptian government, is an exploration of conflicting beliefs about the role of management accountants. Elements of strong structuration theory (a reinforced version of Giddens’ structuration theory) are used to analyse how the contest over the role of the management accountant in a new organisation was played out during the partially successful attempt to establish ERP in conjunction with a system that was felt to better support the requirements of the EU for performance-based budgeting. Despite the forward-looking dispositions of key actors within the organisation and from the EU, the role of the management accountant here became compressed to the traditional one of cost information collector and provider.     

Exploring the relationship between strategic performance measurement systems and managers' creativity: the mediating role of psychological empowerment and organisational learning

This study explores whether strategic performance measurement systems (SPMSs) are linked to managers' creativity through two mediating variables—organisational learning and psychological empowerment. Using data collected from 92 senior production managers in Australian manufacturing organisations, the study tests these links using a partial least squares structural model. The results from the structural model indicate that SPMSs are indirectly related to the managers' creativity through organisational learning and psychological empowerment. The study also finds that organisational learning is both directly related to creativity, and indirectly related to psychological empowerment. Further, the potential implications for empirical research are discussed.     

Development and validation of an improved DeLone-McLean IS success model - application to the evaluation of a tax administration ERP

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is critical to an organization’s success. However, the factors that contribute to the success and usage of these ERP systems have received little attention. This study developed and validation of an improved DeLone-McLean IS success model. Additionally, we examined the factors which influence ERP system usage, employee satisfaction, information quality, service quality, and system quality, as well as the factors that influence the system’s overall success. The proposed model is based on a mixed-methods case study (MM-CS). The results show that the proposed model significantly measures the success of an ERP system. The organizational climate, the information quality, the system quality, and the service quality all have an impact on the usage of an ERP system. The proposed model also shows that the use of an ERP system, training and learning, and the three information (IS) quality constructs are all significant predictors of user satisfaction. The results also indicate that gender and years of ICT use on the path of ERP users have a moderating effect on the relationship between teamwork & support and use.     

Internationalization and employability: the role of intercultural experiences in the development of transferable skills

Policy-makers are increasingly advocating market-based reforms to increase choices for service users and therefore to drive improvement through competition. This article assesses this approach in a hospital trust where there is plenty of scope for patients to choose providers and so for reforms based on a market logic to work. The market had very little impact on the hospital's activities, but demands from the Department of Health and the strategic health authority for the hospital to become more market-oriented were creating the potential for significant dysfunctional consequences.     

Corporate social responsibility and firm financial risk reduction: On the moderating role of the legal environment

Approaching the institutional environment through its regulative component, we distinguish between shareholder‐oriented and stakeholder‐oriented countries. Identifying first this classification with the distinction between common law versus civil law countries and using a large sample of 5,716 firm‐year observations that represents 1,169 individual firms in 25 countries between 2001 and 2011, we show that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) significantly reduces firms’ idiosyncratic risk in civil law countries but not in common law countries. Using then a more direct classification based on shareholder and employee protection scores, our findings suggest that CSR negatively affects firms’ idiosyncratic and systematic risks only in less shareholder‐oriented and more stakeholder‐oriented countries, respectively. These findings are similar in the different components of CSR with two notable exceptions: a high score in corporate governance reduces firm risk only in common law countries, and community involvement increases idiosyncratic risk in more shareholder‐oriented and less stakeholder‐oriented countries, respectively. Taken together, our results strongly support the view that the relationship between CSR and financial risk is moderated by the institutional context of the firm.     

Impact of IT governance mechanisms on organizational agility and the role of top management support and IT ambidexterity

Organizations have increasingly relied on information technology (IT) to remain agile in today’s business environment. This study examines the antecedents of organizational agility by integrating top management support, IT governance mechanisms (i.e., structural, process-based, and relational governance), and IT ambidexterity (i.e., IT exploration and exploitation) into a research model. We test our model using statistical data collected from 326 firms in China. Our findings indicate that top management support positively influences structural, process-based, and relational governance. Results show that process-based and relational governance positively influence IT exploration and exploitation, whereas IT exploration and exploitation positively influence organizational agility. In addition, top management support positively impacts organizational agility through the dual mediation of process-based and relational governance and IT exploration and exploitation. We interpret and discuss these findings as well as their theoretical and practical implications.     

The antecedent role of personal environmental values in the relationships among trust in companies,information processing and risk perception

Trust and risk perception are important issues for industries such as petrochemical companies, typically considered ‘less trustworthy’ because of the hazards associated with their activities. In this context, individual’s trust in companies may have influence on information processing mode that individual adopts to reach a judgement such as risk perception associated with industrial hazards. We take the heuristic-systematic theory (HSM) as the model for processing information about industrial risk, with trust in companies as its antecedent and risk perception as its consequence. However, this process may be influenced by factors such as personal specific values. This paper analyses, to our knowledge for the first time, the antecedent role of personal values towards environmental issues in the HSM of information processing. The model was tested using data from interviews with 992 residents in an area of the province of Castelló (Spain) close to a petrochemical complex. Structured equation models were used to analyse the data. The results demonstrate the proposed relationships. The main contribution of this paper is the corroboration of the direct and indirect effects of personal environmental values on the variables that make up the trust in companies-HSM of information processing-risk perception sequence. Finally, we recommend that the companies of the petrochemical complex consider the frank, open and bidirectional communication with the residents as the key element to break the association among pro-environmental values, distrust in the companies and perception of the risk.