The dynamics of a regulatory space realignment: Strategic responses in a local context

This paper seeks to extend and deepen our understanding of the production and interpretation of accounting regulation. It analyses how, in response to a regulatory crisis, a revised set of regulatory arrangements, principally in the realm of disciplinary procedure oversight, was re-negotiated and re-shaped in the Irish professional accounting context. We mobilize the concept of regulatory space ( and ) and Oliver’s (1991) typology of strategic responses to institutional pressures to theorise the actor dynamics, strategies and resources enrolled throughout the process of developing and interpreting the proposed regulations. By highlighting the interaction between different sets of actors within the regulatory realignment, we extend Oliver’s (1991) (implicit) focus on the strategic responses of one class of actor during an institutional change. While prior research finds that regulators adopt compromise or acquiescence strategies when confronted with aggressive regulatee resistance, thereby significantly diluting proposed regulations (see, Shapiro & Matson, 2008), we unveil a context where regulators successfully enrolled strategies of defiance to repel this resistance. We also find limited evidence of agreement on meaning between the regulators and regulatees, despite conceptions of regulatory space viewing this agreement as central to the initial interpretation of regulatory rules (Scott, 2001). Our analysis provides a counterpoint to prior research suggesting that the accounting establishment has been highly successful in influencing the design and interpretation of new regulations aimed at overseeing the accounting profession (see, Malsch & Gendron, 2011). Drawing on our findings, we suggest that the passivity of national regulators in the process of developing and interpreting (local or global) regulations should not be automatically presumed. We conclude with a call for an enhanced focus on the influence of national political and social contexts on the development and interpretation of accounting regulations.     

Information content of earnings announcements in the New Zealand equity market,a longitudinal analysis

We compute abnormal return variance and abnormal trading volume in the 3‐day window surrounding earnings announcements to examine the information content of earnings announcements in the New Zealand equity market over the past 16 years. We find that the information content of earnings announcements has increased significantly over time, and this finding holds true for both interim and preliminary earnings announcements. We find evidence that earnings announcements with June year‐ends exhibit a higher level of information content and experience a more pronounced rising trend as compared to earnings announcements with non‐June year‐ends. Several firm characteristics appear to relate to the level of the information content of earnings announcements as well as to compound the trend over time. We document an important finding that the information content of earnings announcements increases remarkably in the period after the adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).     

Accounting in its social context: Towards a history of value added in the United Kingdom

Although the relationship between accounting and society has been posited frequently, it has been subjected to little systematic analysis. This paper reviews some existing theories of the social nature of accounting practice and, by so doing, identifies a number of significant conceptual problems. Using the case of the rise of interest in value added accounting in the United Kingdom in the 1970s, the paper conducts a social analysis of this particular event and then seeks to draw out the theoretical issues and problems which emerge from this exercise. Finally, the implications of these for the social analysis of accounting are discussed.     

Management accounting in its social context: Rimailho revisited

The homogeneous sections method prescribed by the Plan comptable general (the French national accounting plan) since its origin is commonly attributed to the influence of the Rimailho Report (1928, in its final version). An in-depth analysis of the processes and management systems Rimailho set up, described in minute detail in his major works, has led to the belief that he was the pioneer of a certain type of the activity-based costing method. But other aspects of his work are far more interesting. With Rimailho, accountancy plays a role which is closely linked to his political and social convictions. Rimailho's management accounting appears as the strategic tool in a type of corporate regulation involving organizational slack, possible in a defender 's strategy deployed in a specific competitive and technological environment. Rimailho's organization does not fit into today's standard typologies (Anthony, Woodward, Ouchi, etc.). It is an appropriate challenge for researchers in accounting and management control.     

中关村发展集团整合社会资本投资项目的新突破

自5月13日举行中关村发展集团成立并第一次股权投资和创新合作签约仪式以来,仅仅两个月的时间,中关村发展集团充分整合资源,不断完善项目发现机制,凝聚社会资本共同支持项目落地,进一步加大重大科技成果产业化股权投资工作力度,与18家高成长性企业签订了股权投资合作意向书,与五家院所高校、六家银行签订了战略合作意向书。阶段性成果显著。     

Management accounting texts in New Zealand: the need for a paradigm shift

This paper questions the dominance in textbooks of a management accounting grounded largely in neo-classical economics and scientific management. In New Zealand the most popular textbook used in introductory management accounting courses is Horngren and Foster's Cost Accounting - a Managerial Emphasis.The current seventh edition of the text, although extensively used, is not regarded as adequate for the purpose by many New Zealand educators. The text is seen as being rootd firmly in the traditional understandings of the role of management accounting which are subject to increasing challenge. Other popular texts which are influencing the content of management accounting courses also are reviewed. We conclude that, despite much criticism over many years, modern textbooks have failed to evolve; change is overdue.     

Financial contagion: A local correlation analysis

Local correlation is used to examine financial contagion. We share the view of previous research that there is contagion from the U.S. spot equity market to that of Germany and Britain. In addition, we provide evidence to suggest contagion from the U.S. spot equity market to that of Japan and Hong Kong. Furthermore, we have detected contagion from U.S. futures to other futures markets. However, there is no reverse contagion from any of the German, British, Japanese, and Hong Kong spot or index futures markets to those of the U.S. The results have international diversification, portfolio management, and within-industry implications.     

Recent developments in the accounting profession in New Zealand: A case of deprofessionalization?

The international accounting literature is replete with references to the importance of professionalization of accounting in its development. While professionalization of accounting is progressing at a rapid rate in many developing countries, the recent developments in some western industrialized countries seem to suggest a different trend. This paper proposes to investigate these developments and provide a critical analysis focusing on one western industrialized country (i.e., New Zealand).Evidence is provided in the paper to show that (a) the boundaries between accountancy and other occupations are becoming increasingly blurred; (b) the dominance of accounting controls in organizations is being challenged; (c) the profession does not control access to accounting knowledge; and (d) the profession is unable to prevent government intervention in the areas of work standards, and bureaucratic controls in the work place. The paper argues that the recent changes in the accounting profession in New Zealand suggest a trend towards deprofessionalization.     

Casemix Management in a New Zealand Hospital: Rationalisation and Resistance

This paper discusses the use of a 'casemix' information system to rationalise and scrutinise clinical activity in a corporatised New Zealand hospital. The implementation of the casemix system was part of a management strategy to influence clinician behaviour by making visible the financial implications of clinical decisions. Clinicians were able to resist the application of this comparative surveillance system by challenging or diverting the information produced.     

Harmonising with Overseas Accounting Standards: A New Zealand Perspective

Standard-setting in New Zealand has graduated from the early wholesale adoption of overseas pronouncements to an autonomous approach which recognises unique characteristics of the country's legislation and culture. However, close cooperation is observed with Australian standard-setting.     

Bank computing in a changing economic environment: the IBIS project in New Zealand

This paper examines a major bank computing redevelopment attempted in New Zealand in the 1980s - the IBIS project. After the expenditure of some hundreds of millions of dollars this project was not proceeded with and this paper looks at the factors that led to its eventual failure. We find that dreams of banking technology can be as costly as other failures experienced by banks, and that banks must have regard to the competitive environment in building their computer systems.     

从验资准则看验资业务的新变化

2006年2月,财政部发布了《中国注册会计师审计准则第1602号——验资》(以下简称"新准则"),后又发布了准则指南(以下简称"新指南")。和《独     

Contrarian Investing in a Small Capitalization Market: Evidence from New Zealand

This paper investigates the performance of accounting–based contrarian investment strategies in the New Zealand market. The return patterns of these strategies are then related to risk–based and behavioral–based explanations of the contrarian anomaly. Based on our analysis of the risk–return characteristics of the various strategies, we attribute the first year underperformance and second year outperformance of the value portfolios to expectational errors caused by noise trading in the relatively illiquid New Zealand market. The longer two–year correction process is in contrast to the much larger and more developed U.S. and Japanese markets, where value stock price corrections have been found to occur more rapidly. This provides support for the conjecture that longer horizons are required for value strategies to pay off in imperfectly competitive markets than in competitive markets.     

A positive analysis of corporate capital budgeting practices

Although the academic literature has long argued that discounted cash flow methods are superior to other capital budgeting rules, these methods have only fairly recently come into widespread use. This article points out that there are both costs and benefits to using discounting rules such as net present value. Therefore, they may often not work better in practice than nondiscounting methods. Empirically, the use of discounting methods is positively correlated with market interest rates and the dissemination of information about these tools and negatively correlated with the degree of uncertainty in the economy, which is consistent with our hypotheses.     

Government ownership and the capital structure of firms: Analysis of an institutional context from China

Emerging economies provide interesting scenarios for examining how institutional context influences the financing behavior of firms. In this study, we examine the capital structure of Chinese listed firms following the Split-Share Structure Reform of 2005. This reform allowed a reduction of government ownership by making government shares tradable. We find that the impact of government ownership on leverage is dependent on whether the government is the largest shareholder in a firm and whether the government ownership is through a parent state-owned enterprise. In addition, we document that the largest non-government shareholder positively influences leverage. Overall, our results reveal that the largest controlling shareholder, either government or non-government, has a significant impact on the capital structure of Chinese firms.     

The indirect effects of direct democracy: local government size and non-budgetary voter initiatives in Germany

Recently, a wide and empirically backed consensus has emerged arguing that direct democratic control over government’s spending decisions through initiatives and referendums constrains government size. This paper extends the discussion to German direct democracy reforms of the mid-1990s, which granted voters rights to launch initiatives on local issues, but neither the right nor the responsibility of voting on the implied costs of these initiatives. An analysis of around 2300 voter initiatives in the population of around 13,000 German municipalities from 2002 to 2009 demonstrates that in this sample—and in contrast to most of the Swiss and US evidence—direct democracy causes an expansion of local government size on average by around 8 % in annual per capita expenditure and revenue per initiative (on economic projects). This quite substantial increase in government size is financed by an increase in local taxes.     

Evaluating disclosure theory using the views of UK finance directors in the intellectual capital context

In contrast to most prior research in this area, which focuses on actual disclosures, this study uses a large-scale direct method to investigate the factors that a key preparer group believes influence intellectual capital (IC) disclosure decisions. IC disclosures are typically characterised by uncertainty of interpretation and high levels of commercial sensitivity. A questionnaire elicits 93 UK-listed company finance directors' views regarding the influences on these decisions. Results are used to evaluate the relative explanatory power of several theoretical and practical reasons for disclosure. Strongest support is found for competitive disadvantage and capital market considerations. Issues related to legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory and other economic disclosure costs also feature. Factor analysis reduces the set of 28 incentives and disincentives to 10 uncorrelated dimensions, indicating that a broad and complex set of overlapping factors affect the disclosure decision. The importance of disclosure incentives and disincentives is found to vary both within and between disclosure topics, which may explain the variation in findings in prior research.     

Immigration and local spending in social services: evidence from a massive immigration wave

The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between immigration and redistributive public spending by using the recent, massive arrival of immigrants in Spain. Specifically, we focus our analysis on the effect of 1998–2006 changes in local immigrant density on contemporaneous changes in municipal spending in social services. To address the potential endogenous location of immigrants, we adopt an instrumental variables approach that uses the distribution of rental housing in 1991 to predict the location of immigrant inflows. The results indicate that (per capita) social spending increased less in those municipalities that recorded the largest increases in immigrant density. We interpret our results as a reduction in natives’ demand for redistributive public spending.     

A Note on the Predictability of Financial Distress in New Zealand Listed Companies

Multiple discriminant analysis is applied to financial ratios of New Zealand listed companies and a model developed which exhibits better classification ability than other New Zealand-based models. The predictive ability of the New Zealand model is tested on a hold-out sample of listed companies and performs reasonably well for predictions close to the point of failure.